The village elder, bowing and scraping, scrambled to pick up the coins. He saw that they were all ducats, the currency of Kaedwen. His old face lit up with delight.

"Yes, my lord! I will see to it right away, my lord!"

The village elder personally slaughtered a chicken, roasted it to a golden brown, baked a few apples, and made a bowl of mutton stew. While Kiusa devoured the food, the elder hurried to build a fire and heat a full bucket of water. As Kiusa finished his meal, the elder and several villagers laboriously carried the bucket into the hut.

"That's enough. You may leave."

"Yes."

The elder collected the plates, which were cleaner than a dog had licked them, and left the hut. Kiusa poured both the hot and cold water into a wooden tub. He tested the temperature with his hand, and when it felt right, he sat in.

The fear, tension, dread, and exhaustion of the past few days seemed to melt away with the satisfaction of a full meal and the warmth of the water. In their place came a wave of sleepiness.

He yawned, intending to get up, dry himself, and go to bed.

Suddenly, his eyes went wide. He had seen something terrifying.

In the reflection on the water's surface, he saw not only himself but also a headless woman in a fur tunic. The reflection made it look as if she were standing directly behind him, pressing close to his side. Though the woman had no head, Kiusa felt as though she was whispering into his ear, "Do you know… where my head is?"

Kiusa let out a shriek and knocked over the wooden tub. Water sloshed everywhere.

The village elder, waiting outside, heard the commotion. He opened the door and saw a naked Kiusa, his face as pale as a sheet, looking as if he had seen a ghost.

The elder rushed forward to help Kiusa up. "My lord, what is it?"

"Ghost! There's a ghost!"

"A ghost?"

The village elder was stunned. He had lived in this house for decades; there was no ghost here. He felt a hint of contempt for this knight, who was dressed in armor and armed with a sword, but who had so little courage.

Kiusa noticed the elder's expression, even though the man quickly composed himself. He felt a mix of shame and rage. He grunted and shook off the elder's supporting hands.

The elder, realizing his mistake, thought: If this lord gets angry and kills me, wouldn't that be an unjust death? The common folk didn't argue with officials, and a knight was the lowest form of the privileged class. He no longer dared to look Kiusa in the eye, instead bowing his head and starting to clean up the mess.

Kiusa stared at the elder's back, but ultimately suppressed his homicidal thoughts. After the elder had finished cleaning, Kiusa let him leave.

The night was far from peaceful. Kiusa thought he would sleep straight through until morning. But when he woke up, the hut was still shrouded in darkness. He cursed under his breath, rolled over, and tried to go back to sleep.

But then his body went rigid. His eyes had just caught a glimpse of a figure flashing by the window.

The figure had no head.

Terrified, Kiusa clamped his hands over his mouth and stared out the window, praying for the figure to leave.

Instead, the figure returned to the window and began to reach inside. It looked like it was trying to climb in.

Kiusa scrambled off the bed. He wanted to flee out the door, but the headless woman was coming in fast. Fearing the sound of the door would attract her attention, Kiusa had no choice but to hide under the bed.

From his vantage point, he could see the headless woman enter the room. She seemed to be looking for something, wandering aimlessly through the hut. Kiusa was petrified, but he held his hands over his mouth. He didn't know if minutes or hours had passed. Hiding under the bed, every second felt like a year.

Finally, the headless woman seemed to give up her search. She climbed back out the same window she had come through. Kiusa finally breathed a sigh of relief. The heavy stone in his heart was lifted.

He made a decision. When he got back, he would leave the army and return to his hometown to be a farmer. Farming, no matter how hard or tiring, was better than being sent to strange places and dealing with these unclean, unholy things.

Kiusa lay under the bed for a few minutes, feeling his strength slowly return. Just as he was about to crawl out, a headless female corpse suddenly leaned down from the bed. The empty space where her neck should be was a gaping black hole, a vortex of unspeakable horrors.

Kiusa's eyes met the abyss for a few seconds before he fainted.

Outside the village elder's hut, Lynn stood at the window, watching the entire spectacle of Kiusa seemingly fighting with thin air, only to be scared unconscious by himself.

Lynn was utterly amazed.

"Lady Tissaia, what happened to him?"

Tissaia replied, "I cast a subtle curse on him. Unless a high-level sorcerer with my level of power sees it, they won't be able to detect it or help him. But he was just following orders, so I didn't want to be too cruel."

"In a week, the curse on him will gradually lighten, making him think it's because he's far from the Blue Mountains. In six months, the curse will purify itself, leaving him with no permanent harm."

"When he wakes up tomorrow, he'll surely leave this village. In a few days, we'll drop his men off at villages near the foot of the Blue Mountains, making them think they escaped on their own. Of course, they'll all be under the exact same curse."

"Good news travels slowly, but bad news travels fast. Even if King Henselt wants to hide this, the story will fly across all of Kaedwen. After that, even if King Henselt wants to send people into the Blue Mountains, they will find every excuse to refuse. After all, fighting a physical monster you can kill with a sword is one thing; fighting an evil spirit that is invulnerable to steel is quite another."

Although Lynn, with his knowledge of the plot, knew just how terrifying this high-level sorceress, who was on the verge of becoming a legend, truly was, he realized he had still underestimated her after seeing her power firsthand.

A curse wasn't a particularly profound spell; casting one wasn't difficult. But for other sorcerers, it required extensive preparation, had extremely strict conditions, and was often prone to backfiring. Lynn, who was holding the script, had never seen any sorceress who could cast such a powerful curse without any preparation, as Tissaia had.

.....................

AN: Check out my P@treon For +120 extra chapters.

Thank You For your Support!!

Join now: Patreon com/Chaos_God