My Beloved Princess ~The Boy Called Incompetent Rises with Only a Sword and the Princess's Devotion~ - Chapter 123: The Curse of Sixteen

Chapter 123: The Curse of Sixteen

“Geez! I only got a little dizzy. I’m fine, really!”

In a room at the cheap inn, Ōka blustered with all her usual energy.

When she’d tried to get up from the bed, Princess-sama had stopped her, and now she was puffing out her cheeks in protest.

“You had me worried for nothing. As punishment, you stay in bed and rest for the whole day.”

“Boo, what’s with that? We finally made it to Ashitana, and now this is boring.”

The walls were cracked, letting in drafts. The floorboards were worn and creaky. Thin mold clung to the grain of the wooden ceiling. Hygienically, it was far from ideal.

Even so, in a city as expensive as Ashitana, they couldn’t hope for anything better.

“If you collapse again, that’ll be a pain. Though if you want me to carry you princess-style, that’s a different story.”

“Ah, I’ll pass on that!”

“Then lie there and behave.”

“Muu.”

The pallor had already left her face, and her color was back.

Her life wasn’t in danger. At least for now.

“Alice-san, I’ll leave Ōka in your care.”

“Yes. Leave it to me. Do your best at the winter special training.”

Alice, who had accompanied them as Instructor Fūyō’s assistant, was also staying at this inn. When she heard that Ōka had collapsed, she came rushing over and volunteered to nurse her herself.

Leaving Ōka in her care, Kishō stepped out of the room. Princess-sama followed after him.

As they walked down the corridor, which creaked noisily with every step, Kishō muttered:

“So Ōka’s whole weak-constitution act… wasn’t an act after all.”

During the first semester, Ōka had missed school often. Around the time Princess-sama came into their lives, the number of absences dropped dramatically. After that, she seemed so lively so often that he’d even joked that being frail was just part of her character setting.

“But in reality, you were treating her all along. You made things so peaceful for her that it felt like being sick really was just some made-up setting. The reason she was able to live out her school days like that… was because of you.”

Princess-sama, walking beside him, gave a small nod.

“She asked me not to tell you, Kishō. She said that if you learned the truth, you would suffer. No matter how hard you tried, the outcome would not change, and you would surely blame yourself. She said she did not want to see that. She wanted things to stay as they were until the end, and to spend that time talking nonsense together like always.”

He had his thoughts about that choice. There was plenty he wanted to say.

But he couldn’t bring himself to press the issue.

How could he intrude on the resolve of someone who had already accepted her own approaching death?

They went down the narrow stairs, crossed the lobby, and stepped outside.

One step beyond the front door, and they were in an alley.

Dark clouds hung over the sliver of sky above, looking ready to burst at any moment.

“So, what now? We’re free earlier than expected. Want to move things up?”

“Yes. Since we have the chance, let us go together.”

“By the way, did you get in touch with Kōran?”

“I asked Instructor Fūyō to pass along a message. We are to meet at this inn toward evening.”

“Good. That’s enough, then. Let’s go.”

Their destination lay in the center of the city. Before the rain could start, Kishō and Princess-sama headed there at a brisk pace.

◇◇◇◇◇

Searching for a specific book in an enormous collection was like looking for a pocket watch dropped in the desert.

Straight rows of shelves. Leather-bound volumes, all with different spines. Look left, look right, and it was books, books, books. Piles upon piles of books. If he tilted his head back and looked up at the towering open ceiling, then everywhere he looked, books from every age and place packed the shelves from end to end.

The whole place felt balanced on the verge of collapse, oppressive in its sheer mass. Searching for a single book in a repository stuffed with this many volumes was the kind of task that made your mind go numb.

Worse, there was no guarantee the book they needed even existed.

The pocket watch dropped in the desert might already have sunk into quicksand and vanished beneath the surface.

Even so, there was no room for complaining.

Splitting up the work with Princess-sama, Kishō searched through the massive collection for any mention of the Curse of Sixteen. Books on curses, books on illness, encyclopedias of medicinal herbs, histories of plague, even holy scriptures expounding faith in the gods. They dug through any text that looked as though it might help them break the curse.

He pulled one book after another from shelves stacked nearly to the ceiling and piled them on the desk. Sitting down, he picked up one of them. Through a gap in the mountain of books, he could see Princess-sama’s beautiful face on the other side. Her gaze was lowered as she scanned the pages with complete concentration.

Was it during the exam period in the second semester?

He had studied for tests together with Princess-sama once. Back then too, they’d sat side by side at a library table, and he’d often stolen glances at her profile as she looked down at her textbook.

Beauty loved by the gods. A lovely face he could stare at for hours without ever tiring of it. A slender body that looked as though it might break if he embraced it too tightly. And yet, she had the figure of a grown woman where it counted. A sweet scent had drifted from her glossy black hair, and seated beside her, he had felt her warmth, her body heat, against his skin.

Whenever he asked about something he didn’t understand, she would lean in so close their cheeks nearly touched and explain it carefully. The explanations she wrote out in his notebook, complete with diagrams, were more logical and easier to understand than a teacher’s. The price he paid for that knowledge was a pat on the head in fair exchange. What an easy heroine she was. He could vividly recall the satisfied look on her face, as though she were about to start wagging a tail at any moment.

But now, not a trace of that relaxed atmosphere remained.

Princess-sama’s expression was as sparse as ever, yet now there seemed to be something like impatience on her face.

There was one more person who wasn’t here.

The three of them had studied together for those exams.

If that third person was just as important to Princess-sama as she was to Kishō…

Then it was easy to understand why she was acting so desperately.

She could not afford to lose her. That feeling was driving her forward.

And Kishō felt the same way.

“I can’t let myself lose, either. I’d better focus.”

Kishō shook his head and cast off the memories of those happy days.

He opened the book and turned his eyes toward the unfamiliar print.

Outside, rain was falling.

The air was faintly damp.

In the silence, only the dry sound of turning pages echoed through the building.

After about two hours had passed, Princess-sama suddenly looked up.

“I want to organize what we know about the Curse of Sixteen.”

Her serious tone broke the silence, and Kishō swallowed.

“Ōka’s situation is extremely grave.”

She had collapsed the moment they arrived at the inn.

Her life wasn’t in danger. However, that always came with the qualifier: for now.

“Twenty days left. Ōka’s sixteenth birthday is the time limit.”

“Yes. Absolute death comes on one’s sixteenth birthday. That is why it is called the Curse of Sixteen.”

It seemed there were two cursed phases to the Curse of Sixteen. The curse first activated once the victim had reached fifteen. The curse power invading the body gradually robbed the target of physical strength. In the end, the victim would lose consciousness and pass away peacefully from exhaustion.

That was the first stage. The main symptom of the Curse of Sixteen.

And they had already achieved partial success in dealing with that first stage. By externally supplying the lost [Ki], it was possible to prevent death by debilitation.

But that was no more than symptomatic treatment. It did not solve the underlying problem. The cursed mark remained engraved on Ōka’s chest even now, and unless [Ki] kept being poured into her regularly, she would collapse again like she had today.

And the true problem lay in the curse’s second stage. There was a vicious device built into it, malicious enough to leave even Princess-sama wracked with helplessness.

“The curse’s second stage. A time-triggered mechanism, huh?”

“Likely a countermeasure against life-prolonging treatment. The death mark is programmed to activate on the victim’s sixteenth birthday. No one has ever surpassed that deadline.”

Heavy silence fell.

The sound of the rain beating against the window seemed to have grown stronger.

Unable to bear the sight of Princess-sama hanging her head, Kishō changed the subject.

“By the way, it’s called the Curse of Sixteen, but people also call it an illness. From what you’ve told me, it’s a curse technique, isn’t it?”

The impression left by a curse and by an illness was completely different. Sorcery was an act of deliberate malice, while illness referred broadly to physical disorders that arose naturally. The two were obviously not the same thing, so why was it called a disease? He had long wondered about that.

Princess-sama answered his question.

“The first recorded cases of the Curse of Sixteen are said to date back roughly eight hundred years. At the time, however, people did not recognize it as a curse. Thus, for a long time, the Curse of Sixteen was believed to be an illness of unknown cause. That remnant of the past is why it is still referred to as an illness even now.”

Even after it was discovered to be sorcery, the custom of calling it an illness remained. That was why it was still spoken of as an incurable disease.

If the cause was unknown, then it was treated as an illness. Even if someone had been killed by a curse, anyone without knowledge of sorcery would be unable to distinguish it from dying of sickness.

And if it had been believed to be an illness for so long…

“That means it’s an incredibly sophisticated curse, doesn’t it? Sophisticated enough that even plenty of practitioners failed to recognize it for what it was and mistook it for a disease… In other words, the spell formula is built that intricately.”

“Precisely. The spell formula of the Curse of Sixteen is bewilderingly complex and utterly extraordinary. It contains multiple leaps of imagination, all intricately linked together to form a single formula.”

Princess-sama’s face remained dark as she spoke in that flat tone.

“Then… is it so complex that even you can’t analyze it?”

“The answer is half yes and half no.”

“…? What do you mean?”

“It is only a terminal.”

Princess-sama bit the corner of her lip in frustration.

“The Curse of Sixteen consists of a command tower that transmits curse waves and a terminal that receives them. The cursed mark engraved on Ōka is the terminal. No matter how thoroughly I analyze it, I cannot grasp the complete picture of the formula. The only thing I can analyze is the information on the terminal side.”

“If you can’t grasp the whole spell formula… then does that mean breaking the curse is impossible after all?”

“The command tower and the terminal are connected by powerful curse waves. To break the curse, we must first cut off those curse waves. And to cut them off, we must determine their exact frequency and construct a dedicated anti-formula. That frequency information is held on the command tower’s side.”

At an antique dealer’s shop in Algant, he had once seen a magical tool called a wireless set.

Apparently it was a rare item excavated from ancient ruins, and an absurdly expensive one at that. The plump shopkeeper had smiled as he explained that it worked by matching frequencies in order to communicate.

In the end, though, they discovered there was no paired second unit on hand, so it was just a useless hunk of junk that couldn’t send or receive anything. Naturally, the magical device never sold.

What he had learned then gave rise to a question in Kishō’s mind.

“Wouldn’t the receiving terminal have the frequency information on its end too? Otherwise, it couldn’t receive the curse waves.”

It sounded like a good idea, but Princess-sama regretfully shook her head.

“That part is cleverly designed. The frequency retained by the terminal is limited strictly to what is needed for reception. The precise frequency needed to control the curse waves cannot be determined from the terminal-side information alone.”

Limiting the information stored in the terminal. That was clearly a safeguard against anyone who tried to break the curse. There was unmistakable intent behind it, the will of a caster determined never to let the victim escape. Kishō ground his back teeth at that malice.

“I see… Then what about rewriting the information on the terminal side so it can’t receive the curse waves?”

“Interference with the terminal, including that sort of tampering, is blocked by the curse waves.”

“Then what about somewhere the curse waves can’t reach? Hiding underground, for example.”

“The curse waves pass through matter. They reach underground as well.”

“What about setting up a barrier or something?”

“The same problem remains. Unless we know the exact frequency, we cannot repel them. The curse waves pass through barriers as well. It is a terrifying spell formula.”

The discussion flew back and forth in rapid-fire succession.

For every idea Kishō proposed, Princess-sama immediately gave him a reason it wouldn’t work. Naturally. After trying everything she could, she had come to him in tears for help only after concluding that she could not save Ōka by her power alone. Any idea Kishō could come up with after just hearing the outline of the problem, she had surely tried already.

“So to break the curse, we first have to find the command tower transmitting the curse waves, the true core of the whole thing. And if we can analyze the command tower’s spell formula, then we can break it.”

“Yes. If we can find the command tower at all, it would be faster simply to destroy it. If the curse waves stop being transmitted, then the Curse of Sixteen will cease to activate as well.”

If only things were that simple.

If he could have said that, how much easier would it have been?

Eight hundred years had passed since the cases were first recorded. The Curse of Sixteen had long been treated as an incurable disease. Naturally, once it was discovered to be sorcery, people must have tried to cure it then as well. Thousands upon tens of thousands of attempts had surely been made, and every one of them had failed. That was why it was called incurable.

Among those people, some must have reached the same conclusion as Princess-sama.

There must have been others who set out to search for the command tower.

And yet the fact that it still remained an incurable disease was proof enough of the outcome.

“I don’t intend to give up. But…”

“Finding the command tower is not realistic.”

Princess-sama finished the words Kishō had been about to say.

With no clues at all, there was far too little time left to search for the command tower.

“Which is why we must approach this from another angle. I can only hope we find something that gives us a hint.”

Princess-sama looked around at the bookshelves filling the building and let out a troubled sigh. The collection was enormous. Even split between the two of them, how many days would it take to read through everything?

That was precisely why Princess-sama had taken this break to organize their information instead of simply continuing to dig through books. It wasn’t only about sharing knowledge. It also felt as if she was relying on Kishō in hopes that he might help open up a new path.

Taking that great expectation to heart, Kishō straightened his back.

“Yeah. For that, I need more knowledge. At the very least, enough to stand where you do. I’ll keep learning until I can stand beside you, and then we’ll go looking. I won’t just keep relying on you like I have before. We’ll work together, the two of us, and find a way to save Ōka.”

Princess-sama gave a small nod.

Then she stood, came around the table, and pulled out the chair beside Kishō. After lifting it to close the distance, she sat down so close that their bodies touched.

She looked up at him with a heated gaze. Then she placed a hand over her chest and said:

“Ask me anything. I am with you.”

◇◇◇◇◇

He had kept up an outwardly calm front. But inside Kishō’s chest, the fire of hatred had smoldered all this time.

Unlike illness, sorcery was deliberate malice. Which meant there was definitely a caster somewhere who had placed this curse on Ōka. Someone had cursed her with murderous intent.

“I’ll never forgive them… But why?”

He and Princess-sama had not yet discussed the caster.

But the question remained. Who had cursed Ōka, and for what purpose? According to Princess-sama, cases had been documented for the last eight hundred years. In other words, people stricken by the Curse of Sixteen had continued to appear at regular intervals.

The caster wasn’t targeting Ōka alone.

They had been scattering this curse throughout the world, driving many people to their deaths.

What was the purpose behind it?

The victims were concentrated in the eastern part of the continent, in the lands of the dragonkin, but similar reports existed all over the world. Humans, beastkin, dwarves, elves, giants… the races varied widely, with no apparent pattern. At first glance, it looked like indiscriminate terrorism, yet cases only surfaced once every few years at most. If slaughter were the goal, the number of victims was far too small.

And yet the killing intent behind it was undeniably strong. That was what made no sense to him.

What if it only looked indiscriminate, while in truth there was some hidden standard by which the victims were chosen? Or perhaps there were multiple casters, each cursing only those with whom they had some personal grudge.

To begin with, this was a large-scale curse technique involving the construction of a command tower and the broadcasting of death-bearing waves across the world. It wasn’t the sort of thing just anyone could handle. And if it had truly been maintained and managed for more than eight hundred years, then the caster would have to be over eight hundred years old as well.

“Or maybe it’s being handed down from master to disciple with each new generation…”

What exactly was the Curse of Sixteen?

And who was the caster, and what was their purpose?

Sooner or later, those mysteries too would have to be brought to light.