Chapter 468: What a Malicious Curse
"Uuuggghhh—AHHH!"
Zeref groaned in sheer agony, clutching his head with both hands, his face contorting into a mask of pure pain.
Having been on high alert the moment he laid eyes on Zeref, Noah didn't hesitate when he saw the dark mage's violent reaction. He instantly thrust both hands out, slapping them onto Simon and Kagura's shoulders.
"Go!"
With a flash of magic, Simon and Kagura vanished from the spot, instantly teleported back to the safety of the base camp.
Noah immediately tried to leap backward, but his heightened senses flared. Someone was charging blindly from behind at breakneck speed! Seeing Simon and Kagura vanish, the newcomer tried to brake, but their momentum was far too great to stop in time.
Noah sighed helplessly. He kicked off the ground, jumping backward, while simultaneously extending his right arm. He caught the charging person by the stomach, fluidly redirected their momentum in a smooth arc, and hurled them forcefully backward, throwing them far out of the immediate danger zone.
By this time, the thick, undulating wave of pitch-black mist had already begun exploding outward from Zeref.
Noah hyper-focused his entire mind on the encroaching darkness. His hands blurred through the air, casting a rapid-fire succession of high-tier defensive barriers in front of him. At the same time, analytical magic circles flared to life in front of his eyes, meticulously observing the interaction between the black mist and his shields.
All the while, his feet never stopped moving, constantly retreating to maintain distance.
Wherever the black mist swept past, the lush green grass and towering trees instantly withered, turning a sickly, decaying yellow. Leaves crumbled into ash before they even hit the ground, and tree trunks became hollowed and brittle, as if subjected to decades of rapid weathering, entirely drained of their life force and moisture.
As the black mist crashed into Noah's overlapping barriers, the vast majority of his shields shattered instantly upon contact. They offered absolutely zero resistance, evaporating like paper, even with Noah continuously pumping massive amounts of magic power into them.
Sizzle... crackle...
Only two specific defensive arrays managed to hold their ground under Noah's relentless magical supply. Seeing those two barriers hold, a small, satisfied smile touched Noah's lips.
Eventually, after expanding to a certain radius, the black mist thinned out and dissipated into the air.
It left behind a perfectly circular zone of absolute, decaying death, spanning dozens of meters, with Zeref at its epicenter. Everything within that circle was completely stripped of life.
Except for two highly conspicuous green patches.
These were the small areas directly behind the two barriers that had managed to hold firm. One of the green patches was noticeably larger than the other.
"You... you actually blocked it..." Zeref slowly lowered his hands, looking at Noah with an expression of profound shock.
"The Curse of Ankhseram, huh? It truly is terrifying. It operates on a completely different existential level," Noah sighed in awe.
In that brief window, he had cycled through and cast nearly every top-tier defensive spell in his arsenal. The results were clear: standard defensive magic was completely useless, shattering instantly upon contact. Only two highly specialized barriers had worked, proving his theories and preparations hadn't been in vain.
"You know of this curse?" Zeref's eyes widened upon hearing the familiar, cursed name fall from Noah's lips. A wave of sorrow washed over him; the last person who knew of his curse was no longer in this world.
"Yes. I happened to read some very obscure texts detailing its specific manifestations," Noah nodded.
"Those two defensive spells you cast... One is a composite array blending multiple pinnacle-tier defensive magics, but the other... it converts pure magic power into raw life force to act as a shield?" Zeref murmured, instinctively analyzing the two barriers Noah had yet to dispel.
A cursory glance at the first barrier revealed the intertwined structures of numerous legendary defensive spells. While its durability shocked him, it was the second barrier that truly astonished the immortal mage.
If calculated strictly by raw defensive strength, the second barrier was vastly inferior to the first. Yet, its protective effect against the curse was significantly better—the larger green patch of surviving grass was directly behind it.
"Of course. Since the Curse of Ankhseram indiscriminately absorbs the life force of everything around it, wouldn't converting magic power into raw life force create the perfect buffer? Though, naturally, this only treats the symptom, not the root cause. It simply feeds the curse enough life force until it is satisfied and dissipates," Noah shook his head.
His first barrier was an ultimate composite spell, Aegis of the Stars, which integrated the absolute defense of Fairy Sphere alongside several other pinnacle-tier shielding magics. It had only survived Ankhseram's Curse through sheer, overwhelming durability and Noah's continuous, monstrous magical output. However, because it wasn't specifically tailored to counter the curse, it required an astronomical amount of magic to sustain. For an ordinary mage, casting Aegis of the Stars once would be a miracle, let alone sustaining it against the curse of a god.
The second barrier, however, was designed specifically to convert magic power into raw life force. It perfectly countered the nature of Ankhseram's Curse, resulting in a much more efficient and effective defense.
"But I have tried exactly that! Why didn't it work for me?!" Zeref asked, deeply perplexed. Having fully understood the nature of his own curse centuries ago, he had naturally attempted that very method to suppress it. Yet, it had completely failed.
"Could it be that your entire existence is cursed, which inherently includes your magic power?" Noah offered his theory. "The curse likely recognizes the magic originating from your own body. Therefore, any life force generated by converting your cursed magic would naturally fail to suppress the curse itself."
Noah knew that a genius of Zeref's caliber would have undoubtedly attempted similar countermeasures. Since Zeref said it didn't work for him, the flaw wasn't in the methodology. As the ultimate prodigy who mastered all forms of magic and broke the boundary of life and death, the chances of Zeref making a simple casting error were practically zero.
That meant the problem lay within the curse itself. Combined with the fact that Zeref had exhausted every conceivable method to kill himself to no avail, it could only mean his entire existence—his body, his soul, and his magic—was fundamentally cursed by the god Ankhseram.
"I see... As expected... I am truly rejected by the world itself," Zeref murmured, his expression twisting into deep, suffocating despair.
Hearing Noah's logical deduction, Zeref instantly recognized it as the truth. Only if his magic itself was cursed would his attempts to convert it into life force be rendered completely inert against Ankhseram's predatory aura.
Seeing Zeref's hollow expression, Noah silently shook his head.
Burdened by this curse, Zeref was completely stripped of his ability to live a normal life. Attempting to lift the curse was a solitary, agonizing endeavor. Without an external force of equal or greater power to assist him, he was doomed to wander alone. And anyone capable of helping him would likely be killed during his sudden, uncontrollable bursts of the death curse, forcing him to research solutions in total isolation.
This created a fatal flaw in his methodology: since he was forced to conduct all his experiments using his own magic power, he could never realize that his magic itself was the corrupted variable. Because the very foundation of his experiments was flawed, no matter how hard he tried, achieving his desired result was impossible.
Perhaps this was the true malice of Ankhseram's Curse. To break the boundary of life and death and trigger the curse, one had to be an unparalleled, once-in-a-century genius. For two such geniuses to meet and collaborate to break the curse was practically a statistical impossibility.
Therefore, the cursed individual would be forever trapped, unable to find an external perspective to identify the true nature of their affliction, doomed to be tortured for eternity.
Furthermore, the Curse of Ankhseram was inherently a "Curse of Contradiction." The more one valued and loved life, the more violently the curse would strip the life from their surroundings. If one did not care for life at all, the curse would never activate.
But the tragic irony was that only those who passionately loved life would ever attempt to break the taboo of reviving the dead in the first place. Noah had never heard of anyone else receiving this specific curse, despite countless mages delving into necromancy and forbidden life magics. Only Zeref, a genius who subconsciously cherished life above all else, was afflicted by it.
It was a testament to the sheer, unadulterated cruelty of Ankhseram.
The curse granted Zeref immortality, but it was an immortality he utterly despised. He was constantly crushed by the paralyzing guilt of inadvertently stealing countless lives, yet simultaneously disgusted by the twisted satisfaction he felt when he detached his emotions and threw himself into endless magical research.
This unimaginable cocktail of guilt, pressure, and self-loathing eventually drove him to seek his own death. But his cursed immortality rendered all lethal harm useless, and his corrupted magic prevented him from destroying himself. Even the Demons of the Book of Zeref—creations forged for the express purpose of killing him—failed.
Honestly, Noah never believed the Etherious could kill Zeref anyway; they simply lacked the power. If the strongest creations couldn't even surpass their creator, how could they possibly kill him?
Trapped in this agonizing paradox of desperately wanting to die but being physically unable to, Zeref's psyche slowly fractured under the centuries of crushing psychological pressure. In simpler terms: he had gone insane.
While he appeared perfectly normal—and genuinely expressed a deep, tragic love for life—most of the time, the foundational layers of his mental state were severely broken. He could snap at any given moment.
Keeping this in mind, Noah subtly heightened his guard, ready to react if Zeref suddenly lashed out.
"You are truly remarkable..." Zeref looked up at Noah, his voice soft.
As a peerless prodigy himself, he had seen countless geniuses rise and fall over the past four hundred years. But to reach this level of mastery and analytical prowess at such a young age... Noah was undeniably one of a kind.
"Thank you for the compliment," Noah accepted it casually, a small smile gracing his lips.
He was well aware of his own excellence; having been showered with similar praise his entire life, he was largely immune to it. However, receiving praise from Zeref actually felt somewhat validating. Despite the countless atrocities Zeref had committed, his absolute supremacy in magic was unquestionable. Being recognized by a 400-year-old legendary mage was a rare honor indeed.
Zeref opened his mouth to say something else, but just then, the person Noah had chucked away earlier came sprinting back, shouting at the top of his lungs:
"Noah! Who is this guy?!"
"N... Natsu..."
The moment Zeref laid eyes on the newcomer, he completely forgot what he was about to say. He stared unblinkingly at Natsu, tears welling up and spilling over his cheeks as he softly murmured the boy's name.
Natsu, however, stood beside Noah with a fierce, angry glare directed squarely at Zeref.
This guy definitely wasn't a member of the guild, yet he had inexplicably appeared on their sacred island. Combined with the terrifying, ominous black mist and the circle of utter death surrounding them, Natsu was absolutely certain this man was an enemy.
"Natsu! What happened?!" Happy finally caught up, flying over and hovering anxiously beside his partner.
"I don't know exactly what happened, but this guy has an incredibly creepy scent," Natsu growled, his eyes narrowed.
"Wh-What is all this?!" Happy finally took a good look at their surroundings and shrieked in horror.
All the trees within a massive radius had withered into dry husks, and the lush green grass had been reduced to a circle of decaying yellow ash. In all his time on Tenrou Island, Happy had never seen such a terrifying scene of absolute death.
"Is this that guy's magic?!" Happy asked, glaring warily at Zeref. The zone of death was perfectly centered around him, making the culprit painfully obvious.
"You can't exactly call it his magic," Noah shook his head.
Happy looked at Noah in confusion, about to ask what he meant, but Natsu's patience had already run out. Seeing the stranger crying and staring at him had deeply unsettled him, igniting an unexplainable urge to act.
"I don't know who the hell you are, but this is our guild's island! Stop getting in the way of our exam!" Natsu roared at Zeref.
"You... you've grown," Zeref whispered softly, his voice trembling with emotion.
"Huh?" Natsu blinked, utterly confused by the intimate tone.
"I have wanted to see you for so long... Natsu," Zeref's voice was saturated with profound, agonizing sorrow and longing.
"Urgh... HRAAAH!"
Hearing Zeref say his name with such bizarre affection triggered a sudden, inexplicable surge of blind rage within Natsu. Without thinking, he launched himself forward, rearing his fist back as he roared:
"WHO THE HELL ARE YOU?!"
"Wah!" Happy was completely caught off guard by Natsu's sudden attack. However, considering Natsu's usual shoot-first-ask-questions-later personality, it was completely unexpected yet entirely within character.
Noah easily had the speed to intercept Natsu, but noticing that Zeref made absolutely zero attempt to defend himself, he chose to stay put and watch.
BAM!
Natsu's fist connected squarely with Zeref's face, the sheer force launching the dark mage high into the air.
Zeref spun mid-air, plummeted toward the ground, and smoothly caught himself with his left hand, landing gracefully in a half-crouch before slowly standing back up.
"I told you, I don't know who you are! Tell me your name!" Natsu roared, infuriated by the strange, burning anger welling up inside him.
Zeref stood completely upright. Tears streamed silently from his eyes, his expression radiating a sorrow so deep it felt suffocating.
"He... he is crying...?" Happy stammered, staring at Zeref in disbelief.
The man was clearly uninjured, and his flawless mid-air recovery proved he was highly skilled. Yet, he was crying after a single punch?
Happy felt incredibly unnerved. Something was deeply, fundamentally wrong here, and it certainly wasn't their fault.
"What a weird guy..." Happy muttered, instinctively flying closer to Noah. Only being near Noah offered him any real sense of security in this bizarre, terrifying situation.
~~~
Get early access to 50+ advanced chapters on Patreon!
https://www.pat-reon.co-m/c/Hollowborn