Curse Return: Swordsmith Start

Chapter 190: Stories in the Diary

Similar to a knight's two-handed sword, it was a deep dark red color, about half an arm's length long, with a faded gem set in the hilt. The sword was stuck in a stone platform, with no signs of rust around it.

An unnatural beam of light shone on the sword, creating a very sacred feeling.

...The secret cave, the countless magic circles, and the holy sword illuminated by light—it all felt incredibly familiar.

A naive young man might have already thought he was the chosen one and couldn't wait, but unfortunately, Yue Ren was a blacksmith, and that sword, in his opinion, was nothing special.

Or rather, the other party should be something else that resembles a weapon.

The ground where the sword was located was laid out like a magic circle, and there were similar things on the sword itself, but they were not clearly visible due to the environment, which would make people mistake it for a stone platform.

The Yue people became interested.

Once you realize there's no problem, go forward directly.

Instead of drawing his sword, he reached out and touched it. As his ability activated, a "memory" appeared in Yue Ren's mind.

"I see, hmm, fate is cruel."

With a sigh, Yue Ren grabbed the hilt of the sword, but instead of pulling it out, he thrust it downwards, burying the entire blade into the ground. As he infused the sword with magic, he rotated the hilt clockwise.

The next moment, the surrounding magic circles lit up.

The hall trembled, and the air in the entire space seemed to be seized by an invisible hand. All the magical energy instantly changed direction, no longer converging towards the altar, but spreading wildly in all directions.

One after another, the magic circles on the wall lit up, so bright they were blinding, and then they shattered.

The Yue man abruptly pulled his hand back and leaped three steps backward.

A crack appeared on the surface of the depression, extending from the hilt of the sword to the edge, and then the entire altar seemed to be stretched open by an internal force, splitting in two with a roar.

At the center of the light, a beastly silhouette slowly coalesced, drawing in the surrounding rubble, which transformed into the monster's skin.

A monster, about five or six zhang tall, with a core of magic and a body made of rock, roared and charged over. Clearly, it was going to attack him.

However, the Yue people's focus was elsewhere.

"Is this... a test?"

Although it appears that the magic circle has been destroyed, the magic power can be seen flowing in a regular pattern through the magic eye, so it should not be caused by a berserk state.

Considering that the designer was Long Jiang and that Orstide was chosen to come here, such an arrangement is not surprising.

Looking at the monster in front of him, which had been pieced together by absorbing the surrounding rubble, Yue Ren didn't waste any words. He summoned "Yuan Hong" to identify its weakness and shattered it with a single strike.

Just as he had predicted, after clearing out the last guards, the final passage finally opened.

As the monster disintegrated, they arrived at a depression. At this moment, something resembling a basement staircase appeared in the cracks of the broken rocks. After entering, a secret room came into view.

There were several bookshelves and a desk. The bookshelves were filled with books that seemed to have been preserved using magic and special materials. On the desk were some office supplies and half-written documents.

He picked up one of the books at random; the cover had the words "Research on Transfer Magic" written on it in the Dragon God's language.

My attention then turned to several other books, all of similar content, including diaries and technical notes... "Research on Reincarnation Magic"...

That's right, yet another ruin set up by Orstide to gain assistance.

All I can say is that Laplace went to great lengths to prevent these things from falling into the wrong hands. If he didn't understand the Dragon God's language, he probably wouldn't have been able to find the correct way to open the door when he saw the "key," which is the sword, and would have taken the "key" with him.

The result of this is that the holder thinks they have obtained a chosen sword, but in reality, it is just a key. They leave this place and wait for the day when Alsterd sees them and then returns to open the secret room according to the instructions.

Even if one were to happen to understand the Dragon God's language and open the gate directly, one would still need sufficient strength. Don't be fooled by his nonchalant manner; that thing just now was at least an A-rank monster, and an ordinary adventurer would have been wiped out.

Once you understand the structure of this dragon magic, it's actually quite easy to deal with.

So, judging from his original intentions, the Dragon King Laplace was really worried about Orstide, the son of the monarch. It's just a pity that everything was messed up by humans and gods.

Through his perception of "tracing the source" and his own analysis, the general outline of the matter has become clear.

Just as he told Rudeus, this world originally had six sides, but under the scheme of the modern "human god", the conflict between the Dragon God Realm and other worlds was stirred up (family members and wives were killed, and the clues of the murderer pointed to important people in the other four worlds). The Dragon God was used as a weapon to destroy the other four worlds along with their gods.

The gods and humans took this opportunity to merge the origins of those worlds into the human realm.

Laplace, one of the Five Dragon Generals (a hybrid of dragon and demon), discovered the anomaly and told the First Dragon God everything he had found out. Only then did the Dragon God connect all the clues.

When the Dragon God discovered the anomaly and tried to attack the Human God, the Human God misunderstood and caused the other four of his five Dragon Generals to turn against each other, resulting in a great battle. In the end, the already seriously injured Dragon God was further injured, and the other four Dragon Generals were also severely crippled.

In this situation, the god and the human stepped forward and explained everything, while also using their power to destroy the Dragon Realm. The four dragon generals, upon learning the truth, were devastated. Two of the dragon generals, who had been directly bewitched, committed suicide on the spot, while the other two were ordered by the Dragon God to delay the collapse of the Dragon Realm as much as possible.

The Dragon God took Laplace, the only dragon general who did not participate in the battle, to his home. He then used teleportation magic to send his newborn son, Orstide, to the future and gave him a unique mission: to defeat the gods and humans and avenge all of this.

Therefore, the first Dragon God set two special abilities on his son, giving him the possibility of defeating gods and men, but also creating two curses on him. One of them is well known, and it is a curse that is feared and hated by all creatures in this world.

The effect of this cursed ability is that it allows Alsterd's fate to transcend the observation of this world, thus preventing the "future vision" of the gods from observing him.

Another special ability is to set up something like an archive point, which will transport him to the year 330 of the Ankylion calendar.

Unless the gods and humans are defeated, Orstide will return to the beginning of time and cycle through time for two hundred years.

Or it can cycle through if someone dies midway.

This ability gave him opportunities to try and fail repeatedly, but this special ability also created another curse-like effect: his mana regeneration speed was extremely slow.

What would take an ordinary person a few days to fully recover would take him decades, which is why he was reluctant to use magic in the last battle.

Back to the topic.

The final outcome of that great battle was that, after making arrangements for his son, the Dragon God sacrificed himself to seal the "human god" into the center of the six-sided world, a pale world that could not interfere with reality.

The Demon Dragon King Laplace, carrying a mission, guided the remaining few dragons to the human world through teleportation magic, and prepared for the future birth of Orstide to defeat the gods.

Originally, it was a story of a young master returning and clearing away all obstacles, but unfortunately, neither the gods nor the humans would allow such a thing to happen.

Through "future vision," the apostles were arranged so that during the first war between humans and demons, the dragon king Laplace was cleaved in two by the immortal demon king Badigand, who was wearing the "God of War Armor" that he had customized for Orstide to enhance his power.

Although it was anticipated that the technology to reincarnate after death would be engraved on the body, unfortunately, the God of War Armor's attacks could also attack the soul.

He can only be described as the first person to be severely harmed by his own methods.

The attack triggered the spell to go berserk, and combined with Laplace's already enormous magical power, the result was only one thing: a massive explosion. That battle directly created the huge Tunguska Sea that is now on the map.

The Demon Dragon King did indeed reincarnate, but he was reincarnated as two individuals: one is "Demon God" Laplace, who possesses demon blood and powerful magic, and the other is "Skill God" Laplace, who possesses dragon blood and has fighting spirit and technology.

That's right, two of the seven great powers were actually originally the same person.

What's even more difficult is that not only have people become two, but their key memories have also become confused. The obsession with "defeating humans and gods" has been forcibly and deeply split in two. The demon god remembers to defeat humans, while the skill god remembers to wait for a certain person to defeat the gods together. It's just amazing.

It was for this reason that the demon god Laplace led the demon race to trigger the second war between humans and demons, and was eventually defeated and sealed away.

So the overall plot of the Dragon Clan is that before the destined ruler has even arrived, the old ministers who serve him are plotted against by the enemy, suffering a fate worse than death, and even turning against each other, which is quite lamentable.

What Yue Ren sees before him are the "experience points" that Laplace, during the time of the Demon Dragon King, provided to the future Dragon God Orstide throughout the world.

Inside were things to help him grow up faster. After all, although he was of the bloodline of the first Dragon God, he was still a child at the beginning and needed to grow.

Now, it's just that the Yue people benefited incidentally.

Pack everything up and take it with you. You can give it to Alster after you meet him. Of course, as a reward for the discovery, he can take a look at it first.

Putting aside reincarnation for now, his research into transfer magic should have provided some inspiration for his goal of creating teleportation magic.

The bountiful harvest made the Yue people feel exceptionally happy when they returned home.

He had only intended to test the waters, but unexpected surprises awaited him.

For the next month, Yue Ren immersed himself in studying his notes, along with occasionally venturing into the dungeon.

Although he only went to the dungeon occasionally, he made quite a name for himself in the city over the course of a month.

After all, he was exploring dungeons under the name of the team "DeadEnd," but when he occasionally ran into a fellow member, he discovered that he was just wandering around the dungeon alone, and that he could conquer a new dungeon every now and then.

After this special circumstance was uncovered by a group of adventurers, Yue Ren's reputation truly soared.

Some came to challenge him because of his reputation, while others wanted to hire him to run dungeons for a lot of money. The former would accept the challenge if he was nice, and ignore him if he was not. The latter, Yue Ren, who was not short of money, naturally chose to refuse. In fact, the more important reason was that the opponent's configuration was really unacceptable, and he did not want to be a babysitter.

It took another half month to thoroughly study the transfer magic. Now, the Yue people can spend some time drawing magic circles to directly connect with transfer magic circles in other parts of this world.

Although we can't teleport at will yet, at least the days spent traveling by carriage have been greatly shortened.

Yue Ren planned to visit the S-rank dungeon, known as the most difficult, before leaving to fulfill his promise to meet with Orstide.

"Transfer Maze"

The most dangerous S-rank dungeon around the labyrinth city of Lapon is known for its numerous teleportation traps. Adventurers can trigger these traps at any time upon entering and be teleported to any area within the dungeon.

Monster hordes, trap rooms... the unique environment makes it difficult for adventurers who need information as a crucial support in combat to move forward, so much so that even now, no one knows exactly how many levels this labyrinth has.

And so the Yue people came here at will.

The first level is no different from the spider maze we entered before, or rather, the shallow mazes in this area are all similar in appearance, all being spider caves, with only the deeper levels changing for other reasons.

You can think of this area as a huge, interconnected ant nest, with different, unconnected areas divided into different mazes. The maze you see here is the main path of the ant nest.

The walls and ceiling were covered with a large amount of white spider silk, and deep inside, a blue and white teleportation magic circle could be seen emitting light.

The environment was dim, and Yue Ren summoned a lamp spirit that could emit light like a fluorescent lamp to walk in front.

Although the Magic Eye can clearly see the flow of magic, the ability to see in the physical world is also necessary, because some traps are not entirely driven by magic.

Normally, adventurer scouts would wear special boots with cross-shaped iron plates glued to the bottom, leaving cross marks wherever they stepped.

The people behind him followed in his footsteps, one step at a time.

It's a product of adventurers' wisdom, a convenient tool that prevents slipping and leaves clear footprints.

The first monster to appear on the first floor is the Crimson Spider.

However, there were also a lot of other spiders that the vermilion spider used as its main food, as well as small spiders that had not yet grown up, crawling around on the ground, creating a scene that would terrify people who hate spiders or have trypophobia.

In such a group of spiders, blank spaces will suddenly appear, some circular or quadrilateral spaces.

Those places are like traps.

If you step on the blank areas because you don't want to trample the spiders, you'll be teleported to another place before you even blink.

And all this intelligence comes from the painful lessons of those who came before us.

Fortunately, Yue Ren improved his magic and created a high-temperature shield around himself. Small spiders within a meter of him would turn into charcoal within three seconds, thus avoiding the disgusting situation of being kicked and exploding.

In summary, with the combined strength and experience, the first level was quite easy.