The old lady looked at me blankly in response to my question and then.
“On the contrary…” “Grandma would never do such a thing!”
I was about to ask her the reasons for her decision, but Nanalee interrupted me.
“I told you to shut up your mouth”
The old lady, in spite of her advanced age, strangled Nanalee with her claws and covered her mouth. Nanalee, squirming, she says.
”Damn it, I told you to get out of town by night, and here you are:……. Well? You there, do you have any proof that this woman casted the curse?”
Now, let’s say I’m a rank A ‘appraiser’. Then what would the old lady do?
Will she claim that it was so cleverly covered up that they were unaware of it? Therefore, it wasn’t her..
But what if I confront her with circumstantial evidence that she is the only person in the neighbourhood who can cast a curse of that magnitude?
The argument is lost. It would be a very difficult situation, if not impossible.
But the old lady still insists on cutting the white cloth.
It wasn’t me. I didn’t do it. The town was devastated because of the lack of effort on the part of the lords and the townspeople.
And when the sentence is handed down, she will say.
–I will curse you who have falsely accused me of a crime I did not commit.
I think it’s all twisted.
Trouble is, the old lady was “deliberately trying to get caught” again, even after we took her away.
She has already told Nanalee where the money she has been secretly storing for years is, and she wants us to take it and run far away.
She’ s going to tell the townspeople and the lords that she’s going to ‘curse’ them anyway.
Not that I was offended by her provocative attitude, but I decided to threaten her instead of showing her the evidence.
I said, “Are you sure? If you don’t confess your guilt at this point, Nanalee might be under suspicion this time, don’t you think?”
The old lady’s expression became stern.
Technically speaking, there was one more person who could be cursed with the “Curse of Decay” in that town.
I looked at Nanalee, who was being held in her arms by the old woman.
She has the unique skill “Sorcery,” rank A. I think it’s a great achievement for such a young person. It was even higher than the old lady’s “Sorcery” rank B.
(T/N: “Jutsu” translated to “Sorcery”, it can be replaced with “Magic” but it didn’t sound good as a skill.)
The old lady’s expression turned into a nasty smile.
“Hee-hee-hee, everyone in town knows that Nanalee can’t use Sorcery.”
Yes, it was. That’s what the old lady wanted, too.
–If you curse someone, it will come back to you.
That’s what Nanalee murmured.
The old woman had been telling Nanalee this since she was a little girl.
Every time.
Even in front of the townspeople.
Whenever she tried to get involved in Sorcery.
And so, for the fearful Nanalee, these words were engraved in her mind like a “curse”.
That’s why she can’t do it.
She is too scared to get involved in “Sorcery,” so she doesn’t know how to do it.
Therefore, she cannot curse anyone, break the curse, or do anything related to the “curse”.
That is what everyone in the town believed and never doubted.
Even if she has the rank A quality of the unique skill “Sorcery” that surpasses that of her grandmother who is a renowned “Sorceress”.
“It was your grandmother who made you do it, wasn’t it? Nanalee, you have tremendous talent, but what a waste.”
“So you are a high-ranking “appraiser” after all. Well, a man from a different field can say that with ease. Well? Kid. There is no such thing as a ‘Sorcerer’.”
Nanalee, who had been trying to escape, suddenly became quiet.
“The “sorcerer” is a specialist in the art of breaking spells,” she said, “It is like a doctor who saves people who have been cursed by cursed items or cursed demons.”
But the public’s opinion is different. Like me, I was under the misconception that exercising curses was their main business.
“I have seen thousands and thousands of shallow people. Those who think of ‘sorcerers’ (us) as nothing more than mere ‘curse-makers’ (sorcerers).”
The old woman, who had made a name for herself in King’s Town, finally grew tired of it. When her only son became independent, she wandered from place to place, earning her living by unraveling curses.
When she heard that her son and his wife had died in an accident, she visited the countryside where they had lived.
In a forest some distance away, there was a curse-spewing magical beast that could yield valuable materials. By the time the beast was hunted to death, the couple decided to retire. With this in mind, she decided to take in her granddaughter, who was left alone, and settle down.
That is the town where they live now.
It was a prosperous town as a base for hunting magical beasts.
At first, the residents of the town gladly accepted the old woman.
The old woman was so tight-lipped that she said, “I don’t do curses. I only lift curses. Curses come back to you,” she always said.
“But there are shallow people everywhere.”
After a while, late at night, people from the town would come to visit the old lady in turn.
A lover was taken from her. A business partner asked for too much. Her mother-in-law nagged her.
While complaining and grumbling, they said this to the old lady.