Lord of The Mysterious Realms Chapter 658

The woman collapsed before she even reached the counter. As Jenkins hurried over, he saw a gaping hole in her abdomen, her internal organs disturbingly visible. Yet, because she wasn't entirely human, she had only lost consciousness, not her life. Not a single drop of blood spilled from the wound.

"What happened to you?"

He knelt, preparing to attempt a healing, but the shop's door swung open once more. An elderly gentleman Jenkins had never seen before stepped inside. He was dressed entirely in black, from his shoes to his hat, the very picture of an old-school aristocrat.

"My apologies for the intrusion. Whether you're a common man or an Enchanter, I must ask you to hand over this woman and that painting. This matter doesn't concern you in the slightest, and I'm sure none of us wish for any unnecessary trouble."

He was direct, wasting no time on pleasantries.

Jenkins remained on one knee beside the woman, examining her injuries as he spoke. He risked a glance through the shop window. It was a morning during the first work week after the end-of-year festivities, and just as he'd expected, Fifth Queen's Avenue was deserted.

His gaze dropped back to the floor. The framed painting lay beside the woman where she'd dropped it. The man depicted within wore a look of profound concern, yet he was powerless to help. As for the old gentleman who had just entered, he was an Enchanter—Level 5, Jenkins noted, precisely one level higher than his own recent promotion.

"Indeed. Hand over the woman and the painting, and we can pretend this encounter never happened."

The woman suddenly stirred, her eyes fluttering open. She looked at Jenkins, her gaze filled with silent desperation.

"That's a tempting offer," Jenkins began, "but I'm rather curious about the history between you two. This whole affair has spilled into this shop, after all. I need to understand why we've been dragged into it, or I'll have a hard time explaining things to my employer."

Jenkins rose to his feet, laying out his terms. As a gesture of sincerity, he even took a few steps back towards the counter, putting some distance between himself and the woman on the floor.

"The reason?" the old gentleman mused. "Oh, rest assured, your shop's involvement is pure coincidence. As you've surely realized, this woman isn't human. She is... well, it's difficult to explain. Let's say she's an immortal, cursed to live forever. The animosity between us began a very, very long time ago..."

"So you're immortal too?"

"No, no, absolutely not."

The old gentleman denied it at once. To show his sincerity, he removed his hat and held his hands out, palms open, to show he was unarmed.

"Certainly not. To be precise, she and the man in the painting have a long-standing feud with my family. It's a story from a much earlier Epoch, filled with gods, aberrations, sorcery, family scandals, and a touch of tangled love and hate—the sort of thing you'd read in a novel. All of it resulted in the man and woman being cursed by a deity, while my family was burdened with a perpetual duty: for generations, we have been tasked to track them down. Our mission is to wait until they find happiness, and then destroy any love they find with a mortal. I know it sounds cruel, but it is a component of the curse. My family are merely the unfortunate innocents caught in the crossfire."

"Frankly, I'm surprised you're telling me any of this. I was half-expecting we'd end up fighting."

The people he'd met today were surprisingly reasonable, Jenkins thought. His Lie Godhood confirmed it—everything the man said was true.

"There's no harm in telling you. You'll simply forget all of this soon enough, anyway. As for fighting... why should we? Neither of us wishes to stir up trouble. This is a shop right on a major thoroughfare; the police patrol this street every half hour. And it's entirely unnecessary. You and I are merely strangers, brought together by fate on a miserable morning. There's no need for us to decide matters of life and death over a cosmic prank."

He had likely sized Jenkins up and concluded he wasn't a malicious sort, for he offered a faint, disarming smile.

"Are you going to kill her?"

Jenkins asked, gesturing towards the large hole in the woman's torso.

"I possess no such skill. To kill her would be to grant her release. If it were so simple a task, they wouldn't have been tormented by this curse for a millennium."

Jenkins nodded. The man was still speaking the truth.

He had no personal stake in this affair, but he found himself captivated by the tale of a millennia-long curse. Because of this, he saw two reasonable paths before him: he could forcefully intervene and save the woman, or he could allow the old gentleman to take her and the painting.

But Jenkins was exhausted. He had already spent far too much energy dealing with the Evil God's Scion, the 'Miss Fabry' debacle, and those vampiric aberrations. All he wanted now was to retreat to a remote lodge, get snowed in by a blizzard, and escape from all this endless drama.

"Wait, why did 'a remote lodge in a blizzard' pop into my head?"

Puzzled by the strange thought, he pushed it aside. The important thing now was to deal with the situation in front of him.

"Very well, you can take this woman and this painting."

After a moment's hesitation, he ignored the woman's silent pleas from the floor and agreed to the old gentleman's request. It wasn't just his reluctance to get involved in more trouble; it was also because the old gentleman had been completely truthful, whereas the woman's earlier story had been laced with dishonesty.

"But I have to ask, have you never tried to break the curse?"

He leaned back, propping an arm on the counter, his tone casual as he asked:

"I imagine your family, as well as this couple, must be thoroughly sick of the cycle by now."

The old gentleman didn't seem to mind indulging Jenkins's curiosity for a moment longer. When the topic came up, a look of genuine frustration crossed his face:

"But this is a curse from a deity. We have begged for divine forgiveness, and during the last Epoch, the god finally answered my family's prayers. At the end of the 20th Epoch, the curse on our family and this pair will be lifted. I'm sure you're aware of the current rumors about the end of our own Epoch. We're only halfway through this agonizing cycle, I'm afraid. My family and this couple still have a long, long time to suffer."

He seemed remarkably optimistic, all things considered. Jenkins suspected their appearance in Nolan was likely connected to the local prophecies about the end of the Epoch.

"So you're just going to wait until the end of the 20th Epoch? To be frank, based on the current rumors, this Epoch could end tomorrow or in three hundred years—the odds feel about the same. And that's not even mentioning the 20th Epoch. That could be tens of thousands of years from now."

"I'm aware," the old gentleman sighed. "But what choice do we have? We must bear the consequences of our ancestors' mistakes. The aberrations that angered the deity were wiped from existence, not even the name of their people remains. Compared to that fate, ours is a merciful one."