Chapter 2: Please Don’t Sacrifice Yourself, Wife

Chapter 2. Please Don’t Sacrifice Yourself, Wife

My amusement vanished.

Thin wounds crossed my chest.

Another along my shoulder.

Several shallow cuts marked my forearm.

Some were already drying.

Others looked recent.

I touched one.

Sharp pain shot through me. "Tch!"

Real.

I looked down at myself again.

Blade.

Blood.

Messy clothes.

Dark ritual chamber.

That seemed... Concerning.

A soft voice came. "Do it, Rey."

I went still.

It sounded like a female.

"If it could calm you down..."

My gaze moved slowly downward.

"I will give you my life."

There was a woman on the floor.

No.

Not exactly a woman.

A mermaid.

My mind simply stopped for a second.

She lay inside a vast ritual circle engraved into the black stone beneath us, long blue hair spreading around her shoulders like flowing water. Her upper body was humanoid, wrapped in a thin ceremonial garment decorated with pearls and silver chains.

Below her waist...

A long turquoise tail rested across the glowing formation.

Individual scales caught the violet light.

Beautiful.

She was stunning enough that my brain briefly attempted to classify her bone structure before basic morality kicked the researcher out of the driver’s seat.

Her eyes were blue.

Wet from tears.

She looked afraid. But not of me.

That was the strange part.

She looked afraid for me.

The system flashed again.

[Ariel Nerelle]

[Race: Mermaid]

[Bloodline: Royal Nerelle Sea Bloodline]

[Identity: Princess of the Nerelle Sea Tribe]

[Relationship to Host: First Wife]

I blinked.

Wife?

[Historical Record Summary:]

[Ariel Nerelle was rescued by Rey Valen during the Dark Lord War after the Nerelle Sea Tribe was attacked by corrupted sea beasts.]

[She later married Rey Valen following the victory of the Five Heroes.]

[Current Emotional State: Fear / Grief / Resolve / Love]

[Affection toward Rey Valen: Extremely High]

I stared at the last line.

Extremely high?

Ariel swallowed. Her hands trembled against the stone.

Yet she didn’t move away.

Didn’t struggle, nor scream.

She simply looked at the knife in my hand and gave me the saddest little smile I had ever seen. "Please," she whispered.

My stomach tightened.

"Don’t hesitate because of me."

My eyes dropped toward the ritual circle.

There were blood channels.

Mana conduits.

Soul-binding points.

A central extraction array beneath Ariel’s body.

My researcher instincts activated instantly.

Sacrificial formation.

Advanced.

Extremely advanced.

And... I slowly looked back at the knife.

Then Ariel.

Wait.

My brain finally connected several very inconvenient facts.

Rey Valen.

Five wives.

Forbidden magic.

First sacrifice.

Ariel Nerelle.

My mouth went dry.

No... I knew this event.

Everyone did.

It was in every major historical textbook.

The Sacrifice of Ariel Nerelle.

It marked as the true beginning of Rey Valen’s descent into madness.

According to history, Rey dragged his first wife into a forbidden chamber and attempted to sacrifice her for power.

She begged.

She resisted.

She cried for mercy.

And he killed her anyway.

My eyes narrowed.

But... Ariel wasn’t restrained.

No chains. No magical bindings. No paralysis curse. Nothing.

She could leave.

She had clearly chosen not to.

"Ariel."

Her eyes widened slightly. "Yes, my love?"

The phrase hit me strangely.

Not because she called me that.

Because there was no hatred in it.

None.

I stared at her. "You... want me to do this?"

Her lips trembled. Fresh tears gathered. "No."

My chest tightened.

Then she continued. "I don’t want to die."

My hand lowered slightly.

"But I want to lose you even less."

...

Even my emotions couldn’t keep up with this.

Ariel drew a shaky breath. "If my life can calm you... if it can stop this... then I accept it."

My skin went cold.

Calm me?

Stop what?

I didn’t understand.

And judging by the blood on Rey’s body, there was clearly quite a lot I needed to understand very quickly.

I looked down at Ariel.

Then, because apparently the glowing thing living inside my head was the only customer service department available in this century, I whispered, "System... tell me what happened."

The system didn’t answer.

Pain did.

It hit so suddenly that my knees almost shattered against the floor.

"—ARGH!"

The ritual blade slipped from my fingers.

-CLANG!

Something tore through my chest.

It felt as if invisible hands had reached inside my body, grabbed every nerve, every muscle, every vein, and decided they all belonged in different directions.

My back arched. "ARGGGHHH!"

Black mana burst from my skin.

The chamber shook.

The candles around the sacrificial formation went out at once.

Cracks raced across the marble beneath my palms.

"What the hell is this?!"

My lungs seized.

Heat crawled through my bones.

Then came cold.

Then heat again.

Then something twisted around my heart and squeezed.

I had studied curses.

Thousands of them.

Ancient curses.

Bloodline curses.

Soul curses.

Mana parasites.

Forbidden spell recoil.

There were entire books describing what it felt like to have your mana channels eaten from the inside.

None of them had described this.

"No forbidden spell mentioned this!" I snarled. Because apparently my response to supernatural agony was academic outrage. Good to know death hadn’t changed me.

"Rey!"

Ariel’s voice cut through the ringing in my ears.

I barely managed to lift my head.

Her tail shimmered.

Water mana wrapped around her lower body, blue light spiraling upward.

Scales dissolved.

The long mermaid tail separated smoothly into two pale human legs.

Under other circumstances, that would have been fascinating.

I would’ve had questions.

Many questions.

Unfortunately, I was busy dying for the second time today.

Which felt excessive.

Ariel stumbled out of the formation.

She nearly fell on her first step, caught herself against the altar, then rushed toward me. "Rey!"

She dropped beside me and wrapped both arms around my body.

Her skin was cool.

And somehow that helped.

Only slightly.

"Rey, stay with me!"

"I—" My teeth clenched. "Trying!"

Her arms tightened.

Water mana flowed from her hands into my back.

The blue light entered my body.

For one beautiful second, the pain weakened.

Then black energy erupted through it.

Ariel gasped.

The water magic shattered into mist.

"What...?"

She stared at my chest.

Dark veins spread beneath my skin.

Not actual veins.

Mana channels.

Corruption.

They pulsed once.

Pain detonated again. "GAH!"

Ariel grabbed my face. "Look at me!"

I did. Mostly because she had physically forced my head toward her.

Her blue eyes were terrified.

Not for herself.

For me.

Again.

That was becoming increasingly inconvenient to my understanding of history.

"Breathe," she whispered. "Please. Just breathe."

I inhaled.

Nearly screamed.

Exhaled.

Definitely screamed.

Then the system finally decided that perhaps now would be a wonderful time to participate.

[Emergency Status Analysis Complete.]

[Name: Rey Valen]

[Race: Human]

[Title: Royal Magus]

[Arcana Rank: Corrupted Magus]

[Curse Stability: 1%]

[Emotional Instability: 84%]

I stared at the numbers through blurred vision. ’One percent?’

That sounded less like stability and more like a statistical courtesy.

Another notification appeared.

[Warning.]

[Current curse structure is approaching catastrophic instability.]

"No kidding!"

Ariel flinched. "Who are you talking to?!"

"Complicated!"

The system continued.

[Current system architecture is incomplete.]

[Host possesses sufficient magical knowledge to establish a personalized progression structure.]

[Please determine the desired method for taming the curse.]

I almost laughed. It came out more like a dying animal.

"You want me to tell you?"

[Correct.]

"What curse?!" I slammed one fist into the stone. "You haven’t told me a damn thing!"