"Help her condense two curse cores? What have you been smoking?" Jason teased, raising an eyebrow at his younger sister. He leaned back with a smirk, clearly thinking she'd lost her mind. "As a curse crafter, you should know better than anyone that one Knight-tier core isn't the same as two Mortal-tier cores."
Janice's eyes narrowed, and her lips curved into a sharp, humorless smile. "You dimwit," she shot back, her tone laced with irritation. "I never said that." She folded her arms and leaned forward, her gaze drilling into him. "Listen carefully, because I'm only saying this once. If a curse core is 0.01 unit away from becoming a Knight-tier curse core, it's still a Mortal-tier core. And if someone condenses a curse core with the bare minimum curse energy, it's still classified as a Mortal-tier core."