The three cores

The old man led Faye and the king of the mercenaries to a room at the back of the makeshift fort where the woman who once had black spots all over the left side of her body awaited them. She now seemed to have recovered from the calamity's strange ability, but her face was thinner and paler than before.

Inside the room, there was a table with a box in the middle, covered with a translucent green barrier, the same one with which the man had healed Nathan at the time.

"You even covered it with a barrier? Isn't that a bit extreme, Mesto?" Faye said, looking at the box with a raised eyebrow.

"Extreme? You won't be saying that in a moment" The man whose name was Mesto, walked over to the box and snapped his fingers, then the translucent barrier began to fade.

An evil aura began to spread throughout the room, causing Faye to look cautiously at the box. Mesto took a few steps away and the woman paled and clutched her left arm, as if remembering the wounds, she had suffered in the battle against the calamity.

"Now do you find my measurements extreme?" Mesto looked at Faye with slight superiority.

Faye simply ignored Mesto's gaze and walked over to the box before carefully opening it with both hands.

The evil aura amplified, causing Faye to have to use essence to resist the discomfort she was beginning to feel. Mesto did the same and the woman simply retreated to the wall of the room, moving as far away from the table as possible.

The only one unaffected was the king of the mercenaries, who whistled as he looked curiously at the red orb resting on a white cloth.

"Pretty scary, I guess it's worthy of being the core of the curses"

Mesto simply looked at the orb with resentment. He had lost many of his men to the skeletal calamity, Descent of the Curse.

The king of the mercenaries raised his hand, then space began to distort and on his hand appeared out of nowhere an orb the same size as the core of the curses, only this one was completely opaque grey.

Leaving the grey core on the table, king of the mercenaries repeated the process and the air distorted again over his hand, then another orb appeared, this one was completely white and had a mystical glow around it.

"With this we now have the three cores we need" explained Faye, who folded her arms waiting for the king of the mercenaries to arrange the three cores in a row on the table.

Red, grey, and white, the mercenary king stepped away from the table and admired the three cores. 

"The core of curses, the core of edge and the core of divinity"

Each core conveyed a different sensation, the core of curses an evil aura and the core of the edge a sharp sensation, like an invisible edge threatening to cut them at any moment. On the other hand, the divinity core was the most pleasant, as the feeling it conveyed was one of tranquility, counterbalancing the other two cores.

"Are you sure it's going to work?" asked Mesto, looking tensely at the three cores.

Faye was silent for a couple of seconds before speaking as she shrugged.

"No idea"

"..." Mesto looked at her not knowing what to say, he expected an affirmative answer, but was only met with more unknowns.

"It doesn't matter if it works or not, we just have to test it" The king of the mercenaries turned and looked at Mesto.

"Are your men ready yet?"

Mesto nodded in the affirmative.

"Yes, you are the only ones left to be ready"

The king of the mercenaries looked at Faye, who nodded.

"Good, then"

The king of the mercenaries passed his hand over the three cores, and they disappeared, leaving a slight distortion in space.

"Let's pay the duke a little visit"

***

Nathan stared at the door of his room with a somber expression. Almost an hour had passed since he had heard the arrival of Faye and the others, since then the atmosphere had become turbulent inside the fort.

Everyone seemed to be running around, preparing for something. Some were even saying things about the end of their suffering, the time to fight, or the time to escape.

Nathan simply shook his head.

'What could they have discovered to make them act like this?'

Suddenly an orb of white light burst through the door, then approached the bracelet on Nathan's wrist and disappeared.

'What did you see?' Nathan asked when he saw that Amelia had returned.

'Almost nothing, I can't be far away from you. I just know that everyone is excited and scared at the same time'

Nathan rested his head on his hand and closed his eyes as he grimaced.

'That's annoying... well, never mind, let's just wait a little longer and that's it'

With that said, Nathan waited silently in the room while he played with the necklace around his neck. Then after almost an hour of waiting, the noise outside his room had disappeared.

Curious, Nathan came out of his room and noticed that everything was empty.

'Is everyone gone?'

Amelia watched everything through his eyes, nodding at his words.

'So it seems... even the civilians left with them'

Nathan left the room and began to walk through the now abandoned fort. He noticed that they had taken everything important with them, such as the supplies they had gotten over time.

Nathan approached the exit of the fort... although it was only a corridor with several pieces of furniture obstructing the entrance for the calamities.

The corridor was a mess, dozens of mutilated calamity corpses lay around the edges, with blood filling the floor.

Most of the corpses of the calamities had already been there for a long time, but Nathan noticed how some of the bodies were still fresh.

Moreover, the trail of blood from the corpses led him straight to where they had all gone.

Then, placing the great sword on his back, Nathan began to follow the trail of dead bodies of calamities, without hope. In the end, if there was a way out of the realm, it was either by dying or by killing all the calamities.

'I wonder where they're headed...' Amelia wondered to herself as Nathan dodged the corpse of a calamity with a long stride.

'No idea, maybe they found a better place to locate the fort'

Nathan passed the corpse of the calamity and stopped momentarily. He looked back and saw what a mess the hallway was from another vantage point.

'I've never seen so many corpses together...'

Not even counting the hundreds of tribal calamities he had killed in the swamp, they did not add up to the amount of corpses he saw around him. Although these had accumulated in the two months since they had all arrived at the castle.

Nathan himself had already killed several dozen calamities on his own... though they were not as strong as the ones in this place. Just by looking at the bodies, he could see the difference in strength of the calamities he usually faced in the residential area.