99 - Paranoia
The forest was silent as Alexandra bandaged her wound and Willow helped Haste with the one on her forehead. Alexandra was looking at them with suspicion in her eyes. Neither girl had told her they knew each other. Then again, it was likely that they had no idea Alexandra knew both of them.
She tightened her bandage.
Was it really a coincidence?
Willow finished dressing Haste’s wound and turned to Alexandra. When she saw her, she sighed.
“Yes, it’s a coincidence,” she said.
Alexandra held her breath. Now that Willow knew about her paranoia, she could manipulate it to—
She shook her head. She didn’t want to let the curse control her. “Fine.”
Haste looked between the two of them. “What?”
“Nothing,” Willow said. “It’s not important.”
Nothing. It’s not important. But it wasn’t nothing, and it was important. What if Willow was—
“You’re doing it again.”
Alexandra gave a wry smile. “Sorry. Can’t help it.”
She looked at Haste’s mace. It was an opportunity to test out her evolved perk’s synergy with Adventuring Party.
“Do you have Mace Mastery?” Alexandra asked.
Haste beamed. “I do! You too? But I didn’t see you holding one when you exited the dungeon the other day. That was so cool, by the way. I didn’t know you could solo a dungeon. A dungeon above your rank, too! Oh, look at your robes. Did you evolve? Congratulations. But your hair is still grey. I know it’s not natural, but I thought maybe evolution would restore them. Did your class evolve? Mine did when I ranked up. It’s so much better now, and that’s why I can use weapons and magic together—”
Willow clamped a hand on Haste’s mouth. “Don’t go blurting out all your status.” She looked at Alexandra and shook her head.
Alexandra's lips twitched. Yeah, not sharing a secret with her.
Especially not a secret as heavy as her Training Quests. The more she thought about it, the more she believed she’d made a mistake sharing them with Willow in the first place.
She trusted Willow.
Alexandra looked at her. The white-robed girl was arguing with Haste. Apparently, it wasn't the first time she’d caught her running her mouth.
A pause.
Yes, she trusted her. Even if sickness of paranoia was fucking with her mind.
She trusted her, but Training Quests were too much. She was starting to worry that someone would force her to generate quests for them. There were only three slots in her party and a way to make skill leveling easier…
Alexandra was afraid that it wasn’t just paranoia talking.
She should be safe as long as she stayed under Raymond’s protection. But who would protect her from Raymond himself?
Her only consolation was that her old friend probably didn’t have any skills in common with her. Who could imagine the Magus with common and uncommon skills?
It didn’t assuage all her fears, but it helped.
“Let’s go back to the library,” Willow said, looking at the sky. “It’s enough for today.”
They walked through the undergrowth, aiming for the path.
Willow walked first, Haste in the middle, and Alexandra closed the line.
“What were you doing out there alone?” Willow asked. “You know our elders don’t allow Bronze ranks to visit that forest without supervision.”
“But I’m close to merging my weapons skills together. I just need to finish this stupid Mace Mastery. Training it on trolls is the worst.”
Alexandra could see that. With their tough hide, fat, and regeneration, it would be hard to damage a troll with that weapon. Hard. Not impossible.
Speaking of which, she looked back at the path, deeper into the forest, in the direction of the Troll Cave.
Now she had a reason to make another trip there. She thought that with the stolen regeneration, she wouldn’t be able to level her skills in the dungeon, but the Training Quests changed that paradigm entirely.
Now, all she had to do was grind, and there was no safer environment than a dungeon full of targets that couldn’t kill her.
This evolved perk had turned into what was perhaps the single most powerful aspect of her class, and she was only level five. She didn’t know the level of her old guildmates. But they had a century to train compared to her fifty days, and their classes should be just as strong.
She exhaled, hoping that Louis wouldn’t do anything stupid.
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The journey back to Kator was taken over by Willow lecturing Haste on the virtues of following the rules. A little hypocritical for a book thief, but Alexandra had no standing to speak from.
Alexandra parted ways with them when they reached the dormitories. She locked herself up in her room and generated quests for all her skills. Just being aware of them would help her complete a few as the occasions arose.
What she was really interested in was maxing out Curse Unraveling as fast as possible. She wanted both her sicknesses out of her as soon as possible. Empathy was annoying, but she’d learned to live with it. On the other hand, paranoia was a real puzzle.
On one hand, it was hijacking her thought process, making her see conspiracies where there weren’t any. On the other, it was making her see conspiracies where she hadn’t seen any. There was a difference.
She took out Clarity of Mind and got to work. The Training Quest for Curse Unraveling was simple. She had to unravel a growing number of curses.
Alexandra worked for most of the night, only taking a three-hour break to sleep.
Only when it was time for class did she store her book and take in her progress.
Curse Unraveling 11 -> 13
Life Curse 12 -> 13
She sighed. Both Curse Unraveling and Life Curse had started requiring sicknesses to progress, forcing her to stop. As for Dark Bolt, it asked her to kill her target with it, and the low-intensity casts she used for training weren’t enough to let the skill develop naturally.
Alexandra checked her schedule.
Curse. This morning's first class was Tristan’s.
She walked to the classroom, using the rising sun’s energy to skip breakfast. She was the first to arrive. She took a seat and turned over the question that had been sitting with her since she got cursed again: whether to ask him.
Tristan already knew about the malediction. He knew about sickness of empathy. Far from her first impression of him, he’d even offered good advice on the latter.
Two students walked through the door, nodding at her in passing. She nodded back.
They were watching her. She knew it. Agents planted by Raymond, like Sera. And so was Tristan. Nothing was coincidental. Everything was an act, from her first meeting with him in front of the library to this very moment where she would admit to a weakness to get his help.
Except it was the paranoia talking.
Tristan arrived without preamble and set his notes on the desk without looking at anyone.
"Detection," he said, picking up the chalk. "Last session we covered structure. Today we cover identification."
Alexandra straightened.
He drew a circle, subdivided it. "A healthy mana core has a pattern. You learn to read your own.”
Everyone nodded.
“The difference between a bad curse and a well-crafted one is how well it can hide within that pattern.” He paused the chalk. Turned to face the class. “Most of you have never been cursed.”
Alexandra winced.
Tristan pointed at her. “Except you, of course. To be honest, I don’t think today’s class will be very useful to you. We’ll only cover the basics.”
She nodded. Decided to stay. She still wasn’t sure if she should ask him directly.
“For the rest of you,” Tristan said. “We’re going to have to change that.”
The Silver from earlier raised his hand again. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that I will curse you until you locate that curse and manage to destroy it.”
Murmurs.
Tristan didn’t move until silence fell on the class. “This is a lesson on curses. Either you want to cast them, or you want to counter them. Either way, practical exercises are essential. I won’t claim it will be pleasant, but if you find yourself against a curse mage, you’ll be glad to have done it.”
Tristan fluttered his fingers.
“Let’s get started.”
The first curse took the Silver.
He didn't scream. He went rigid in his chair, spine locked, hands flying to his throat, patting at it.
"Locate it," Tristan said.
The boy's eyes were wide. He pressed both palms flat to his sternum.
"Wrong."
Two more followed in quick succession, a girl with red-streaked hair near the window and a large Bronze who'd been taking notes since the lesson began. The girl made a sound like she'd been punched. The Bronze just stared at his hands, turning them over slowly, as if he didn't recognize them.
Tristan moved between the desks without hurry. He corrected postures. Redirected hands. Told a boy in the front row to stop trying to cough it out.
He stopped beside Alexandra's desk. Didn't curse her. Moved on.
She let it go for ten minutes. Then: "Why not me?"
He didn't look up from where he was crouching beside the Bronze, guiding the man's attention inward with two fingers pressed lightly to his mana core. "You’ve beaten a malediction. There’s no simple curse that could stump you." He paused. “Well, nothing I could safely cast for a lesson.”
“A failed malediction.”
“A failed malediction is still a malediction,” he said. “And you’ve told me last week that you made headway for your sickness of empathy. Work on that instead of asking for more curses.”
The Bronze made a low, strained sound. Tristan glanced down at him.
Right. It made sense. There was nothing he could teach her about locating a curse, and if she wanted a sickness to train, she could make it herself.
Except.
She looked at the back of his head. He was moving again, hands clasped behind him, watching the room work.
She could ask. About paranoia specifically. She didn't have to tell him it was still active. She could frame it as theoretical.
He was Raymond's agent.
She blinked. No. There was no evidence of that. He'd never—
Absence of evidence.
She pressed her fingers flat against the desk. Felt the grain of the wood. She knew what the paranoia felt like now. She'd been through enough cycles of it to recognize when she was inside one. That knowledge didn't make it easier to dismiss.
Because, technically, the paranoia was right. Tristan was not a Keeper. Not yet. He was only Gold. But he was a professor at the Iron Library, under the employ of Raymond.
She breathed out.
Fine. Not that. She wouldn't ask about her specific curse.
She raised her hand.
Tristan looked over without breaking his circuit of the room. "Yes."
"Is there a comprehensive reference on curses? Classification, effects, patterns. It would be easier to study that first."
He paused. "No. You have to understand, a curse that has been figured out loses most of its value. No curse mage would spread them."
"But there are books."
"There are books." He stopped. “The curses I’m using today would be listed there. Some variants of them, anyway. Maybe a few sicknesses as an example. Nothing modern.”
Alexandra held his gaze. What she wanted was sickness of paranoia. It came from Life Curse. From the system. Maybe there was a chance.
"I'll write the titles down for you," he said and turned back to the nearest student.
Then she’d read what he wanted her to read.