Chapter 812 - Nevermore: To Feed Thy Curse (Patreon)

So, Jake actually ran into a bit of a problem with his experimentation. Testing out the effectiveness of his poison and curse shouldn’t be that hard, right? Except who was Jake supposed to test it out on? The defenseless prisoners down in the cellar of the House of the Architect? Random beasts or low-level monsters in one of the worlds? No, all the options were shit, and not just because it would leave a bad taste in Jake’s mouth, but because he wanted to give Eternal Hunger something tasty. Something it actually wanted to eat.

Weak creatures didn’t strike the cursed weapon’s fancy, and Jake wanted a poison that would really help turn the curse energy ravenous when it mattered. There was also the problem that Jake needed similar targets to compare results. Most alchemists achieved this by testing on live targets that they then healed up again, this often even being people who could give feedback on the torture they had to endure – a fate Meira nearly suffered as a slave.

Yeah, Jake wasn’t going to randomly become a torturer. He also wasn’t even sure it would work. The entire point was to turn his curse energy uncontrollable, so it was a foregone conclusion that Jake wouldn’t be in full control. Due to that, he had no way of ensuring he wouldn’t accidentally kill his target. If he did that, any experimentation would be wasted as he needed to start over with a new test subject, which seemed needlessly cruel.

He then considered if he could just use himself, but no matter what he did, his curse energy didn’t hurt him. It was probably because he wasn’t just the user of the curse energy but also the source. Even if the Sin Curse was hungry beyond anything, it still didn’t make any moves to devour Jake himself, which was kind of a new discovery in itself. He did wonder why this was for a while until he quickly reached the conclusion that it was due to Sim-Jake having merged with the curse.

Records of his other self existed within the curse energy, and the curse energy would never try to devour itself. In the same vein, it would now not try to ever devour Jake. At least, that was his best guess. It could also be that Sim-Jake has blessed the Sin Curse with faint instinctual self-preservation that made it aware that killing Jake would also result in it killing itself.

It had to be noted here that Jake was very different compared to Casper and Temlat as a curse user. Both of them created their own curse energy using their souls and resources, while Jake just wielded a weapon with a powerful curse. He didn’t have any inherent curse energy but happened to have sealed and bound an insurmountable amount of curse energy within his own Soulspace. This was also why Jake couldn’t do something like summon curse bolts or whatever by just transforming his energy. If he wanted to do something like that, he would have to channel the energy from the Soulspace.

This also resulted in Jake theoretically having a finite amount of curse energy. The word theoretically being used in this case as Eternal Hunger was pretty damn good at keeping itself fed and even fatting itself up through Jake’s actions.

Anyway, to return from the sidetrack, the reality was that his own katar didn’t want to eat him, requiring Jake to find another unfortunate victim to experiment on.

That is when Jake got a brilliant idea. He needed people to experiment on who would be receptive and not fight back during the experiments while not suffering at the same time. It would have to be someone pretty much immortal and highly helpful. This was usually not a thing – outside of perhaps Eron if Jake could convince him - but here in the House of the Architect, Jake had the perfect candidates.

“Excuse me, could you help me with something?” Jake asked as he went up to one of the many attendants walking around doing nothing in the House of the Architect.

“Most certainly,” the attendant responded with a smile. “How can I assist you?”

“Would you be able to be my test subject regarding a Creation I am working on? Ah, for clarity, I will need you to have near-infinite health points and be immortal during the experimentation while giving me feedback on the results of my tests. Oh, finally, can you make yourself level… let’s just say 320?” Jake asked.

“I will do my utmost, but I must warn you that any energy extracted from my body will not be useable as part of any Creations,” the attendant answered without a moment of hesitation to Jake’s ridiculous request.

“Oh, that’s fine; I just want to test the potency of a mix between a curse and a poison,” Jake said casually.

“I see. I must add further that when it comes to feedback, I will only be able to answer any questions and not volunteer information,” the attendant further elaborated. “More restrictions may also apply. Is this acceptable to the Creator? If not, there are plenty of potential test subjects in the worlds through the portals and the lower floors of the House.”

“The terms are just fine,” Jake said with a nod. “Ah, finally, can you turn off your own perception of pain to not make this an unpleasant experience?”

“I can if that is what the Creator wants,” the attendant nodded, being very helpful.

Just like that, Jake recruited the best test subject one could imagine and quickly got experimenting. The attendant quickly followed him to the lab, where he took off his robe and wore only a pair of pants to allow Jake to see the visual response of his attacks better.

Jake entered a hardcore session of constant experimentation from here on out, with the attendant gladly helping whenever he could. Having already prepared a few potential mixes before he went to grab his test subject, Jake got started right away.

Eternal Hunger in hand, Jake started out by doing a few baseline tests by punching the attendant in the stomach while activating the curse energy in the mythical weapon. His katar easily penetrated flesh and drew blood from the male human attendant, yet the man didn’t even react, even as he had a bloody hole in his stomach.

Pulling Eternal Hunger back out, Jake saw the curse do its thing for a little while as it absorbed some of the attendant’s life energy. Alas, Jake felt that only a few seconds later, this energy dispersed, having not truly benefitted the weapon or Jake in any way. So that was one exploit out the window.

Jake continued his test a few hundred more times as he had the attendant compare the effectiveness of each attack, and Jake noted down the baseline “damage number” as 100. Each hit Jake made dealt between 97-103 damage on this scale. This number was after Jake factored out the damage done from the stab alone by also doing a few stabs with Eternal Hunger while he suppressed the curse energy entirely. As for how he got this number? Well, he just asked how many health points the attendant lost. Pretty simple, actually.

He also only needed a few of these stabs to establish he could hit pretty much in the exact same way several times in a row if he so wished. Jake had brilliant control and had a good feel – clearly due to his wonderful Perception - for precisely how hard he was hitting every time, which made this a lot easier.

Anyway, with a baseline down, it was time to test some of Jake’s poison.

Taking out Eternal Hunger again, he coated it in the poison he had created prior. It seemed to nearly instantly evaporate, but it, in fact, stuck to the weapon as it seemed to almost merge with it. With the weapon in hand, Jake went over to the attendant and got ready.

“Prepare yourself,” Jake said.

“Very well.”

Without waiting further, Jake stabbed forward as he stirred the curse and made it come to life. The katar penetrated the attendant’s stomach easily before Jake pulled it out and observed the results. He counted down how long it took for the curse to be eliminated by the attendant’s vital energy and got a feel for the damage as he looked at the man.

After some quick calculations and asking him how much health he lost, Jake frowned. “A 91, huh? But the curse energy dispersed in nearly half the time…”

So, Jake had weakened the curse, probably by making it consume some of its energy to eat the poison, but he had also made it work with twice its usual speed. Curses were usually slow burns, much like poisons. They took time to properly take effect. Jake’s Eternal Hunger curse was a bit different as it was usually pretty fast-acting, especially due to most working to eliminate it immediately, making it devour some vital energy quickly before running out of steam.

However, this time, the curse worked even faster. Which was, in all honesty, not something Jake was really interested in. Sure, if it worked faster, it was fine, but not at the loss of potency. So, back to the drawing board.

A week later, Jake was stabbing the attendant again as he once more evaluated the results.

“A 134? Good on paper, but…” Jake muttered. This time, the problem was the exact opposite. The curse energy had acted slow as fuck, so even if it had done more damage overall, its damage per second was far, far lower, having taken nearly four times as long. Moreover, the curse had somehow gotten even less aggressive compared to before and only really bothered to eat the vital energy that got close to it.

Jake once more sat down to think as he went back to testing different things. He ended up making many more concoctions over the next few days, most of which he could sell back for a Merit Point profit after he tested some from each batch. He got different results, some of which were purely positive and kind of did what he wanted, but he still wasn’t satisfied.

He couldn’t figure out what he was missing and even began looking in the books to see if there was some crucial ingredient that could help him, but nothing came up.

Suddenly, one day, Jake was reading a book about more effectively using cursed items. It wasn’t even directly related to what Jake was doing, but as he read the book, he had an epiphany. He realized he had been looking at the problem all wrong.

“Why am I just trying to make the existing curse energy more potent. I should draw out more,” Jake muttered.

The book talked about how one would often use “bait” to activate certain cursed items to draw out their energy more easily, which got Jake thinking… why didn’t he do that? If there was something he had a lot of, it was curse energy. In fact, the amount Jake accumulated had only grown since Yalsten as Eternal Hunger devoured more than it used when he used it.

Even now, it held enough pure curse energy to flood at least an entire solar system, which was, needless to say, far more than Jake could ever use or control as a C-grade. It was a bit like how he walked around with a drop of blood from the Malefic Viper that could probably poison a god to death if Jake had any way of using the power and Records within.

Jake quickly adapted his plans after getting this new idea related to using bait. He used some of the ingredients it suggested, which, luckily enough, turned out to primarily be a slightly modified version of the usual healing potion. Jake was very lucky in many ways, as the Sin Curse of Hunger was considered the simplest of them all due to how it wanted to eat pretty much anything.

Only three days later, Jake made his first uncommon rarity version of this poison and quickly tested it with his very helpful assistant.

Coating Eternal Hunger with this new poison, Jake prepared to stab the man the same way as always as he drew out some of the curse energy. As he did so, it was like more energy hidden inside wanted to come along, making it far easier for Jake to pour out more than before as extremely dark-red mist began to seep out of the weapon as the poison coating turned blacker and more reddish sheen. Jake could tell the energy was mixing, but the curse hadn’t pounced yet. Feeling the energy, he gladly let the curse have at it as he stabbed forward and drew blood.

Once more, the attendant didn’t really react, even as the weapon embedded itself in his stomach. Jake felt the coating rapidly being consumed, especially when the energy of the attendant was thrown into the mix. Black veins spread from the attendant wounds as Jake pulled back his weapon and felt the results with Sense of the Malefic Viper and his other senses as best as he could.

The curse energy ended up taking about the same time to be consumed as when he didn’t use any coating at all, but the result was far better.

“168,” Jake said happily. Other alchemists would probably have found his happiness odd, though, as the cost of this increased power was Jake having used more than three times the usual curse energy to only inflict around seventy percent more damage. The efficiency had gone way down, but Jake was still happy as he would gladly spend curse energy like some trust fund kid in a toy store if it meant he could do more damage faster.

Finding himself on the right track, Jake began to refine his concoction over the next week and a half. All in all, it didn’t end up being as complicated as he had feared, and in a pretty quick fashion, he created a product he was satisfied with.

[Cursed Stimulant of Hunger (Rare)] – A poison created with the express purpose of feeding a cursed item related to the Sin Curse of Hunger, allowing it to indulge in gluttony uncontrollably. Whenever this poison comes into contact with curse energy related to the Sin Curse of Hunger, it shall be rapidly consumed to attract and draw out more curse energy from nearby mediums and serve as a stimulant for the curse by turning it far more volatile and consume significantly more curse energy in the process.

It was an entirely new poison, unlike anything Jake had ever created before. He kind of liked how it framed the fact it consumed more energy as one of the “benefits” of the poison, which was kind of correct. This was ultimately still a poison that worked against the Sin Curse of Hunger in particular, and if Jake fought some creature relying on the Sin Curse, it would not want to be hit by the poison at all. Of course, the volatility did make it deal far more damage in the same time span, but the increased cost and lack of control would rarely, if ever, be worth it. Unless they were Jake. And as for how much more damage it dealt now?

“242,” Jake concluded after his final tests with a huge grin.

Nearly one and a half times the damage with each stab from the curse energy. It was about as good as he could ever expect.

When it came to downsides, it now consumed roughly eleven times more curse energy than regular. For a one-hundred and forty percent increase, this was even more inefficient than the uncommon rarity versions Jake made, but he didn’t care.

He did consider improving it further, but he realized that diminishing returns were kicking in hard. Maybe he could push it to 260 or 265, but at that point, it would consume sixteen to eighteen times more curse energy. No, he would have to make some hardcore qualitative improvements if he wanted to make a better version, and that just wasn’t worth it. Thus, he would simply be satisfied with this one.

Sure, it was only a rare rarity poison, but Jake genuinely believed this was a good item to submit. Rarity wasn’t everything, after all, and this item had a good “story” related to its crafting process, especially the part where he had an attendant help him. So, to conclude, one more Creation down, eight to go.

Ah, and speaking of another Creation-in-progress, it had been about two months since Jake sent Temlat on his training mission. Jake had only gone once to check about three weeks ago to see if the guy was still alive, and he most definitely was. Based on how the centaur camp was on high alert and definitely on edge, he seemed to be creating some trouble, even if he had yet to get through.

The only reason why Jake waited that long to check in was because he felt like Temlat was still alive. Even now, he still felt the young man still kicking, and if he trusted anything, it was his guts. In fact, he got the feeling the young man would soon be back, and just in time for Jake having finished his poison.

Now, there was one last thing to address… how good would this poison be in actual combat? Well, to put it nicely, it was completely and utterly useless when he could use any of his other poisons, as quite frankly, a good dose of necrotic poison did far more damage than even a double-damage dose of Eternal Hunger’s curse. One could argue the life-stealing effect of the curse would make up for this, but not really. There was also the problem that all the poison got consumed in just a single stab, requiring him to reapply it all the time.

So, to conclude, it kinda sucked from a practical standpoint. However, that didn’t mean it would continue to be that way, and Jake was certain he would find use of this kind of poison in the future… who knows, maybe he could even use some of what he learned when it was time to play with rituals later on in the Challenge Dungeon.

But for now, it was time to go and turn in his second Creation to the Architect.