Chapter 21: Closing the Curtain

Cursed tool creation is both similar to enchanting and not at the same time. It can be considered both a sub-skill of it and a parent skill of it. In fact, I am fairly certain I can get enchanting for my cursed tool creation.

But first I wanted to get used to the basic tool-making. So I pulled out a common drop dagger and laid it on the table. The process of making cursed tools is not that complicated.

In fact, you can just stuff a dagger full of cursed energy for an extended amount of time and call it a cursed tool and you wouldn't be wrong. But a more skilled crafter can make tools that are more durable, sharper, and even imbue special aspects to it.

I grabbed the knife and started flowing my cursed energy into it while activating Cursed Tool Creation. And a menu popped up, honestly, I expected the system to make me do it myself but this was better.

In the menu, there were several parts that showed me what enchantments or curses I could put on the weapon. I didn't have any obviously and even if I had them it seems like I need reagents to put abilities on weapons. So I just chose overall reinforcement of the weapon which made every aspect of it slightly better. Which required a whopping 1,500 CE and 10 Minutes to make.

When I press ok my head got filled with information on what I needed to do. So in the end it still needed manual input.

For the next 10 minutes, I spent my time stuffing the knife with my energy until it became a cursed tool.

In the end, I was left with a subpar cursed tool. After it was finished the system made me give it a name so I just named it Dagger1 and gave it to one of my thieves to use.

Deciding that Cursed Tool Creation was too inefficient at the moment I decided to look over the crystals I got. After picking out one with about 10,000 energy capacity I started filling it out with my cursed energy.

While I did that I also practiced my other skills and within an hour the gem was filled thanks to potion abuse. Now that the gem was filled I could start my most important skill grind.

Curtain.

I want to turn my house into a goddam fortress and this thing would be the key to that. Curtains with my system should be ridiculously flexible. I wanted a safe haven for myself that I could rely on and curtain was the key to that.

And casting curtain proved that. While casting curtain I can imbue it with effects that are related to my skills. For example, I can cast a curtain with the "Chameleon" effect thanks to my chameleon skill.

If I do that the curtain will blur the cursed energy signatures inside making them harder to detect. Perhaps one of the most useful effects I could've gotten as it provides me with anonymity.

Another one I can make is cursed energy sense which would allow me to sense anything that possessed over a certain threshold of CE that entered my curtain.

No simple domain or create undead however for some reason. I also didn't have any utility spells I could imbue my curtains so I would have to figure that out later.

There was also the basic functions of the curtain such as physical barrier capability and non-magical imperceptibility.

At a higher level, I would be able to imbue more techniques and more complex techniques into my curtains as well as setting conditions on the curtain itself.

But it should be said that curtains aren't really useful mid combat they take a while to set in and can be easily interrupted. A truly good curtain is one that is set up beforehand.

I started small by creating a 5-meter curtain in my living room with no special properties.

"Emerge from the darkness, blacker than darkness. Purify that which is impure." I chanted and held my hand out. And from the middle of where I set my curtain to emerge, a black liquid-like wave formed before cascading down in a dome shape that covered the area I wanted.

After a few seconds, the curtain settled into a dome that made the outside look tinted in black yet still let in the same amount of light somehow. Yet I did not look at it for long before dispelling it.

"Emerge from the darkness, blacker than darkness. Purify that which is impure." Let's see how long I can keep doing this until I get tired.

...

I wasn't completely stagnant while practicing Curtain. During my time spent creating and dispelling curtains I read through the book of rituals I had.

There were two rituals in particular that interested me.

First was the undead enhancement ritual. Which allowed me to sacrifice materials such as undead flesh and draugr bone to increase the stats of my undead. This included corpses and basically anything that possessed necrotic energy.

More interestingly was the second ritual.

Undead Construction ritual. Using dead material such as bones, carcasses, flesh I can put them into the ritual circle to construct a full corpse out of them. Well to more specific it is the corpse golem creation ritual.

I can dump a bunch of useless corpse waste onto the circle and it will compile that waste into a lesser corpse golem used by more traditional necromancers. Depending on the materials I put into the ritual I can get better golems.

I can also construct high-level skeletons from the draugr bones I had to create a higher-rank undead. There was also mention of more experienced necromancers being able to construct homunculi from the circle but I didn't need them. There were other rituals such as soul binding, restraining undead, maintaining souls, and other such things.

I would try these rituals later when my necromancer class becomes high enough to perform them. Because there are actually level restrictions on the rituals I can perform.

Now, after several hours of grinding curtain, it was finally at level 20 giving me the ability to imbue 2 techniques into one curtain and lowering the upkeep costs of a curtain. Now, I retreived the 10k energy battery and set it as the core of the curtain so that it wouldn't drain from my CE pool. It was crude and not nearly as effective as an actual commissioned curtain but it would do for now.

The conditions for my curtain were:

Chameleon: Makes it difficult for outside observers to discern energy inside the barrier.

Sense energy: Notifies the user when anyone that possesses a certain amount of cursed energy enters the curtain.

Thanks to the lightweight of these conditions it didn't cost too much to keep this curtain. The gem I placed as the core can last a day or so. I made the curtain cover the entire house including my backyard, and I also specified that the black tint wouldn't show on the inside as it was gloomy.

Now any curious cats or familiars wouldn't be able to spy on me easily. Was this overkill? Maybe but it makes me feel safer. Now with my newfound privacy, I released Fido into the backyard. He nearly reached my neck in height. It seemed like he was rather happy to be let out as he nuzzled into me contently.

After playing with Fido for a few minutes I summoned my skeleton warriors. I needed to practice my swordsmanship and complete its intermediate quest and who better a partner than my own minions?

The intermediate quest for my kenjutsu was simple. Get a kenjutsu skill level 25. But I didn't have one. Although I did know one.

I pulled up videos of Iaido on my phone and had my skeletons hold it for me as I tried to replicate the stance shown. I don't remember the full technique just the principle behind it so it would take a bit to learn. But after managing to get the stance down I mixed it with simple domain and had my skeletons come at me with their shields while I slashed away at them with my Iai stance.

After I managed to get the drawing slash form down I had my skeletons actually attack me as I tried to respond to their attacks. Closing my eyes and only responding by the response from the simple domain. And finally, I put my blade back in its scabbard.

I recalled the theory as I moved my cursed energy into the blade and sheath. The cursed energy surrounded my blade and rotated around it from the tip of the katana giving it propulsive force. And then draw it.

With speeds faster than what my agility should allow I drew the sword and slashed the skeleton in front of me before it could react.

'Quick Draw!'

[ You have created the skill [Quick Draw Lv.1/100] ]

[ Quick Draw Lv.1/100 ]

Cost: Varies

By covering your blade with cursed energy you can greatly improve the drawing speed of your blade to unleash a slash at incredible speeds. Scales with Int and Agi.

After getting this skill I worked my butt off training against my skeletons over and over but as I was practicing late in the afternoon I had taken a break to cook myself some more pancakes when I noticed my curtain ping me about 4 presences entering my curtain.

4 familiar and demonic presences.

What do they want?

Authors note: Your comments and interactions helps motivate me so please write what you thought about the chapter in the comments. I am open to suggestions to help improve my fics.

Also, if anyone has interesting ideas for the random gatcha I will be glad to include those ideas if I like them. You can also recommend characters for the occasional companion card mc may pull from the gatcha.

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