Curses operated on the principle of higher risks for higher rewards. But it wasn’t the reward Elian was after. The Tribulation from a Curse, or whatever its counterpart was, would be stronger than from a Boon. Very useful… so long as he could tank it. A risk, for sure. But he should take risks, within reason, because time wasn’t on his side. He should become strong as fast as possible. He was confident that he could tank a Cursed Tribulation with the synergy of the Elder Giant’s Curse and Abyssal Eye’s Curse boosting his Armor sky high.

If he felt he couldn’t do the next Tribulation, he wouldn’t call for it—a simple solution. Priest Thalman did teach him to choose how to carry his burdens.

The Magistrate didn’t move as if pondering Elian’s request. Too bad a hand didn’t have facial expressions to read.

“You can grant me a Curse, right?” Elian asked. “I know you don’t need me to jump through hoops for one.”

Obtaining Curses was the opposite of getting a Boon. Instead of following the biddings of deities, one would find a way to offend them badly enough that they’d cast a Curse. Like the devotion from tests, the endurance of struggling through the Curse was what the deities craved.

Examining the Tribulations closely, they inspired devotion and required endurance from the Penitents. Two-in-one. The Magistrate was practically cheating with its Boon. A Cursed Tribulation should give it more yummy snacks. Elian was more than half sure the Magistrate would agree because deities loved shenanigans way more than they’d care about a time traveler trying to prevent a destroyed future.

The giant hand turned into the blackest black, absorbing all the light in the room, even the rays of the sun from above. For a moment, everything went dark. The air stopped moving and there was pressure from all sides as if Elian was deep underwater. Then dots of light appeared on the hand as if a pimple outbreak.

“I knew you’d do it,” Elian said. “You won’t regret this.”

Tendrils of a star-filled sky stretched from the Magistrate’s finger up Elian’s hand. They coiled around his arm and under his sleeves. He could feel the power of the Magistrate spreading all over his body before branding itself into his skin with a hot coolness he couldn’t quite explain.

And it was done.

The Magistrate’s hand disconnected from Elian, closed itself into a fist, and rested knuckles down on a wide velvet cushion. The light returned to normal and the air moved again.

Elian sensed the new Curse in his body, willing the contract emblems to surface on his skin as proof. The magical tattoos for the Magistrate’s Curse were also scales like its Boon, only with a more pointy and jagged design.

“Can I go to the Stage of Devotion with this?” he wondered with a frown. Followers might not like the idea of someone Cursed by their deity. He had found a possible source of funds, and it was taken away just like that. He hoped the Curse was worth it.

Lesser Curse of the Overzealous Judge

Once a day, you must call upon a Tribulation and suffer it twice, increasing two attributes of your choosing. If you fail to present yourself for heaven’s judgment before the day rolls into the next, the Hundred-Armed Magistrate will strike you with Tribulations thrice more than what was owed.

“Huh… This might be the biggest mistake—wait. Is it? What about that time I ate a… No. This is bigger. The biggest mistake of my life. Damn rotten meatballs in my pockets.”

Elian stared at the words of the Curse floating in front of him, unblinking for several seconds, rereading it several times in the vain hope it’d changed. He even forgot to breathe. As his brain slowly regained function, he assessed his situation.

“Every day?” Elian demanded of the giant hand. “I was expecting the Tribulation to hit harder—twice is plenty. That’s already commensurate to twice the rewards. I’m even expecting the Tribulation to hit thrice as hard if really pushing it. Why add the daily thing?”

Since he could raise two attributes, he’d pick Armor and Attack Power, which was also Armor, after every successfully passed Tribulation. More Armor each day to meet the Tribulations. But at some point, the rate the Tribulation hits harder would outstrip his ability to be harder. The requirement to call upon Tribulations every day was a death sentence with an unknown date.

This was a real curse compared to other deities’ Curses. The green solar winds failed him today.

The stone door rumbling open snapped Elian out of marveling at his bad luck.

“You appear to be finished, brother newly walking the penitent path,” Priest Thalman said. “Come with me. Others follow after you to ask the Magistrate for a bestowal.”

Elian followed the priest back into the Depositary while wondering if he should study math again. He had gotten so bad at calculating risks. He had asked Borlen about the Magistrate’s Curse, but he hadn’t heard anything about it. No one did. Elian knew that the Magistrate would impose something heavy on him just for fun but didn’t expect it’d be to this extent.

“Through here.” The priest opened a doorway different from the one leading back to the golden hall and led the way.

Elian stepped into a narrow tunnel made of smooth stone. Earlier, he wondered where the pilgrims meeting the Magistrate exited because they didn’t descend the main temple steps. They left a different way. “Is another priest accompanying the next person?”

“It’s still me,” Priest Thalman replied.

“You can multiply yourself? Or are you making illusions? Are you an illusion?”

“We’ll never know,” the priest said, chuckling to himself with a distant gaze. “I’ll also never know. Putting that aside, brother. You have taken the first step of an arduous journey to find your true self by connecting with the heavens. Why the unhappy visage?”

“Something didn’t turn out the way I wanted.”

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Priest Thalman patted Elian’s shoulder. There was only a faint contact. Elian wasn’t even sure if he felt the priest’s hand or was just imagining it.

“Did you ask questions you have about life and didn’t receive any answer?” asked the priest. “Or the answer wasn’t what you expected? That is how the Magistrate is. That is how life is. In the future, several Tribulations and even more epiphanies later, you’ll have a better understanding of life and look back at this moment to realize it happened as it should’ve.”

“I’m thinking of opening a cookshop and forgetting about all this.”

“A cookshop?”

“Just random ramblings,” Elian said. Part of him weighed telling the priest about the future and asking for help. Priest Thalman would just think him crazy. Elian would need to be stronger first so people would listen to him. “Say, can I borrow the items in the gold hall?”

“I see now what’s bothering your heart. Fear of death. That is normal. You cannot see life with new eyes if you let death cloud over you.”

The priest was wrong. Elian had mostly forgotten the feeling of fearing death. Having the Timekeeper’s Boon desensitized him to it. Now that he lost his rewind feature, the feeling didn’t return. Not death. That wasn’t on his mind. Rather, the urge to turn things around, finding the solution in the direst of situations—this was what bothered him. He got himself into this crap bath. His brain raced to find a solution to how to get out.

“As for the armors reserved for the Enlightened Penitent,” said the priest, “reach a Greater Boon and I’ll personally vouch for you before the Seven for permission to use them.”

“All of you vote on it?”

Priest Thalman nodded. “And all of us are needed to break the seals since all of us secured them. Work hard, brother. May you someday petition us to use the items of the silver or even the gold hall?”

“I will,” Elian said. He added in his head, But I don’t think you’ll allow a Cursed brother to use them.

Clapping greeted Elian as he returned to Borlen’s camp around midday. The pilgrims had parked their wagons outside the rim of Cauldron Hill. Or rather, simply the Cauldron. It wasn’t actually a hill but a small caldera. A shallow crater with the temple, or school, in the middle and everything else around it.

Borlen and the other pilgrims crowded around Elian. He didn’t remove his clothes as he concentrated on manifesting the Magistrate’s Curse, opting to simply pull down the neckline of his tunic to show the Kymorathi number zero on his chest. He didn’t want to show them the rest of the tattoos.

“Congratulations, brother!” Borlen took something out of his robes and gave it to Elian: a pendant with a violet crystal inscribed with warding symbols. “I present this gift to you, a Health-boosting necklace given to me by the person who led me to meet the Magistrate. It’s not much of a gift, I admit—it blesses you with only three hundred more Health points—but it will help in meeting the Tribulations. Keep in mind that you should take care of your Health underneath the Armor and defenses.”

“I’ll make sure not to forget,” Elian said, accepting the gift and wearing it. “And many thanks for the gift.”

The pilgrims wanted Elian to call a Tribulation right then and there. He had to make some excuses about wanting to experience the first strike of the heavens on his own. A closer and more personal connection with the Magistrate or something like that. He’d need to keep thinking of excuses because he shouldn’t do it in front of them. Seeing his Tribulation, they’d know something was… very different.

True to his story of seeking isolated communion with the deity, Elian entered the forests to have his first Tribulation somewhere with no people. Borlen offered to accompany him, but Elian refused.

“May you endure the Tribulation,” Borlen had told him. “It doesn’t start strong. Most men can endure it with no issues. But I ask that you return before the sun sets.”

“Don’t won’t worry, I’m not going to fail,” was Elian’s reply. “And I’ll return as soon as I finish it so you won’t worry about having to look for me in a ditch somewhere.”

“It’s not about that, brother. I have full confidence that you’ll pass your first Tribulation. But the beasts of the forest pose a threat if you venture too far into their territories. At night, more ferocious monsters prowl.”

“I’ll keep your warning in mind.” Elian rejoiced that there were strong monsters for him to hunt. A stronger Tribulation would hurt them more. Always look on the bright side.

After an hour of trekking through the forest, Elian found a pile of boulders stacked beside the slope. Must’ve been the result of an ancient avalanche. He might not have a fortified hole like Tharguras, but he found a little nook in the middle of the boulders that worked the same way. He probably wouldn’t have much use for it yet because Borlen had told him that the Tribulation would strike a small area first, around a foot wide, and gradually expand with each succeeding one.

Best if he’d find a more permanent spot and start constructing defensive seals. He could also put protective wards, though that’d need some money for the materials to start making.

Elian, wearing Borlen’s gift, stared at the craggy surfaces of boulders while holding his cleaver. “Wait… I don’t know how to call the Tribulation.”

He hadn’t seen Penitent Tharguras do it. Neither Priest Thalman nor Borlen told him to do it. Embarrassing if he’d return to camp just to ask. He transferred the cleaver to his left hand and raised his right, mimicking the pose of the statues on the Road of Penitents Past. He didn’t want the cleaver to get hit by the Tribulation. Tattoos of point scales emerged as he awoke the Magistrate’s Curse inside him.

“What should I say? Hmmm… I present myself for Tribulation!”

The sky darkened for a moment. Two flashes of light.

And all Elian felt was a push from above that didn’t hurt at all.

“That’s it?” he asked the boulders. There wasn’t any scratch on them.

Examining his leather vest, he saw one strap that had snapped. The soil around his feet was slightly disturbed; the radius of the Tribulation was too small for hunting monsters. He wasn’t finished checking the very underwhelming aftermath of the Tribulation when his tattoos peeled off his body to form six white balls with splotches of black surfacing here and there, looking like a disco inkblot test.

Kymorathi writing appeared above the balls, translating to Angloise as he read them.

Choose two of the following rewards:

+ 150 Health

+ 100 Energy

+ 30 Attack Power

+ 30 Magic Power

+ 30 Armor

+ 30 Magic Resilience

Elian’s smile almost stretched around his head. “Oh, it included Health and Energy too? I’ll increase that later on. This is a nice set of rewards to start with. And this is supposed to increase.”

He chose Attack Power first, obviously, with each point becoming twenty-four Armor. His second pick was the thirty Armor. In total, after his Curses boosted his gains, Elian had an additional eight hundred and forty Armor. Even if he did the Tribulations naked, he could probably last for several days, or even weeks just relying on the rewards. Of course, he wouldn’t actually test that without knowing how strong the next Tribulation would be.

Delectable roasted star hens waited for Elian at the camp. He presented the proud proof of a Tribulation passed on his chest. A fitting dinner before he’d look for a Path to join tomorrow and start preparing for the Sarnival Port in earnest. A bit over six and a half months to go.

Elian woke up the following day to delve deeper into the forest to find a site for a magic circle.