Cursed Child Duo

𝗛𝗶𝗺𝘂𝗿𝗮 𝗦𝗮𝘁ō

"Himura Satō," I say briefly.

"Alice Darkrin, I, uh, Homunculus." She says trying to be brief about it but her lack of communication skills made her stumble a bit on her words.

"Freya Bellken, An elf, nice to meet you." She said in a calm tone while bowing slightly.

Astoria lastly although hesitant told her name last.

"Astoria...just that for now," She said not looking at them but especially the dark elf one.

"Hm, I understand. Well, this is Halq Hiler and Pent Hiler" Shin points at the two men who seem to be brothers and a bit younger than him then he points at the dark-skinned elf.

"This is Lino Heatherin, as you can see, she's a dark elf"

He confirms my assumptions and with our introductions done we head to their town after a brief awkward silence since all we waited for each other to take the initiative to talk again.

Keeping my guard up, I walk behind them as they talk about their brief history. For about 12 years, they have been stuck here without any way of leaving.

They only managed to be alive to this day due to the fruit of the moonlit tree or "Lunai Frugt" for short, which came from the root of the sun and moon tree. Thanks to those, they have managed to live this long even if they are only scraping by.

The total population of their only town is about five hundred or so. Shin stops walking by then before talking about something from his satchel.

He takes out a dimly glowing fruit presumably the so-called Lunai Frugt and with his fingers took a very small part of the fruit and crushed it with his fingers. The blue dimly glowing liquid from the fruit left an afterimage about three seconds behind.

Using one finger, he draws various lines with a single stroke, and in response, another blue glowing trail far from us which writes another various line which I cannot understand.

They nod to each other and led us inside the wooden gate, after a while, the gate opened and during this time of night, I could vaguely see a town with a few amount houses here and there and I could also see the other side of the wall from here.

A younger woman appeared from the watchtower and she and shin talked while looking at us suspiciously, I didn't much attention to them and watched out for any ambushes of any kind. After that, we were led to one of the houses which had a trapdoor leading down to their actual home.

Looking around there were multiple looking at us which made both me and Alice a bit nervous but thankfully we were led to an empty room.

"Unfortunately, the others still don't trust you so you'll be here while I convince them otherwise so I'll be back." He says as he and Lino head out of the room but Freya calls out to them.

"Wait, why is it that you trust us?"

She asked and in response, he smile slightly.

"Well, that friend of yours seems to have the same origin as me."

He said as he points at me.

Having 1/1 mana was a symbol of one being a former cursed child since they are born with no mana and it seems this man somehow knew my mana count either from the eyes which can only see mana or the new system added in this update which allowed you to view other individual's stats.

'Heh, I'm probably a cursed child before I arrive in this world.'

I thought to myself self-deprecatingly.

After saying that, Shin left with Lino behind him leaving us four locked in this room (Cell?)

"Hey what are the chances of us actually being held, prisoners?" Astoria asked Alice, the smartest of the group.

"Hmmm, about 50% to 71% give or take." She responds

"Huh, so what do we do now?" Astoria brushed off what Alice said and looked at me for directions.

Though not knowing the reason for her asking me specifically, I still decided to answer.

"We'll just have to play the waiting game since there's not much that we can do."

"Well, hopefully, it's not long," Freya said.

The three women fell asleep since they didn't have much sleep yet and I took the role of a lookout and stared down the door. After a while, the door opened and Shin entered.

Apparently, Shin managed to convince them that we weren't their enemy and thus we were assigned rooms to sleep in.

Astoria, Freya, and Alice were assigned a single room for them while I will have to share a room with Shin. He says this in a tone that says that he had no say in this and I could definitely feel the prejudice against us who was a former cursed child.

Thankfully our rooms were next to each other so my suspicions of them lessened a bit. When I entered the small room, the walls, floor, and ceiling were made from mud bricks and had two beds on each side and a small table in the corner.

The beds were in poor condition due to their lack of resources and the entire room was lit by a single torch.

I put my bags and weapons in my corner, only leaving my longsword at my waist then I casually took off my leather armor leaving only the white long-sleeved shirt and my missing left arm exposed.

It seems Shin was quite shocked by this but didn't say anything.

Laying down on my bed, I wanted to finally get some sleep but it seems, Shin had other plans. He drags the table between our beds and took out a crate full of bottles before taking out a single bottle and putting the crate back under his bed.

He then takes out two cups and put them on the table and without me even being able to say anything, he pours the liquid inside the bottle and I immediately knew that it was very strong alcohol.

"Here drink this," Shin said as he put the cup in front of me.

"Why do you have that..?" I asked in suspicion.

"Hey, we've been living here for quite a while okay, we needed something to tolerate it, and thus, lunai frugt alcohol was created."

He takes a sip.

"Besides, I've been wanting to talk to you and it seemed you, yourself have an interesting story as well."

He looks at my missing arm.

"Oh and also, when we mean by "We are barely scraping by.", we mean that we don't have any resources other than food to keep us alive like water and such."

"Water? Isn't there a river near here?" I questioned.

I knew that their food situation was great since they were able to afford to make alcohol out of them but it was weird of them having no easy water access.

"There is but it's infested with monsters and we can't risk the river being poisoned when we fight them for it so we had to purposely fight carefully." Although it's hard to agree since we didn't encounter one back in our first camp so I say much about it.

I smelled the alcohol and it immediately made me somewhat dizzy.

"God, how strong is this?"

"I dunno, the older people here said that it was on the strong side by normal standards but I don't really know much since I was exiled here when I was still a kid"

Shin said something sad about his past but waved it off like nothing.

I drank the alcohol straight since it seems I would be talking about myself for quite a bit, something that I was not adept at so I wanted to be drunk to throw my hesitance and shamefulness out of the window.

We instantly hit it off because of our similar origins. Shin when he was still a boy, despised himself because he was a cursed child and everyone around him hated his presence, even his parents.

With no one to protect him, he was forced to go to the godless land to avoid being impaled by the villagers in his village.

Shin thought that I would feel somewhat sad for him but my face remained expressionless as I steadily get drunk. He questioned why he didn't seem to care and it was my turn now to tell my story.

I talked about my lonely and introverted lifestyle back in my world and how I pretty much dissected myself out of spite then I rebuilt my entire personality which had lost its core emotions like happiness.

That was the reason, I was mostly expressionless. I didn't say this to him but I already knew what my problem was and why I did it, I just hated myself that I wanted to die but I also wanted to live so this became my compromise till now.

I was able to say this to him without care because I was already drunk. Once again, I thanked the power of alcohol for making use of my high charisma stat.

We laughed and cried at each other while telling our stories and overall we hit it off really well to the point that we created our group called the "Cursed child duo"

We decided to stop after the third bottle and we headed to sleep. After a few minutes passed I asked him.

"Hey, you seeemd to not carre about me being reincarnated that mucch, is that noormal heree?" I drunkenly ask.

"Hmm, I dunnno, probly not, I jussstt donn't reeally care...." He said, his voice slowly getting quieter.

"Huh." I look at him and it seems he has fallen asleep.

I turned my body around to face the wall and opened my eyes slightly after closing them moments ago.

'Why was I talking to this guy anyway?' I didn't really know the answer but I knew that we could relate to each other.

It was like, I was a different person when talking to him that I even cried and laughed with him.

What was most weird was that he was already a middle-aged man and I was not exactly great at opening up with older people like him.

I raise my head a bit.

'How has it been since I last cried or laughed?' I asked myself but the drowsiness caused me to forget about it and I slowly fall asleep.

Tomorrow, we will be trying to prove our worth if it would be worth it for us to live with them or not.