I Can Copy Curses

Just as the rays of light, one by one, seeped slowly from the lady's body into the spherical ball, Orion, who was drifting in the abyss of nothingness, felt a familiar energy bathing him.

"Is this… chaos energy?"

Orion was certain; he could never mistake the energy he was most attuned to. But confusion flooded his thoughts.n/ô/vel/b//jn dot c//om

"How could chaos energy reach this place? And where am I? Isn't this where everyone goes after they die?" Questions swirled through his mind once more.

He knew he was dead, killed by that god, so he assumed this dark expanse was where all souls drifted after death. But now, with chaos energy reaching his soul, he wasn't so sure if this was truly the resting place for departed souls.

"What's the use of chaos energy if I don't even have a body to use my abilities?" Orion had already tried and confirmed he couldn't see his status screen or activate any of his powers. He wasn't surprised; he was dead, and this was how a dead soul ought to be.

Orion continued floating in the abyss, wondering if it was, in some way, better to be dead. He was free now, no longer responsible for anything. "But why is there still this persistent desire for revenge, even after death? It just won't go away," he sighed, haunted by the unending urge for vengeance.

Was it because of the chaos energy he wielded, an energy heavily reliant on negative emotions, or was this just his nature?

"Does it even matter? I'm dead," he thought, hoping that, with time, his consciousness would fade. He didn't want to remain like this, trapped for eternity in thoughts that refused to die.

"You aren't dead, my friend."

The sudden voice reverberated through his soul, and Orion knew exactly whose voice it was.

"You're… still alive?" Orion asked, shocked.

"I was almost wiped out, but the chaos energy that flowed here stabilized your soul just in time," Grey Orion responded with a wry laugh.

"My soul? Are you… inside me?" Orion asked.

"Fool. You and I are one, so when that stupid god killed you, my body was also destroyed. But something unexpected happened: instead of returning to the Null Void, my soul merged with yours," Grey Orion sneered.

Orion frowned, struggling to understand how this could be possible. "So, you didn't fully die because you didn't go back to the Null Void; instead, you were pulled into me."

"Correct. That man back in the Null Void—Azeron, I believe—did something when he placed me within you. He somehow linked us, so when you died, my soul was drawn to yours instead of returning to the Null Void, resulting in this situation," Grey Orion explained.

"So, what now?" Orion asked.

Grey Orion shrugged. "I don't know. I'm dead, and I have no power to do anything."

"..."

"What do you mean you can't do anything?" Grey Orion asked in frustration.

Orion sighed. "As you can see, I've lost my system and my body. Without them, I can't use my curses, so I'm powerless here, left only to stare into the literal void in front of me."

"Damn! That's all your fault for provoking that god," Grey Orion sighed.

Orion scoffed. "He was just a pathetic god who couldn't even control his own world."

"Anyway, I think we might be able to leave this place once I've gathered enough chaos energy," Grey Orion suggested.

"Leave this place?" Orion frowned. "Do you even know where we are?"

Grey Orion shrugged again. "Not exactly, but I can tell this isn't the end for us. The steady flow of chaos energy into me suggests we're either somewhere within a world or near the Null Void. But if we were in the Null Void, my soul would have dissipated long ago, and the amount of chaos energy flowing into me would be massive. When you died, my connection to the Null Void was also severed."

"But how can we even exist here when we're dead?" Orion mused.

"I've been wondering the same thing," Grey Orion replied. "Death is instant and should obliterate our souls as well. Yet, here we are."

"Do you think that god did this intentionally?" Orion pondered. "Maybe he wanted my soul to suffer for eternity or has some other plan for us. For me?"

"I don't know, but we'll find out once we get out of here," Grey Orion replied. "I'll focus on absorbing as much chaos energy as possible."

With that, Grey Orion fell silent. Orion, too, was quiet, gazing into the void. He knew that only Grey Orion's efforts could disrupt this endless continuum.

"I'm even more useless than he is now," he sighed. Grey Orion could manipulate and absorb the chaos energy around them because his essence originated from chaos. Orion, on the other hand, could feel the chaos energy flowing through him but had no control over it.

Time passed, stretching endlessly.

Minutes became hours, hours became days, days turned into months as Orion waited. He had no sense of time here; he couldn't tell if an hour had passed or an entire month. He only felt a strange peace, though it was tinged with the constant thought of revenge brewing within him.

"I think I can do it now. I've gathered enough chaos energy to break us out of this place," Grey Orion announced suddenly.

"Should I go for it?" he asked. "Wherever we end up, it has to be better than this literal void of nothingness, right?"

Orion sighed and nodded. "Do it. If we're meant to die, then we die. And if we're meant to live, then we live."

"Alright, partner." Grey Orion smiled, focusing all the chaos energy he'd accumulated.

Crack!

A fracture appeared on the spherical ball beside the woman, catching her attention.

"It cracked?" she gasped, reaching to call her husband, but in that instant, the crack spread across the entire sphere, shattering it.

Bang!

A beam of white light shot upward from the broken sphere, piercing the sky and vanishing into the distance.

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