“Miss Maya, you remind me a lot of my mom, you know?”

  Huh? So her father really was spot-on…

  I slightly moved my head to show that I was listening, which was unnecessary as Heltna merely began rambling while simultaneously doing her tests. I was currently standing in the middle of what was usually referred to as an array, it was a bit like a magic circle–Which was something absolutely different–But the nature of what I was inside of did not matter.

  The purpose of this small array was to apply a curse within an area rather than directly to a person. Heltna’s idea was to check whether my ‘special constitution’, as he had begun calling it, could nullify curses that weren’t directly targeted at me.

  Although not quite on the same level, it was kind of like standing on cursed land. Although being inside one would cause adverse effects, the people and creatures wouldn’t be directly cursed in most cases. The point was simply to see if my immunity could tell the difference between a direct curse and an indirect one.

  The result? It absolutely could. The components of the array ended up drained of all they had within moments, as I just slurped everything up like I was drinking from a big bowl of soup.

  “My mother married into the family. Papa met her on a trip to the wilds. He used to be adventurous in his youth or something…”

  The noble girl did not show much reaction to what had just happened and merely continued to speak, using simple magic to pick the remains of the array off the ground, quietly moving on to the next experiment.

  “...She was a wandering knightess like you! She was very strong, but carried a powerful curse that ensured that she would die at the age of thirty. Papa did his best to find a way to get rid of it, but… It was impossible, so my mother died when I was eleven”

  Her parents were quite efficient in getting you, it seems. And her mother was already a strong knight at this young age? She must have been quite the talent… Strange that Heltna seems to have no athletic capabilities whatsoever. She was just a frail-looking, petite noble girl, like there were many of.

  She was just on the gloomier side of the aisle.

  Heltna kept telling me about her mother for the entire duration of the experiments. Apparently, her father first brought her mother back home under the guise that he wanted to study her particularly peculiar and powerful curse, but in reality, they had already begun their relationship at that time.

  It was safe to say, his own parents weren’t too keen on letting their only son marry a random knightess without any noble or otherwise exquisite background. But the ‘deal’ was sealed before they could do anything about it.

  Quite a nice little story, but the part that I really cared about came at the end.

  Apparently, the curse that had once inhabited and caused the death of Heltna’s mother was not just any powerful curse… It did not disappear after claiming its victim’s life. On the contrary, it grew significantly more powerful in an instant and revealed its true nature as none other than a freaking Living Curse.

  Heltna had not been around to witness it directly, but the entire Bombidour manor rumbled for hours as her father battled the curse with the help of several knights. That thing had been able to manifest powers and abilities that were supposed to belong to mages of legend, absolutely decimating the cursed knights and collapsing half of the mansion before the current patriarch was able to subdue and trap it.

  There was a whole Living Curse trapped inside this very manor! This was huge news for me. I couldn’t even fathom the sort of boon devouring such a thing would bring me, but it was also a bit concerning… Not just because a Living Curse was probably harder to feast upon than a regular one, but also because Heltna’s father was actually way more powerful than I had assumed.

  I was no expert on advanced mage stuff, but I was aware that it was absolutely insane to be able to achieve even a small portion of any of the techniques the Living Curse was said to have used. To be able to beat down and trap such a thing, her father would have had to at least have access to one of these supreme techniques…

  Now, that might sound bad, but as long as he did not suspect a thing and did not sweep around using his mana sense at an unfortunate time, everything would be fine. In fact, I was now certain that he really treated his daughter like a little princess. He was probably way too doting on her due to Heltna basically being what remained of his late wife.

  So, he was probably unwilling to use this extra sense of his too broadly because of her presence. Also, if his supreme technique used curse slinging as the basis of it, then I might actually want to get caught in it.

  But as much as I hungered for curses, even I felt strongly reluctant to do such a thing…

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  The fact that I now knew of a most delectable snack was great, though. I could just feel the ecstasy it would bring me to feast upon it… This knowledge filled me with even greater determination than before, which was impressive, as I had already been excited beyond belief to absolutely stuff my imaginary stomach with everything possible.

  I was already eating quite well thanks to Heltna. The curses she could cast were very refined and potent. I probably would have unlocked a new upgrade if I hadn’t reached the previous threshold very recently before arriving here.

  I wasn’t yet able to test the difference in terms of my curse-throwing capabilities, but I was planning on testing that after I had completed my glorious robbery… My plan was simple and strongly relied on my ‘Plush Form’.

  On the ‘teleportation’ ability of it, in particular… When sacrificing one of the plushes made in my effigy by Ophelie, I could instantly assume the ‘Aggressive State’ of the ‘Plush Form’ at the location of the plush in question. This meant that I could theoretically teleport from one spot of the manor to another within the blink of an eye… Or, for example, teleport from outside the mansion into it.

  The idea was easy to understand, but could easily become very difficult to apply. This was why I was spending so much time learning as much as possible about the layout of the place and the usual routes of everyone inside.

  My plan was to simply stay in the Bombidour residence and be a very good guest. My only mischief would be the placing of several hidden plushes inside unoccupied guest rooms. I was initially worried that maids would find them when doing their cleaning, but there was a good reason why the personnel were limited in numbers. There were curses directly imbued into items that kept them clean.

  As such, the cleaners only checked everything at the end of the week, and even then, if nothing was wrong with the curses, they wouldn’t bother to look under the bed or inside the closets and drawers.

  So my adorable plushes could be hidden without a problem, granting me access to the supposedly tightly-guarded residence.

  The main point of this was to preserve the good image of my persona as Maya, The Silent Knightess, and of course, to keep suspicions off of me in the first place. Everyone would naturally suspect the guest to be the culprit, especially if the defence mechanisms had been left untriggered and undamaged.

  While the plan was actually not that convoluted, the problem was that there were risks of my little plan falling apart because one servant or guard decided to take an unusual route… To be safer, I was planning on acting when Heltna’s father was not at home, and would thus be away with a small group of knights and guards as well.

  I would move in a little after Heltna’s bedtime. As far as I could tell, she always went to bed at the same time every evening and would sleep for nine hours and remain in bed one or two more hours after that.

  Ah… Truly enviable, the life of a noble… Well, I could have done that as well in the past, but I had a hard time staying in place. As a human, I hadn’t needed many hours of sleep to be in great shape and was basically unable to stop myself from working out and exercising every day.

  Heltna would rather spend some time hugging some big plushes instead of doing push-ups, though.

  In any case, if I moved in as early as possible into the night, I believed that I would be able to consume everything I was aiming for, and by then, I would be able to use the teleportation ability once again to instead extract myself from the noble residence.

  On paper, this plan was very nice. I would have to see how it fared in practice for myself.

  Your plan sounds pretty good to me. Especially waiting for Heltna’s father to be away with a small retinue of bodyguards… Also, since he won’t be around, the remaining guards and knights will likely be focusing on keeping an eye on his daughter instead, which should further free the way for you to rob the storerooms

  Good point! Maybe I could even try and do something to convince Heltna herself to go out during that time? I only saw those two knights as her bodyguards last time, and I counted six of them in total…

  Depending on how many follow the Bombidour patriarch around, I might be able to get rid of most of the knights, which would put me at an advantage even if things end up going wrong.

  For several days, I kept thinking about this plan and trying to refine it by learning more about how things went inside this place. Until Heltna’s father eventually returned, he was accompanied by ten guards and two knights. One of the two armoured warriors had a gash across his chestplate, but he himself seemed unhurt.

  “Papa? What happened?”

  “Well, we found the strange creature, and I think it was some sort of golem made from steel. Perhaps one of those war automatons, now that I think about it. That thing is freakishly strong and quickly took off faster than I could chase after it! It even managed to evade detection from my mana sense, can you believe that?”

  The man coughed.

  “To be frank, it mostly got away because it stuck something to a child and claimed it was a bomb that would go off if anyone pursued it, so it had a head start as the thing it threw dissolved several minutes after it was already out of sight”

  I would have just let the child explode. Why would the curse-noble-guy be so nice?

  “It was pretty smart and articulate though… I think it was made by a competitor of Mister Nebulo. It kept on asking: Where is Mara Nebulo? Where is Mara Nebulo?”

  “Talk about bad taste, inventing something that asks where your missing sister is as it terrorises random civilians? I will have to call for a meeting about this. It might be foreign interference after all… I won’t be around for a little, Sweetie”

  “I am not a kid anymore, you can leave for as long as you want”

  “Oh, come on, Pumpkin… Can you not give your old man a little hug at least?”

  I did not pay attention to the father-daughter duo. I was slightly livid.

  Leton… Did you decide to take things into your own hands? That’s good. You’re starting to act a bit more like a man.

  If you want to kill me, you should do it yourself. Our little spat should stay in the family…