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(DHF)Chapter 43: Cursed gaze
🕑 Added 2024-05-16 16:05:36 +0000 UTCFor starters my fear that I would stop being human came true as my race now read as cursed-human. I didn't feel any different despite this which was great as I still felt joy and all the other normal emotions just fine. I also didn't have any weirdly evil or depraved impulses so you know , yay. My new skill was a huge bummer though, [Vessel of Sin] was was clearly a twisted skill born from my cursed energy and fears that honestly put a huge limiter on me. That line about it being a burden was not a joke.-
I constantly felt like I was moving underwater, like my body was being pressed in on from all sides. I wasn't physically limited per se as I still could move as fast as normal and could hit as hard as usual but felt like I wasn't if that made sense. My additional granted skill [Soul gaze] also sucked ass as I was practically blind. Fun fact the skill was CONSTANTLY active and another fun fact, souls were bright as shit. Like staring at the fucking sun bright. I tried to get used to it really I did but man did Bell and Hestia not make it easy.-
As a goddess Hestia's soul was MASSIVE and pure golden with silver streaks which was beautiful but a pain to get beamed with constantly. Bells soul was white, like pure fucking white which tracked considering how innocent he was. Let me tell you after I woke up from my admittedly self induced coma seeing both of those immediately was a highly unpleasant experience. Honestly the only "good" news besides me getting one step closer to godhood was that I could make cursed tools now.-
As it turned out I did in fact need the blacksmith or in my case Curse-smith developmental skill to create cursed tools. Not to say I don't absolutely suck ass at it because while I CAN make cursed tools I clearly have no idea what I am doing in the process and it shows. My first attempt went feral and had to be put down, may it rest in pieces. You are probably all like "Hey aren't you sort of skipping all the reactions from Hestia and Bell and stuff?" and the answer is yes, yes i am. I got yelled at, like a lot, it wasn't a fun time for me.
Even more unfun for me was that my tattoos got bigger, again. This time I got some new marks on my face and arms which was just great for my self esteem let me tell you. On my face I got two black dots on my forehead that I was pretty sure represented horns. On my arms I got four new tattoos, a pair of matching black bands on my wrists and two hollow black triangles on the back of my palms. I mean the new tattoos didn't look bad at all but I wasn't a huge fan of them personally.
Lets see what else was worth mentioning? Ah! Well I lost like two weeks of time recovering from my level up as my vessel rebuilt itself. That was a bit annoying but at the end of it I had somewhat gotten used to my new senses and power. I found out my soul was black by the way which was frankly confusing to learn since at first I thought I didn't even have one since I didn't see anything. It was only after REALLY paying attention that I realized that I couldn't see anything because it was too gods damned dark.-
Not sinful though as I discovered after comparing my soul with those of other peoples in public. Sin interestingly enough came in a hue of colors according to my new skill which I had to carefully figure out. For greed it was a yellow, lust was purple, wrath was red, sloth was a pale gray and pride was brown. Envy and gluttony surprisingly enough weren't actually a sin according to my skill or perhaps they fell under one of the other sins somehow.-
As I learnt most souls were comprised of a single over arching color and then "stained" with the color of their sins. Some souls like Bells or I suppose my own in a way were brighter than others which meant something I'm sure but what was beyond me for the moment. I had a sort of instinctual judgement of how much staining was needed for a soul to be counted as innocent or sinful which I attributed to my new skill. Roughly speaking more than half a soul being stained was the dividing line for it to be "sinful" which was a high bar to cross it seemed as not even some of the people moving shadily out of Daedalus street were that stained, usually.-
My next meeting with Syr was complicated to say the least as it went like this.
Our gazes met and we both froze when it became clear that we were both staring at the others soul. Her soul was massive and a rich mix of purple, silver and red with sins the same color staining it ever so slightly.
"You're a god?" "You can see souls?" we both asked at the same time awkwardly.
I went to speak again but she hurriedly stopped me. "Not here! Follow me." she hissed looking around nervously to make sure nobody heard us.
Syr leading me into the hostess had Mama Mia looking confused for a moment from behind the bar before getting serious when Syr gave her a look. I got led to an empty room above the main area of the hostess.
"Why the act?" I couldn't help asking when she shut the door.
I was frankly astonished to find that the friendly and kind Syr that I had come to know was in fact a goddess and one with some rather questionable sins.
She sighed "I am looking for something and I believe being myself would make it difficult to find it. You need to understand that being who I am means I have many enemies and few allies. if I ever found what I seek they may move to take it from me. I mean no harm playing mortal I swear." she said sincerely.
"If you are wondering about this whole soul sight thing I got it after I leveled up, it's been an unpleasant couple weeks." I said honestly.
"I can imagine, i myself sometimes wish I couldn't see them as it can be a heavy burden to bear. Could you please try and keep my being a goddess a secret, I would take it as a personal favor if you did?" she said practically begging.
"You seem to be awfully attached to this role of yours so I suppose I can act as though i haven't seen what I have. But I demand that you don't make fun of my tattoos in exchange." I said with a smile and she giggled.
"It's a steep price but I think I can live with it." she said and we shook on it.
Comments
Alexander Brown
Lmao 😂 🤣 Pride is brown?! Pride is 💩 colored pride is literally sh!t. 😂
Cpt.Doomsday
Thanks for the chapter
Loskro
He loses stats, like stated it puts a serious restriction on him.
C_Black_Star
What if he killed innocent souls accidentally?
Loskro
It's the details of the skill. He gets weaker if he kills "innocent" souls. this means that becoming outright evil from his cursed energy based existence is no longer possible. Effectively the falna solved his fears by giving him a skill that cut off his future if he took that route.
C_Black_Star
Will be able to remove the limiter in the future? How does fear of losing his sence of self translate to vessel of sin skill?
Christian Jeffress
Thanks for another really excellent chapter. I like how the vessel of sin was translated, as well as hence of future developments, now that he is a cursed human, and what he might eventually look like. The issues he is having with his soul site is also understandable, and I am curious to see how he will eventually adept to it, maybe with the help of a certain goddess. Lastly, I am very much looking forward to his eventual creations of various cursed tools, and if he will sell those to others, or if they will just be for him and his familia.
Olivier Pascal
True. Alex will have to Struggle with the next level up and won't be able to follow conventional wisdom and have to find feats to achieve that should be only achievable by adventurers at level 5/6 adventurers. Thanks for the chapters and hope you have a good day! :D
Loskro
Solid assessment on the scaling and accurate at the level four amount as well for Alex. The trick here is that I am also aware of the scaling issue in regards to the canon series of events. But who said that I was going to stick to canon alone? Sure much of canon will be the same but there will be a great many changes due to the impact Alex has on the world just by existing. Additionally I would like to point out that the difficulty of leveling up increases based on what you did to level up previously as well as how challenging it was for you to do whatever you did.. For Alex it was defeating a level two monster solo much like canon Bell but unlike Bell who got to SSS in all stats before leveling up Alex hit the true limit and as a result will have a much harder time leveling up compared to Bell from here on. A sort of balance between challenge and reward is going to be struck, not to worry.
Olivier Pascal
If you want to go more in depth than me and understand where I am coming from, then I recommend going to the wiki and looking at the stats that are there for multiple adventurers. Also, I recommend looking at the reddit comments of "Sylenzy" from the post "level system?" by "Slushin21". You just need to know that most adventurers level up when they reach one letter D in one stat, and the rest are usually around H or G. Also, there is a boost to a person when they level up, and since it isn't known, I will make the assumption that they get 1000 stat points of that level. I am making a lot of assumptions for this, and I also need to define some terms: I shorten adventurer to: ADV Some adventurers don't unlock the magic stat, so I add a P (Physical) if they didn't unlock magic and a M (magical) if they did unlock magic. I am making the calculations in such a way that the number at the end is represented as level 1 stat points, so just keep in mind that stat points at higher levels are 1.25 of previous levels (100 lvl 4 stat points are worth 195.3125 lvl 1 stat). I will be averaging to the closest whole (195.3125 becomes 195). In between brackets, I add the level and a letter to say what stat average they have and the actual average. I don't have all the numbers, but I will make the assumption that an adventurer gets +30 every level stats average. Here are examples with speculation from the wiki (for the stat total, I multiplied the average by 5, added 1000, and multiplied it all by (1.25^LVL-1)): Random Example adventurer level 1 with magic, 1 stat Max D, 4 Stat Max H: ADVM(1G279) with a stat total of 1395 Random Example adventurer level 1 without magic, 1 stat Max D, 3 Stat Max H: ADVP(1G299) with a stat total of 1196 Liliruca Arde level 1 would be classified as: ADVM(1F312) with a stat total of 1561 Lefiya Viridis level 3 would be classified as: ADVM(1G?279|2F?309|3F339) with a stat total of 9787 (2395+3181+4211) Tiona Hiryute level 5 would be classified as:ADVP(1B?713|2B?743|3B?773|4A?803|5A833) with a stat total of 34014 (3852+4965+6394+8227+10576) Tione Hiryute level 5 would be classified as:ADVM(1D?553|2D?583|3C?613|4C?643|5C673) with a stat total of 33900 (3765+4894+6352+8232+10657) Ais Wallenstein level 1 would be classified as: ADVM(1D581) with a stat total of 3905 Ais Wallenstein level 6 would be classified as: ADVM(1D581|2C?611|3C?641|4C?671|5B?701|6B733) with a stat total of 49285 (3905+5069+6570+8506+10999+14236) Bell Cranel level 4 would be classified as: ADVM(1SS1109|2SS1079|3SS1174|4SSS1391) with a stat total of 40810 (6545+7994+10734+15537) For Ottar I am going to speculate that he maxed all stats beside magic at SSS rank for level 1, 2 and 3; Max SS rank for level 4, 5 and 6; Max S rank at level 7. Magic is going to be maxed out at one rank lower than all the other stats so Max SS rank at level 1, 2 and 3; Max S rank at level 4, 5 and 6; Max A rank at level 7. Ottar level 7 would be classified as: ADVM(1SSS1450|2SSS1450|3SSS1450|4SS1200|5SS1200|6SS1200|7S979) with a stat total of 106085 (8250+10313+12891+13672+17090+21362+22507) If Alex intends to max every stat then at level 4 he would look like this: Alexander Drake level 4 would be classified as: ADCM(1~3000|2~3000|3~3000|4~3000) with a stat total of 92250 (16000+20000+25000+31250)
Olivier Pascal
I am a bit concerned about the power scaling of the novel, and I did some back-of-the-napkin calculations to put things in perspective. Since I spent some time on this tangent, I decided to share my work. TLDR: I am worried Alex will get too strong too fast and that the plot of DANMACHI won't be able to keep up
Cole Bromley
Thanks for the chapter!
Cmols897
I wonder how Freya will react now, she could potentially help/teach him with his soul sight
