Danmachi- Hell’s Forge

Curses and souls

Once we got done with our meal we headed back to the church and passed out. In the morning I was jealous of Hestia who wasn't suffering from a hangover while my head was throbbing. Besides that however I was fine and decided to take the day to relax a little. I needed a few days for my body to adapt to my new stats anyways so it was fine. Eventually my hangover faded and I was left with the pleasant feeling of my cursed energy reserves growing slowly but continuously larger.-

I wasn't looking forward to my next update however as my magic stat was already really fucking close to the first limit of 999(S). I was more likely than not going to get leveling sickness again when I broke that limit which was bound to be just as unpleasant as ever. Kinda jealous of Bell skipping that as he broke the limit and hit the second one before leveling up all at once. His level up meant his body dealing with having broke the limit got rolled up into his vessel being reforged. This meant he was hale and hearty the whole fucking time and didn't get sick at all.-

Don't get me wrong the fact I absorbed the concepts of monsters in order to raise my stats was broken as all hell too but his skill was completely unfair. Gonna sound like a dick joke but at least my soul was bigger than his now. [Vessel of sin] came in with that soul strengthening thing it does now after my update and I can confidently say that it did , in fact, improve my ability to utilize cursed energy. A minor increase mind you but an increase none the less!-

If I had to quantify it I'd say maybe like a one percent increase if I am being entirely honest. It was a humble amount sure but eventually that amount will get to a very respectable level. If my calculation were right in fact I'd say at about level four I'd have a twentyish percent increase in cursed energy efficiency. That is assuming the cost of each increase doesn't go up by a massive amount though so who knows. Other than that however I have no idea what other benefits a stronger soul confers on me if any.-

Like in theory there DEFINITELY should be more but as to what exactly those were I have no idea. Souls were a very ill recorded topic of research in the this world so even when I went looking for information I found only a single mention of the things and that was in a book on curses, the normal sort I mean. Contrary to the naming scheme cursed energy was not in fact related to actual curses. An actual curse was merely a sort of negative magic effect that tended to be temporary but could be permanent if you were hit with enough.-

A rather popular curse was [anti-healing] and from the name alone it should be pretty damn obvious why that was so popular. Unfortunately actual items with cursed effects were illegal as shit so if you get caught with such a thing it was exile, prison or death for you. The difference was mostly to do with your level and how "dark" the curse was. Have something with the aforementioned curse at level one or two and exile was a pretty high outcome if you didn't hurt anyone with it when you were caught. Have something with [agony] on it at level one or two and it's prison or death.-

Have anything with a curse on it after hitting level three and it's an increasing likelihood that you get killed immediately. A particularly fascinating but dangerous curse was the [level down] curse that forced the person inflicted with it to drop a level temporarily. That curse is instant death by the way as it served only a single purpose, adventurer hunting. The thing that was fascinating about that curse however was that it directly acted on the falna which was a surprisingly rare thing. In fact there was only maybe four things ever recorded to do so.-

The curse, status thief which was a potion that forcefully revealed ones hidden falna, a unique magic, and the gods themselves. That was as you should be able to tell a very small number considering the thousand years that the falna has been mainstream in use. Admittedly most people wouldn't need to be able to effect a falna directly like that but the scarcity of things that did after so long seemed odd. Anyways as I was saying about souls the only mention of the things I found that spoke of them directly was in regards to the [damnation] curse.-

A more common name for the curse however was the [god killer] curse. This curse existed in exactly one and ONLY one scenario, a mortal killing a god. The details of this curse ironically enough was something the gods went out of their way to make public knowledge. It was very simple really as if a mortal kills a god that god inflicts a curse mark on the soul of the mortal and upon the mortals death that soul falls into the killed gods hand to be tortured for eternity.-

This curse was one of the reasons deicide was something only a truly deranged mind would even attempt. The kicker though was that all the other gods can sense this curse and as a result are usually the reason the mortal dies as they gang up on them with their familias. That was it on souls that one tiny thing was all I could find on the subject. It was disappointing to say the least but nothing I could do about it as Syr/Freya refused to tell me anything about the topic as it was taboo for a god to share divine information with a mortal.-

Make no mistake about it either the nature and knowledge of souls IS classified as divine information. Syr did tell me however that by the rules anything I myself discovered on the topic was free to be shared with the world so long as it didn't directly threaten the gods themselves. It was some rule about not interfering beyond a certain point in the development of the mortal world. As a mortal anything I discovered was fine but the gods weren't allowed to share information beyond the mortal worlds current understanding.-

I understood why this rule was in place too. In heaven the gods were knowledge wise practically infinite and unlimited. They had access to all the secrets of creation if they chose to spend the effort to look at it. As a result even though the gods squandered that oppurtunity their knowledge on some subjects were VASTLY beyond mortal understanding and sharing it would do more harm than good. There was also the fact that the gods enjoyed watching us mortals grow and develop.