Accepting a curse, while seeking a blessing.

This was horrible. A classmate had just died.

And we were supposedly summoned to defeat someone much stronger than the fog creature we had just encountered.

We couldn't help the people of this world. We were the ones who needed help. Lost in an unknown world. Not knowing what to do or where to go. Our priority now was to merely survive.

Our class representative, Maria, and her sister Gabriela were crying. Alejandro must have explained everything to them. I could see them from here, but there was someone I couldn't see. Marcus was missing. I looked around, but I simply couldn't find him. There was a forest nearby; could he have gone into the forest?

First, I needed to do something about my arm. I got close to the group. Maria and Gabriela were still crying.

"Guys, I'm sorry to interrupt, but we should get to the nearby town," I said. "This place isn't safe, and I need to find a doctor, or anything resembling a doctor."

They all stared at my arm with a terrified expression. They must have never seen anything like this.

"Leo, are you okay? Does it hurt?" Mateo asked, a naive question I couldn't blame him for.

"I'm mostly fine, but my arm is not," I replied. "I might actually lose my arm if I don't hurry."

"Leo is right. Let's move. No time for crying," Agustin said.

"Wait!" Gabriela exclaimed. "What are we going to do about Anahí? Are we just going to leave her body inside that clump of thorns? Everyone deserves a proper burial..."

Gabriela, along with Maria, were some of the most devoutly religious people I had ever seen. This kind of reaction was to be expected.

"Proper burial?" Agustin scoffed. "Are you going to pull her body—or what's left of it—out of that agglomeration of thorns? Besides, she was a follower of a different religion. Is burial even mandatory for them?"

Xiomara, a follower of the same religion—the Guarani religion—intervened. "A simple burial is not the norm. We place the bodies of our dead in giant ceramic urns, and then the urn is buried. But that doesn't seem to be an option here."

"Then it's fine to leave her like this," Agustin stated. "There's no guarantee there's anything left inside the agglomeration of thorns."

Xiomara then approached Gabriela. "If you're worried about her, we can do a proper burial another day. Those thorns aren't going anywhere. We just have to craft the urn around those thorns. But that's not happening today. We have other priorities."

"Xio is right. We need to help Leo now," Alejandro said.

"Actually, there's one more thing we need to do before we go into town," Xiomara added.

"What is it?" Alejandro asked.

"We can't just leave the crystal sphere here," Xiomara explained. "As unreliable as it may be, this world's magic might be our only chance at survival. I suggest we all touch the sphere before we leave. If we're lucky, maybe one of us will acquire a helpful magical skill."

"Are you serious?" Maria protested. "After what happened, you still want to touch that cursed thing? We should be helping Leo now."

"That cursed thing might actually save our lives one of these days," Agustin countered. "And there's even a chance that one of us will get a healing skill we can use on Leo. I'm going first."

With a fierce expression, Agustin proceeded to touch the sphere. We heard the word "Spark" come out of it.

"I see," Agustin said. "So all this feeling directly translates into information going directly into my brain. It seems I'm attuned to lightning magic. This might be worse than Leo's magic. One miscalculation and I'll be instantly killed. I don't think my magic will be of any use."

Mateo was next. He was afraid but still slowly approached the sphere, and when he touched it, the word that came out was "Burden."

"I think this is related to affecting weight," Mateo said.

"Hmm, that one might actually be useful under the right circumstances," Agustin mused.

Alejandro practically hit the sphere with the palm of his hand. "Messenger" was the word we heard.

"I think this is something that allows me to create tiny mana creatures, but they don't have their own free will," Alejandro explained. "And they probably wouldn't be of any use to us."

Xiomara touched it next. The word was "Breeze."

"This seems to be related to the manipulation of air particles, but it seems I can only affect their moving speed a little," Xiomara said. "That's probably why it's called 'Breeze'."

"Another useless skill," Agustin scoffed. "Gabriela, Maria, both of you must do it. Who knows, maybe you'll get something that can help us survive in this world."

"Maria, maybe we should do it," Gabriela said. "There's a chance we might be able to help people."

"Yeah, but there's also a chance we might end up destroying ourselves!" Maria retorted.

"Maria, don't you risk your life all the time, dealing with wild animals and getting hurt just to make sure those animals get adopted into a nice family?" Gabriela asked, her voice uncharacteristically firm. "This time you would be risking your life to save our friends. That's something we can do. That's something we should do."

It was weird seeing Gabriela, who normally agreed with everything her sister said, trying to convince her. Maria now had an expression of complete resignation. She got up and silently walked towards the sphere. She reluctantly touched it. "Column" was the word that came out of it, leaving us perplexed. That was a weird name for a magic skill.

Maria, speaking in a dead-tone voice, tried to explain her skill. "This supposedly allows me to transfer my mana to any of you. In fact, it's constantly and slowly transferring my mana to all of you, while my body keeps absorbing mana from the surroundings. This basically increases the mana regeneration rate of all of you. But this skill would be useless in a zone with little to no mana, because it would drain all my mana, and I wouldn't be able to replenish it. And before you ask, no, I can't stop this skill. It's constantly active."

"So, it's like a passive skill," Alejandro said. "Like one of those auras that benefits those around you in video games."

"Please, don't compare this to a game," Maria snapped. "People can die here. Also, I don't need to be around you. This skill will keep transferring mana to all of you regardless of distance."

"That sounds like something that can be useful," Agustin said. "Or perhaps I should say that it is already being useful."

"I'll do it now," Gabriela said.

Gabriela touched the sphere, and we heard something that brought hope to all of us: "Half-saint." This had to be some kind of support skill, maybe even a healing skill.

"Apparently, this can heal wounds," Gabriela announced. "But it has a cooldown of 12 hours. Exactly half of a day."

"YES! Now we can heal Leo's wounds!" Alejandro cheered.

Everyone seemed happy. Even me. But not Agustin.

"After what happened with Anahí and Leo, we have to assume that these skills aren't what they seem to be," Agustin warned. "They can backfire if not used correctly. Be careful, Gabriela, who knows what kind of stuff is hiding in your healing skill."

"I don't think a healing skill can backfire," Gabriela said. "Besides, I'm not going to need all my mana to heal Leo. But it's still going to have a 12-hour cooldown regardless of how much mana I use."

"Don't waste time, go ahead and heal him!" Alejandro urged.

"Are you sure, Gabriela?" I asked. "We don't know what's going to happen."

"It's fine. Let's give it a try," she said.

Gabriela got her hands closer to my arm, and shortly afterward, her hands started emitting a yellow light. My arm suddenly began to feel better. The pain vanished. And the skin was slowly restored. We finally got a useful skill on our side.

"Okay, it's done," Gabriela said. "But now we have to wait 12 hours before I can use it again. That means we have to avoid danger at all costs. No one is allowed to get hurt, okay?"

"No one is allowed to get hurt." That was basically a red flag. Ominous words.

We thought our day couldn't possibly get worse.

We were wrong.