CHAPTER 422: NINETY-NINE VIRGINS

"Damn it, I have to restart the ritual from the beginning again," Egger cursed in frustration of having been sent back to square one for the second time.

"Can’t you just sacrifice some of the mortals below to fasten your ritual?" the terrorist group’s Captain asked, feeling guilty, thinking if he hadn’t acted petty and interrupted Egger’s curse ritual the first time, they would have completed the ritual and located the thief before the sniper took action.

"Do you think I don’t want to? I can’t anymore sacrifice mortals unless it’s the last thing I do," Egger argued, fearing that if he were to use mortal scarifices, with the resulting taboo toll, he wouldn’t be human anymore. He was willing to give his life for their cause, but if he wasn’t human anymore, would the promised ninety-nine virgins still welcome him in the afterlife? Therefore, he would rather pay the taboo toll with his life rather than his humanity. That was too say unless it was life or death, he wasn’t planning on sacrificing the mortals.

"Some low-level curse users are helping the mortals evacuate the town, you can use them as sacrifice, right?" the terrorist group’s Captain proposed, not bothering to pursue why Egger would not use the mortals as sacrifice, the scales on the back of his head and neck were answer enough.

"They are C.I.B. agents. If we kill them, then we can forget leaving this cursed country alive. Stop giving nonsensical ideas and just make sure they don’t find us till I am done with my curse ritual and mark the thief who stole our money," Egger instructed their captain as he completed the preparations to start the curse ritual again. Getting an assuring nod from David, he started the cruse ritual in haste.

’Death will not stop us from completing our mission,’ the terrorist group captain mentally announced to their other two comrades, ensuring that they knew not to let fear of death interfere with their mission.

’Yes, but if we can leave here alive, then we should try to do so because we cannot afford to lose four sky-teir curse masters. Especially, a sky-tier curse caster. That would be too much price just to find a mere thief,’ David remarked, showing he had no insecurity about his conviction in their cause, unlike their acting captain, a prime example of everything wrong with nepotism.

Actually, as a veteran Sky-tier and a curse caster, Egger should have been their team’s acting Captain, but then one of the higher-ups felt that this mission was a good way for their nephew to earn some merits, and that’s how they ended up with their current captain, whose pettiness and insecurities about how he got his current role caused them to lose strategic time and put them in a situation where they might fail a simple search and recovery mission.

’Guys, focus. Our priority is to complete the mission without any losses, but if it comes to it, we need to do what needs to be done,’ Banner mentally said, indirectly asking David to stop it, knowing that antagonising their captain any further would only come back to bite them if not now, later when they return alive. Who was to say a guy who let his pettiness and insecurities jeopardise their mission wouldn’t complain about them to his powerful uncle?

’Incoming, this one’s big. Protect Egger!!’ David mentally alerted his comrades, sensing a huge bogey head their way at unimaginable speed. As a matter of fact, by the time he completed this sentence, the bogey had left the curse array and stopped 50 yards from them, revealing itself to be the infamous Sky-Slayer holding what looked like a big dinosaur plush.

’Permission to engage?’ Banner asked, pointing the bubble RPG cannon at Sky-slayer.

’No!’

’No!’

Both David and their captain simultaneously stopped Banner from engaging the Sky-slayer. As they believed the latter hadn’t found them and was most likely a scout sent by the hostiles in the Curse Array to find them. Their attack on her now would be like them foolishly revealing their location.

Despite knowing Delores’s title, the Curse terrorist seriously underestimated her, thinking that as an Ocean-tier curse master, she was helpless in the fused curse dominion summoned by three Sky-tier curse masters. Well, they were in the right to assume that, but they were wrong to assume that they were facing her alone. They were smart enough to consider that Delores might be acting as a scout for the curse array, yet they also failed to consider the means of hostiles hiding in the curse array.

’What the fuck is that?’ Banner mentally yelled, seeing the huge plush in Sky-slayer’s arms open its mouth to a full 180 degrees and spew out a red hot sphere of the size of a football before Sky-slayer retreated.

Seeing the sphere grow in size from a regular football to a big beach ball within a second, Banner fired his cannon at it. However, to his surprise, the bubble warhead incinerated as the sphere detonated itself into a brilliant and blinding flash lasting several seconds, without giving any of them time to react.

"Aarrh!"

The blinding flash vanished loud screams filled the fused curse dominion that was showing signs of several cracks spreading wide and long on its boundary.

"What kind of curse ability is this? Why isn’t the Life-steal curse spell working?" Banner barely managed to ask as he was doing his best not to scream in pain while trying every means at his disposal to put off the fire burning him—no, burning his curse energy.

"..." David did not answer; he worked through the pain of his curse energy being burned and tried his best to maintain the fused curse dominion from falling apart.

"Shut up, Banner. Protect Egger..." The curse terrorist group’s captain barely managed to spit out that order as he tried his best to put out the fire burning his curse energy.

"Egger is missing!" Banner exclaimed as he spun around, trying to spot their scaly but trustee curse caster.