"I don't want to be your accomplice."
"You have no choice in the matter. A worm like you can't survive on your own. You have no idea what to do with yourself, so from now on, I'm taking ownership. You'll belong to me, no different from my katana or my dagger."
"And if I don't, what will you do to me then?"
"Then I'll punish someone else in your place. Someone else will have to suffer. Can you live with yourself then?"
She had lived her life thinking everyone was better than her. Leaving her to herself was like throwing away a perfectly good blade. I'm a blacksmith, after all; I couldn't allow that. Our eyes clung to one another as if we were being sucked into each other. My heart pounded heavily in my chest as ecstasy filled me.
It wasn't love or anything related to romance. It was the same feeling I got after acquiring a new weapon—a weapon that belonged only to me. I would polish her and care for her just like I did with my other weapons.
I moved in so close that our faces were almost touching. She tried to look away, but I grabbed her chin and kept her eyes on me.
"The next time you cut yourself, someone else will suffer for it."
I needed her to understand. She was completely at my mercy. I had never cared about her before, but now she had my attention, whether she wanted it or not.
She looked dazed, as if she were being hypnotized then she gave a silent nod. Gazing into her purple eyes, I could see that connecting with another person wasn't as bad as I thought. I would get her to love herself and turn her into something special. That way, she could be useful to me.
Looking at her, I couldn't help but wonder how someone could have fallen so low that they hated themselves. I had never thought I deserved what my father did to me. It happened solely because I allowed it—because my weakness allowed it.
This girl in front of me was an abomination; every person alive needed to fight for themselves. She had allowed them to break her, but I would be the one to fix her. She was like a blade dulled by years of negligence. But maybe I could help her become better, make her true talents shine through.
And if the time came when she was strong enough to get rid of me, then so be it. Natural selection comes for everyone. After I am gone, my weapons will be all that remain. Luna will be one of them. They'll be my legacy.
I got to my feet, pulling her up with me. I couldn't help but feel satisfied by the events that had transpired between us.
The next morning, we got up early in preparation for the supply drop. Now that there were two of us, I needed two supply bags instead of one. An idea was slowly forming in my head.
"Luna, how many curses can you create?"
She was seated not too far from me on the ground.
"Well, umm… it depends on the rank of the curse. To create a category 1 level curse, which is the lowest rank, I need three souls."
It seemed the way her system ranked her curses was different from how my system ranked my weapons.
"How many do you have?"
"I only have 27 souls from the monsters you killed."
"How many would you need to create curses capable of fighting?" I asked.
"Umm…" She rested her finger on her chin as she thought up the answer. "That would take all of my points just to create three curses."
That meant it took nine souls to get a curse capable of fighting. It wasn't nearly enough, but it would have to do.
"Why are you asking this all of a sudden?"
Since there were only 50 bags of supplies being dropped on this rather large island—so large that out of the 500 applicants who came here, I had only encountered a few dozen—we needed to scale up our efforts if we were going to secure at least one of the supply bags.
"I'll need you to create three curses capable of fighting. Have them spread around the island so that if they happen to be near a supply bag, they can secure it until we get there."
Based on what happened last time, we would be given a map showing where the supplies were located. Just like before, I planned to go after the closest one, and if one of Luna's curses happened to be near one of the bags, it could secure it until we arrived.
"Are you sure you're okay?" Luna suddenly asked. "To fight, I mean. You got injured yesterday, and it hasn't properly healed yet."
"I'm fine; don't worry about me."
"Uhh, okay."
Just like last time, at exactly 10 AM, a notification lit up on our watches, displaying a map showing where the supplies would be dropped.
But at that exact moment—
BOOM!!
A loud explosion rang out in the forest. A few more followed shortly after. It sounded like the entire area had erupted in chaos the moment the location for the supply drop was revealed.
I didn't have to wonder about the reason behind it; in fact, I had already planned for it. It was because I told Luna to inform Cassian that Rafael was the one behind the abduction of the members of his group that I had eliminated.
I had set the stage so that the attack last night would fall on Rafael. Though, I never intended for them to start a war over it; I only wanted to shift Cassian's attention away from me, and the only way to do that was to pin the blame on Rafael since both their factions were opposing each other.
Putting that aside, I shifted my attention back to my watch and, along with Luna, headed off to the nearest supply bag available.