The First Curse Model is an Independent AI… Wraith!

"Department Head Su, I have submitted a request regarding the protection of Jingdou's former informant, Du Lang. Please review."

A middle-aged man received a manilla envelope from the outstretched hand of Gu Ling with a deadpan expression. He tore apart the seal and surveyed the expansive documents with a disinterested gaze, before aligning his eyes onto the tantalizing body of Officer Gu.

"Du Lang, provider of information regarding Tie Haoran, Xie Ruanshan, Deng Chao, Man Lie, and many others… oh – so a veteran? But he's so young?"

The numerous sheets of paper were shuffled into a disorganized state, and the department head stuffed them into the manilla envelope. He tossed the file towards Gu Ling, and leaned into his chair with his arms crossed behind his head.

"Some gang's going to take a hit at him again? Just provide him with the usual – surveillance and active monitoring," the middle-aged man chuckled with a derisive smile.

"Being an informant for the police is hardly an honor, you know? We can protect him the first time, but countless time and time again, heh…"

Gu Ling bit her bottom lip and frowned at the utter lack of regard presented by the man responsible for managing the law enforcement of Jingdou. The mature woman retrieved the documents from the envelope and shuffled them back into the right order, before leveling the middle-aged man a scrutinizing glare.

"Department Head Su, this is not some local gang we are talking about. It regards the international private military corporation, Academi."

"Academi?" the department head paused before bellowing in laughter.

"Academi, the glorified personage of incisive military might and modern warfare, wants to target a single journalist of a mid-tier city like Jingdou? Don't make me laugh – its most likely a gang trying to ride on their coattails after admiring too many Western movies – nothing special."

"Department Head Su, this information was confirmed by the state national intelligence agency!"

"Then leave it to the state. We are law enforcement responsible for maintaining public order, not private-exclusive bodyguards. One man's death won't affect the public order, especially since Academi is involved in this mess. Have you ever seen them mess up in an assassination mission?"

The utter carelessness of the department head was put at full-display. The complacent smile, the disregard and act of bemusement – Department Head Su ensured that he nailed all of the requirements as listed in the manual he received from the state after rising to his position.

He managed the local police agency of Jingdou. His agents were policemen and policewomen who fought gangs and local, organized crime.

How the hell were they supposed to fight against an organization specializing in assassination and incisive military tactics!?

"Officer Gu, leave this case alone. Just let the state handle it. We will pray for Du Lang's safety if he wants – his information did help quite a bit."

With one suave retort, Department Head Su managed to shed himself of all responsibility. After Gu Ling had grudgingly left his office, the middle-aged man swiftly retrieved the manual with the blue-and-white laminated cover, and heaved a sigh of relief after confirming that he hadn't made a mistake.

"Too close. Poor kid – I'm sorry to you, young man, but I simply can't involve my officers into this hellhole. How the hell did we get involved with Tie Haoran in the first place?"

Department Head Su was desperate on confirming that his career path remained relatively stable and comfortable, and was only willing to light incense for the former journalist. Du Lang, on the other hand, was now gnashing his teeth in frustration as he lounged in his chair, coffee mug in hand.

The coffee mug was empty since an hour and a half ago, and his throat remained endlessly parched and begged to slake its thirst. And yet, Du Lang continued to spout command after command, belching every-so-often to rapidly clear his airways.

"Build a chained class nested underneath the main process, and link the compression variables so they can be modified – bullsh*t! What do you mean that there will be a memory leak!?" he roared, tempted to toss the mug away.

"You said you're writing this directly to my soul – is my soul some half-baked RAM stick from the 80's!? Just assemble and proof it for me, will you?"

"No! Not interfacing with ARM architecture, just use the optimized route, please! Sibyl, why are you making this so complicated for me?"

The fuzzy black sphere chittered as it hovered around Du Lang's head. Hundreds of lines of code spiraled past from the top to the bottom of his vision as Sibyl assembled and compiled the background code at breakneck speed – to the extent that Du Lang couldn't identify a distinct line or phrase.

From early morning to now – he had spent the entire day cursing, screaming, and dancing for joy. Du Lang clasped his hands and lit a stick of fragrant incense for all of the programmers who toiled on Hua's booming software market, especially regarding their sore fingers and aching waists.

This curse model of his – which was supposed to be something incomprehensibly stupid and light – had transformed into one that could only be admired from a display stand. The looming threat of Tie Haoran and Academi's hunters had forced his hand, and Du Lang was unwilling to simply stand there to be massacred.

The curse model that he had planned was meant to be a simple Firestarter – travel in a linear direction whilst ignoring any non-negligible resistance or drag from the environment, and upon receiving a verbal or non-verbal trigger, emulate the burning of Magnesium. But now, Du Lang held greater expectations and demands from the party trick…

Namely, to recognize his dream of bypassing the shoddy restriction of casting only one of Er Gouming's divine curses a day – what else could it be?

Alas, having migrated to a new host, Sibyl refused to allow Du Lang to inherit the base framework and implementations from his predecessor, though her mild ambivalence brought great reason for him to believe that it hadn't been deleted outright, but withheld from him due to spite. Nonetheless, Du Lang had to write a framework and method of implementation for himself from scratch, and the fuzzy black ball refused to budge an inch regardless of how many times it was prodded or whispered cute nothings.

He was granted the half-assed, shoddy tool that Sibyl excruciatingly relented and delivered begrudgingly that was Java, and now he was to build an operating system with it to speak – but with its simplifications and complications. He didn't need to write any graphical manipulation, which elicited no fewer than an hour's worth of relieved sighs from Du Lang, but he needed to write the capacity to determine sentience.

According to Sibyl's surprisingly lax restrictions compared to before, all Du Lang needed to write was a personality model and the permissions to access memory. It took him two seconds from conception to verbalization.

"Sibyl, access my memories and derive a personality model from my interactions with my Elder Sister. Place an emphasis on obedience to my orders, however."

He didn't need another divine, angelic elder sister persona who secretly harbored the scariest demons from the underworld!

All he wished for was an sentient intelligence that was obedient to his commands but also capable of criticism – ahem. Du Lang stood to pour himself another cup of coffee, and savored the rich yet mellow taste of good coffee mixed with honey. With happiness poured in the cup grasped by his hand and great expectation blooming in his heart, Du Lang sat back onto the couch, and delivered the final command.

"Sibyl, compile and build the product. I want to see how it functions?"

The scrolling lines of text abruptly halted their motion, and faded into the background of his vision. Fixed at the center of his vision, the fuzzy black sphere that was Sibyl began to gently quake, and the surroundings began to gently distort as black threads mercilessly ravaged the atmosphere.

[Compiling <Freeform> curse model <Wraith>. Compile succeeded, initializing. Congratulations, host Du Lang. Ten <Freeform> curse models remain until advancement to Intermediate Privilege.]

The melodious voice in his ears filled his heart with gentle warmth, and its contents caused him to leap with exhilaration. Du Lang placed the coffee mug onto the table besides the couch to prevent himself from spilling any more coffee, and cross his hands before his chest.

"Please work, please work, please work…"

At the lower-rightmost fringe of his vision, Du Lang spotted the formation of a small black spot. The miniscule dot blurring a portion of his vision vibrated and expanded as it grew to the size of an adult's palm, and two scarlet lights emitted from its center – resembling a pair of mischievous and cheerful eyes, completing the character traits that he had pirated – ahem, ported over from a mobile game of his childhood.

The black sphere gently swirled around his vision as it flew freely and without inhibition throughout the living room of his house. Du Lang witnessed the scarlet eyes shift around as it carefully inspected the various objects strewn around the living room and kitchen, and released a light chuckle of appreciation.

"Wraith, come here. Perform an environment scan," Du Lang gestured with his fingers.

"Terrain, temperature, pressure – the basic drill. Show me the finished layout?"

The black sphere softly chittered in an unknown barrage of random noise, and quickly fluttered to rest before Du Lang. Before his amused gaze, the smooth surface of the sphere gradually became translucent, and reflected the interior of the house on the underside of the ball. The scarlet eyes shifted towards various places as the displayed image morphed from a basic blueprint layout to an advanced form that integrated terrain mapping, temperature and atmospheric pressure analysis…

When the scarlet eyes had finished their exploration of the house, the image was transferred from the underside of the black sphere to occupy much of his vision, just like Sibyl had done when it created an AR interface for him to 'code' his framework to build his own <Freeform> curse models. The difference was that whilst he could mostly spectate the changes to his vision provided by Sibyl and interfere to a substantially useless extent, the AR interface that the Wraith provided was completely open to manipulation.

Look, he could even change the perspective or centralized position of the map by moving his fingers! And with the standard pinch-pull mechanisms that he had ported from his Xiaomi – he could easily change the magnification of the presented layout!

It was truly, the epitome of mankind's technological motivation – the pursuit if laziness…

"I probably look like an utter idiot, waving my fingers in the air," Du Lang smirked, and disengaged the map with a lazy swipe of his arm.

"Sibyl, how would you classify the Wraith as a curse model?"

[The host's curse model is categorized as a <Freeform> curse model, and is not prone to restriction of classification. However, the output of any <Freeform> curse model is limited to the host's <Freeform> Privilege.]

���So, as a <Basic> curse model? That's not so bad, not at all."

Du Lang nodded in satisfaction at Sibyl's crude remark. Considering the devastation that even a <Basic> curse model preconfigured by Sibyl could achieve, he couldn't help but look forwards to the day that he used the Wraith for its intended purpose.

He had configured the curse model to create a non-human sentient existence that would respond to his command and perform auxiliary tasks including analyzing the environment and calculating raw data. However, its true intended purpose… was to be a botting mechanism!

Creating a curse model required vast amounts of unceasing inspiration, patience, and virtue. Ordinarily, Du Lang felt that he might comply with the rules as an obedient worker of society, but not Sibyl's rules!

If he was to be thrust a game mechanism like the <Freeform> Privilege threshold, then he was going to fight back with a trainer software!

"Wraith, you have access to the internet – scour everything! Novels, movies, games; build ten random curse models for me based on optimal usage, efficacy, and reliability!"

Why would he – no, why should he endeavor when he could get others to do the grunt work for him? This was a modern socie –

[Host, any curse models created by an artificial sentience will not contribute towards the advancement requirement. The host has been warned.]

Alas, before his project took flight, it was shut down by a ruthless, critical strike…