Chapter 185 Cursed (R 18+)

A/N: EXTREME TRIGGER WARNING!

This chapter was one of the worst ones I've had to write. From the beginning, I had Grace's backstory fleshed out. But I did not expect just how difficult it was to write it when it came time to do so. As an inexperienced writer, I have to mentally inhabit my characters to elicit realistic responses and emotions and translate them into words. In writing this chapter, I had to take frequent breaks because it was just too... disgusting.

Needless to say, I am absolutely against and abhor child sexual abuse! Those that do it are the worst of the worst. What is even worse is the process of grooming, which is when the abuser conditions the victim from an early age.

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[TRIGGER WARNING]

A six-year-old girl, with two sharp chestnut-brown eyes glowing with the innocence of childhood, crouched down and inspected a multi-coloured flower in bloom. She used her stubby index finger to tilt it to the side and observed the integrity of the flower's stem. Noticing the excessive elasticity of the stem, she pulled back her hand and scratched her chin in thought.

"What's the matter?" An adult's voice asked, shocking the girl out of her ponderance. The girl turned to face the source and revealed a smile so bright that it could block out a hundred suns.

"Master!" The girl cheered and skipped toward the man. He had the appearance of someone in their forties, with a chiselled goatee, brunette hair that was tied into a bun and hazel eyes. He wore a loose white cotton collarless shirt that descended till his knees, and equally loose sandal-coloured trousers of the same material. He descended to his knees and met the girl at eye level.

"What's gotten you so stressed out, my little Disciple?" The man inquired mirthfully.

"The Auroral Lily's nutritional intake seems stunted," the girl answered with a pout as she rubbed her muddy hands on her plain jute summer dress.

"Have patience," the man said with a warm smile. "We've only just replanted it. The soil environment in this region already has a significantly higher mineral content, on top of the vitality-rich fertiliser we're using. The Lily grows in a tundra biome under much scarcer conditions. You shouldn't be worried about it not receiving enough nutrition. Besides, everything takes time. Remember the first month after you moved in with me? How did you feel then?"

The girl smiled wryly and said, "That's not fair! I was only missing my parents..."

"Maybe this flower is also missing its parents. Give it some time, it will come to liven up," the man added while gently patting the worried girl's head. The girl beamed back a smile in response, failing to realise the man's hand's incremental descent down her spine to the small of her back.

"Guess what Master found today?" The man asked with exaggerated intrigue.

The girl frowned as she tried guessing, but before she could voice it, the man pulled out a simple, yet elegant gold necklace.

"Wow!" The girl's eyes widened like saucers as the gold glimmered in the morning sun's bright rays.

The man proceeded to put the necklace on the girl by first moving her flowing locks. His hands contacted her neck, revealing her collarbones cushioned with baby fat. He placed the gold metal on her neck and slowly fastened it from behind.

"This Master is so lucky! He has the most beautiful Disciple in the whole wide world!" The man declared loudly.

The girl blushed in response and hid her face in embarrassment.

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[TRIGGER WARNING]

"Master, when can we go to the city?" The girl asked. She was now ten years old, and her face was in the process of shedding its fat.

"Why do you want to leave?" The man shot back with a faint yet harsh edge in his voice.

"It's been so long. I want to eat those Sweet Dumplings you brought last time," the girl said with a hopeful gaze.

"Why would you need to go to the city for that?" The man shot back as he approached the girl from behind. He placed his hands on her waist and rested his chin on her head. "Master will make it for you."

The girl flinched slightly as the man's breath brushed against her scalp. She had spent five years with her Master, isolated on this hill in the middle of a forest. She had tried leaving many times - in the beginning, it was due to boredom. But in the past few years, a sense of foreboding had dawned upon her. She felt trapped. Suffocated.

Over the years, she and her Master had gotten closer... on an uncomfortably physical level largely due to her Master's aggressive advances. She felt discomfited and anxious, but her Master would tell her that it was all innocent. They were just normal interactions between Master and Disciple, he would say.

"How's your cultivation moving?" the man inquired, now whispering directly into her ears. The girl shuffled away and bowed respectfully. "Thanks to Master's teachings, this Disciple was able to achieve a breakthrough and advance into the cusp of the Core Formation realm. Just like Master said, ingesting that potion made of Auroral Lily invigorated my blood and pushed me past that barrier."

The man's eyes flashed with malicious greed but were immediately replaced with warm pride. She didn't miss this instance, though. Recently, she had noticed her Master's gaze and expressions waver, exhibiting a dangerous glint intermittently.

"That's good! Congratulations, my beautiful Disciple!" The man exclaimed as he reached in for a hug.

The girl's spine tightened at the words 'beautiful Disciple'. A compliment should elicit a more pleasant response, but after hearing it so many times, each time with more lustful vitriol than the last, she was starting to hate it. She didn't believe it anymore. She hated her hourglass figure, her piercing gaze, and her inviting features. Everything her Master used to describe her allure had turned into knives carving into her spirit.

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[TRIGGER WARNING]

"AH!" The girl screamed as she beheld the gory mess on her bed. Blood. Blood everywhere. Hearing the scream, her Master rushed into her room.

"What happened?" He asked. But his eyes landed on the girl's bed.

"It's okay. It's a natural process," the man assuaged the shaken girl. He approached her bed and folded the bedspread. With a flick of his hands, the cloth disintegrated. With another flick, the blood that oozed into her mattress dissipated as well.

"See? As good as new!" He exclaimed with a flourish of his hands.

The girl looked apprehensively at her Master and cowered.

"Don't be scared, Grace," her Master said. "It's a good sign. It means that my beautiful Disciple - the most wonderful girl in the world - has now become a woman."

Grace looked into her Master's eyes and saw his facade slip completely. No longer did he bother to wear the mien of a proud Master, a caring father figure, and a close friend. His eyes lost all of their warmth and were replaced by a maddened, avaricious and lecherous intensity.

"Master?" Grace whimpered as she saw the man she called Master approach her. His gait was that of a predator. And she was his prey.

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Silence reigned in Grace's room, as she paused. Her voice remained stoic and uncaring the entire time she narrated her past. She was picked up by a seemingly kind-hearted Mage who unearthed her from her village and took her on as his Disciple. He convinced her parents that she had immense potential and would one day soar through the skies. As illiterate folk, gaining the recognition of a Mage was a massive boon. They readily sent their daughter with the Mage. After all, the best they could give her would be just enough food to survive the day. At least with this Master, their daughter could thrive and not just survive.

Grace's Master took her to his "home" which was an isolated cottage up a hill, surrounded by dense forestry on all sides. There was an artificial spring flowing through the area that was used to irrigate and tend to a garden that grew a myriad of herbs, flowers and alchemical ingredients. Her Master taught her everything about growing herbs and cultivating. Grace showed immense potential and breezed through cultivation realms with minimal effort, going as far as to reach Foundation Establishment by six and a half years of age.

"Have you ever heard of Lamias?" Grace asked. "They're a type of nature spirit - sentient creatures native to the Fae Realm. One key biological trait of Lamias is that they're always females."

"They are known to be extremely powerful, capable of wielding the force of nature with a high level of proficiency. A Lamia in the Core Condensation realm can control a forest the size of Radiant City as if it were her own playground. A Lamia is born with an innate cultivation method, like most sentient beasts, that can boost her to the Core Condensation realm incredibly quickly. For others, it may take years or lifetimes, but for a Lamia, a decade would be sufficient."

"Yet, even with all this power, a Lamia has one glaring weakness," Grace paused.

"You see, the moment a Lamia becomes pregnant, she loses everything. Her cultivation is immediately dissipated, never to be regained again, and all of it is transferred to her offspring. Since Lamias are only females, their offsprings are also exclusively females, and they are always born as twins. No matter what race the other half of the offspring may be, Lamia's bloodline supersedes all. Her offspring will be just as strong as her, and will have the same weakness as her."

Grace turned her face on her pillow and looked directly into Guy's eyes.

"What happens to a mage's core when they die?"

"It starts to dissipate," Guy answered.

"For a Lamia, once she becomes pregnant, her core gets infused into her offsprings. If one were to extract the offspring from her womb, refine them and siphon their essence through alchemical processes, they can create an extremely potent elixir that can boost a mage's cultivation by a lot. For a Mana Condensation realm mage, it would be enough to deposit them on the doorstep of Core Formation. For a peak Core Formation realm mage, it would be enough to boost them into the Core Condensation realm," Grace concluded.

She then moved her hands towards her belly and slowly pulled up her shirt, to reveal a horrible burn scar marring her abdomen.

"What my 'Master' didn't tell me when he picked me up, was that I had Lamia blood flowing through my veins." Grace's voice wavered as tears started to flow out the side of her eyes. "All that time, I was so excited when my cultivation leapt through realms. He would praise me, and commend me for being a genius. Little did I know that it was all a lie - an unfortunate byproduct of my cursed bloodline."