"I-I will never intrude upon you again m-my lord" the young lady said. "so p-please, please don't curse me with blindneth." She bit her tongue…
'Did she really just mess up that badly?' I thought while looking at her without a trace of emotion shown on my face. 'I mean how do you fuck up that badly? If I were in front of some supposed deity, the least I would do is try to speak properly.'
"Heeeew" I took a deep breath. 'Okay, time to sell the act' I thought while putting on the most brilliant poker face I could possibly come up with.
"Young lady, why do—"
"It's Josephine, my name is Josephine my lord." The blonde woman looked up at me with the most innocent face one could have, as though all her fear had suddenly washed away.
My poker face cracked a little. 'She cut me off… what she believes to be an angel, she… cut off.' My poker face was cracking more and more. 'I mean seriously, what would she have done if I had turned out to be an actual deity. I feel like I should vaporize her for that or she might see through my facade even though I don't have that ability. No wait, calm down Johan, she's just a kid. You are a forty-six year old young man and she's a measly twenty year old idiotic brat.
Putting a straight face back on, I asked her again. "Lady Josephine, why do you show me such devotion?"
She looked at me full of confusion. "What do you mean?"
"I mean why do you have faith in me?" Screaming at myself internally. 'WHY THE FUCK WOULD I ASK HER THAT OF ALL THE POSSIBLE QUESTIONS.'
"Ohh that." Her eyes lit up and she paused for a moment to gather her thoughts. "Well, it happened about a year ago when the volcano erupted. Back then everyone was scrambling for their lives trying to get as far away from the volcano as they could, me included" she started looking to the floor with a sorrowful look on her face.
"When I was running away with the others there was something I noticed or someone, you could say." Her eyes lit up again.
'This better not go in the direction where I think it's going.'
"There I saw it, what appeared to be a young man with long blond hair running towards the direction everyone was doing their utmost to avoid."
'Ah, I knew it.' I put my hand on my forehead.
"To think that the person who ran towards the volcano in hopes of stopping it and saving so many lives turned out to be an angel" she closed her eyes and put her hands in a praying gesture. "My faith couldn't grow any bigger. Oh, and also the Pope guided me and everyone to safety."
'Kill me…' I stared at her with my lips pursed and eyes that seemed so extremely tired. 'First of all, I was fucking walking for gods sake, and I didn't even save a single person's life, for crying out loud I went there and jumped into the lava hoping it would kill me. The thought of hoping that the volcano would stop never even occurred to me. Matter of a fact, that thought wasn't even at the back of my mind. I wasn't even paying attention to the people who were running away scrambling for their lives.'
'Now don't get me wrong, I'm not a bad person whatsoever. It's just that I'm not a totally good person either. The only people I really care about are my family, but they died a long time ago sooo… '
"My lord?" Jospehine said in a concerning tone.
"Yes?"
"Why do your eyes look so sad?"
I closed my eyes. "I… would like some time alone, be gone at once."
Josephine then got up from her seated position and walked towards the exit. I waited until I heard the sound of the doors closing before opening my eyes again.
"Haah" I sighed. Another reason to hate my stupid curse. Now it's even got people believing that I'm some sort of angel from heaven sent here to grant people salvation.
How fucking stupid is that?
Though, I'll be sure to use this for my goal.
***
Oh yeah, I still haven't told you guys everything about cursed abilities so I'll tell you a bit more about them. There's actually a method to evolve one's curse. You see, in our world there are these trials that appear in the form of floating swirly vortex looking gates. Every trial is pretty random from what I've heard.
Are you wondering why I've never entered a gate? Well it's pretty simple really. You see, there's this thing called soul essence which every ability user has. Imagine your soul as this sort of empty glass jar and soul essence is the water that fills that jar. Whenever someone enters a trial, they can't exit until they've cleared it which is pretty dumb if you ask me.
Anyways, when someone clears a trial, depending on the difficulty of that trial, it fills your soul with more essence. The difficulty of these gates range from different colours. From easiest to hardest, a blue coloured gate which is considered the easiest ranked trial, yellow which is in between easy and hard in difficulty, followed by orange being a hard ranked trial.
The two hardest ranked trials are so difficult that they've earned themselves titles. Purple gates are considered insanely difficult to conquer and are classified as Nightmare ranked trials. Finally, the most difficult kind of gates are the red one's and they go by S ranked trials which I'm pretty sure stands for suicide.
Yeah that's right, suicide. You'd have to be insanely strong to take on one of those gates. Oh, and abilities have ranks as well. They range from basic grade to intermediate grade to proficient grade followed by advanced grade and finally, perfect mastery.
Once someone fills up their soul with essence to the brim they're ability goes through an evolution of sorts. I hear it's a pretty painful process. Hell, having your soul suddenly expand from inside of you sounds pretty painful to me but it's still nothing compared to the pain of becoming a living torch.
What grade am I? Well it's pretty obvious if you ask me. My soul is bone dry of essence since I've never entered a gate before, so I'm still just basic grade.
Why have I never entered a trial before? Well again, isn't it obvious? Why the hell would a guy who's actively trying to die have a need to evolve their immortality? If I were to evolve my ability to intermediate grade then my regeneration would probably sky-rocket. Dying is already hard enough as it is.
***
After contemplating life for so long, I finally got up from my throne and exited the church through the normal sized door in the back left corner of the building.
After arriving outside, looking behind the church, what faced me was none other than the ruined city which was once known as Liremont. The church stood atop a massive hill situated right outside the city facing opposite of the volcano. Pope Zackariah had it built here like this so that when people stood outside the entrance of the church, they would see the ruined city and immediately be reminded of what they lost. Quite the manipulative tactic if you ask me. Exactly what one would expect from a cult leader.
And no, I wouldn't call myself the cult leader. If you ask me I'd say I'm just the face of the church. The Pope is the person who manages everything and makes all the decisions. I'm just here to give these people a sense of hope.