"You thought the previous owner kept no records of his leverage," Arthur said, his tone absolute ice. "You were wrong."
He tossed the documents. They scattered across the floor of the carriage. One of the daughters tremblingly picked up a page. She read the first few lines, and her eyes widened in absolute horror.
Arthur didn’t break eye contact with the mother. "I don’t know exactly what Edric did with you. And I don’t care. But I know what *you* did to owe him."
She stumbled backward, hitting the side of the carriage. "You don’t understand, if those get out—"
"I don’t need to understand," Arthur interrupted, the violet aura around his arm intensifying. "I’ve already sent copies of these exact records to the merchant guild. If you ever set foot on my property again, I will ensure they reach the royal guard."
The woman’s arrogant facade completely shattered. Her daughters began shouting at her—a chaotic chorus of panic, accusations, and desperate denials.
Arthur stood in the twilight, watching their empire of superiority crumble in real-time.
He expected to feel a massive surge of triumph. He expected the curse to demand blood.
Instead, something entirely strange happened.
The agonizing, boiling pressure inside his chest began to rapidly decrease. The more their arrogance dissolved into pathetic panic, the quieter the violet presence became.
Arthur noticed the shift immediately. His ragged breathing slowed. The crushing weight on his lungs lifted. The dark aura around his arm faded, leaving only the warm, stabilizing hum of the emerald mana.
Suddenly, he understood. Not perfectly, but enough to see the shape of the trap.
The curse had been building tension inside him for days. It had hoarded his repressed anger, his frustration, his humiliation, and his fear. It had twisted the dial until he was ready to snap.
And the moment he finally acted on that anger—the moment he asserted dominance and took revenge—it released him. It rewarded him with absolute, intoxicating peace.
Arthur looked down at his hands in the dim light. The violet energy was completely gone. For the first time in days, his chest felt incredibly light.
And that realization terrified him more than the magic itself. Because a very dark, very human part of him *liked* the way that peace felt.
***
[Memories: Lakeside Fun with the Noble and her daughters]
Then
[Memories: A Night to Remember - Mei]
Then
[Memories: Gotta Fck Thm All - Ravaging Mom and Daughters]
***
The next morning, Arthur returned to the manor alone, leading the nobles into the night pleasures and finally to their own manor.
Elena was waiting for him in the vast, candlelit library. She was sitting in a heavy leather chair, an unread book resting in her lap. As he walked through the door, she looked up, studying his face with intense scrutiny.
"You seem different," she noted quietly.
Arthur walked over and sank heavily into the chair across from her. "The pressure is gone."
"What pressure?"
"The curse."
Elena’s expression shifted to deep concern. "What happened out there?"
Arthur leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, and explained exactly what had transpired. The confrontation at the carriage. The deployment of the blackmail records. The sheer, overwhelming panic of the noblewomen. And most importantly, the strange, immediate disappearance of the curse’s suffocating pressure afterward.
She listened in absolute silence, her eyes tracking his every word. When he finally finished, she closed her book.
"Does that mean you’re cured?" she asked hopefully.
He looked toward the tall, arched windows. The sun had appeared completely now. Total light covered the estate, illuminated by the sun.
"And that’s exactly what worries me. A new evening will again come," Arthur murmured.
He had spent the last several days believing the curse was random, a volatile magical anomaly that struck whenever it pleased. Now, he wasn’t so sure. It felt designed.
Arthur reached for a blank sheet of parchment on the desk and dipped a quill in ink.
*Sunset.* He wrote the time down.
Then: *Violet aura begins to manifest.*
He scratched another line. *Pressure increases through the evening.*
Then: *Strongest emotional impulses occur during nighttime.*
And finally, he underlined the most important discovery: *Pressure disappears entirely after emotional/sexual release.*
Arthur stared at the fragmented notes, the mechanics of his own damnation laid out in black ink. "So... it has a cycle."
She stood up and walked over, looking over his shoulder at the parchment. "You think it only activates when the sun goes down?"
"I don’t know for certain," Arthur tapped the quill against the desk. "But I’m going to find out tonight."
He pushed the chair back and stood up. "There is one place on this estate where I can test it safely."
Elena understood immediately. "The lake."
Arthur nodded. The hidden subterranean lake behind the manor. The exact place where he had first felt the cold pulse of the curse after waking up in this world. It was isolated, massive, and entirely cut off from the rest of the city.
There was enough space to unleash whatever was inside him without risking her, Kaelera, or Margaret.
Arthur looked back toward the dark window as the sun was again going to set in a few hours. "I need to learn how to control both powers. Together."
He raised his right hand in the center of the library. With a focused breath, the emerald mana bloomed to life, wrapping around his fingers in a warm, protective glow.
Then, he reached deeper into the cold well of his chest. A thin, jagged violet flame emerged, dancing dangerously close to the green light.
The two energies coiled around one another, casting a strange, shifting luminescence across the rows of ancient books.
Arthur stared at his glowing hand. "The angel gave me the emerald light. The curse gave me the violet flame." He slowly closed his fist, extinguishing both elements in a localized shockwave of wind. "And somehow... both of them belong to me now."
The hidden lake was absolute perfection beneath the moonlight.
Arthur stood alone at the edge of the rocky shore. The water was a flawless, silver mirror, and the ancient trees surrounding the basin swayed gently in the cool night breeze.
He unbuttoned his heavy dark coat and tossed it onto a nearby boulder, standing only in his linen shirt and trousers. He rolled his sleeves up past his elbows.
He closed his eyes and stepped forward.
The emerald mana flooded his system instantly. His muscle fibers tightened, reinforcing his bones. His senses expanded rapidly, catching the microscopic sound of water lapping against the stone and the scent of pine in the air.
He moved.
One step. Two.
Then, he exploded forward. The ground cracked beneath his boots as he launched himself at a massive, ancient tree near the shoreline. He twisted his hips, driving his fist directly into the thick trunk. Find the original chapter at g.com.
*BOOM!*
The impact sounded like a cannon firing. The massive tree shook violently, a shower of silver leaves raining down around him. A deep, splintering crater was left in the hardened wood.
Arthur pulled his hand back, inspecting his knuckles. No blood. No broken bones. Not even a bruise.
A fierce, exhilarated smile broke across his face. "Again."
He focused the emerald mana down into his legs and launched himself backward, clearing thirty feet in a single, gravity-defying bound.
Then, he landed on the shoreline and stopped entirely.
He reached into the dark. He called for the violet energy.
It answered immediately.
Arthur didn’t resist it this time. He didn’t try to lock it in a mental box. Instead, he simply watched it. He studied its flow. The dark, cold flame crawled rapidly up his arms, sinking into his skin.
His heartbeat accelerated into a furious, drumming rhythm. His vision sharpened beyond human limits, shifting into a hyper-focused, predatory clarity. His physical body felt impossibly stronger, faster, and infinitely more dangerous. The peaceful serenity of the lake vanished, replaced by an overwhelming urge to hunt, to break, to conquer.
Arthur slowly raised his hands, the violet aura radiating off him like dark heat.
"Let’s see what you really are," he challenged the empty night.
The violet aura expanded outward in a concussive wave. The surface of the lake trembled violently, the water rippling away from him. Dead leaves rose from the ground, suspended in the anti-gravity of his magic.
Arthur stood firmly in the center of the darkening forest, the brilliant emerald mana glowing like a beacon beneath the swirling violet flames.
For several long seconds, he simply stood there and breathed.
He didn’t attack the trees. He didn’t desperately try to suppress the darkness. And he didn’t surrender control to it.
He balanced it. Or, at least, he tried his absolute hardest to maintain the precarious equilibrium.
Then, a whisper slipped through the rushing wind.
*Arthur.*
He spun around sharply, his dual-colored aura flaring defensively.
No one was there. The lake remained perfectly still. The shoreline was empty.
Arthur’s eyes narrowed, scanning the deep shadows between the trees.
Suddenly, the violent violet flame dancing around his right hand twisted. It pulled away from his skin, hovering in the air for a fraction of a second, and formed a distinct, unmistakable shape.
A single, jagged purple eye.
It stared directly into his soul, ancient and endlessly amused.
Arthur stared back, refusing to flinch.
Then, the eye dissolved back into formless flame, sinking back beneath his skin.
Arthur’s expression hardened into absolute, unbreakable resolve. "So you’re watching me train, too."
The wind abruptly stopped. For one brief, terrifying moment, the entire subterranean forest became perfectly, entirely silent. The entity was listening.
Then, the violet flame returned to his hand, burning brighter than before.
Arthur smiled faintly, falling into a low, combat-ready stance, his fists radiating dual magic.
"Fine," Arthur whispered into the dark. "Let’s train."
That night, he started his journey to control the curse but always had Elena and Kaelera as a fallback, which led to all of them panting in the lake, and thus a new morning came.