Bargaining Chip

"Was it wise? Giving the courier girl time to reconsider, I mean."

It had been three days since their conversation about undoing Albatross's curse. With the time granted to Albatross to let her think things through running short, Kalman was starting to worry if things would truly go their way.

"As I said, she will want her curse broken one way or the other. That's why we brought up the subject of forming an alliance first. Her choosing to undo the curse was a foregone conclusion. The time is merely given to her to mentally prepare herself."

Unlike Kalman, Theodore, taking the form of a ten-year-old was far more confident and composed. Even though the 'ghost' of the late Demon Lord was unable to grant him any additional abilities that could have aided him in the future, the cluster of Aether back then preserved the Demon Lord's memories, experiences, and insight, deeming these things far more important to pass on. It is at times like these that the wisdom of such a decision reveals itself.

"What makes you so sure?" asked Kalman, unable to see through Theodore's thoughts.

"It's because you humans are all the same," said Theodore, and the moment he spoke those words, the mood in the living room shifted. For a moment there, it was as if someone else was talking. "You and Albatross, the both of you aren't so different."

"What do you mean?"

"Don't you understand? Then why are you doing this, Kalman? You could have lived out the rest of your life in peace as an Elder of the Mage Tower. As you are hardly a threat, the other elders would have left you alone as long as you don't do anything stupid. So why take all these risks?"

Beads of cold sweat began to roll down Kalman's back. Despite knowing the fact that he's facing a ten-year-old with hardly any power despite being a Demon Lord Larva, when Theodore cast his way those azure eyes that seemed to see right through him, the elder felt as if he's in the presence of a true Demon Lord.

"W-what do you possibly know about my desires?"

Kalman was panicking as he wondered if Theodore somehow knew of his plans. If he did, then it could ruin everything he's done thus far.

"I can't read your mind, Kalman. I can't possibly know what you want. However, I do know humans, and I know you need to cling onto something to live, you need to be driven by the greed to obtain something or the fear of losing something, and those stimuli are what keep you in motion. When humans, when living things become content, when they lose those stimuli, they start to die. I can still see the life in your eyes, yours and Albatross's both. Both of you will keep moving forward until you get what you want. At the very least, neither of your will stop and be content for the foreseeable future."

"........"

Kalman was at a loss for words. He couldn't help but wonder who it was that he had just been talking to. His eyes saw Theodore, yet there was something eerily different. Although Theodore did have quite a mouth on him, this time it felt a little different.

While Kalman was in his stupor, Theodore felt a strange mood beginning to fade from him. It was a strange feeling, a calm feeling that was calmer than calm. If he had to describe that feeling, then it would be something akin to a state of nothingness, where he felt nothing about anything.

(The memories are possessing me. How much longer until I am no longer 'Theodore?')

The two sat in silence, each contemplating their own questions and problems. It wasn't until the doorbell of the rear entrance began to ring was the silence broken.

***

Before Theodore, there stood Albatross, her two hands clasping his head in between them, holding him still. Behind him, there was Kalman, his wrinkled hands upon his shoulders, keeping him in place. Trapped between the two, Theodore was forced to sit still on a chair, his face blue from what was to come.

This all began roughly half an hour ago when Albatross finally returned to the workshop grounds after her three-day period was up. As she stood before Theodore and Kalman, both eagerly awaiting her answer, she imposed upon the two a condition.

"I'll join you and I'll let you cut me open to undo the curse, but before that, I am going to need insurance," said Albatross, a fire lit in her eyes.

"So you have something in mind then?" Theodore prompted even while trying to contain his surprise. He did not expect her to be able to come up with a solution to her dilemma in such a short time.

"You must let me place a curse on you, one that will ensure that you can't act maliciously against me."

"A curse? From you?"

Even the Demon Lord would have been surprised at that statement. As far as Theodore knew, Albatross could barely control her Aether, much less perform something as complicated as a curse. There was simply no way she would be able to do it, not on her own at least.

"You reached out to someone didn't you? Who did you talk to?"

Kalman was quick to notice the absurdity of what Albatross was saying and quickly arrived at the conclusion that she must have asked someone for help with this. Fearing that their secrecy might have been compromised, he proceeded to interrogate her.

"I won't tell you who it is, but it's someone I know I can trust."

"In this city? Absurd!" Kalman was quick to deny the premise.

"Well, if Albatross says that they're trustworthy, maybe there's not much to worry about," said Theodore, trying to calm Kalman down. "Besides, with her curse intact, she couldn't have been able to tell the other party much about us, not that we gave her much to talk about in the first place, mind you. At least, nothing other than trying to break her curse. Under the circumstance where she couldn't tell the other party about what was going on, not even who the curse was for, the other party went to the lengths of preparing a curse for her to use. In this situation, I can only think that the other party was either messing with her and gave her a fake curse, or they genuinely wanted to help her and prepared a proper curse for her."

"...... I suppose you have a point," said Kalman, still holding onto some measure of suspicion, but was able to see reason in Theodore's words.

"So? What kind of curse is it? How does it work?" Theodore turned back to Albatross, probing for more detail. Although he figured that it should be merely an insurance, Theodore wasn't about to get cursed without knowing the details of the malediction.

"Right," Albatross nodded as she began to explain. "According to what I was told, the curse..."

***

The curse, according to what Albatross was told, took the form of parasitic worms. Though she called it a curse, it's closer to some kind of poison, in a sense. To deploy these worms, the user had to first ingest the eggs and have them incubate within their body. Once hatched, the parasites would have adapted to the user's Aether. With this, the worms would come to view the user as their 'mother'. Soon after hatching, the worms would upset the stomach and cause a vomit reaction from their 'mother', with the worms exiting the body along the contents of the stomach.

After the worms exit, the 'mother' must then have their target ingest the worms which will then proceed to proliferate within the body of the target via absorbing the target's Aether and dividing themselves over and over, numbering up to hundreds of thousand within the hour. Once the first hour was up, their proliferation rate would begin to slow down as they enter a state of stasis.

Though the host would feel fatigued within the initial hour, the worms will do no more harm to their body afterwards. However, should the host attempt to harm or act maliciously against the 'mother', the worms would immediately leave stasis and proceed to devour the target from the inside with ravenous appetite. Additionally, should the 'mother' die, whether it has to do with the host or not, the worms will also begin to devour the host, not stopping until nothing but their bones were left.

Developed as a method of control against even full-fledged mages by the biological research and development department within the medical district, these parasitic worms had proven themselves to be highly effective. Not only do they have the ability to devour Aether, thereby making them immune to magic resistance, but their 'natural' instincts were also more sophisticated than what could be inscribed within a behavioral matrix of a similar collective mass by an average enchanter. For the most part, they were ideal, which was why Salome had determined that they could help Albatross out.

However, there were a couple of issues that kept them from leaving the developmental stage. Just a couple of small issues...

Perhaps due to their high metabolism and reproduction rate, the parasitic worms have difficulty surviving in environments that has less Aether than around the average amount found within the human body. When exposed to an environment of low Aether density, the majority of worms would expire within seconds, with only a few capable of lasting more than a couple of minutes. This is why the worms have to be transferred to the target as soon as possible to ensure the success of the infestation.

***

End of Chapter 81

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