8. The Curse Of Eternal Snow

Since ancient times, countless empires and kingdoms had fallen, not to some mighty external enemy but to trivial fractures within.

Because walls always crumble from the inside.

For me, Arden’s sickly body was exactly that kind of crack, and I never knew when it might burst.

Elli came through for me.

A week had already passed since I’d started on the Luna Herb tea. The fits of sudden blood-coughing that used to soak the bedsheets had grown rarer, and the leaden heaviness of the body felt noticeably lighter.

Eve spun in circles around me, cheering.

In fairness, House Arne probably hadn’t neglected Arden.

They must have thrown every renowned physician in the Empire and every top-grade medicinal herb at him.

To a one, they would have taken in Arden’s pale complexion and cold skin and concluded that the fix was to warm a depleted, chilled constitution back up.

So they would have prescribed flame-herb and sunroot — things bursting with fiery essence.

Prescribing that was as good as pouring oil on a burning house. The thing truly gnawing at Arden’s body wasn’t a simple chill; it was the Curse of Eternal Snow, the worst of all ice-attribute curses. The curse worked the way a fever does: feeling cold is no reason to bundle up. Force fire-attribute medicine into a body locked under it, and the two energies collided and went to war, so the cure did nothing but deepen the harm.

That was exactly why the Luna Herb I’d tracked down this time mattered so much.

Fight cold with cold, as the saying goes.

Eve’s Possession Stabilization buff sealed the gaps in my body like a dam, and through it the gentle moonlight radiating off the Luna Herb synchronized with me. Too strong a dose could rouse the curse, so I fed the moonlight in slowly, very slowly, like Jiang Taigong patiently fishing in time itself. Doled out that gently, the moonlight had been steadily wearing the curse down.

Honestly, without Eve, the Luna Herb wouldn’t have worked either.

Without that Possession Stabilization buff, none of it would have meant a thing. The buff stood like a dam against the tide of curses trying to chew through Arden’s flesh, and that was what made the whole strategy possible.

I’d locked the door tight and given Elli stern orders never to enter the room.

“Hoo.”

I peeled off my shirt and tossed it aside. A fistful of Luna Herb sat in my palm.

This is the only way to fully break the curse.

Every weak, slow-steeped cup of tea over the past week, each one letting a little moonlight essence soak into me, had been buildup for this one moment. I took two deep breaths, tipped the Luna Herb into my mouth, and chewed, hard grinding mouthfuls of it. Instead of anything green and grassy, a metallic tang and a frigid, bone-aching juice burst across my tongue.

And the instant I forced it down my throat…

“Krgh, ugh…!”

A bomb went off in my stomach.

The Curse of Eternal Snow reacted to the foreign energy invading its territory and began to rampage like a maddened beast.

“Frozen to the bone” was no metaphor. The blood in my veins turned to slush ice and clawed at me from the inside, and every time my heart beat, it felt like shards of glass were circulating through my body.

Eve was shrieking in silence, where no one could hear her. Her small hand pressed desperately against my chest, but it only passed through my body.

“Khrrrgh.”

My teeth clattered together so hard I couldn’t form words. White frost crept across my eyelashes and hair, and the curse seized my organs like a live animal and refused to let go.

Pull yourself together. If I let go, it’s over.

I clung to the bedsheets with violently trembling hands and rode out the pain. There was no point now in begging the house to send for a curse-breaker; they would never have done it, and even if they had, no one was likely to recognize anything as rare as the Curse of Eternal Snow. In the end, this was mine to handle alone.

But there was a problem.

Damn it, I’m losing ground.

I’d counted on the week of buildup to crack the curse open, but its resistance was beyond anything I’d imagined. The moonlight was being crushed under the curse’s death-throes, guttering like a candle. Feeling drained out of my toes, and my ears went numb.

The world was going hazy. Little by little, Eve’s face stopped registering.

Is my very existence turning to ice?

At this rate I wouldn’t break the curse at all; I’d be found as a frozen corpse. I scraped together every last scrap of Luna Herb in my hand, forced my frozen-stiff jaw open, and crammed it in. Working my jaw with both hands, I chewed through sheer brute force.

Gulp.

The instant the massive lump slid down my throat and hit my stomach…

BOOOOM—!

A second explosion went off in my gut.

“Kuh, hah…! Krrrgh!”

My veins bulged like they might burst, and my heart hammered.

But this time, I didn’t lose ground. This second dose of moonlight chill was tearing the curse’s roots clean out of my bones.

“Uh — uhgaaargh!”

At last, along with the breath I’d been holding, a thick gout of black blood spilled onto the floor.

It wasn’t ordinary blood. The instant it touched the floorboards it hissed and froze solid into a black knot of ice, curse and toxin condensed together.

“Haa… haa….”

Feeling came back to my body, and warmth began to move through me again. The bone-deep chill faded, and cool, clean air reached all the way to the bottom of my lungs.

Eve threw herself at me to hug me, passed clean through, and whooped.

“…Yeah. That’s a relief.”

I gazed blankly at the lumps of black ice melting away into dark water.

By the game’s lore, the Curse of Eternal Snow wasn’t an illness anyone could catch naturally. Contracting it meant traveling to the continent’s far north, into the depths of the Northern Sea where no human had ever set foot. Only long exposure to the chill pouring off the Eternalfrost Blossoms that bloomed there could ever satisfy the conditions for the curse.

So how on earth did Arden — who’d spent his entire life shut up in his bedroom — catch this curse?

No matter how I turned it over, I couldn’t answer that one question.

Did someone bring an Eternalfrost Blossom to this manor and forcibly expose Arden to it?

It was one hypothesis, but it didn’t hold up. An Eternalfrost Blossom would either melt on the way or freeze whoever carried it to death first.

Eve’s question pulled me out of my own head. It wasn’t a problem with an answer ready to hand anyway, not then and not now.

“…Never mind. So — what are the remaining debuffs?”

Gone was the cheer of a moment before; Eve’s voice sank low.

Every one of them was grotesque and contrived, utterly unbefitting the youngest Young Master of a knightly house. I pressed a hand to my throbbing forehead. The biggest piece of the puzzle had come together, but it was still only one piece, the first to work loose.

Arden, what on earth —

— are you?

Even with the curse broken, I didn’t drop the daily ritual of the herb tea. Curse or no curse, that distinctive bitterness suited my palate. Not every curse had been lifted, but being rid of the worst of the chills, the one that had tormented me most, made daily life remarkably pleasant. According to Elli, Rel’s faction had eased off harassing her too, so things could hardly have been more peaceful.

“…Young Master.”
“What?”
“…It’s nothing.”

Peaceful, that is, except for Elli, who kept whimpering at my side like a stray puppy. She’d gone quiet and pensive ever since our talk the other day.

Pitter-patter, pitter-patter.

Elli was hopping around me in little rabbit-steps, circling and circling.

That is one extremely ‘I-am-deeply-troubled’ move.

Then again, a pure-white canvas getting painted over in gray strokes was bound to be confusing.

I shut my book and got up from the bed.

“Let’s go.”

Elli, with no idea what I meant, tilted her head.

“Where to?”

I tapped my index finger against the side of my head.

“When you’ve got too many thoughts, you need to move your body.”

.

.

.

“Young Master, are you really sure you’ll be all right?”

Elli still didn’t know I’d broken the curse. Then again, I’d never actually told her I had one to begin with, so it made sense she’d be in the dark.

Either way, I stretched as I walked and said,

“You haven’t heard the saying? ‘When in doubt, just run.’”
“I’ve never heard it.”
“You wouldn’t have. I just made it up.”
“…Young Master.”
“What?”
“But — when are we going to go rescue our Senior Leo?”

I’d brought Elli out to the central garden, where the sunlight came down strong and bright. The weather was lovely.

“You completely forgot about Senior Leo, didn’t you?”

Come to think of it, there was one more thing I hadn’t told her: that Leo had never been seized in the first place, and that he’d betrayed us.

I was just about to let her in on it when the noise around us stopped my mouth.

“He’s just thrashing about. He’s not long for this world — figured he’d at least catch some sunlight one last time, didn’t he? Tch-tch, what a pitiful thing.”
“Tell me about it. When he keels over mid-run, we’re the ones who have to clean up after him. Why go making work for everyone?”

Had word of my turning up in the central garden already raced through the whole manor? Servants who’d been sweeping the paths or wiping the windows had stopped what they were doing to steal glances at me as if I were a ghost.

Elli’s face flushed red at the spiteful whispers coming from every direction, but I, the actual target of them, didn’t care in the slightest. If anything, I found the stares entertaining.

Like the big guilds who couldn’t stop checking me the second I World-First-cleared a new raid.

A solo player who steamrolled all the content with nothing but NPCs in tow, and they’d cursed me for a cheat player. I had no reason to explain myself against that kind of nonsense, and even if I had, they wouldn’t have believed me.

Bark all you want.

Undeterred, I made my declaration in front of everyone.

“Right — starting today, we begin rehabilitation exercises!”

Day one.

“Hrrgh… hah, huff… I can’t do this anymore.”
“Young Master! You can do it! You mustn’t give up!”

For all my solemn declaration, I didn’t make it half a lap around the garden, never mind a full one, before I face-planted into the lawn. Arden’s body, which had achieved perfect oneness with the bed, treated the basic act of walking like high-intensity training. My legs trembled and my lungs felt like they were being shredded.

This wasn’t rehab. It was torture.

“Young Master! How can you collapse already?! You can do it! You mustn’t give up!”

Beside me, Elli jogged lightly in place, looking down at me. She wasn’t shedding a single drop of sweat.

Don’t tell me she wasn’t lying about beating a bear with her bare hands.

“Wait… hah… let me rest a bit….”
“You can’t! You’ll break your rhythm! Get up!”

Elli was merciless. She hauled me staggering back onto my feet, and then she brought out her ultimate weapon.

“Young Master — to help you find your strength, I’ll sing you a cheer song!!”

Walking was hard enough on its own, and now auditory torture was being piled on top. I wanted to stop her, but I didn’t have the strength left to make a sound.

In the end, the gates of hell opened.

“Strength, weeeell up!! Hah!! Kneeeeeees!! Straighten ouuuut!! Hah!!!”
“…shut… up.”
“Our Young Master — walks!! A thousand-li road!! Begins with one steeeeep!! Hah!! Hah!!!”

It was shock and awe. The pitch had rocketed off into Andromeda, and the rhythm had blown past offbeat into no beat at all.

This was no song. It was a sonic weapon fired point-blank at the eardrum.

“Shut UP!!!”

I had to plug that mouth racing along ahead of me. I clamped my hands over my ears and took off after Elli.

“Oh my! The Young Master’s found his strength and started running!”

It wasn’t the cheering that gave me strength; it was sheer survival instinct, the drive to escape that horrific noise. But Elli was firmly convinced her song had done the trick. The faster I ran, the more cheerfully she sang.

“I’ll sing even louder for you!”
“AAAAAAAAARGH!”

A ringing, ear-splitting high note tore the quiet of the Arne manor to shreds.

“Heavens — that’s worse than nails on a chalkboard!”
“Somebody, please — plug that mouth!”

Every servant nearby clamped their hands over their ears and fled.

Pinned by her proximity limit to a front-row seat for the performance, Eve’s sapphire eyes were spinning in circles.

Thud.

Eve collapsed. A singing voice so catastrophic it could knock out even an incorporeal being like her.