The anemic light of the Dimensional Dungeon shone through the ruined ceiling and bathed Talia, whose skin was covered in runes, and the Abyssal Jaw Boss, which had just opened its maw to release an earthquake-inducing roar.

The green and brown scales of the monster glowed with Mana, and in an instant, several constructs appeared beside it.

[Mud Water Golem - Level 35]

Talia frowned.

It can summon monsters with a higher level than himself.

But it wasn’t something that should have surprised her since she was currently facing a boss. Boss monsters were much stronger than whatever their levels showed. The Mud Water Golems advanced on Talia with speed that was strikingly in contrast with their size.

While Dark Water was coursing through her, Talia couldn’t access the other Skills that might have helped her grow stronger during the battle and perhaps suck the vitality out of the Golems and the Boss alike. However, the trade-off still worked in Talia’s favor, at least in her opinion.

With her strength exponentially magnified by the Cursed Form, Talia charged the first Golem, leaving cracks in the pavement as she dashed forward. The Golem swept its arm toward her, and a rain of rocky projectiles flew her way.

Talia paid almost no heed to them, just summoning a thin layer of Dark Water that protected her from the incoming barrage. The projectiles fizzled away as soon as they struck the Dark Water, incapable of leaving a dent in it.

She swung the Star Glaive at the first Golem, and with Dark Water crystallized along the edge of the blade, she bisected the monster in two, her blade slicing through it like a hot knife through butter.

Two more monsters charged at her, shielding the Boss from another sickle of Dark Water she had thrown in its direction. However, despite their valiant efforts, the two Golems crumbled against the attack.

The Boss immediately summoned more Mud Water Golems, but they did nothing against Talia’s Cursed Form. As she mowed down Golems while trying to reach the Abyssal Jaw Boss, Talia felt extremely frustrated.

She wasn’t frustrated by the battle itself. If anything, the battle was going much more smoothly than it should have. No one five levels below the Boss should have been able to solo such a monster.

The frustration came from the fact that she couldn’t control the Cursed Form. Already, she felt a primal fury overcoming her, clouding her judgment and making her act less rationally.

If a Golem attacked her, instead of focusing on getting closer to the Boss, her body would almost move on its own and barrel through the Golem that had dared attack her.

The Cursed Form made her incredibly powerful. But even with her raised Charisma, which did help since Talia was at least still conscious and somewhat in control of her body, she could still feel the dark power she had summoned take over.

It was a disgrace. She knew it was. If only she could have controlled the Cursed Form, she would have already been, without a shadow of a doubt, the strongest warrior at her level, bar none.

However, with the kind of madness the Cursed Form injected into her, she knew she would have struggled against a smarter opponent. Thankfully, the Abyssal Jaw Boss wasn’t smart at all.

Talia charged at the Abyssal Jaw Boss. Her Dark Water-infused glaive sliced through another Mud Water Golem. The monster crumbled to pieces. She felt a surge of primal satisfaction. But she knew she needed to focus on the main target.

The Boss roared again and summoned more Golems. They formed a protective circle around it.

After a moment of consideration, Talia decided to change her approach. Instead of attacking the Golems head-on as she had been doing, she would use them to her advantage.

With a burst of speed, she lunged at the nearest Golem. She felt a deep need to destroy it,, to tear it apart through her power. However, resisting the Cursed Form's impulses thanks to the newfound Charisma, she vaulted over its head, using the construct as a springboard to launch herself toward the Boss.

The Abyssal Jaw Boss's eyes widened in surprise, not expecting this move. Talia felt a moment of triumph as she sailed through the air, her glaive raised high above her head. As she descended, she swung the weapon down with all her might, the Dark Water-coated blade biting deep into the Boss's tough hide.

A bellow of pain erupted from the monster as it thrashed wildly in response to the unexpected attack. Its massive tail whipped around in a lethal arc, and Talia, still airborne, couldn't dodge in time. The appendage slammed into her midsection with bone-crushing force, sending her flying across the chamber. She crashed into a crumbling wall, feeling the impact reverberate through her entire body.

Pain exploded through every nerve, but the Cursed Form was already working its magic. Talia could feel her bones knitting back together and her bruises fading at an accelerated rate as the runes on her skin converted the Raw Mana into vitality and more Dark Water.

Within seconds, she was back on her feet.

It was amazing what the Cursed Form did, which she had discussed and investigated at length with Professor Iakopo.

Committing all her Blood Water to the Cursed Form meant that Talia’s nigh-infinite reserve of vitality allowed her to draw on such an insane power that was otherwise inaccessible to her through Blood Water.

The Boss, which had clearly been scared by her attack, still hurt, tried to end her. It charged with all its Mud Water Golems alongside it, and, while its minions attacked, tried ripping apart Talia with another tail attack.

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Talia managed to dodge and grab the end of the tail, launched in the air as the appendage retracted. She summoned a disk of Dark Water mid-air, kicking it and using it to redirect herself downward toward the Boss’s spine.

You’re mine, Talia thought amidst the Cursed Form’s exhilarating effects.

A massive dragon-like projection made of Dark Water appeared above her glaive as she swung it.

The attack impacted the Abyssal Jaw Boss’s back, destroying its spine on impact and not stopping, burrowing past the scales and flesh of the creature, coming out of the other side.

The Boss, its eyes wide, with a massive, gaping hole in its back, slowly toppled as Talia landed right beside it.

The Mud Water Golems started crumbling, not powered by the monster’s Mana anymore.

She heard a notification ringing in her head.

[Lifestealer reaches Level 27!]

[Lifestealer reaches Level 28!]

[You gain two Free Attributes!]

[Your Dark Water Affinity has evolved!]

[Affinity - Dark Water reaches Level 4 {Awakened}.]

Talia stood over the fallen boss, her body still thrumming with the power of the Cursed Form. The runes on her skin pulsed with an eerie light, and she could feel the Dark Water coursing through her veins, demanding more carnage. She gritted her teeth, fighting against the primal urge to continue destroying everything in sight.

Binding of Luminescent Water shot from the ground, immediately restraining her. She roared, furious, but she also tried, with the rest of her consciousness, to give up, to let Keanu secure her so that the Cursed Form could finish running its course.

It was a struggle.

"Talia!" Keanu's voice seemed to come from far away. "Help me out! Stop struggling like that!”

A part of her wanted to lash out, to break free and continue the rampage. But Talia clung to Keanu's words, using them as an anchor to her true self. She focused on her breathing, on the feeling of the cold stone beneath her feet, on anything that wasn't the intoxicating power of the Dark Water.

Slowly, agonizingly, the runes began to fade. The Dark Water receded, leaving Talia exhausted and trembling. As the last of the Cursed Form's influence dissipated, Keanu cautiously approached.

"Are you back with us?" he asked.

Talia nodded weakly, her voice hoarse. "Yeah... I'm me again." She looked around at the devastation – crumbled walls, shattered Golems, and the massive corpse of the Abyssal Jaw Boss. "That was... intense."

Keanu helped her to her feet. "You were incredible. Scary, but incredible."

As her faculties returned, Talia remembered why they had come here in the first place.

"The ruins," she said, her eyes scanning the chamber.

She quickly dumped the four more points she had gotten as Free Attributes into Charisma and proceeded to examine the walls.

Her mother had allegedly found information here that led her to do whatever it was that she had done. Professor Iakopo had been incredibly vague, but he had told her that Yalena had mentioned this place once in an uncharacteristic moment of weakness.

Talia didn't exactly want to imagine what this moment of weakness the professor had quoted could be since it kind of gave her nausea thinking about her mother and the professor being intimate, but she trusted the man.

Professor Iakopo had been nothing but upright and interested in her well-being since the Placid City events.

And so Talia approached the walls, seeing that here, the murals had resisted the time and, more importantly, the Abyssal Jaw Boss attacks. In fact, when she turned on Eyes of the Abyss, she saw that the paint below the moss emitted incredible quantities of Mana.

With the help of Keanu, they soon cleared up all the walls. Talia saw what looked like a story in several panels. Wait. Not a story, Talia thought. This is a spell.

The four walls of the room, starting above the corridor they entered from, had four different scenes. The first was a large background split into two different shades of blue. One was a scintillating light blue or azure that had fishes and the flora that one would expect from an area of the sea rich in food for its ecosystem. The second part on the right of the background was a giant expanse of dark blue. Inside of it, there were Abyssal Creatures.

Talia looked at it, confused. "Is this the Calm Belt and the Four Seas?" she asked Keanu.

Keanu looked at the murals himself and shrugged. "I don't know," he replied.

The second panel seemed to present the first transformation of the spell. Two people stood below the replicated diagram. One was below the azure one, and the other below the dark blue one. The one below the azure one was connected with the above mural through a thick tendril the color of blood.

Talia felt her heart catch in her throat. "I think that this is Blood Water," she told Keanu, feeling like they were finally about to get some answers about whatever it was that her mother had done to her.

Keanu looked at the second picture, where a dark black tendril snaked toward the second man from the deep blue above. "And that's Dark Water," Talia said, confused.

"So," Talia speculated, "Blood Water is the vitality and life in the Calm Belt or whatever that light water is, and Dark Water comes from the deep, which Professor Iakopo already explained to me. So that makes sense."

They moved onto the third wall. There, the pictures of the two men superimposed with half of the man now painted in black and half of the man painted in red, shimmering with runes.

"That's the Cursed Form," Talia said. "The Cursed Form is the union of Blood Water and Dark Water. That makes complete sense."

However, in this mural, there are several stages and more representations of the two human figures. In the first, the energies were perfectly balanced, and runes appeared where the two bodies were superimposed. In the second, there was more Blood Water than Dark Water, and the runes were nowhere to be seen. A third set of figures instead had more Dark Water than Blood Water and showed a dark aura around the superimposed figures with a very ominous feeling all over it.

"I think that's me," Talia said. "That's if there's too much Dark Water, it takes over the person. But don't you have a notion of vitality in you, and isn't your Blood Water Affinity stronger than your Dark Water Affinity?"

"Yes," Talia said, scrunching her brow. They looked at each other in confusion.

But then Talia noticed that the third representation, the one where the Dark Water had taken over, showed tendrils that snaked all the way up to the fourth wall. There, a giant vessel stood before two more humanoid figures, the same one that had the ominous Dark Water all over it and that entered a giant vessel. On the other side of the vessel, the same figures exited, and there was now just one human fully covered in runes with a red aura around it.

Talia looked at the vessel, and it wasn't clear what it meant. "Wherever that is, I think I have to go there to unlock the full power of the Cursed Form and to avoid being controlled by it. I guess that this is where mom got whatever idea that led her to give me these," Talia said, raising her wrist marks. "I wonder how she pieced together this, Professor Iakopo's own research, how to create Dark Water, how to gift me Dark Water. This is all so convoluted."

However, she noticed that Keanu had said nothing in return. And when she turned toward him, she found him very pale. "What's up?" she asked.

"That vessel," Keanu said. "I know exactly where that vessel is."

"You do?" Talia asked excitedly.

"Yes," Keanu nodded slowly. "It's from where I come from, the Kaimoro’s hiding place."