Chapter 389: Ether Eye & Frozlight

Ace looked at where the fifth curse user was hiding and subtly waved in that direction, ignoring Ava, who was growing impatient with every shot she missed to hit Ace. In her frustration, Ava missed his subtle signals. The reason Ace was so confident that the unknown curse user was Matthews was that a person couldn’t enter a curse domain without the domain master’s knowledge, even if it’s an artificial one.

One can invade and hide in another’s domain if their curse abilities allowed it, but their entry into the domain would be revealed to the domain master. This was just how a curse domain functioned.

However, the fifth user was able to enter the artificial domain without Sonia’s knowledge meant that the artificial domain disc EAD Matthews gave her was rigged. So, the odds were that the intruder was no other than EAD Matthews, and Ace was willing to bet on these odds.

“Awwwh!” Ace let out a loud yawn. Then, eyeing frustrated Ava, he remarked, “Can you make this quick? I just got up from bed, yet I am already sleepy. Thanks to you.”

“Then, why don’t you try attacking me instead of dodging?” Ava yelled in irritation, believing that when it comes to evasion, nobody could outmatch her innate curse art’s effect, ‘Flash.’ After all, with it, she could achieve the speed of light.

“No, a wise person wouldn’t bite a dog because it bit you,” Ace commented before suddenly vanishing from Ava’s field of vision without giving her a chance for a proper outburst.

He had made use of the curse clout to hide in a shadow, connecting to her shadow and using its shadow folding ability to move into her shadow. Then, making use of Ava’s confusion, he swiftly pasted a couple of curse suppression talismans onto Ava’s back, stopping her from deconstructing her body into light and escaping.

Without wasting a second, Ace immediately proceeded to paste a couple of curse suppression talismans onto Ava’s innate curse tool before snatching it from her grip, successfully cutting Ava’s connection to her curse core in her innate curse tool.

Curse Suppression Talisman was an experimental curse talisman developed by Emi using the curse suppression array used by the C.I.B. in their prison cells to hold curse criminals. This was the talisman’s first actual trial. Therefore, just to be safe, Ace used a couple of them instead of just one. Thankfully, by the looks of it, the talisman seemed to function.

“Ace!” Ava exclaimed, seeing Ace appear partially from behind her, sticking out of the ground, her shadow to be exact. But after he forcefully snatched her innate curse tool from her hands after passing a couple of yellow papers to it, she hysterically demanded, “Give me back my frozlight!” Having sensed the severance of connection between her and Frozlight.

“Frozlight? Is it supposed to be a blend of the words ‘frozen’ and ‘light,’ as in frozen light? Well, you are more imaginative than my sister, I give you that,” Ace commented, ignoring Ava’s flaring nostrils as she rushed towards him after her moved himself a couple of yards away from her using shadow folding. Also, he still seems to be dissatisfied with his sister’s innate curse tattoo, looking like a copy of Lexus’s logo.

Ava dashed at Ace, following him, after repeatedly failing to make use of her innate curse art, ‘Ether Eye.’ She had found that she couldn’t conjure any curse energy. However, before the fear and panic could paralyze her knees, she just ran with only one thought in her mind to get her ‘Frozlight’ back from Ace one way or the other.

Ace tried storing Ava’s Frozlight in one of Emi’s storage talismans to stash it in her toy space, but to his dismay, the storage talisman rejected Frozlight, surprising Emi, who immediately reported, ‘Master, that innate curse tool is a living entity.’

‘What?’ Ace asked, knowing that unless a curse tool gives birth to a spirit, it cannot be considered a living entity. The same went for even an innate curse tool.

All innate curse tools have spirit, but they are in an embryonic stage. The curse master has to slowly nourish their innate curse tool’s embryo into a fetus, and ultimately, when they satisfy all birth conditions, the fetus develops into the innate curse tool’s spirit.

Take Ace’s curse toybox, for example, it too has a spirit embryo, with whom he and his toy summons always communicate to teach it and seek help from it on a regular basis using his innate curse art, ‘Status Screen.’

Since regular curse masters can’t contact their innate curse tool’s embryo because they weren’t technically alive, they have no choice but to wait for it to develop as their innate curse tool’s spirit to converse and seek aid from it.

Both Emi and Ace can sense that Ava’s innate curse tool’s spirit was still an embryo. It would be a miracle if otherwise, as Ava had only forged this innate curse tool last night.

According to the curse web, developing an innate curse tool’s embryo into a spirit required decades of care and curse energy. Only the Void-tier curse masters who had achieved the peak of ‘World of Curses’ have all the time and curse energy to spare to develop their innate curse tool’s embryo into a tool spirit.

Then the Toymancer and Toy summon duo wondered if Ava was like Ace, who could communicate with her innate curse tool’s spirit embryo. Thinking of this, Ace wondered if Ava could bypass the curse suppression talisman as he did with the curse suppression array.

Before Ace could further speculate, Emi hurriedly reported, ‘Master, Ava has turned her innate curse tool into a curse anchor. It’s a very archaic concept mentioned in Cyclops’ crafting notes. Most importantly, it’s taboo and condemned by the Curse Council.’

‘Curse anchor?’ Ace repeated in confusion, as it was a new term for him, as he continued to use shadow folding to avoid Ava.

Ava’s innate curse art ‘Ether Eye’ is partly inspired by the concept of the luminiferous aether—the hypothetical medium once believed to carry light through space.