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Chapter 114: Mysterious Scale? Class Upgrade – Cursed Knight Lv.3
🕑 Added 2025-05-28 16:42:26 +0000 UTCLyle raised an eyebrow in mild surprise as he saw how far the wave of darkness had spread. Then he cracked a grin.
Thud!
With a stomp of his foot, Lyle disappeared from where he stood, reappearing a split second later right in front of the petrifying lizard that had just attacked one of his Flame Archangels.
He swung his iron sword in a clean arc—straight at the lizard's thick, scaly neck.
Schlunk!
Putrid black blood gushed out like a fountain as the massive reptilian head was lopped clean off.
Thump!
The now-headless body momentarily regained movement, but without a brain to drive it, it collapsed to the ground in a dramatic heap.
[EXP Gained: 723]
[EXP Bar: 10355 / 10000]
"Only 723 EXP? Either these things are stingy, or the curse is messing with the rewards," Lyle muttered as he twisted his ankle and darted toward the next petrifying lizard.
Crack!
His iron sword shattered from the impact.
Unfazed, Lyle summoned another identical sword into his palm and immediately brought it down in a heavy slash.
[EXP Gained: 539]
Whoosh!
Another sword swap. Another lizard down.
Lyle danced through the shadows like a grim conductor of death. Every time a sword shattered, it meant one more monster had been cleaved in two.
Thanks to the Dark Wave ability, these cursed beasts couldn't even lift a claw in resistance. Paralyzed by Fear and Weakened Curse effects, they were little more than statues waiting for execution.
Unless a creature could resist both status effects, Dark Wave was absurdly powerful as an area-control skill.
As he slayed lizard after lizard, Lyle could also feel it—his body was accumulating more of that strange Cursed Energy.
And not just a little. These petrifying lizards carried far more cursed power than any monsters he'd faced before.
But what was it all for?
The cursed energy inside him was building… but its nature hadn't changed. No new abilities. No clearer purpose. It just was.
In less than a minute, over a dozen petrifying lizards had been turned into twitching piles of meat and stone.
Clack!
He tossed aside the cracked remains of his sword hilt like a used toothpick and glanced at his stats screen.
[EXP Bar: 16789 / 10000]
"Nice haul."
Lyle grinned and turned toward the unconscious Doken. His smile faded slightly when he saw the state of his comrade's skin—it was halfway rotted.
"Yikes…" Lyle frowned. "I really need to find whatever's causing this mess. Fast."
He slung Doken over his shoulder with ease, then gestured for his two Flame Archangels to continue lighting the way ahead.
Time passed.
He was ambushed a few more times by grotesque monsters—walking corpses dripping rot—but he cut them all down without breaking a sweat.
[EXP Bar: 17520 / 10000]
Unfortunately, while they didn't offer much experience, they were positively oozing cursed energy. And his body absorbed every last drop.
The deeper they went, the fewer rotting monsters he encountered. In their place, countless white bones began littering the ground.
Another twenty minutes of walking through the pitch-black valley…
Suddenly, Lyle found himself face-to-face with a massive rock wall.
"Huh. Dead end?"
He approached the wall and gave it a solid knock. A low, dull thunk echoed back.
Definitely solid.
Something felt off.
Frowning, Lyle instructed one of the Flame Archangels to fly around the rock wall and shine light on everything like a divine spotlight.
His left eye could see in the dark thanks to a magical Night Vision accessory, but it still didn't beat actual lighting when it came to spotting tiny details.
The surface of the rock was rugged, seamless—definitely no hidden doors or cracks. But when the archangels flew up higher…
There it was.
Roughly ten meters above, where the main wall met the left cliff face, one of the Flame Archangels illuminated a narrow, hidden gap.
Lyle smirked.
He had one of the archangels lift him up, and sure enough—there was a cave opening, jagged and unnatural. Something big had clawed it open. Probably the lizards.
"The cursed energy's spiking... this is definitely the source."
He ordered one of the angels into the tunnel first. After a moment of silence, nothing exploded or screamed, so he followed.
The cave was old, clearly abandoned for years. Its walls were covered in dust and shallow scratch marks. Whatever made them had long since moved on—or died.
Soon, the exit came into view.
The soft glow from his archangels filled the small chamber beyond.
Lyle stepped into the cramped space between mountain walls. It wasn't very large—the angelic light easily lit up the whole area.
Then his eyes narrowed.
"…What is that?"
Boom.
He dropped from ten meters above, landing heavily and causing the whole place to shake slightly.
The cursed energy here was thick—almost alive. It rippled through the air, invisible but undeniable.
Lyle looked ahead.
There, slumped at the base of the wall, was a human skeleton. The bones were ash-white. The joints were corroded into powder.
Oddly, there wasn't even a hint of decay in the air. Whatever this guy had been, he'd been dead a long time.
But most shocking of all… was what lay in front of the skeleton.
A massive black scale, as tall as a grown man.
It pulsed with visible cursed energy, wisps of black mist leaking out and dissolving into the air like steam.
"…You've got to be kidding me," Lyle muttered, staring at the scale. "That's the source of the cursed energy?"
And who was the skeleton?
No regular human corpse should've lasted this long, especially not in a place dripping with this much malevolent magic.
Curious, Lyle stepped closer. A shimmer of magical energy pulsed around him as he cast a familiar spell.
"Item Appraisal!"
...
Item: Mysterious Scale
Level: ???
Description: ???
...
Lyle blinked. "First time I've ever not gotten anything from Appraisal... neat."
The scale was clearly from something massive—far bigger than anything he'd seen before.
And the cursed energy in his body? It was stirring, growing unstable… almost excited.
Without even thinking, Lyle reached out and gently touched the edge of the scale with one finger.
BOOM—
The black mist stopped leaking slowly.
Instead, it flooded into Lyle's body like it had just found a long-lost home.
The cursed energy he'd collected until now surged—no, exploded. In seconds, it smashed through some kind of invisible barrier inside him.
[Class Up: Cursed Knight Lv.1 → Lv.2]
His system panel lit up with a new notification, and Lyle's jaw dropped.
But it wasn't over.
More cursed energy poured in. Even the ambient mist in the chamber was drawn toward the scale—and straight into Lyle.
He could feel every drop of it, flowing through him, reshaping something deep within.
Hum—
Another panel update.
[Class Up: Cursed Knight Lv.2 → Lv.3]
Only then did the energy flow finally stop. The massive black scale dulled, its surface now etched with pale gray patterns—like it had burned out.
"…That actually worked?"
Lyle stared at his stat screen, then back at his upgraded Cursed Knight Lv.3 class.
His expression was somewhere between shocked and awestruck.
Until now, he'd believed there were only two ways to level up a class: either train it the old-fashioned way—slow, boring, time-consuming—or spend EXP directly to force a level.
But this…
This was a third way.
"Absorbing class-related energy can raise your class level…? Seriously?"
He muttered it out loud, still in disbelief. Then he paused and shook his head.
"Yeah, but it probably only works for weird classes like Cursed Knight. I doubt I can just stab a sword and gain Sword Saint levels."
Still, his eyes gleamed with excitement.
"This… This is a game-changer."
