The Strongest Curse Master

"You sure you're ready?" Ace asked his sister for what felt like the hundredth time.

"Yes, yes, yes!" Lyra snapped, clearly annoyed, as she stood in the middle of the curse core condensation array, ready to undergo her awakening ceremony.

"One yes is enough, geez. I'm starting the array now," Ace replied, as his toy summons confirmed that Lyra was in an optimal mental state for the awakening.

The ceremony Lyra was about to undergo was vastly different from the one Gloria had used for Ace. Gloria's method was affordable and simple, while the one Ace's toy summons had prepared for Lyra was highly complex—so much so that it required four of his toy summons to oversee it. Each one was cloaked using invisible talismans, ensuring Lyra remained unaware of their presence.

It wasn't that Ace didn't trust his sister with the details of his innate abilities. Rather, he believed that one of the quickest ways to meet your end in the "World of Curses" was to reveal your innate abilities to another soul. Unless someone figured them out on their own, Ace had no intention of disclosing them. And even if they did, he planned to deny, deny, and deny.

"Bring it!" Lyra shouted in a final burst of courage, just as the array beneath her began to glow. In an instant, her mind was pulled into an endless illusion, forcing her to relive her past traumas. One by one, every painful memory she'd buried resurfaced, unleashing a flood of negative emotions deep within her heart.

These emotions soon became overwhelming, threatening to consume her entirely. At the peak of her despair, she teetered on the edge of madness—feeling an uncontrollable urge to destroy the world and burn it all down with her in it.

However, to her surprise, just a second later, she found that the influence of the negative emotions on the decision-making part of her mind kept decreasing—until it was virtually nonexistent. She couldn't help but feel a wave of relief as rather than overcoming her past and emerging victorious to be reborn as a new being—a curse master—she had nearly let the darkness consume her.

What shocked her even more was that, despite her heart being filled with an overwhelming amount of negative emotions, her mind felt completely detached from them. The illusion she was experiencing successfully triggered those emotions, but, for some odd reason, they failed to affect her mentally. Not only that, her mind felt unusually sharp—so sharp that she could even remember what she had for lunch last week.

This was vastly different from what was described in the video her brother had shared with her.

She wondered if it was the effect of the array beneath her feet. Choosing not to dwell on it, she turned her focus inward and began the process of condensing her curse core within her heart, step by step, exactly as shown in the video and explained countless times by her baby brother.

Thanks to the array's influence on her mind, she recalled every tiny detail about the process with perfect clarity—it was as if Ace were standing right beside her, guiding her through it.

It didn't take long for Lyra to condense her curse core. She decided to continue compressing it for as long as possible to further refine it. After a while, however, she began to feel lightheaded. Taking that as her cue to stop, she prepared to open her eyes and begin the next step: forging her innate curse tool.

As she did, profound knowledge suddenly flooded her mind, granting her complete awareness of her curse core and everything there was to know about forging an innate curse tool.

"Congrats, sis. Here you go. Forge the Jackpop into your innate curse tool while you're still on a roll," Ace said, handing her the cursed Goli soda bottle once he saw the clarity return to her eyes. He knew she had just digested the insights granted to every person who successfully condensed their curse core.

Lyra stared at her baby brother with gratitude for a moment before taking the Jackpop from him with a firm nod. Without hesitation, she began the process of forging her innate curse tool. Thanks to the profound knowledge she had received, she now understood just how important it was for a curse master to use a powerful cursed item for this purpose.

Now she knew why her brother had gone to such great lengths to get her not only the best one out there but the one she had chosen. And for that, she would be forever grateful.

Holding the cursed glass Goli soda bottle to her chest, Lyra channeled her curse core into it and began forging it into her innate curse tool, following the profound knowledge she had gained after refining her curse core. As her curse core merged with the bottle, it vanished from her hands and appeared in her soul space. Having successfully forged her innate curse tool, Lyra calmly stepped out of the array formation. Though mentally exhausted, she managed to hold her own.

Ace immediately pulled out a bunch of mental recovery talismans and used them all on his sister, helping her recover to full mental strength. Once she looked stable, he eagerly asked, "Did you awaken an innate curse art?"

"Yes! It's called Myriad Curse Incarnation Tattoo—" Lyra began enthusiastically, but before she could continue to go into details, Ace abruptly cut her off, shouting, "Stop!"

"What's wrong?" Lyra asked, confused by her baby brother's sudden reaction—especially since he was the one who asked.

"Now that you've officially entered this vile world, I need to share a few of my personal rules that might help you live a long and prosperous life," Ace said with a grim expression. "Rule number one: never reveal your curse abilities to anyone unless you're planning to hasten your own demise. If you ever find yourself in a situation where you have no choice, then lie—but make it convincing, or you'll get exposed and killed. Even if it's me—your little brother—asking, just lie, lie, and lie. Got it?" he stressed, hoping to make her understand the seriousness of what he was saying.

"Keep your stupid rules to yourself. What's the point of having these powers if I can't share and brag about them to you? I have no idea what you've been through these past couple of months, but now that I'm here, you're no longer alone. Got it?"

"For once, why can't you just agree with me?"

"What do you mean? I agree with you all the time."

"Like right now?"

"This time it's different. You're dead wrong. So, how can I agree with you? If I did, I'd be failing you as your big sister."

"How the heck do you know I'm wrong when it's only been a couple of minutes since you awakened as a curse master?"

"Shut up!"

"No, you shut up!"