Scarlet

The very moment I turn the skill towards my Sin of Pride curse, I feel it clicking somehow. Like my skill locked onto the curse.

And as soon as I activate Bane of Corruption, I hear a shattering sound that echoes throughout the clearing we’re in, followed shortly by what appear to be red, purple, and black chains manifesting in the air while locked onto me. Then the chains themselves shatter under the eyes of all of the demons nearby, and along with them all of the powerful urges brought to me by the Sin.

I blink as I look at the remains of the chains of light falling to the ground before looking at my own hands.

“Well?” Tar asks while floating down in front of me. “How does it feel?”

I continue looking at my hands, simply turning them back and forth for a few seconds before eventually raising my head to Tar.

It feels liberating. My sense of pride is still here, but the uncontrollable impulses that came along with it are gone. And the pride itself has been significantly decreased as well. To a level even lower than it was before I contracted.

“The leftover is probably just your own natural pride, nothing more,” Tar comments while floating around me as if studying me. “Does anything else feel different?”

I purse my lips while looking down and then turning my head around to get a view of my current appearance, but nothing stands out as different physically. Even when I close my eyes and look inwards I don’t find anything really different.

The only real difference is the lessened sense of pride and the lack of any impulses.

I raise my head to look at the Nobles around me, each of whom seem like they’re waiting for me to say something. And interestingly enough, I can tell just from a glance that I would be perfectly fine with running away from them now if necessary. Which it’s not necessary.

Interesting. And likely will lead to me being in fewer dangerous situations.

“I nullified my own Sin of Pride curse,” I finally tell them, making all of the demons immediately start cheering. But to my surprise, some of them even start crying out of what I’m assuming is relief.

Wow. They’re happy.

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“Well they’ve been dealing with their curses ever since they were born, and a lot of the Sins are much worse than Pride,” Tar points out, making me lightly nod my head in response.

True.

Just the thought about what some of the demons have gone through is terrifying. Ghouls eating their own family, oni killing their own family after losing control of their Wrath.

The Lord of Hellfire going on a rampage through Tartarus after losing control of his own Wrath.

And now they have hope of getting rid of those curses for good.

“Your Highness, would you please grace me with the nullification of my curse?” Artorius von Nightborne, the Noble who first got into contact with me for this, asks while kneeling down in front of me.

I frown at him before answering, “I don’t know if I’ll be able to erase others curses just yet, but I can try.”

He nods his head, “That’s all I would ask of you, Your Highness. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart.”

The vampire then lowers his head and closes his eyes as if preparing for whatever I’m going to do. So I follow suit and step forwards, placing my hand on his head and closing my eyes.

Then I activate Bane of Corruption, feeling the skill lock onto a source of corruption in the vampire. But this time I feel a powerful sense of resistance that has my eyes furrowing slightly despite being shut.

When I nullified my own curse, the curse itself felt like a little root branching from a much larger tree. And my skill first started by cutting the root from the tree before quickly erasing the root itself.

But the curse in this vampire feels different. It’s still a root connected to a tree, but this time my skill doesn’t seem powerful enough to cut the entire root from the tree. And whenever it tries, the root itself somehow regrows back in an instant, repairing the little damage my skill managed to do to it.

So after realizing that I can’t deal with his curse, at least not yet, I follow along the root to the tree itself.

And immediately regret it as I feel my knees dropping out from beneath me as I cough out a mouthful of blood, my eyes shooting open.

The vampire quickly gets up and grabs my shoulders as he helps me stand, but I just raise a hand after a second and stand up myself.

“What happened?!” he exclaims. Meanwhile I find all of the other Nobles looking worried. Likely both about me and whether I’ll be able to nullify their curses.

I use my Blood Manipulation to grab the blood that had left my mouth and partially covered my lips and chin before storing it into my Bloodwell for later use in combat. Then I look up at the Nobles and answer, “It looks like I’m not strong enough to nullify other demons’ curses yet. And when I tried to follow the curse back to its source… you saw what happened.”

They all begin to grow a lot more depressed at my words.

“I’ll probably be able to nullify individual demons’ curses in a hundred or two hundred more levels,” I tell them, bringing their hopes back up. “But without using the skill as a ritual skill I likely won’t be able to nullify the curse on demonkind itself. And even with a ritual usage, I probably won’t be able to pull it off until I’m at least a viscountess.”

They all feel conflicted, but in the end most of them seem happy with the results.

“Well, none of them really expected to ever be able to erase their curse in their lifetimes,” Tar comments, making me nod my head in agreement.

Yeah.

“I’ll go level up a hundred or so times and then head to Tartarus to nullify the Lord of Hellfire’s curse,” I tell them, making the count nod his head before bowing again.

We have direction now.

And I’m curse free.