I Became A Thief Who Steals Overpowered Skills - Chapter 126

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 126. Tell Me About Curses, Please!

Curse Scholar Dorma Lackroad.

At seventeen years old this year, she rolled her eyes side to side while her shoulders hunched inward.

Originally timid to her core, she had enrolled at Rahelern Academy with excellent grades, yet spent six months without making a single friend, keeping to herself.

It was simply her nature—she had never gotten along well with people.

But half a year later, even she found herself belonging to a group.

As a result, she could finally escape her isolated existence at the Academy.

Though she was secretly pleased by this turn of events, her sensitivity to the emotions of others made her acutely aware of the truth.

Sigrin’s group did not welcome her.

Sigrin herself was always kind, but Dorma struggled to blend in with the others, each of whom possessed such forceful personalities.

Yet she did not mind.

After all, she had always belonged to the shadow world.

‘I was happier with my senior sisters and brothers.’

She was the youngest disciple among the twelve students of Beltuaa Lackroad, the world’s greatest Curse Scholar.

Those days spent with her senior brothers and sisters, all devoted to curse research, had been joyful.

Beltuaa had found her wandering as an orphan beyond the city walls and brought her in.

He raised her and even gave her the Lackroad name.

But when Dorma turned ten, Beltuaa suddenly left her with his other disciples and departed.

She wept for days afterward, but he never returned.

Even the other disciples did not know precisely why their master had gone.

They only vaguely assumed it had something to do with their master and curses.

Though Beltuaa was gone, Dorma’s upbringing suffered no great hardship.

Her senior brothers and sisters loved her dearly as their youngest.

The problem was that this very affection created a wall between her and her peers.

She could get along with adults well enough, but she had no idea what to talk about with children her own age.

So she missed her senior brothers and sisters.

Had her eldest senior brother not insisted she attend Rahelern Academy to broaden her perspective on the world, she would still be studying curses and living happily among them.

But to her, who had grown indifferent to human relationships and uninterested in people themselves.

Recently, someone had begun to occupy her thoughts.

‘Krash Balheim.’

A direct descendant of that famous Balheim house, and lately the Academy’s most talked-about figure.

The rumors surrounding him reached even her ears—a woman who barely spoke to anyone—with such frequency that she couldn’t ignore them.

Yet she was certain it had nothing to do with romantic interest.

Though when she’d rest her head on her desk lately, she’d overhear the girls around her chattering endlessly about Krash, she possessed none of that girlish sentimentality.

She was, after all, a brooding figure—nothing like a princess riding in a carriage.

So why, then, did she find herself paying attention to Krash?

‘Curses.’

In her eyes, Krash was little more than a mass of curse.

A being so thoroughly coated in curse that she wondered if he might be the very source of it.

That alone was enough to draw the attention of a Curse Scholar like her.

The thing was, Krash’s curses were so tangled and layered that even her trained eye, that of a Curse Scholar, couldn’t distinguish the individual types.

But the real reason was something else entirely.

‘That curse manipulation method… isn’t it the same as my Master’s?’

On the day of the entrance examination for the second cohort at Rahelern Academy.

She’d been forced to attend the examination proctoring when Sigrin’s faction all moved together as one.

While she watched the exam from a corner, thoroughly uninterested.

That was when she’d been startled.

Krash was clearly manipulating curses.

And his method of manipulation was unmistakably identical to Beltuaa’s own.

Though Beltuaa was called the world’s finest Curse Scholar, it would be more accurate to call him a Curse User.

He commanded thousands of different curses, and using them, Beltuaa displayed combat methods that defied all convention.

To obtain curses, one had to venture into the World Erosion itself; he had chosen curses as his method of confronting Invasive Species.

And now Krash was employing that very same curse manipulation style as Beltuaa.

When she realized this, she’d barely managed to keep herself from bolting from her seat.

‘There’s definitely some connection to my Master.’

She wanted to ask where her Master was now, and how Krash had come to use such curse techniques.

But her timid nature proved an anchor once again.

While she hesitated and wavered, time simply marched onward.

But today, that changed.

She found herself in a Curse theory class with him.

He had designated the elective as her required subject, which was why she’d come to this lesson.

Her heart stirred with anticipation.

There were so many questions she wanted to ask him about Beltuaa—more than she could count.

But her natural temperament kept making her hesitate to speak them aloud.

‘This might be my only chance.’

He wielded Curses, certainly, but perhaps he was actually suffering from them instead.

If that were true, couldn’t she ask him about her teacher while helping him break the Curse’s hold?

The moment this thought crystallized, she clenched her small fists tight.

‘I can do this, Dorma.’

Today, she would speak to Krash.

She made her resolve firm.

* * *

“That concludes today’s lesson.”

The professor ended the class and left his seat.

Naturally, Krash had paid little attention to the lecture itself.

After all, his knowledge of Curses far surpassed even the professor’s.

Meanwhile, the other students gathered their things and stood to leave.

Krash rose from his seat as well, alongside Aslan.

“Um, um!”

It was at that moment.

He turned at the sound, thinking his bait had finally been taken.

Before him stood a girl with soft, pale hair in complete disarray.

Her small frame trembled visibly, her eyes darting about with unmistakable nervousness.

She hesitated for some time before finally finding her voice.

“Would you… would you talk with me about Curses?”

The question came out in a nervous pitch, and she lowered her head in embarrassment.

Her legs trembled like aspen leaves in the wind.

All she had to talk about was curses.

Since that was the only thing she knew, there was no help for it.

“Krash, you’re popular.”

Aslan let out a light whistle.

“N-no, that’s not… that’s not what’s happening.”

At that, she waved both hands frantically as if to dispel any misunderstanding.

Then she dropped her head, her face flushed crimson.

Krash knew well enough why she’d come looking for him, so he decided to cut straight to the point.

“You want to ask me about Beltuaa Lacrod, don’t you.”

The moment she heard those words, her head snapped up.

Her eyes gleamed, and she nodded eagerly up and down.

It looked like an unkempt puppy throwing itself into something with all its heart.

If she had a tail, it would probably be spinning like a motor by now.

“There’s a suitable place to talk. Want to head there?”
“Y-yes! I will!”

She answered brightly.

-Don’t lead the girl astray. Are you some candy man? If the other disciples find out about this, they’ll try to kill you. Do you know how much they care for her?

If you counted by physical age alone, Krash was younger than Dorma.

But that seemed to matter little to Crimson Garden.

“Aslan, what about you?”
“You two talk comfortably. I’ll head to my room.”

Aslan gave up his seat.

“And be careful Lirina doesn’t find out.”

For some reason, at the mention of Lirina, Krash’s hand rose to the back of his neck.

“Let’s go.”
“Y-yes!”

With that, he began walking alongside Dorma.

As Krash and Dorma passed by, eyes turned toward them.

Krash was tall for his age, while Dorma was noticeably small for hers.

The contrast made them impossible to ignore.

As Dorma shrank her frame nervously, Krash entered the Special Studies Building.

After walking a bit further, they arrived at Darling’s Alchemy Chamber.

Darling happened to be away at the moment.

He’d said he would come today, but as lunch hour approached, it seemed he’d gone out to buy something to eat.

“Make yourself comfortable. It’s an acquaintance’s workspace, after all.”
“Ah, yes, of course.”

Dorma settled into a chair with careful, hesitant movements.

Already slight in frame, she seemed to shrink further as she hunched forward.

As she glanced around the chamber, her eyes widened.

There were several Curse-Infused Bottles scattered about—oddly out of place in an alchemy chamber.

“Ah, I’ve been researching curse-related theory lately. The current focus is the Curse Nullification Theory.”

The moment Dorma heard those words, her eyes grew wide.

“The Curse Nullification Theory, you say?”
“That’s right. The theory Beltuaa created.”

The conventional curse-breaking method involves a Curse Scholar channeling their Aura to direct and eliminate a curse.

But curse nullification is different.

It’s a method of canceling a higher curse by using a lower curse against it.

That, precisely, is curse nullification.

Before the regression, this theory had been established by two people.

One was Darling, the Alchemy Master.

And the other was Beltuaa, the world’s greatest Curse Scholar at the time.

He had been ridiculed by other Curse Scholars as preposterous.

A higher curse typically kills the afflicted before a Curse Scholar can even arrive.

Since no one had ever had the chance to test it, the Curse Nullification Theory existed only in theory—in Beltuaa’s writings alone.

And this theory is realized through Krash.

For now, Darling was still in the stage of merely writing papers.

So at present, only Beltuaa was advancing this theory.

“So Krash really does have a connection to your master!”
“More or less.”

If you counted past-life connections as connections, then yes, you could say that.

“Ah, but—if a curse doesn’t land on its target, it won’t take full effect, will it? That’s why the Curse Nullification Theory can’t be proven……”

The greatest problem with the Curse Nullification Theory was that it couldn’t be tested on people.

Well, a higher curse kills you on the spot—nearly instantaneously—the moment it takes hold.

So Beltuaa had merely put forward the theory that curses could be nullified.

There was no explanation of which curses nullified which.

“But I’m different.”

Krash, however, was another matter entirely.

By stealing curses, he never became a direct target himself.

Thanks to that, he survived because the curse’s potency was halved, and he could actively test the Curse Nullification Theory in the process.

As a result, Krash had become a living proof of the Curse Nullification Theory.

Dorma’s movement creaked to a halt.

Then she slowly turned to look at Krash with wide eyes.

“D-directly from you?”
“Dorma, you already know. You must sense what I’m carrying inside me.”

Dorma flinched.

Being this close made it unmistakably clear.

A curse so thick and suffocating emanated from Krash that even Dorma’s breath caught.

“And you wanted to ask about this from the start anyway.”

Krash crossed his legs where he sat, a faint smile playing at his lips.

Seeing him like that, Dorma’s lips trembled before she squeezed her eyes shut and burst out:

“Yes! It’s because the curse method you use is so similar to Master’s!”
“Well, of course it is. I learned this directly from your master.”

The secret art Krash possessed: Extreme Blood Needle Poison.

The Annihilation Erosion he drew forth through Ignis was founded entirely on Beltuaa’s curse art.

Krash’s ability to use Annihilation Erosion so readily stemmed wholly from that experience.

“Just as I thought!”

Her eyes blazed with intensity, and she looked ready to throw herself at Krash any moment.

“I—I’ve been searching for Master all this time! He disappeared suddenly when I was ten, and there’s been no word since. I’ve been so worried!”

Dorma’s words tumbled out in rapid succession.

Speaking so quickly left her breathless, and she paused to catch her breath.

“But when I saw you use Master’s methods, I wondered—do you perhaps know where Master is?”

Having poured out her words, her throat felt parched.

Krash took out a cup and poured water into it, then handed it to her.

“Ah, thank you.”

She held the cup in both hands and drank in greedy gulps, her small mouth working steadily.

Only then did her expression settle.

“Feeling better?”
“Yes, yes.”

Watching the visibly calmer Dorma, Krash smiled.

“First of all, Beltuaa Lakroad is wandering somewhere in the Forbidden Zone.”

That old man was utterly obsessed with curses.

The moment he judged that Dorma had grown old enough, he’d rushed off to the Forbidden Zone without hesitation.

His refusal to tell Dorma or his disciples where he was going had its own logic—it was for her sake, in a way.

He didn’t want her foolishly chasing after him into the Forbidden Zone.

“……The Forbidden Zone.”

Dorma murmured the words to herself, her face hardening.

She knew well enough how dangerous that place was.

Dorma was an exceptional Curse Scholar.

Trained directly by Beltuaa, her knowledge of curses was advanced, and her Curse-Nullification ability ranked among the finest even of his twelve disciples.

‘I’ve owed this girl a considerable debt myself. I’ve benefited from her greatly.’

Yet despite that, her combat ability was almost nonexistent.

Her small frame and frail constitution were ill-suited to wielding curses.

So hearing the words “Forbidden Zone,” Dorma’s breath would have caught in her throat.

It was a place she simply could not reach.

“Would it help if I looked for Beltuaa Lakroad?”

At Krash’s words, Dorma’s head snapped up.

She believed Krash knew Beltuaa.

After all, he was none other than Balheim.

He would surely venture into the Forbidden Zone in the future.

If so, he could certainly find Beltuaa.

“Are you certain?”
“I’ll be going into the Forbidden Zone anyway. Might as well.”
“Ah, oh, thank you, thank you so much! You’re nothing like the rumors said, Krash—you’re incredibly kind!”

She rose from her seat and grasped his hand, shaking it enthusiastically.

For her, who had yearned so desperately to see her master again, Krash’s offer was an invaluable kindness.

“A rumor?”

When Krash questioned the rumor that followed, she made a small sound and rolled her eyes downward.

“Well, it’s just that…”
“Don’t worry. It’s only what my usual conduct has shown people anyway.”

There had been some deliberation in it from the start.

At Rahelern Academy, Krash had no intention of ever being underestimated.

So there were moments when he’d acted somewhat more aggressively than was his custom.

—It’s exactly like always, though.

He didn’t pay much mind to what Crimson Garden had said.

“N-no, that’s not it! You’re so kind even to someone like me! The rumor is actually a misunderstanding! It’s the fault of those wicked people who spread such terrible gossip—that you keep a great number of women and all that!”

But at her next words, even Krash’s expression stiffened in an instant.

“……Me, keeping women?”

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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