For a moment Devon braced himself to have to fight a skeleton boss, but after several seconds it became clear that the bony figure wouldn't be getting up. Still, he found it strange that the king's corpse would remain when all of the others had faded away into dust. Perhaps it was a part of leveling past a certain point.

The skeleton held the spear in its right hand, while its left held a tile.

Devon approached cautiously and picked the tile up. He opened the status screen to see who he should be offering up his respects to.

[Status] - Deceased

Name: [Data Purged]

Race: [C-Grade Infernari]

Devon frowned at the message.

Data purged? Is that a result of the system screwing with someone else who was cursed, or was it somehow done manually by someone else in the time since their death?

Unable to glean an answer from the otherwise blank status sheet, he moved on. When he went to look in the inventory he noticed an additional function that hadn't been there on the tile he'd looked at in the room before or the Overseer's tile.

[Datalogs]

When he opened it he saw there was a single datalog called 'The End.' He went ahead and opened it.

[The End]

I leave this message behind out of spite, nothing more and nothing less. I hope dearly it finds its way into the clutches of somebody who has been cursed, like myself. I hope it aids you on your journey, because the more you prosper… the more the system will suffer.

The only title or name that means anything to me is that of the Cursed King. It is, or perhaps I should say it was, my pride. A mark of defiance against the heavens, definitive proof that even a being that had been labeled as cursed could create something wondrous and beautiful, as I have created a home that was both of those things for my people on this world.

I erected defenses that even A-Grade beings could not breach alone, and established myself as a shining example to all those who are known to be cursed.

I suppose none of this may mean anything to you, so I'll get to the point. There are many things I have learned on my journey. I have learned much about the system and I have found many ways to use it that even ordinary beings do not know.

I have concluded through my travels one universal truth. The system is bound by something to create equal opportunity for all those who exist within Karma's Path.

Let's start with the most important thing. Even after all my travels, all my experiences, and my near infinite attempts at combination and permutations of known system commands, I could never find the command to distribute free points. But that in itself can be seen as an advantage for the cursed, because within the accumulation of free points lies Potential.

The way I see it, free points are in essence crystalized Potential. The system allows the distribution of that potential to allow a user to grow stronger in ways they see fit, giving birth to a myriad different trails along the path of ascendancy.

But untapped Potential creates something similar to a chain reaction when it's allowed to build up past certain thresholds. It overflows, causing that being's power to rise beyond what it would normally be within the system.

Finally, Devon's greatest concern and his biggest question were answered in one fell swoop. The mysterious points he was gaining were coming from the free points he wasn't able to spend. He kept reading, suddenly even more eager to read what the Cursed King had left.

The tiers of Potential seem to be uniform among most species in the Infinite Realms. The first is relatively easy to get at 30 points. The second requires a significant amount of time to achieve at 100 points.

However, this does not come without a tradeoff. The accumulation of Potential creates something akin to a blockage in the distribution of exp. I'm not certain if beings who have higher tiered Potential simply require more exp to level up, or if exp efficiency decreases as Potential increases, but the effect is the same.

So that's it.

Devon hadn't understood how Eve could possibly be so far ahead of him when it felt like all he did was fight monsters, but here was the answer. It wasn't that Eve was that much better at hunting than he was, though he still couldn't entirely discount that possibility, Devon simply required more kills to level up.

This makes it absurdly hard to specialize in any one thing, but over time the excess points obtained through Potential will compound almost exponentially. By the fourth tier of Potential there will not be anything at an equivalent level that could be your match.

Anything other than other beings who have abused the benefits of Potential, that is. The unfortunate truth is that you don't need to be cursed to take advantage of Potential. In fact, I've almost come to believe that it's considered a requirement for anything above C-Grade.

Even so, the existence of Potential is largely a secret, and is usually only known by the elites or beings that have absolved themselves of their curse. Even those who know of Potential outside of the cursed rarely take it to the second step. The third step is almost unheard of because of the immense decrease in leveling speed. The fourth step and beyond is often considered foolish in the extreme, because anybody who wishes a Potential abuser harm can simply outlevel them and launch a surprise attack to crush them before the system rescinds the lock on point distribution.

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The lock on point distribution is another reason higher tiers of Potential are considered ill-advised among the elites of the Realms. Once a tier of Potential has been reached it enacts a time limit on when the user is able to distribute points, with the limit being set at the amount of time between the last distributed point and the next instance of intent to distribute those points.

Devon found it quite interesting the system put limitations based on the use of Potential. It was almost like it cared about creating a balanced environment for most users. It would be nice if that balance extended to him, but no. Apparently the curse overrode its desire for a level playing field.

The greatest piece of advice I can give any other cursed being is this; seek struggle. This is more or less a default for most every living thing in the Realms, but cursed users need to take this concept to the next level due to the vast amount of exp required to reach yet higher.

And finally, the biggest warning I can give is this. Whatever you do, do not gain more than ten Marks.

The curse can bestow powerful benefits the closer you tie yourself to Karma, but do not be greedy. I went beyond ten, and the state of my beautiful world is the result.

Devon felt a chill run down his spine. If he was reading this right, the Cursed King was saying that going beyond ten marks of karmic disdain was what triggered the system to aggressively target the king and his kingdom.

He suddenly remembered something Trey had said, that there had been a weird system notification that hadn't seemed to resolve on the night he'd been playing with his profession.

The night the override protocol gave me 100 artificial marks…

It was quite possible Devon had nearly flown directly into the sun without knowing it. If that strange prompt that had appeared to Trey and every other member of the tutorial was similar to the one that the citizens of this ruined kingdom had seen in the memory dungeon then Devon was extremely lucky to be alive.

Beware also of the Curse Hunters, though I'm sure that should be obvious to anyone who's lived in the Realms for any amount of time.

The remainder of this message will be a list of all the system commands I've discovered over my life. Good luck.

Devon felt immense frustration at the fact that the king didn't mention what a curse hunter was supposed to be. He'd fought them in the memory dungeon, but he didn't fully grasp what they were. They seemed too varied to be a single faction, but if they could all simply be known as 'curse hunters' then there must be a reason they all hunted curses.

Devon looked over the list of commands and smiled. There were many that he already knew, but also several that he'd been wanting to sit down and figure out for a while. Some of them seemed to reference functions he'd never heard of, so he transferred the datalog from the king's tile into his own.

Finally he looked in the inventory, but he wasn't expecting too much else. The datalog had been the single greatest discovery he possibly could have found, in his mind. An explanation of things within the system that he needed answers to as well as a list of system commands that he could freely use. The importance of it could not be understated.

He didn't expect much more than dust. Since the king had been dead for as long as everyone in the previous room there was no reason to suspect that the cruel march of time hadn't destroyed anything worth taking.

So he was surprised when he found there to actually be items within the king's subspace storage. There were only three things, all made from what looked like the same type of metal. There was an axehead, a curved sword, and a giant rectangular block of metal.

Each of the strange pieces had a contraption attached to them, and Devon puzzled over them until he decided to set them down and take a look at the spear the king still held. It had slipped his mind that it was extremely odd that the spear too had survived until now, especially considering it was exposed to the elements, unlike the pieces within the king's inventory.

He gingerly uncurled the king's bony fingers and took hold of the spear. Unlike the spears given by the terminal, the speartip was broad and bladed. Along the length of the pole near the ends were strange formations and indentations within the metal that Devon didn't understand.

[Trick Spear of the Cursed King]

Class E

This weapon was forged in the heart of a dying star, and is nearly indestructible. Despite this, it possesses no outstanding qualities or affinities.

It was the first weapon Devon had seen that had a description, and it sent a jolt of supreme joy through his heart. No longer would he have to continuously shill out money for trash weapons from the terminals. At least, not spears.

Wait, a trick weapon? What the heck does it mean by that?

He took another look at the items within the king's inventory, and a huge smile spread across his face when he read the descriptions for them.

[Trick Blade]

Class E

This item was forged in the heart of a dying star, and is nearly indestructible. Attachment for the Cursed King's Trick Spear.

[Trick Hammerhead]

Class E

This item was forged in the heart of a dying star, and is nearly indestructible. Attachment for the Cursed King's Trick Spear.

[Trick Axehead]

Class E

This item was forged in the heart of a dying star, and is nearly indestructible. Attachment for the Cursed King's Trick Spear.

Devon couldn't believe his eyes. The king's weapon was one that actually suited him perfectly.

After half an hour of fiddling with the mechanism he determined that all of them could be attached to the spear itself in different ways. The trick weapon could be configured to be a spear, a hammer, an axe, a scythe, a naginata, or a bardiche. He could also use the curved blade on its own as a sword, though he was going to have to get used to using the attachment mechanism as a handle.

He supposed it made sense when he thought about it. If the king had been like him, unable to distribute points where he wished, and given a class that gave points equally to every stat, then it was reasonable to assume the king had drawn the same conclusions Devon had about his fighting style. The king, like him, had been focused on versatility, and this weapon was emblematic of that.

Still… this is going to be a serious problem going forward.

He looked back at the datalog still displayed before his eyes. It seemed extremely likely to him that most of the cursed beings in the Infinite Realms had probably gone above the threshold of karmic disdain during the course of their leveling process. So they would have had the chance to start off the way they wanted, distribute free points, and get a class that suited their particular tastes.

Devon had started his journey cursed. From level 1 he hadn't been able to invest his free points, but that wasn't even the real issue. The further he went along the path of ascendancy the harder it was going to be. If the cursed king's words were to be believed it was likely there was nobody else in the entirety of the Infinite Realms that was as unlucky as him.

Even so, he had found fortune within that unbelievably bad luck. He looked toward his profession tab and saw Cursed Schemer staring back at him.

Even if there were others that had the misfortune of being cursed from level 1 like him, he was probably the only one that had gotten a profession that allowed him to gain power outside of leveling.