I looked at my companions; they were both shaking, for different reasons, but it wasn’t a really good thing. We came here expecting to get something good, and we nearly died. Alya and Mary were still unconscious. Who should be blamed for this? Me? I was their leader. I never said it out loud, but it was implicit. If I said this could be too dangerous, they wouldn’t have come here.

  And they wouldn’t have nearly died.

  It was to see if they will manage to recover completely, if not physically, then mentally. This wasn’t good.

  “How are you guys?” I asked.

  Quinn looked at me with a strange face. “Honestly, Elias… this was a shit show. How the fuck did it go this way? I gained an achievement just for avoiding that giant fuck, you know? The system called it a mortal enemy, whatever that means. It is more than fantastic for my build; now I’ll be really untouchable, but these,” he said while showing me his hands. “They are still shaking, you see? I can still feel the pain, even if I know that is not there anymore.“

  “How did Mary get possessed? Or controlled?” Asked Rhea suddenly.

  “I don’t know; she sounded a bit strange on the way to the shrine, but I think it was the door somehow; the mask just sealed the deal.” I told her what I thought; maybe I was wrong, maybe there was something else at play, but it didn’t really matter.

  “Rhea, sorry if I couldn’t stop the champion in time… how did you survive that hit?” I asked her; I was curious, really curious.

  She shuddered, “I forgot about it you know?” She said in a small voice, then lifted her pendant, the one that glowed the same as the barrier that saved her life. “I performed a ritual of protection on this, the first night we camped; after those people died, I thought I needed some reassurance in the event that I got attacked. I used most of my reagents for this…” She took a big breath, “I thought I was going to die, not only I forgot about it in the heat of the moment, but I had no idea if it was good enough to protect me by a strike like that. But at least this time I wasn’t a liability,” she smiled at that, a sad smile. “I could help…”

  I interjected. “Without you we would be dead.”

  She looked surprised at my admission. “N-no, I’m sure you’ll have found another way…”

  “How? I was on my last rope here; it was just thanks to your capabilities that we managed to survive. Hell, even the spirit mask fucker was surprised by you tampering with the cavern ritual, or whatever that was. And you, Quinn, if you didn’t manage to sneak and neutralise it, it would have ended the same… it was all teamwork.”

  That seemed to lift them up a little.

  “How did you think of this in the middle of the battle? I have no idea… but yeah, teamwork, yay…” Said the boy in a tired and self-mocking tone. But I could see from his expression that he was recovering a bit of his usual exuberance.

  “I have high mental stats.” I told him with a grin.

  “Ha! Fucking mages…”

  “As soon as we can get you more reagents, you should make one of those for everyone; if it is the cost that is the problem, I’ll bear it. If Alya had one, she wouldn’t be in that condition, probably…”

  Rhea showed me a small grin. “Probably she would have flung herself at the champion again after surviving the strike,” we all chuckled at that, then after a moment she continued. “But anyway, yes, I’ll do it. I have so many rituals I’m constantly studying and modifying… I’m out of paper for my notes, and the lack of reagents is making me go crazy. I could do so much if I wasn’t limited to this stupid forest.”

  “We will get you what you need, right, man?” Quinn said to me. “We have a money-making machine here; we won’t go hungry.”

  “What do you mean?” Asked the ritualist.

  “I mean that I devised a simple but effective plan to make a tonne of money! You see, our friend and intrepid leader here can move curses around, right? So, we can simply buy cursed stuff for a little price, sell it for a high price, and boom! Profit! Unlimited money glitch! It’s going to be perfect.” He grinned from ear to ear; his eyes were shining too.

  “While I’m all for exploiting the shit out of the system, I’m still sure there will be some measure in place to prevent this.”

  “We’ll see, we’ll see.” He said.

  Rhea looked excited at the prospect of being able to afford her stuff too. “It will be great, really, but for now, we need to resolve this.” She gestured around us.

  “The door is still locked for sure. I will have to study the whole array. There are two actually; one is natural, and the one the eldir built is seamlessly intertwined with it and works in conjunction. It is beautiful and pow—”

  “Yes, yes! Everything you say,” Quinn interrupted her. “If you don’t mind, I want to take a second and look at my status; you do yours.”

  With the exception of Melissa, the guys have zero social sense. But I wanted to confirm a couple of things too, so I wasn’t opposed to it. “If you could do that, it will be great, Rhea, thank you. As soon as we get out, I can help them,” I gestured to Alya and Mary, “with another life transfusion, if I find some other monsters nearby.”

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  “Hum, ok. I will get to it then… in a minute, I’m still exhausted.”

  I nodded at that, then without any other distraction I took a look at all the notifications I got.

  Blue panes stacked over one another; first were the kill notifications.

  A long list of them.

  On and on. The statues, a thought came to me unbidden, the system said you have defeated.

  All of them.

  My jaw tightened, so the ritual barrage counted as my kills. Rhea got nothing.

  I glanced at her; she had done the heavy lifting in that first attack. Without her rituals, those things would have butchered us. No matter how many more stats I could gain, fighting nearly fifty together would have been a death sentence for sure.

  “I’ll make it up to you,” I muttered, though she did not hear me.

  My main means of attacks reached another threshold for evolution... I'd have to address that to in a bit, but not now.

  Damn, there were a lot of them.

  Well, I would need even more.

  Then the next notification hit me like a slap in the face.

  I felt something in my mouth that tasted very similar to ash, not that I ever tried eating ash, but that should be an apt description because I felt my mouth go dry and it tasted very bitter.

  Level eighty, but not a baron, not even something special. I noticed the system will say slay, not kill, when I killed something with a noble title. This was just… a regular specimen, the champion of the regular specimen of whatever these things were before they starved and devolved on the surface.

  But then the achievement window unfolded.

  I stared at it.

  “That’s wrong,” I said out loud.

  Quinn had fought it, distracted it… nearly died many times for buying us time. Alya had stalled it, even if for just a moment. Rhea had survived one of its strikes.

  I had killed it, yes.

  But solo?

  My thoughts raced. How does the system judge this?

  Damage dealt? Final hit? Control effects? Threat focus?

  The champion had been at full power when it came for me, yes. Quinn’s knives didn’t score any hits. Alya didn’t manage to strike it, but the distraction alone in a battle like this was worth more than gold.

  Maybe the system only counts meaningful impact in taking it down…

  If an ally cannot pierce defences, cannot inflict a status, and cannot alter the fight in a measurable way, they might as well be background noise to it.

  I exhaled slowly.

  So if I cripple a monster with hexes and curses and others merely chip at it… Would it still count as solo or not? If it does, I will abuse the hell out of it.

  My instincts said no, and the experience I had said it too. I always weakened the elders the group fought against; they were too fast otherwise, and I didn’t hear anyone talking about gaining an achievement for defeating them. I went on reading my notifications; I’ll talk with Quinn later about it; he’ll have some theories for sure.

  “That… figures,” I breathed.

  A curse that gnawed at body and mind alike. Comprehensive. Cruel. Born from the death of a baron and the fusion of a curse for each of the stat potions. I involuntarily created something terrible; now my mace was useless too. But maybe I could use it to train my trait again… but I shouldn’t need it. Now I have the token that will evolve my trait again, and as Aurelia said, I needed at least three evolutions. I managed two by myself; the token will make for the third, but it wasn’t something pressing right now. I will try to get more information about everything as soon as I find a fucking safe zone. There should be one around.

  I continued; the next pane came forward.

  This was a great boost, nearly double in potency… The day I will manage to become totally resistant to curses is not that far away. How much would the token push further the evolution, I wondered? For now I was more than happy with it, considering that the other achievement I got for creating a curse myself boosted resistance for another ten per cent… things were starting to look good.

  Now though, let’s take a look at my status properly…

  20 chapters ahead!