It would just automatically scale up to the current Hunger if we get it now, we didn't miss out on anything.
It is currently one of the stronger 3 Pick advancements, yeah. Even though Defense is arguably the weakest stat, this is a lot of defense.
A Simple Transaction I
- Thread starter Rihaku
- Start date
- Original
It is currently one of the stronger 3 Pick advancements, yeah. Even though Defense is arguably the weakest stat, this is a lot of defense.
Zampano
🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈
- Location
- Simping for DSB
Conjured Blade, you'll have to expand on this: how much does the skill element influence results & power of Ordinal spells?
One of the Ordinal Spiral quotes posted recently mentions that most people don't take every possible spell because it's difficult to practice them all & keep your skills sharp.
ImperatorV
The Laughing One
- Location
- The Voyaging Realm
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE-
...Aww. Knew it was too good to be true. Would a combat-type with scepter be able to get the full version I wonder? Probably not, that's a lot of magic systems. Imagine the amount of cross-system synergies you could get. Design a Praxis effects that boosts your reality effects from cultivation and have a "Dao of the Archmage" that boosts all your diverse magics... Lots of potential there, too much for a Combat-type.
- Location
- The Middle of the Howling Wilderness
I also kinda want to know if there's an Evening Sky EFB behind Pearlescence. That has since been boosted by absorbing the tower.
Protection is not terrible, but the issue is that we still don't translate it into stuff. Think how STR is much more useful thanks to Ruin scaling we got from the thingy bob.
Basically we need to put some work in Iridescence tree which, conveniently enough, also unlocks the Pearlescence.
A lot. Basically, in Terrascape we had mastery system which went something like Beginner - Expert - Master - Grandmaster - Archmaster as levels 1-5, which each level representing exponential increase in ability to do stuff. For example, Master Elementals might fashion stone into a golem, while Grandmaster Elementals might control every grain of earth around him individually with perfect precision.
Which is why we got First Blade, actually, it gave cross stage boost to mastery.
It probably was Signs, and it probably was locked behind some additional stuff, much like Cut Through was locked behind a bunch of stuff - stuff that we were able to circumvent thanks to Uttermost.
Now it probably buffs Signs instead.
ImperatorV
The Laughing One
- Location
- The Voyaging Realm
Hm. That's possible. Eating the Opalescent Tower letting us skip the Opalescence line does have a sort of logic to it.
Zampano
🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈
- Location
- Simping for DSB
{Seeker/Shield, Construct, Examine} all raised to archmage tier in a reasonable amount of quest wordcount, plus the interactions of other magic systems?
these alternative remittances sure are cool
- Location
- The Middle of the Howling Wilderness
I mean I'd take that. A big ol' buff to Signs would be sweet.
Zampano
🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈
- Location
- Simping for DSB
im worried the thread is making a mistake by skipping the 5-sign boost to Deathly Star
Signs buffs are good but we're preemptively deciding to take [Evening Sky] signs for #6&7
What if we get an improved version of Pennants for #7? I'm not sure we'll stay the course
Just have Hunger gouge his eye out for that sweet TSH boost and buy as many 1st Signs as you want, my friend
Seriously though, those advancements that require us to have both eyes better be good. Rihaku mentioned that there is a bunch a long while ago.
They are probably too busy chilling with Graces and Tears Advancements in cool kid corner.
OctarineShrike
Avatar of Mandos
Data compiled.
The Gardens of Enoch: Terrascape Academy Original
Character Mechanics Your character's human qualities are represented by three Primary Attributes and a series of Traits that apply to them. The Primary Attributes reflect overall aptitude in their domain, including natural talent and any generally-applicable crystallized knowledge. The Primary...
forums.sufficientvelocity.com
The Gardens of Enoch: Terrascape Academy Original
A couple things - There are four types of activities possible with the Elements Form: 1. Brute Creation - Attacks and walls made of a generic form of the element, like iron or rock. You cannot really specify the form besides stuff like choosing soil or rock for Earth. The stuff is an arcane...
forums.sufficientvelocity.com
Seeker - Skill effects the velocity of your missiles and your ability to have multiple seekers hone in on an enemy.
Shield - Skill effects your ability to maintain a continuous shield and function day to day
Conjure - Skill improves qualities such as speed, size of space
Construct - Nearly all parameters are improvable by skill(Strength, degree of control fineness of construction, size of construct)
Elements - Construct tier versatility can be acquired with skill. Skill improves capacity for True Creation albeit less so compared to taking reductions. Skill improves how long brute creations last.
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The Gardens of Enoch: Terrascape Academy Original
The Ladder to Heaven After a brief conference with the others, Arthur decided to take the offer alongside Alice. Caroline could not be dissuaded from rejecting it and taking the money, but she agreed to tag along and see what she was missing. Alice wanted to go look for other Iron Spire...
forums.sufficientvelocity.com
Skill is necessary to maintain multiple spells
The Gardens of Enoch: Terrascape Academy Original
Alright, I suppose Imperia has no reason not to tell you what the higher Ordinals actually do. 8 - Overwhelm (Seeker applicable) The user may fire blasts of reality-warping energy. This attack is relatively slow, but exceptionally dangerous, as depending on relative magical might, presence and...
forums.sufficientvelocity.com
Overwhelm - Skill unlocks matter transmutation and at high levels, permanent reality alteration effects
Oathsworn - Skill needed to go beyond peak human, trade skills and abstract concepts, etc
Nightmare - Skill unlocks new Nightmare abilities and raises its capabilities
Vindicate - Improves range of effects subject to it
Valor - Skill raises strength of priority
Wyrd - Immutability and ease of maintenance scale with skill/specialization supposedly.
Techniques are a thing.(The Gardens of Enoch: Terrascape Academy Original). More skill means more integral techniques.
It takes very high levels of skill to safely use the Gamma radiation form of Elements. Here are some blurbs for what we would have gotten if we took an Ordinal as our ninth
The Gardens of Enoch: Terrascape Academy Original
Alright, given the plan that won, you guys are about to gain a lot of Depth, and I don't want to over-complicate the likely-sprawling and critical next vote with build discussion, so I'm going to do this part first. This decision point is going to be complicated enough... Especially since you...
forums.sufficientvelocity.com
Here's a batch of elementalism techniques we had the opportunity to vote on at one point. The Gardens of Enoch: Terrascape Academy Original
More technique stuff: The Gardens of Enoch: Terrascape Academy Original
Here's some Valor Techniques(The Gardens of Enoch: Terrascape Academy Original)
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- Location
- US
The clear solution is to take TSH on Regalia, ofc. Even a limitation like this can be bypassed with something like that.
Aabcehmu
Confusion as a Natural State of Being
- Location
- Chicago, IL
- Pronouns
- Any/All
To Shatter Heaven is probably a Progression-type-only Lesser Remittance, and Face Card is a Combat-type Primary Remittance.
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- Location
- US
Rihaku gave TSH Intensified Imperial Praxis Combat Hunger as an example of the fact that Hunger couldn't scale to the Hidden Ones in finite time. For that reason, I think it's safe to say that TSH and Intensify can be purchased even as a Combat Class.
Aabcehmu
Confusion as a Natural State of Being
- Location
- Chicago, IL
- Pronouns
- Any/All
Eh, we didn't actually pick to be a Combat-type, and didn't see TSH as an option thereafter, so I'm not totally convinced that it's more than a hypothetical.
Plus, that same word-of-Rihaku would seem to imply that, if Combat-types can get TSH, it is still of somewhat restricted scope.
Rihaku
The Internet
What does a man with +30% Attack Speed need from Graces?!
Strange9
hdellaverson@gmail.com
- Location
- Los Angeles, CA
... more pseudo graces that give 30% melee attack speed?!?!?
Birdsie
Sharp Talons Cleave The Worthy
- Location
- Poland
Here's A Simple Transaction crossover with Konosuba (God's Blessings On This Wonderful World.)
Honestly? Not sure what possessed me to write this, but I ask myself that rather often lately. I guess it's the call of the Arete Miner. I am not certain if this is going to be a one-shot or a subquest so don't ask. Some of the Curses are inspired by Kazuma's companions in the original series.
Wordcount: 6540
Honestly? Not sure what possessed me to write this, but I ask myself that rather often lately. I guess it's the call of the Arete Miner. I am not certain if this is going to be a one-shot or a subquest so don't ask. Some of the Curses are inspired by Kazuma's companions in the original series.
Rihaku-42342 said:
God's Curses On This Wretched World!!
Storytelling is the lifeblood of the human experience. It always has been.
Human lives were nothing but self-contained stories, individual episodes and chapters overlapping with those stories of other people; everyone was their own hero, faced their own antagonists, their own demons, and experienced their own development.
Every person was an actor in a performance that was unscripted, started eons ago, and would never end. In other words, the world was a stage, and the stage was a world of entertainment.
But for whom did this entertainment flow? For whom did those bitter dramas, honeyed comedies, aural triumphs, and disheartening tragedies happen?
Was there some audience out there, a director or writer who subtly led the events?
It was not in the mortal's fortune to know, perhaps. Like ants dancing in a spiral, most would never realize their purpose in the grand story of the universe.
Most of those unwitting actors would go on, play out their stories, and have their books closed forever, with the reality of their story uncaring for whether or not the tale's conclusion was a satisfying one, or a painful one.
However, if one were to know everything there was to know, they would realize: There was one.
There was a director of events across the whole solidified fabric of what humanity called the multiverse; an author on whose very existence the entire script of reality hinged. Its name was Fate, and it was a cruel mistress.
After all, some tales were far more vigorous and visceral than others. A story with no conflict is no story.
In a moment of combustive dissociation, the young boy returned to consciousness and selfhood.
His emerald-green eyes shot open wider than a pair of saucers and he took in a long forceful breath, filling his lungs to the brim as ghastly ice froze every fragment of his corporeal vessel down to the bone. He felt as if though death was standing right beside him, the gentle caress of her finger tracing a line down his neck and to his chest, right where the heart was; a painful caress, like the sensation of crushed bone and pulverized flesh.
He felt a desire to throw up from sickness but managed to hold himself still in that ruined state, calming down in a slow and deliberate manner.
His entire life's sequence had run through his head, each second of his conscious and unconscious existence on Earth summarized in less time than it took for him to draw in that new breath, ending in an abrupt death. He'd already forgotten most of it, but for the moment he experienced it, he realized how small and futile his life was.
He realized how small and futile life was in general, and how precious.
Closing his eyes, the boy once again breathed in. These were calmer breaths; terror becoming tranquility, and horror changing into serenity with the realization he was no longer in danger. He centered himself.
With his change in mindset, from primal instinct and malfunction to composed thought, he realized there was a problem.
Once again, his eyes shot open and he studied his surroundings. He was seated on a wooden chair in the middle of a black void, a single invisible lamp planted somewhere on the dark ceiling shining down to surround a radius around him in bright light.
"What happened to me? Where am I?"
As if she had been waiting patiently for him to do so, a voice spoke, feminine and soothing like a fireplace in a cold winter night, "Satou Kazuma-san, welcome to the afterlife. Unfortunately, you've died. It might've been short, but your life's now over."
His neck practically creaked as he twisted it ninety degrees to the left, eyes widened to reveal terrified emerald orbs. "Eh?"
The woman that welcomed him walked past his field of vision as he looked, and he followed her as she moved to the center of the illuminated stage in the void.
The moment he consciously realized her appearance, Kazuma's heart skipped a beat and then picked up its rate as if in tremulous excitation. He'd never seen a person that beautiful.
The difference between the goddess in front of him and the most beautiful TV idol he'd ever seen was like the difference between the luminescent, chatoyant heavens above and a patch of barren earth. Her long flowing hair trailed down like the caressed waves of aqua-pure water in a river, smoother than silk with even a glance. Her figure was a perfect hourglass, but not to the point of opulent excess, with a bust that his eyes stopped on for a moment, before assessing the smooth, flawless pale skin of her face, and the sapphire-blue eyes that looked back fondly into his emerald-green. She wore a blue uniform with a skirt and a light-purple hagaromo draped over her shoulders like the vestments of a high priestess.
He was stunned, in a non-hyperbolic sense of the word. Her beauty was such that Satou Kazuma's brain stopped processing information properly, and despite apparently being dead, he felt like he was about to go down from a heart attack.
He snapped out of his state at her words, cleaning the line of drool running down his chin and then his throat, in order to respond with a voice-crack, "E-excuse me?"
"Is there something wrong?" Her head bobbed adorably to the side, making Kazuma's heart run aflutter. He wanted to close his eyes and enjoy the moment, but controlled himself and focused on the task at hand: gathering knowledge.
"You, um, said that I died?" he asked nervously, although with better control than before. He was starting to regain his capability for conversation, even though he never had a lot of it to begin with. "I do not remember that at all..."
"Ah, yes. Forgive me!" The goddess clutched a hand to her chest, then bowed minimally in apology. He felt a stab of guilt at seeing her like that, but she continued faster than he could object, "I had forgotten, but you fell unconscious, and the subsequent brain damage would have undoubtedly tampered with your memories. If you'd like to know what happened, I can tell you."
His mind caught up to the situation at hand, and it was like his entire being was sent spinning through a whirlpool.
He was dead now. His life was over. This was the afterlife.
Kazuma's breath hitched, stuttering in his throat as if he'd swallowed a fly. He started breathing audibly again, calming himself down in moments and realizing that it wasn't so bad. He was still conscious, and this goddess was here no doubt in order to explain the afterlife to him; even if his life couldn't keep going, it wasn't all over.
The goddess was looking at him as he calmed himself. There was something else lodged behind the friendly veneer of her expression; he would have said it was eagerness, were it not for her divine disposition.
"Yes, please..." he requested. The goddess looked down at him with a clouded character for a moment. "I'd like to know how I died."
"I'm afraid it wasn't glamorous," she informed, but he accepted that much; it was obvious. He wasn't a soldier in the JSDF or some noble knight gallivanting around, saving damsels and sacrificing himself for the greater good.
Kazuma frankly expected to die of old age, but it wasn't too surprising if he had a fatal accident where some heavy object fell on him.
He'd always considered himself to be luckier than most - in fact, he was so lucky that he never lost a game of rock, paper, scissors in his life, and he'd always pull in the best gacha rolls on any game he played. However, being so lucky must have had some logical conclusion: maybe he overdrew on the well of karma that life offered him, and it came to get what it was owed. Perhaps that was it. He could actually tolerate that, if it were the case.
The goddess continued, seeing that his state hadn't worsened at those news, "You went out to get food, and a malfunctioning self-driving car suddenly turned the corner as you were passing the street."
Kazuma blinked, then blinked again. Did he catch that right? He blanked for a moment, then processed what the goddess said. He felt a moment of overwhelming dumbness and heart-clenching embarrassment. It wasn't the worst possible way to go, but it was definitely near the bottom of the barrel. "I-I was hit by a self-driving car?"
"Oh, no, no, don't misunderstand! You survived that, having the crisp reflexes to dodge," the goddess rebuked, smiling at him as if those were good news.
"So... what happened?" Kazuma asked, confused and wary.
"Well, you managed to avoid getting driven over by jumping!" the goddess clarified, then continued with that same, sunny expression stuck on her face. Kazuma's heart was starting to clench anew because he realized that she was suppressing laughter, not being friendly. "So, instead of breaking your bones and killing you, the impact sent you flying down the street. After hitting one of the nearby buildings, you flipped over, fell down a set of stairs near the entrance, and then collapsed near the sidewalk."
His eyes widened in shocked disbelief. No one could possibly go like that! It sounded like something that'd only happen in a cartoon! "S-so I died from the fall?"
"No, no! Let me- he- finish, he-he-he," the goddess started to chuckle, tears appearing in her eyes as she used one hand to daintily hold her stomach in place. Her chest was heaving with a storm of unreleased laughter. "You fell down there... unconscious, right into a centimeter-deep puddle. But the position you were in meant you couldn't breathe, so you drowned in the puddle!"
With that revelation, the goddess burst out into a peal of incorrigible laughter, seizing and almost falling over as a pure-white throne appeared behind her. She fell into it, raising her legs and kicking at the air as she laughed. "Kusukuskusuku!"
Kazuma's jaw fell open agape, unable to comprehend this. That wasn't a laughing matter, it was horrible. If that happened to anyone else, Kazuma would have... he would have laughed, maybe... b-but...
Kazuma's stomach twisted and turned. He felt dumb and idiotic for a moment, as he gained a new insight on human nature: cruelty. He realized that if it happened to anyone else he wouldn't have felt any increased pity or commiseration for their fate: he would have laughed just like the goddess in front of him. At utter best, he would have been fascinated by the improbability of such an event, but he definitely wouldn't feel an obligation to feel sadness.
What was wrong with people? What was wrong with himself? It was only though the power of hindsight, and being put on the spot, that Kazuma realized his disgust with himself, better than he ever could have in any other situation.
"That's why I'm here in the first place! I'm Aqua, the Goddess of Water. I already guide Japanese people who die young into the afterlife, but you're a special-special case, since you died through- pffft- through drowning!" As if thinking the joke needed even more celebration, Aqua started laughing again, as rambunctious as before.
For a moment, his eyes saw red. He felt a brief thrill of vengeance; irritation crystallized into murderous hatred, like carbon pressurized into diamond. His fists clenched as he started to plot the best way to run over and smack the goddess in the face.
But that redness became darkness, as he realized how meaningless that would be. At best, it'd accomplish nothing since he was dead. At worst, he'd be denied entry into the afterlife for affront to majesty.
His fists unclenched, and Kazuma sagged into his chair while Aqua kept laughing.
Kazuma's vulnerable heart started to blacken, then withered into dust, like a delicate orchid in the killing winter cold.
He looked down, expression utterly blank and empty. He didn't have the strength to argue or scream at her in rage. Kazuma felt nothing but emptiness, his chest a black void. It felt like he was a balloon for his entire life, and the goddess' words undid a knot inside of him - rather than being a satisfying release, it left him utterly empty of anything.
The feelings he experienced when he died returned to him. It was like he was being judged by some distant, oppressive overdeity, with every moment of his life's story mustering through his awareness.
He reminisced about his childhood. It was the sweetest time of his life, before he became a useless shut-in.
There was a girl he liked back then; a childhood friend. He remembered how much his heart quaked in her presence, the feelings of warmth in his hands and chest when she was close by. Every one of those moments, he held as precious back then. It was the very stuff of life.
One day, he gained the confidence to confess his feelings to her under a tree on a hill. He remembered the heart-shaking anxiety as her eyes widened at his statement.
He recalled the ease with which his heart calmed itself when she smiled at him. There was an unspoken promise in that smile: the promise of reciprocation.
And using words, they promised each other they'd get married one day. It was like a dream come true; the realization of everything he wanted, and everything he lived for. It was his life's story perfected into a fable that ended in a happily ever after.
And then, the dream was shattered. One day, he went to school and saw her kissing the cheek of an upperclassman delinquent, before riding off with him on his bike, burning rubber with a calamitous squeal of tires.
Right now, he felt the same as he did back then. Adrift in the drowning waters, devoid of any purpose or goal.
He'd withdrawn after seeing his life's love do that. Kazuma gave up on romance, gave up on friendship; his meaningless life reached a downward spiral, then a final nadir as he locked himself in his room and played games each day hoping to let the rest of his life pass by on vacuous distractions.
There was an ember of bone-deep regret in his chest. Tears started falling down his reddened cheeks as he sobbed, even as the goddess whose name he already forgot kept laughing in his face.
That ember of regret strengthened the blackness in his heart.
He resolved in that moment, promised himself with no words, that if he was ever given the chance, he would never allow himself to become so vulnerable or pathetic again. He would never let people's words do that to him, and never again would he permit himself to stay down after being knocked over.
If Fate wanted to knock him over, he would defiantly stand up and never surrender. No matter what, he would pull through. Even if it meant bleeding, loss of limb, he would ignore any physical atrocity so long as it meant he was standing and still defiant in the end.
It was a hopeless promise. He was already dead, both physically and in his soul.
But he made the promise anyway because he had to. Because otherwise, he was meaningless, and he would be meaningless forever.
Kazuma sat there, drawing in that resolve as a human drew in oxygen. It felt like emptiness, a loser's prize for second place. Maybe it was greed, but he didn't want that to be the end of it.
There was a sudden realization. Aqua's laughter stopped a moment ago; Kazuma's eyes shot open in alarm.
Aqua was sitting on her throne, wiping off a tear from her eye and holding the other arm across her chest as she looked at Kazuma. Her exuberant colors of blue, cyan, and aquamarine had been replaced by an unsaturated grayness, with shades of black and white.
She was frozen in time, and her hagaromo and hair were both suspended, no longer flowing as they were.
More important was the being that stood in front of her. Kazuma turned to assess this entity.
It was a man with eyes like twin graves staring into Kazuma's soul without a single eyeblink. His face was the very idea of tribulation, with a rough and tired expression matched with an infinite determination to keep going no matter what. It was a man who'd sooner defy and then shatter heaven, than submit to be shattered. The sword bound at his side boldened that impression, giving the feeling of a swordsman who'd be able to cut Kazuma's head off his shoulders faster than the boy could blink.
His power was a twisted, limitless source, betwixt the distorted lines in the air, invisible to Kazuma's eyes, but tangible to his spirit. It wafted off of him, a radiance beyond the divine.
In comparison to Aqua's eloquence and beauty, this man was nothing more than disorderly and unruly; a person that walked outside the paths of Fate, and by whose sword-cut the stories of its dictates came to an end. Determinism was only a suggestion to him, the idea of 'limits,' only a piece of half-hearted advice, meekly whispered by the universe with a submissive twiddling of the fingers.
For some reason, Kazuma disliked him at once, which he considered strange because so far the man hadn't done anything that would have caused Kazuma to feel that way. On the contrary, he made that eyesore of a goddess shut up.
"Kazuma Satou," the man said in a mournful voice as if reciting a funerary report. Oddly appropriate, given the situation. "Son of the salaryman, Daizen Satou, and the housewife, Fumiko Satou. You are a highly substandard candidate, almost worthlessly unsuitable. Nonetheless, you are pure in body... mostly pure in mind, and fulfill a... let us say, handful of the other requirements. And because you hold immense potential, but your candidacy would be otherwise ruined if I waited any longer, I am going to will myself to present you this offer, but only once."
For a moment, Kazuma's brain raced in analysis. Everything the man had said so far; his attitude and appearance, his speech about offers and potential, his axiomatic opposition to the Goddess that laughed at Kazuma. It led the boy to a single conclusion that was rather worrying.
He needed to ask, and it seemed like the being in front of him was already anticipating the question if the raised eyebrow was any indication. "Are you the-"
"No, I am not the Devil," the man raised his hand in a placating motion. "Nor am I associated with any of the beings that claim to be him. There will be no souls, no contracts, no signing in blood. My offer is that of a simple transaction. Take up a portion of my burdens, and in exchange receive a fraction of my power."
Slowly, Kazuma exhaled. That determination he felt before seemed to shift in reaction to this man's presence. If before it was a gelatinous mass, it had now hardened into a solid crust; but one that was nonetheless at the risk of fraying and crumbling from the inferiority that Kazuma felt deep in his soul when looking into the man's eyes.
No, he needed to hold on. With another breath, Kazuma remembered why it was important for him to keep defiant. Even if the man lied and he was the Devil - although Kazuma believed him that he wasn't - then Kazuma would consort with him, if it meant winning here.
"Let me be clear," the man continued. "To you, my power may seem immense, but I am vastly diminished from what I once was. And my burdens are extremely unpleasant. Their weight will not be greater than you can bear, nor greater than the value of the powers I impart, but you will likely suffer enormously; especially since you hold such a poor compatibility for the role. And until you accept or decline, I cannot tell you more."
Kazuma glanced at the frozen body of the goddess. He initially believed her to be a beautiful creature of light, but now he realized the mistake of that assumption: she was nothing more than a deceitful bully. A beautiful shell with a rotten inside.
He compared her to the Accursed man in front of him. He bore the resemblance of death; a man who'd been tired and calloused by life's games. Appearances could be deceiving, but this man was hiding nothing - every one of his words struck with a chord of truth.
Kazuma realized he could refuse, and have a calm afterlife.
But something pushed him onward, past that road. It made him go higher in a spiral, rising from the gunk of the nadir in which he'd drowned both literally and metaphorically, aimed heaven-bound for the stars. He remembered that determination that he settled on, not even a minute ago, and he clutched it as close to his heart as possible.
He, too, wanted to shatter heaven like the man in front of him.
"I accept," Kazuma perilously stated.
The man nodded imperceptibly, then closed his eyes with the candor of an executioner ready to chop someone's head off. Kazuma felt a trickle of uncertainty but strove to go past it, once again. If his determination wilted at mere doubt, it would be meaningless; Kazuma wouldn't let himself fall that low.
"If your desires are to be realized, there is only a single path for you. Realize, that it will be painful and difficult. You'll face potential death, adversity, and hostility many times on the long road to achieving that wish you carry deep in your heart," the Accursed informed with a level of calmness that unnerved Kazuma. "But if you survive? Rewards eternal. No power will be beyond you. Take care not to let this power chain you down into something you do not want to be. Power means responsibility."
Kazuma nodded, but the man wasn't paying attention, or perhaps didn't care. His eyes were closed, and Kazuma felt the options spring into his awareness: an entire catalogue of Curses and Remittances to have for them.
---
The choice came upon him, knowledge of the Curses appearing like a coiled spring in his mind. All could be mitigated with time and effort, though it would take increasingly heroic efforts to overcome more than a modest fraction.
You must take at least 4 Curses in order to become a Progression-type Cursebearer, due to your Shit-Tier Compatibility.
[ ] The Geas of Indenture - Mortgage your future to pay for the present? The term of your service shall be no less than 937 octillion years. Immediately you will be transported to another world and given a task to complete. Nearly every task will fall into one of two forms: you will be required either to kill a predestined 'Chosen One' of some kind or to conquer some amount of territory.
You will be granted full discretion in the completion of your tasks and there is no penalty whatsoever to slacking off provided you complete your mission within the generous time window allotted. Assassination tasks typically have a 100 - 500 year window, while conquest tasks usually have a 1,000 - 10,000 (or greater) year window, depending on the scope of the territory in question. Should you complete your mission early, you may choose to vacation in your current world for up to 10 more years before departing to the next task. Your assigned tasks will always be within your given capabilities to achieve. Failure to complete your task within the time window will result in death. You will not be assigned tasks that are totally abhorrent; the assassination of a well-meaning hero is about as bad as it gets.
[ ] Geas of the Debtor - A sweet desire for power runs foul as it encourages the roadblock of a toll.
From now, for as long as they exist, the Cursebearer is indebted to the world itself on a scale that ranks proportionally with their power. Each week, the Cursebearer needs to pay a sizable toll in material or abstracted goods in order to maintain their existence and powers.
A starting Progression-type like you will only need to pay a fee that's roughly equivalent to $2,600 every week, but this can grow to become far more unsustainable faster than you'd believe.
The Cursebearer can only pay with objects they own on a conceptual level; they cannot simply mark the entire planet and declare it their payment. They may, however, take an apple from a costermonger's cart, take it back home, and consider it their possession; even if it was originally stolen, not bought, they can assert their ability to maintain and defend this property as theirs, so it is eligible for marking as payment.
If the Cursebearer is unable to pay the material worth this curse demands, the curse will instead consume everything they own - including clothes - and diminish their power until an acceptable level of ontological worth has been paid. The curse will then disable itself for a month to let the Cursebearer make up their possessions. If they do not make enough money by next month, this diminishment will continue to happen at a steady rate, once again cutting their powers until they wear away completely. Once the Cursebearer is entirely powerless, the curse will start to remove their organs as payment instead, until nothing remains: not even fragments of bone.
Slaves or livestock are considered an eligible form of payment, but in order to qualify, they need to be defeated, captured, and bound, or willing if non-hostile. Slaves and livestock removed this way are not erased from the universe, but sent to act as servants or pets in the retinue of some otherworldly deity.
[ ] Doom of Incompetence - The Cursebearer's decision-making skills are stunted.
Every time the Cursebearer faces a serious decision, they feel a strong compulsion to follow their slightest whims. This curse doesn't create sudden desires out of nothing but amplifies what the Cursebearer is already feeling while suppressing their self-control, rationality, or decorum. For example, if the Cursebearer was feeling down on his spirits and there happened to be an open bar on the path to his next task, he would choose to ignore the task in favor of drinking himself to sleep for the night and picking it up tomorrow instead. If the Cursebearer has reliable companions who can find a way to motivate him to keep his head in the game, the effects of this curse may be less profound.
This curse isn't lethal on its own; the Cursebearer won't become so slothful as to stay in bed until they starve, or so whimsical as to drink themselves to death, but it can be occasionally dangerous: although a princess may be acting like a bitch, following the desire to call her that in front of her court might not be the best approach to augmenting one's longevity.
Rarely, the Cursebearer may encounter an individual with a volatile personality that closely matches the effects of this Curse. When that happens, they may choose instead to transform this curse into the Geas of Incompetence, ridding themselves of its effects, at a very serious cost: the Geas of Incompetence causes the Cursebearer's Fate to intermingle with that of the volatile individual in question, so the Cursebearer will feel nigh-dutybound to keep pulling said individual out of trouble, no matter how egregious or aggravating their behaviors. No matter how much of a burden the individual becomes, the Cursebearer will consider it his obligation to keep them around.
If you do not choose the Geas of Indenture, a perfect candidate is available and currently laughing at you.
[ ] The Explosive Affliction - Become a destructive force without equal.
The body of a Cursebearer is normally a perfect engine of power, a tool that translates mere possibility into hard fact. However, your fuel tank seems to have come with a bit of a leak.
Become a machine of atomic might: at least once every twenty hours, upwards of half of the Cursebearer's life-force, metabolic energy, and stamina will be efficiently converted into an expression of kinetic and thermal energy, then blown outwards as an explosion. The lethality, radius, and overall profundity of this effect, obviously, scales with the Cursebearer's life-force, metabolic energy, and stamina. This effect can happen at any time and with little warning, but those issues can be partially bypassed; divinatory powers can be utilized to assess the likelihood of a release at any given time of the day, but the reliability of such effects falls with the level of the Cursebearer's power, and can even become deceitful past a certain tier.
This Curse will never be directly lethal to the Cursebearer, but the stamina loss that follows a release can make them susceptible to harm from any enemies who survive a release. Likewise, if the Cursebearer isn't durable enough, falling rubble may be their doom. Allies who are standing too near may suffer injury.
[ ] Doom of the Flagellant - There is always something to blame on oneself; fault for our sins falls on no one but us.
The Cursebearer's feelings of guilt for any wrongdoing, mistake, or fault receive a strong amplification. Furthermore, their definition of wrongdoing and fault is broadened to include a much wider category of events, making it easier for the Cursebearer to follow a track of thought that leads them to self-blame. Unlike in normal people, these feelings are difficult to extricate using mere time and honest endeavor to improve; the most efficient way to repay one's faults is with blood, sweat, and torture.
For as long as the Cursebearer feels guilty of anything, they will feel greatly compelled to walk into situations where their life is in danger or choose substandard paths that lead to greater pain. They will often elect to put themselves at risk, even when their party has a dedicated tank with a superior vitality and defense. Every painful impact of the opponent's blade, every moment of gut-wrenching fear, and every exertion of the body they perform in the line of these substandard, dangerous paths is going to act as an edifice for ridding themselves of their soul-twisting guilt.
This curse is very insidious. Its effects aren't obvious to the Cursebearer, and will often stay mostly subconscious, rendering any psychological support or therapy that might help the Cursebearer remove their guilt in more natural ways difficult at best.
[ ] Affliction of Misfortune - It's in poor taste to swim against Fate; those who do find themselves tighter bound to its chains.
This Curse causes things to align in order to destroy the Cursebearer's plans at the most inconvenient moments. These events are usually non-harmful to the Cursebearer; they prefer to impede his impact on the world and frustrate him beyond his ability to describe, rather than turning the world into a death-trap. However, it would still be foolish to even think about playing a game of chance; every casino is debt waiting to happen, and every card game with the devil with one's soul on the stakes is an exercise in futility.
Fortunately, the Curse can be sidestepped; it cannot conjure events out of thin air, nor can it cause events that would be considered stupendously improbable. It can skew a situation with an 80% success rate into a failure, but if something is undeniably sure to occur, it cannot summon a cause for it not to. If the Cursebearer makes careful plans to take its existence into account, they may be able to live relatively unmolested.
Furthermore, it's remarkably easy to mitigate directly: all the Cursebearer needs to do is manually increase their luck parameter until it offsets this Curse's effects. The reason for this Curse's particular laxity is because Satou Kazuma was born with an impossibly transcendent luck that registers as half a step higher on the Infinite Singularity Husk - second only to the goddess whose domain is fortune - having never lost a game of rock-paper-scissors since he was a young boy. How come that he suffered such a horrendous death with this luck is unknown, but it doesn't mean much when the evidence is laid bare in front of them.
In a way, the Cursebearer's very nature means it comes heavily pre-mitigated - lucky you!
[ ] Brand of the Wretched - A simple curse. All who meet you will be invested with a severe dislike bordering on hatred, perhaps not enough to provoke violence in civilized individuals, but more than sufficient for them to actively work against your interests. No one, not your closest friends, not your family, not even the Accursed himself, is immune to this effect.
You can overcome this opposition by word and deed, but supernatural influence of any kind finds no purchase against the power of your Brand.
[ ] Affliction of Slumber - A curse of the body. No matter how powerful your physical form becomes, you will require at least sixteen hours of sleep every twenty-four hours. Missing even a single hour will result in severe physiological consequences. If enemies consistently interrupt your sleep, you will find yourself near-constantly disoriented and enervated. Your waking hours are the very stuff of life. With this choice, you surrender half your conscious existence, your very presence in the world, upon the altar of a Curse.
[ ] The Lethal Curse - Become a person despised by Fate.
If one were to possess a key to understanding the universe and perceive that phantasmal root where every law of physics, logic, and abstrata is written, they would be able to see a list that reports the names of all the things in existence. Your entry has been crossed off with an ominous red line. What this means, you cannot possibly know, but surely it cannot be anything good.
*Counts as 2 Curses. Don't take it unless you have to.
[ ] The Apocryphal Curse - "May you live in interesting times."
The challenges this presents will usually not be beyond your ability to overcome, but very occasionally you will be forced to dig deep and discover whether you are truly worthy of the Accursed's mantle. Remember: the greater the reprieve, the more terrible the chaos that follows. "Better to be a dog in times of peace, then a man in time of war."
*Counts as 2 Curses. Don't take it unless you have to.
---
Please, select one Remittance.
[ ] Green Armor - Protection from the depredations of injustice.
Eight times in total, when you would die or otherwise suffer an unacceptable loss, instead your consciousness is hurled back in time to the moment you entered your current world. You arrive unharmed and fully replenished, retaining all memories and progress. If still inhabiting your native realm, instead you are returned to the moment immediately after you finalize your agreement with the Accursed...
All Cursebearers present in your universe are affected by this power's activation, so if you were defeated by a fellow Cursebearer and found this unacceptable, they would retain their knowledge of the original history the second time around.
There are few regrets more powerful than the urge to try again, and few powers more encompassing than true precognition. With this ability, you can have it all, for a limited number of tries. Your stock of lives regenerates slowly over time. You may regain additional lives by performing favors for the Accursed. Regardless of your power, these will not be easy.
[ ] The Genie Lamp - A lamp cast in brightest gold: rub it and have anything.
Friends are nice in any place, but it's nicer to have friends in high places. The Accursed will grant certain of your requests. Do not squander his favor. You start with three, and they aren't particularly puissant.
Because the Accursed is skeptical of you to start with, you can only wish for anything you could reasonably accomplish with a year's dedicated effort and assuming you know only what you know. You may wish, for example, for your parameters to be raised as if you had trained intensely for an entire year, or for a set of weak but complementary superpowers that may prove to be the edge you need.
If you exceed the Accursed's expectations - that's not a high bar, because you are Satou Kazuma - or mitigate your Curses substantially, the quality and quantity of wishes you can have will rise, and some fraction of those you spent will be restored.
[ ] Halo of Immortality - A crown of stars forged in coruscant plasma.
The halo represents the ability to survive and leverage one's ability to grow more powerful through having some power to start with. Skip those beginning days of stumbling, and jump right ahead into the fray. This endowment is compatible with Kazuma's overall skills and preferences and optimized to grow with him.
What's the fastest way to accelerate a growth curve? Skip ahead to a higher point. Immediate power represents more than safety in the moment, valuable as that may be. You can't train if you're dead, after all. But power in the moment is also leverage to face stronger foes, to reap greater rewards, to provide greater space for optimization, more resources with which to accelerate your training. Why do the rich get richer? Because they use the power they have to accumulate more power faster.
By the very nature of the Accursed's offering, as long as you survive you will grow strong. First and most importantly, therefore, make sure you survive.
*The Accursed will grant you a mighty power, broad in remit and scope of action and well-suited to your nature. It far outpaces anything that Aqua would have offered by its very nature, although if you choose to remain in this world, you can have the goddess' cheat as well as this.
[ ] The Sword of Strange Hangings - Accursed blade.
Access the Praxis, the Accursed's personal casting style. A style of magic that emanates completely from the self, relies completely upon the self, and is developed completely by the self. Advancement in the Praxis depends little on talent, much on effort and self-sacrifice. A dream of fairness, defiant against an uncaring universe. And power enough, in time, to make the universe care.
The Praxis is renowned for its limitless potential and complete omni-dimensional reliability. Where all other magics fail, the Praxis operates with unerring consistency. It excels at inflicting and preventing harm, but struggles in matters of renewal or restoration.
Storytelling is the lifeblood of the human experience. It always has been.
Human lives were nothing but self-contained stories, individual episodes and chapters overlapping with those stories of other people; everyone was their own hero, faced their own antagonists, their own demons, and experienced their own development.
Every person was an actor in a performance that was unscripted, started eons ago, and would never end. In other words, the world was a stage, and the stage was a world of entertainment.
But for whom did this entertainment flow? For whom did those bitter dramas, honeyed comedies, aural triumphs, and disheartening tragedies happen?
Was there some audience out there, a director or writer who subtly led the events?
It was not in the mortal's fortune to know, perhaps. Like ants dancing in a spiral, most would never realize their purpose in the grand story of the universe.
Most of those unwitting actors would go on, play out their stories, and have their books closed forever, with the reality of their story uncaring for whether or not the tale's conclusion was a satisfying one, or a painful one.
However, if one were to know everything there was to know, they would realize: There was one.
There was a director of events across the whole solidified fabric of what humanity called the multiverse; an author on whose very existence the entire script of reality hinged. Its name was Fate, and it was a cruel mistress.
After all, some tales were far more vigorous and visceral than others. A story with no conflict is no story.
In a moment of combustive dissociation, the young boy returned to consciousness and selfhood.
His emerald-green eyes shot open wider than a pair of saucers and he took in a long forceful breath, filling his lungs to the brim as ghastly ice froze every fragment of his corporeal vessel down to the bone. He felt as if though death was standing right beside him, the gentle caress of her finger tracing a line down his neck and to his chest, right where the heart was; a painful caress, like the sensation of crushed bone and pulverized flesh.
He felt a desire to throw up from sickness but managed to hold himself still in that ruined state, calming down in a slow and deliberate manner.
His entire life's sequence had run through his head, each second of his conscious and unconscious existence on Earth summarized in less time than it took for him to draw in that new breath, ending in an abrupt death. He'd already forgotten most of it, but for the moment he experienced it, he realized how small and futile his life was.
He realized how small and futile life was in general, and how precious.
Closing his eyes, the boy once again breathed in. These were calmer breaths; terror becoming tranquility, and horror changing into serenity with the realization he was no longer in danger. He centered himself.
With his change in mindset, from primal instinct and malfunction to composed thought, he realized there was a problem.
Once again, his eyes shot open and he studied his surroundings. He was seated on a wooden chair in the middle of a black void, a single invisible lamp planted somewhere on the dark ceiling shining down to surround a radius around him in bright light.
"What happened to me? Where am I?"
As if she had been waiting patiently for him to do so, a voice spoke, feminine and soothing like a fireplace in a cold winter night, "Satou Kazuma-san, welcome to the afterlife. Unfortunately, you've died. It might've been short, but your life's now over."
His neck practically creaked as he twisted it ninety degrees to the left, eyes widened to reveal terrified emerald orbs. "Eh?"
The woman that welcomed him walked past his field of vision as he looked, and he followed her as she moved to the center of the illuminated stage in the void.
The moment he consciously realized her appearance, Kazuma's heart skipped a beat and then picked up its rate as if in tremulous excitation. He'd never seen a person that beautiful.
The difference between the goddess in front of him and the most beautiful TV idol he'd ever seen was like the difference between the luminescent, chatoyant heavens above and a patch of barren earth. Her long flowing hair trailed down like the caressed waves of aqua-pure water in a river, smoother than silk with even a glance. Her figure was a perfect hourglass, but not to the point of opulent excess, with a bust that his eyes stopped on for a moment, before assessing the smooth, flawless pale skin of her face, and the sapphire-blue eyes that looked back fondly into his emerald-green. She wore a blue uniform with a skirt and a light-purple hagaromo draped over her shoulders like the vestments of a high priestess.
He was stunned, in a non-hyperbolic sense of the word. Her beauty was such that Satou Kazuma's brain stopped processing information properly, and despite apparently being dead, he felt like he was about to go down from a heart attack.
He snapped out of his state at her words, cleaning the line of drool running down his chin and then his throat, in order to respond with a voice-crack, "E-excuse me?"
"Is there something wrong?" Her head bobbed adorably to the side, making Kazuma's heart run aflutter. He wanted to close his eyes and enjoy the moment, but controlled himself and focused on the task at hand: gathering knowledge.
"You, um, said that I died?" he asked nervously, although with better control than before. He was starting to regain his capability for conversation, even though he never had a lot of it to begin with. "I do not remember that at all..."
"Ah, yes. Forgive me!" The goddess clutched a hand to her chest, then bowed minimally in apology. He felt a stab of guilt at seeing her like that, but she continued faster than he could object, "I had forgotten, but you fell unconscious, and the subsequent brain damage would have undoubtedly tampered with your memories. If you'd like to know what happened, I can tell you."
His mind caught up to the situation at hand, and it was like his entire being was sent spinning through a whirlpool.
He was dead now. His life was over. This was the afterlife.
Kazuma's breath hitched, stuttering in his throat as if he'd swallowed a fly. He started breathing audibly again, calming himself down in moments and realizing that it wasn't so bad. He was still conscious, and this goddess was here no doubt in order to explain the afterlife to him; even if his life couldn't keep going, it wasn't all over.
The goddess was looking at him as he calmed himself. There was something else lodged behind the friendly veneer of her expression; he would have said it was eagerness, were it not for her divine disposition.
"Yes, please..." he requested. The goddess looked down at him with a clouded character for a moment. "I'd like to know how I died."
"I'm afraid it wasn't glamorous," she informed, but he accepted that much; it was obvious. He wasn't a soldier in the JSDF or some noble knight gallivanting around, saving damsels and sacrificing himself for the greater good.
Kazuma frankly expected to die of old age, but it wasn't too surprising if he had a fatal accident where some heavy object fell on him.
He'd always considered himself to be luckier than most - in fact, he was so lucky that he never lost a game of rock, paper, scissors in his life, and he'd always pull in the best gacha rolls on any game he played. However, being so lucky must have had some logical conclusion: maybe he overdrew on the well of karma that life offered him, and it came to get what it was owed. Perhaps that was it. He could actually tolerate that, if it were the case.
The goddess continued, seeing that his state hadn't worsened at those news, "You went out to get food, and a malfunctioning self-driving car suddenly turned the corner as you were passing the street."
Kazuma blinked, then blinked again. Did he catch that right? He blanked for a moment, then processed what the goddess said. He felt a moment of overwhelming dumbness and heart-clenching embarrassment. It wasn't the worst possible way to go, but it was definitely near the bottom of the barrel. "I-I was hit by a self-driving car?"
"Oh, no, no, don't misunderstand! You survived that, having the crisp reflexes to dodge," the goddess rebuked, smiling at him as if those were good news.
"So... what happened?" Kazuma asked, confused and wary.
"Well, you managed to avoid getting driven over by jumping!" the goddess clarified, then continued with that same, sunny expression stuck on her face. Kazuma's heart was starting to clench anew because he realized that she was suppressing laughter, not being friendly. "So, instead of breaking your bones and killing you, the impact sent you flying down the street. After hitting one of the nearby buildings, you flipped over, fell down a set of stairs near the entrance, and then collapsed near the sidewalk."
His eyes widened in shocked disbelief. No one could possibly go like that! It sounded like something that'd only happen in a cartoon! "S-so I died from the fall?"
"No, no! Let me- he- finish, he-he-he," the goddess started to chuckle, tears appearing in her eyes as she used one hand to daintily hold her stomach in place. Her chest was heaving with a storm of unreleased laughter. "You fell down there... unconscious, right into a centimeter-deep puddle. But the position you were in meant you couldn't breathe, so you drowned in the puddle!"
With that revelation, the goddess burst out into a peal of incorrigible laughter, seizing and almost falling over as a pure-white throne appeared behind her. She fell into it, raising her legs and kicking at the air as she laughed. "Kusukuskusuku!"
Kazuma's jaw fell open agape, unable to comprehend this. That wasn't a laughing matter, it was horrible. If that happened to anyone else, Kazuma would have... he would have laughed, maybe... b-but...
Kazuma's stomach twisted and turned. He felt dumb and idiotic for a moment, as he gained a new insight on human nature: cruelty. He realized that if it happened to anyone else he wouldn't have felt any increased pity or commiseration for their fate: he would have laughed just like the goddess in front of him. At utter best, he would have been fascinated by the improbability of such an event, but he definitely wouldn't feel an obligation to feel sadness.
What was wrong with people? What was wrong with himself? It was only though the power of hindsight, and being put on the spot, that Kazuma realized his disgust with himself, better than he ever could have in any other situation.
"That's why I'm here in the first place! I'm Aqua, the Goddess of Water. I already guide Japanese people who die young into the afterlife, but you're a special-special case, since you died through- pffft- through drowning!" As if thinking the joke needed even more celebration, Aqua started laughing again, as rambunctious as before.
For a moment, his eyes saw red. He felt a brief thrill of vengeance; irritation crystallized into murderous hatred, like carbon pressurized into diamond. His fists clenched as he started to plot the best way to run over and smack the goddess in the face.
But that redness became darkness, as he realized how meaningless that would be. At best, it'd accomplish nothing since he was dead. At worst, he'd be denied entry into the afterlife for affront to majesty.
His fists unclenched, and Kazuma sagged into his chair while Aqua kept laughing.
Kazuma's vulnerable heart started to blacken, then withered into dust, like a delicate orchid in the killing winter cold.
He looked down, expression utterly blank and empty. He didn't have the strength to argue or scream at her in rage. Kazuma felt nothing but emptiness, his chest a black void. It felt like he was a balloon for his entire life, and the goddess' words undid a knot inside of him - rather than being a satisfying release, it left him utterly empty of anything.
The feelings he experienced when he died returned to him. It was like he was being judged by some distant, oppressive overdeity, with every moment of his life's story mustering through his awareness.
He reminisced about his childhood. It was the sweetest time of his life, before he became a useless shut-in.
There was a girl he liked back then; a childhood friend. He remembered how much his heart quaked in her presence, the feelings of warmth in his hands and chest when she was close by. Every one of those moments, he held as precious back then. It was the very stuff of life.
One day, he gained the confidence to confess his feelings to her under a tree on a hill. He remembered the heart-shaking anxiety as her eyes widened at his statement.
He recalled the ease with which his heart calmed itself when she smiled at him. There was an unspoken promise in that smile: the promise of reciprocation.
And using words, they promised each other they'd get married one day. It was like a dream come true; the realization of everything he wanted, and everything he lived for. It was his life's story perfected into a fable that ended in a happily ever after.
And then, the dream was shattered. One day, he went to school and saw her kissing the cheek of an upperclassman delinquent, before riding off with him on his bike, burning rubber with a calamitous squeal of tires.
Right now, he felt the same as he did back then. Adrift in the drowning waters, devoid of any purpose or goal.
He'd withdrawn after seeing his life's love do that. Kazuma gave up on romance, gave up on friendship; his meaningless life reached a downward spiral, then a final nadir as he locked himself in his room and played games each day hoping to let the rest of his life pass by on vacuous distractions.
There was an ember of bone-deep regret in his chest. Tears started falling down his reddened cheeks as he sobbed, even as the goddess whose name he already forgot kept laughing in his face.
That ember of regret strengthened the blackness in his heart.
He resolved in that moment, promised himself with no words, that if he was ever given the chance, he would never allow himself to become so vulnerable or pathetic again. He would never let people's words do that to him, and never again would he permit himself to stay down after being knocked over.
If Fate wanted to knock him over, he would defiantly stand up and never surrender. No matter what, he would pull through. Even if it meant bleeding, loss of limb, he would ignore any physical atrocity so long as it meant he was standing and still defiant in the end.
It was a hopeless promise. He was already dead, both physically and in his soul.
But he made the promise anyway because he had to. Because otherwise, he was meaningless, and he would be meaningless forever.
Kazuma sat there, drawing in that resolve as a human drew in oxygen. It felt like emptiness, a loser's prize for second place. Maybe it was greed, but he didn't want that to be the end of it.
There was a sudden realization. Aqua's laughter stopped a moment ago; Kazuma's eyes shot open in alarm.
Aqua was sitting on her throne, wiping off a tear from her eye and holding the other arm across her chest as she looked at Kazuma. Her exuberant colors of blue, cyan, and aquamarine had been replaced by an unsaturated grayness, with shades of black and white.
She was frozen in time, and her hagaromo and hair were both suspended, no longer flowing as they were.
More important was the being that stood in front of her. Kazuma turned to assess this entity.
It was a man with eyes like twin graves staring into Kazuma's soul without a single eyeblink. His face was the very idea of tribulation, with a rough and tired expression matched with an infinite determination to keep going no matter what. It was a man who'd sooner defy and then shatter heaven, than submit to be shattered. The sword bound at his side boldened that impression, giving the feeling of a swordsman who'd be able to cut Kazuma's head off his shoulders faster than the boy could blink.
His power was a twisted, limitless source, betwixt the distorted lines in the air, invisible to Kazuma's eyes, but tangible to his spirit. It wafted off of him, a radiance beyond the divine.
In comparison to Aqua's eloquence and beauty, this man was nothing more than disorderly and unruly; a person that walked outside the paths of Fate, and by whose sword-cut the stories of its dictates came to an end. Determinism was only a suggestion to him, the idea of 'limits,' only a piece of half-hearted advice, meekly whispered by the universe with a submissive twiddling of the fingers.
For some reason, Kazuma disliked him at once, which he considered strange because so far the man hadn't done anything that would have caused Kazuma to feel that way. On the contrary, he made that eyesore of a goddess shut up.
"Kazuma Satou," the man said in a mournful voice as if reciting a funerary report. Oddly appropriate, given the situation. "Son of the salaryman, Daizen Satou, and the housewife, Fumiko Satou. You are a highly substandard candidate, almost worthlessly unsuitable. Nonetheless, you are pure in body... mostly pure in mind, and fulfill a... let us say, handful of the other requirements. And because you hold immense potential, but your candidacy would be otherwise ruined if I waited any longer, I am going to will myself to present you this offer, but only once."
For a moment, Kazuma's brain raced in analysis. Everything the man had said so far; his attitude and appearance, his speech about offers and potential, his axiomatic opposition to the Goddess that laughed at Kazuma. It led the boy to a single conclusion that was rather worrying.
He needed to ask, and it seemed like the being in front of him was already anticipating the question if the raised eyebrow was any indication. "Are you the-"
"No, I am not the Devil," the man raised his hand in a placating motion. "Nor am I associated with any of the beings that claim to be him. There will be no souls, no contracts, no signing in blood. My offer is that of a simple transaction. Take up a portion of my burdens, and in exchange receive a fraction of my power."
Slowly, Kazuma exhaled. That determination he felt before seemed to shift in reaction to this man's presence. If before it was a gelatinous mass, it had now hardened into a solid crust; but one that was nonetheless at the risk of fraying and crumbling from the inferiority that Kazuma felt deep in his soul when looking into the man's eyes.
No, he needed to hold on. With another breath, Kazuma remembered why it was important for him to keep defiant. Even if the man lied and he was the Devil - although Kazuma believed him that he wasn't - then Kazuma would consort with him, if it meant winning here.
"Let me be clear," the man continued. "To you, my power may seem immense, but I am vastly diminished from what I once was. And my burdens are extremely unpleasant. Their weight will not be greater than you can bear, nor greater than the value of the powers I impart, but you will likely suffer enormously; especially since you hold such a poor compatibility for the role. And until you accept or decline, I cannot tell you more."
Kazuma glanced at the frozen body of the goddess. He initially believed her to be a beautiful creature of light, but now he realized the mistake of that assumption: she was nothing more than a deceitful bully. A beautiful shell with a rotten inside.
He compared her to the Accursed man in front of him. He bore the resemblance of death; a man who'd been tired and calloused by life's games. Appearances could be deceiving, but this man was hiding nothing - every one of his words struck with a chord of truth.
Kazuma realized he could refuse, and have a calm afterlife.
But something pushed him onward, past that road. It made him go higher in a spiral, rising from the gunk of the nadir in which he'd drowned both literally and metaphorically, aimed heaven-bound for the stars. He remembered that determination that he settled on, not even a minute ago, and he clutched it as close to his heart as possible.
He, too, wanted to shatter heaven like the man in front of him.
"I accept," Kazuma perilously stated.
The man nodded imperceptibly, then closed his eyes with the candor of an executioner ready to chop someone's head off. Kazuma felt a trickle of uncertainty but strove to go past it, once again. If his determination wilted at mere doubt, it would be meaningless; Kazuma wouldn't let himself fall that low.
"If your desires are to be realized, there is only a single path for you. Realize, that it will be painful and difficult. You'll face potential death, adversity, and hostility many times on the long road to achieving that wish you carry deep in your heart," the Accursed informed with a level of calmness that unnerved Kazuma. "But if you survive? Rewards eternal. No power will be beyond you. Take care not to let this power chain you down into something you do not want to be. Power means responsibility."
Kazuma nodded, but the man wasn't paying attention, or perhaps didn't care. His eyes were closed, and Kazuma felt the options spring into his awareness: an entire catalogue of Curses and Remittances to have for them.
---
The choice came upon him, knowledge of the Curses appearing like a coiled spring in his mind. All could be mitigated with time and effort, though it would take increasingly heroic efforts to overcome more than a modest fraction.
You must take at least 4 Curses in order to become a Progression-type Cursebearer, due to your Shit-Tier Compatibility.
[ ] The Geas of Indenture - Mortgage your future to pay for the present? The term of your service shall be no less than 937 octillion years. Immediately you will be transported to another world and given a task to complete. Nearly every task will fall into one of two forms: you will be required either to kill a predestined 'Chosen One' of some kind or to conquer some amount of territory.
You will be granted full discretion in the completion of your tasks and there is no penalty whatsoever to slacking off provided you complete your mission within the generous time window allotted. Assassination tasks typically have a 100 - 500 year window, while conquest tasks usually have a 1,000 - 10,000 (or greater) year window, depending on the scope of the territory in question. Should you complete your mission early, you may choose to vacation in your current world for up to 10 more years before departing to the next task. Your assigned tasks will always be within your given capabilities to achieve. Failure to complete your task within the time window will result in death. You will not be assigned tasks that are totally abhorrent; the assassination of a well-meaning hero is about as bad as it gets.
[ ] Geas of the Debtor - A sweet desire for power runs foul as it encourages the roadblock of a toll.
From now, for as long as they exist, the Cursebearer is indebted to the world itself on a scale that ranks proportionally with their power. Each week, the Cursebearer needs to pay a sizable toll in material or abstracted goods in order to maintain their existence and powers.
A starting Progression-type like you will only need to pay a fee that's roughly equivalent to $2,600 every week, but this can grow to become far more unsustainable faster than you'd believe.
The Cursebearer can only pay with objects they own on a conceptual level; they cannot simply mark the entire planet and declare it their payment. They may, however, take an apple from a costermonger's cart, take it back home, and consider it their possession; even if it was originally stolen, not bought, they can assert their ability to maintain and defend this property as theirs, so it is eligible for marking as payment.
If the Cursebearer is unable to pay the material worth this curse demands, the curse will instead consume everything they own - including clothes - and diminish their power until an acceptable level of ontological worth has been paid. The curse will then disable itself for a month to let the Cursebearer make up their possessions. If they do not make enough money by next month, this diminishment will continue to happen at a steady rate, once again cutting their powers until they wear away completely. Once the Cursebearer is entirely powerless, the curse will start to remove their organs as payment instead, until nothing remains: not even fragments of bone.
Slaves or livestock are considered an eligible form of payment, but in order to qualify, they need to be defeated, captured, and bound, or willing if non-hostile. Slaves and livestock removed this way are not erased from the universe, but sent to act as servants or pets in the retinue of some otherworldly deity.
[ ] Doom of Incompetence - The Cursebearer's decision-making skills are stunted.
Every time the Cursebearer faces a serious decision, they feel a strong compulsion to follow their slightest whims. This curse doesn't create sudden desires out of nothing but amplifies what the Cursebearer is already feeling while suppressing their self-control, rationality, or decorum. For example, if the Cursebearer was feeling down on his spirits and there happened to be an open bar on the path to his next task, he would choose to ignore the task in favor of drinking himself to sleep for the night and picking it up tomorrow instead. If the Cursebearer has reliable companions who can find a way to motivate him to keep his head in the game, the effects of this curse may be less profound.
This curse isn't lethal on its own; the Cursebearer won't become so slothful as to stay in bed until they starve, or so whimsical as to drink themselves to death, but it can be occasionally dangerous: although a princess may be acting like a bitch, following the desire to call her that in front of her court might not be the best approach to augmenting one's longevity.
Rarely, the Cursebearer may encounter an individual with a volatile personality that closely matches the effects of this Curse. When that happens, they may choose instead to transform this curse into the Geas of Incompetence, ridding themselves of its effects, at a very serious cost: the Geas of Incompetence causes the Cursebearer's Fate to intermingle with that of the volatile individual in question, so the Cursebearer will feel nigh-dutybound to keep pulling said individual out of trouble, no matter how egregious or aggravating their behaviors. No matter how much of a burden the individual becomes, the Cursebearer will consider it his obligation to keep them around.
If you do not choose the Geas of Indenture, a perfect candidate is available and currently laughing at you.
[ ] The Explosive Affliction - Become a destructive force without equal.
The body of a Cursebearer is normally a perfect engine of power, a tool that translates mere possibility into hard fact. However, your fuel tank seems to have come with a bit of a leak.
Become a machine of atomic might: at least once every twenty hours, upwards of half of the Cursebearer's life-force, metabolic energy, and stamina will be efficiently converted into an expression of kinetic and thermal energy, then blown outwards as an explosion. The lethality, radius, and overall profundity of this effect, obviously, scales with the Cursebearer's life-force, metabolic energy, and stamina. This effect can happen at any time and with little warning, but those issues can be partially bypassed; divinatory powers can be utilized to assess the likelihood of a release at any given time of the day, but the reliability of such effects falls with the level of the Cursebearer's power, and can even become deceitful past a certain tier.
This Curse will never be directly lethal to the Cursebearer, but the stamina loss that follows a release can make them susceptible to harm from any enemies who survive a release. Likewise, if the Cursebearer isn't durable enough, falling rubble may be their doom. Allies who are standing too near may suffer injury.
[ ] Doom of the Flagellant - There is always something to blame on oneself; fault for our sins falls on no one but us.
The Cursebearer's feelings of guilt for any wrongdoing, mistake, or fault receive a strong amplification. Furthermore, their definition of wrongdoing and fault is broadened to include a much wider category of events, making it easier for the Cursebearer to follow a track of thought that leads them to self-blame. Unlike in normal people, these feelings are difficult to extricate using mere time and honest endeavor to improve; the most efficient way to repay one's faults is with blood, sweat, and torture.
For as long as the Cursebearer feels guilty of anything, they will feel greatly compelled to walk into situations where their life is in danger or choose substandard paths that lead to greater pain. They will often elect to put themselves at risk, even when their party has a dedicated tank with a superior vitality and defense. Every painful impact of the opponent's blade, every moment of gut-wrenching fear, and every exertion of the body they perform in the line of these substandard, dangerous paths is going to act as an edifice for ridding themselves of their soul-twisting guilt.
This curse is very insidious. Its effects aren't obvious to the Cursebearer, and will often stay mostly subconscious, rendering any psychological support or therapy that might help the Cursebearer remove their guilt in more natural ways difficult at best.
[ ] Affliction of Misfortune - It's in poor taste to swim against Fate; those who do find themselves tighter bound to its chains.
This Curse causes things to align in order to destroy the Cursebearer's plans at the most inconvenient moments. These events are usually non-harmful to the Cursebearer; they prefer to impede his impact on the world and frustrate him beyond his ability to describe, rather than turning the world into a death-trap. However, it would still be foolish to even think about playing a game of chance; every casino is debt waiting to happen, and every card game with the devil with one's soul on the stakes is an exercise in futility.
Fortunately, the Curse can be sidestepped; it cannot conjure events out of thin air, nor can it cause events that would be considered stupendously improbable. It can skew a situation with an 80% success rate into a failure, but if something is undeniably sure to occur, it cannot summon a cause for it not to. If the Cursebearer makes careful plans to take its existence into account, they may be able to live relatively unmolested.
Furthermore, it's remarkably easy to mitigate directly: all the Cursebearer needs to do is manually increase their luck parameter until it offsets this Curse's effects. The reason for this Curse's particular laxity is because Satou Kazuma was born with an impossibly transcendent luck that registers as half a step higher on the Infinite Singularity Husk - second only to the goddess whose domain is fortune - having never lost a game of rock-paper-scissors since he was a young boy. How come that he suffered such a horrendous death with this luck is unknown, but it doesn't mean much when the evidence is laid bare in front of them.
In a way, the Cursebearer's very nature means it comes heavily pre-mitigated - lucky you!
[ ] Brand of the Wretched - A simple curse. All who meet you will be invested with a severe dislike bordering on hatred, perhaps not enough to provoke violence in civilized individuals, but more than sufficient for them to actively work against your interests. No one, not your closest friends, not your family, not even the Accursed himself, is immune to this effect.
You can overcome this opposition by word and deed, but supernatural influence of any kind finds no purchase against the power of your Brand.
[ ] Affliction of Slumber - A curse of the body. No matter how powerful your physical form becomes, you will require at least sixteen hours of sleep every twenty-four hours. Missing even a single hour will result in severe physiological consequences. If enemies consistently interrupt your sleep, you will find yourself near-constantly disoriented and enervated. Your waking hours are the very stuff of life. With this choice, you surrender half your conscious existence, your very presence in the world, upon the altar of a Curse.
[ ] The Lethal Curse - Become a person despised by Fate.
If one were to possess a key to understanding the universe and perceive that phantasmal root where every law of physics, logic, and abstrata is written, they would be able to see a list that reports the names of all the things in existence. Your entry has been crossed off with an ominous red line. What this means, you cannot possibly know, but surely it cannot be anything good.
*Counts as 2 Curses. Don't take it unless you have to.
[ ] The Apocryphal Curse - "May you live in interesting times."
The challenges this presents will usually not be beyond your ability to overcome, but very occasionally you will be forced to dig deep and discover whether you are truly worthy of the Accursed's mantle. Remember: the greater the reprieve, the more terrible the chaos that follows. "Better to be a dog in times of peace, then a man in time of war."
*Counts as 2 Curses. Don't take it unless you have to.
---
Please, select one Remittance.
[ ] Green Armor - Protection from the depredations of injustice.
Eight times in total, when you would die or otherwise suffer an unacceptable loss, instead your consciousness is hurled back in time to the moment you entered your current world. You arrive unharmed and fully replenished, retaining all memories and progress. If still inhabiting your native realm, instead you are returned to the moment immediately after you finalize your agreement with the Accursed...
All Cursebearers present in your universe are affected by this power's activation, so if you were defeated by a fellow Cursebearer and found this unacceptable, they would retain their knowledge of the original history the second time around.
There are few regrets more powerful than the urge to try again, and few powers more encompassing than true precognition. With this ability, you can have it all, for a limited number of tries. Your stock of lives regenerates slowly over time. You may regain additional lives by performing favors for the Accursed. Regardless of your power, these will not be easy.
[ ] The Genie Lamp - A lamp cast in brightest gold: rub it and have anything.
Friends are nice in any place, but it's nicer to have friends in high places. The Accursed will grant certain of your requests. Do not squander his favor. You start with three, and they aren't particularly puissant.
Because the Accursed is skeptical of you to start with, you can only wish for anything you could reasonably accomplish with a year's dedicated effort and assuming you know only what you know. You may wish, for example, for your parameters to be raised as if you had trained intensely for an entire year, or for a set of weak but complementary superpowers that may prove to be the edge you need.
If you exceed the Accursed's expectations - that's not a high bar, because you are Satou Kazuma - or mitigate your Curses substantially, the quality and quantity of wishes you can have will rise, and some fraction of those you spent will be restored.
[ ] Halo of Immortality - A crown of stars forged in coruscant plasma.
The halo represents the ability to survive and leverage one's ability to grow more powerful through having some power to start with. Skip those beginning days of stumbling, and jump right ahead into the fray. This endowment is compatible with Kazuma's overall skills and preferences and optimized to grow with him.
What's the fastest way to accelerate a growth curve? Skip ahead to a higher point. Immediate power represents more than safety in the moment, valuable as that may be. You can't train if you're dead, after all. But power in the moment is also leverage to face stronger foes, to reap greater rewards, to provide greater space for optimization, more resources with which to accelerate your training. Why do the rich get richer? Because they use the power they have to accumulate more power faster.
By the very nature of the Accursed's offering, as long as you survive you will grow strong. First and most importantly, therefore, make sure you survive.
*The Accursed will grant you a mighty power, broad in remit and scope of action and well-suited to your nature. It far outpaces anything that Aqua would have offered by its very nature, although if you choose to remain in this world, you can have the goddess' cheat as well as this.
[ ] The Sword of Strange Hangings - Accursed blade.
Access the Praxis, the Accursed's personal casting style. A style of magic that emanates completely from the self, relies completely upon the self, and is developed completely by the self. Advancement in the Praxis depends little on talent, much on effort and self-sacrifice. A dream of fairness, defiant against an uncaring universe. And power enough, in time, to make the universe care.
The Praxis is renowned for its limitless potential and complete omni-dimensional reliability. Where all other magics fail, the Praxis operates with unerring consistency. It excels at inflicting and preventing harm, but struggles in matters of renewal or restoration.
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DarkSideBard
Flying, without moving on
This is in line with what I was saying around the post-fish vote, where the math from Sharpening the Blade (3 Picks 4 Arete, but Honing (2 PIcks 2 Arete) + Iridescence (1 Pick 2 Arete) + Opalescence (1 Pick) = 4p 4a) made it seem like we were getting a "free" Opalescence.
That's a feature! Since Non-Evening Signs 6 & 7 have to compete with boosted Evening Signs, we'll be offered better Signs all around (theoretically). If another Sign is good enough to outcompete a potentially very boosted Evening Sign, then they're good enough to justify pre-trading away whatever lesser individual single-sign boost we might have gotten here. If they don't, then we're good for a bigger Evening Sign boost anyways!
I know that we could technically cash out the Evening Sign bonus here and still get offered the same choices for 6th/7th Signs that we would have been given anyways, instead of relying on a tradeoff framework between "getting stronger signs" and "getting major/any sign bonus". But Rihaku tends to balance choices to be appropriately difficult to weigh, even if they aren't equally correct. For example, once Haeliel was in reach, he made sure to offer something like Blood Sorcery for a high enough Arete count that there's no way we could have both. Blood Sorcery solved our immediate problem, opened up potential Accretion->Signs feeding mechanisms, and other cool advanced Blood Domain shenanigans, so it really made the choice tougher. I still obviously think that Haeliel was the correct pick because of the long term implications, but that doesn't mean that adding in that choice didn't make the call harder to make.
Not to imply that Conjured Blade didn't earn the Blood Sorcery option through a lot of effort spent posting about tactics. I'm just saying that Rihaku chose the version of the "solve this problem" advancement in a way that specifically made the overall decision harder.
Speaking of which, I think that I've resolved to be happy even if Favor doesn't win. Guidance/Grace/Deferral is still relatively safe, since even if we get fucked by this next proc Grace would save us. In the long term, our game now has a source of hope from Haeliel. In that performing Heroism to a high enough degree while accumulating Arete over even an unboosted projection of our historical amounts means that Hunger is likely to get Committed Haeliel if he survives, which I would bank on to substantially raise the possibility of a Good End even if we don't beat the Hidden Ones.
Though I still think that Favor is the best path to take to Committed Haeliel. I don't have a history of being in PragmatismGang (InkSky and Ruling Ring and APK were all solidly GreedGang territory), but being able to unlock Conjunctional Advancements with the Oriflamme Token through sufficient heroism is nuts if they're anything like OaF X+1 or Praxis picks (a la King Stands Alone). With the way that Haeliel's Moment of Glory effect was compared to how the Praxis feels, I wouldn't be surprised to be offered some really cool shit. Plus, it would be even further incentivization for Hunger to stay on the path of heroism! A reaffirmation of his choices and outlook. And hey, the middle path between Haeliel's Glory and the Forebear's Resolve seems like it actually suits Hunger well, since it captures both of his virtues instead of one alone.
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OctarineShrike
Avatar of Mandos
Since in the event of the worst case scenario I fear(Anything but souping up more party members to the level they can stand with us/utility options was the wrong decision), grace won't help us due its monofocus on hunger and Exaltation is trailing, it doesn't matter how far in I go in backing favor, I'm offering a marker with a veto for a switch to Favor. Tag me with your switch if you're interested.
Edit: Actually there's 2 markers with vetoes up on offer right now.
Edit: Actually there's 2 markers with vetoes up on offer right now.
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Strange9
hdellaverson@gmail.com
- Location
- Los Angeles, CA
Very well.
For the low, low price of 0 markers, I will switch from Favor + guidance to Favor + guidance.
The pact is sealed.
DarkSideBard
Flying, without moving on
Oh my god, you really went for it, didn't you? There are so many ways that this could be good.
Wow, already you're kicking the shit out of canon and every single piece of Konosuba fanfiction I've ever had the misfortune to read. Kazuma comes off so much better and Aqua so much worse, the tone and characterization is shifted just right to be appropriate for a Rihakuverse...Kazuma's internal dialogue being sobering and realistic without that edge of humorous tone that Konosuba holds onto relentlessly, the way that everything is described, Aqua's supernatural APP stat's effect, it's all done well.
There he is, the man himself!
I find this development to be believable, insofar as imagining there to be a Kazuma who is resolved enough to receive an offer.
I'm sure the Accursed isn't such a fan of the Kazuma who accidentally drowned in a small puddle, especially compared to someone like Hunger, but in my opinion you don't have shit-tier compatibility unless the Accursed makes you take a Crowning Curse. Maybe he just thought that Kazuma wouldn't be able to handle it, but he offers two to him, so...? They'd probably obliterate him in the early game even with a suitable Remittance, since Kazuma's personality is just not quite on the level. I know Apocryphal would, at least, but The Lethal Curse seems nasty as well, even if it isn't particularly clear what the manifestation will be. Fate constantly attempting to "correct" over you, maybe?
Now I'm just imagining High Cursebearer Kazuma, which sounds like an impossible nightmare. Blurgh.
Indenture is a great pick, because it's forgiving, a good route to power, Kazuma isn't leaving anything else behind and fuck Konosuba canon, and also because can you imagine how funny it'll be for him to vanish in front of Aqua? I'm sure that having The Accursed show up in such a place would be brown pants for the whole operation, especially Aqua. Can you imagine? You mock someone openly for their death and then they become a Cursebearer right afterwards? That's leaving aside whether or not the Konosuba Heavenly Bureaucracy is just a small portion of Big Sis Haeliel's Isekai Delegation structure and she shows up to scold you for being terrible....
Debtor is...too hard. The owed amount is just so high, and if it scales with power then you're always on the edge of a big disaster where you lose a bunch of power. Even though a Progression-type is good at learning to survive without exterior expenses and acquiring loot, this is just too painful. The only out is that it doesn't scale with companion power, but that's a bare solace for someone like Kazuma, who has little to no social grace. It's mostly incompatible with the other Curses because of how much time it takes up and how it relies on being productive. Plus, aren't you just feeding whichever entity laid this Curse on the Accursed??? Absolutely unacceptable.
Incompetence is really suitable for Kazuma, which means that it's a death knell for his possibility of winning. His whims make him much worse as a person. He really needs personal growth in the most basic sense, and this will deter that aim substantially. Also, his whims make him a fucking awful friend, and IMO he really needs companions that support him and act as positive influences, so despite this curse's synergy with his needs, it works against his best interest. Geas of Incompetence is much better, but it's a role that Kazuma would need to grow into a lot. Though maybe that's a bonus! Unfortunately, Indenture is definitely indispensable, but even if it wasn't...fuck Aqua, no way. Not a goddamn chance. She's the worst.
Explosive Affliction is an oof, though it's really funny how well it just...fits in with this theme! I would consider this curse to be totally good to take, except that Kazuma really, really needs those allies, and this Curse dooms you to be a loner unless you completely forswear physical stats, which a progression type cannot and should not do.
Flagellant could genuinely help Kazuma improve as a person, but it would make him so much more likely to die that I don't know that you could take it without being a fool, and you certainly couldn't take it with a Crowning Curse without being doomed.
Misfortune is like a lesser Apocryphal, but it's pretty good if you're Kazuma, since going in on a Luck build is way more reasonable for him than almost anyone else, and it can be manually avoided by tightly controlling against bad probabilities. Hell, if Kazuma can get something like Slice Fate, that alone would save him a lot of pain. Also, the innate ability of having +.5 ISH Luck is actually insane, and it kinda reframes the way you have to think about his history...was all of that unpleasantness caused by a higher power? Or was it simply to engineer this specific Isekai situation for Kazuma, where it wouldn't have happened any other way? Seeking out a fate where he could live peacefully and truly happily, moreso than any other possibility, threading the needle of bad occurrences all the way up to the point of him drowning in an inch of water, just to cause him to meet Aqua....Obviously it couldn't cause The Accursed's offer, but still.
Wretched is painful, since it's directly opposed to making companions and being assisted, but it's less painful than most other things.
Slumber is, as always, the best Curse, since all it requires is functional companions to watch over you to avoid a death-spiral. Though it has strong anti-synergy with Indenture...
As I said above, Lethal and Apocryphal are both awful. In this house, we don't take optional Crowning Curses.
Honestly, this is hard, since Debtor and Misfortune are so bad together but so much better individually than many others....
I guess I would go Indenture/Flagellant/Misfortune/Slumber and hope to grab really suitable companions as lesser remittances.
Imagine a world where someone like Gisena and someone like Kazuma can even exist in the same tier of power. BIG YIKES. Kazuma needs help, but the help he needs is so divergent from Hunger or Seram.
Slumber is bad with Misfortune and Indenture, but is good with Flagellant in comparison to most of the other Curses, and is personally not too unpleasant. Kazuma is equipped for all of these, save Flagellant, but I can't help feel that Flagellant will help shape him into a better person in the long run.
If Apocryphal-chan wasn't so likely to snap Kazuma over its knee like a brittle stick, I would say Indenture + Misfortune + Apocryphal would be the call, since it really focuses the pain of Curses in on one of the places that Kazuma is actually strong, which is Luck. Though he's a weak baby at resolve, which you also need to overcome interesting times....
Green Armor isn't too attractive as it is, honestly, since Kazuma is starting with little in the way of power. Even with the stock of lives regenerating over time. It might be better if it were alike to Daylian's Lazulite Sigil, which was presumably half resets and half power. Some resets will give Kazuma the ability to grow and make mistakes early on while accumulating the base competence to deal with life as a Cursebearer, while a Green Armor power (Protection? Physical enhancement? Ultra Woodsmanship? Nature Magic?) might give him the edge he needs to make some use of it. Plus reversions are good with Slumber and Misfortune.
Genie Lamp is better, since those wishes can offer him flexible and suitable additional powers on a whim, as well as some rescue if he's overcome by his Curses. And I think that Kazuma is capable of exceeding the Accursed's modest expectations of him. After all, this Kazuma is already a vast, vast outlier on the total conceptual space of all Kazumas.
Halo of Immortality is the good stuff, immediate power to make Kazuma safer. It'd probably be suitable to help protect him in his sleep with my build of Curses, or generate or meet companions. Strongly leaning towards this, though the flexibility of Genie Lamp might be preferable, since Kazuma might do better starting off with less power and having backup wishes to save his bacon. Though Slumber takes away a bunch of time, so jumping ahead on the power curve might be really important to finish that first Geas Task. On the other hand, people with Slumber are more likely to be given Geas tasks that can be effectively handled with a lot of sleeping time built in.
Praxiiiiissssss. This is way too risky to take with Indenture, which is sad because I genuinely believe that being given it would be an amazingly positive catalyst for Kazuma's personal growth, since it heavily incentivises and properly rewards one's hard work without fail. It might actually be worth taking a totally different Curse mix to get this.
Overall, I would Lean Genie Lamp, since it offers some immediate power, some flexibility and safety, and the best growth potential via Kazuma succeeding as a person over time. The temptation to find a build which safely allows for Praxis is high, though, and having him roflstomp through to that True Wish with Praxis shenanigans would be amazing!
I liked this and would be happy to read more of it, quest or omake! Thanks for the effortpost, you brave Arete Miner!
(I think this might be the first time I've done a proper "reaction" to anything, yikes.)
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