‘Who am I? Oh, since I stuck in your body for now, I might as well indulge you, Voren, ‘Lord of Nine Hells’, ha! You are speaking with one and only Toriaxius Magnificio Daresco the Best!’

I sat down on a tree branch and hid my head under a wing, smearing more blood all over it. The action did nothing the help the headache that this arrogant voice brought me. ‘What do you mean, ‘stuck’? Get out!’

‘It would be my fucking pleasure! Want to get rid of me? You only need to do one small thing.’

‘What is it?’

‘Go to the kobold village, fly to a cook cutting meat, and lie down under its knife. I will immediately disappear, I swear.’

I scoffed inwardly and straightened. ‘Listen here, the Worst. Keep messing with me, and I WILL find a way to get you out of me skull and feast on your corpse.’

‘Oh, what a pain in my nonexistent ass! First these adventurers, then, when I thought I finally got free, you.’ The mysterious creature paused. ‘What the hell ARE you, really? You seem pretty clueless if you have no idea what I am.’

‘As you have already read, I am Voren, Devourer, Apex Predator and Lord of Nine Hells,’ I thought with a strange mix of pride and bitterness. ‘I don’t know about each and every pest inhabiting mortal realm.’

‘Pest? I’m not a fucking pest! People piss in their pants when they hear about likes of me. I’m scarier than tax collectors, more inescapable than the Guild’s contract. I am a draining curse!’

Something clicked in my memory. Something from souls’ tales again. A curse. There weren’t many around, and draining curses… Ah, I recalled now. A mysterious ailment that affected mostly adventurers, though no one knew for sure where it came from. It drained their EXP, diminishing their stats and taking away their abilities and levels until they became victims of monsters. This didn’t bode me well, though…

‘This makes no damn sense. Curses are just, well, sickness like a cold. Can you imagine a cold talking? Well, I can’t, and I can’t imagine a curse talking, either.’

‘If it’s beyond your imagination, dumbass, that doesn’t mean it’s not real. It’s a totally fucking normal thing, actually, for us to talk when we want to.’

I snorted as much as I could through my beak and weighted my situation again. On one hand, the annoying voice in my head was still there, sprouting outlandish bullshit. On the other hand, dead kobold—these was how these lizardfolk were called, wasn’t that what the voice said?—spread the scent of his blood all around.

Early bird gets the worm. For a time, I decided to eat the fruits of my hunt and think about the voice later, so I fluttered down to the still warm kobold and began to pick on his meat and bones.

‘Wow, you have some really strange abilities. You already ate your weight and still didn’t blow up,’ the voice spoke in my head again, his tone both amazed and mocking. By that time I finished with the kobold’s head (tasty, soft brain) and was drinking spinal fluids through his neck.

I ignored the voice for now, though I had a fleeting desire to mock it back. What did he imply—that I was a glutton? I was Devourer, the emperor of gluttony! And the voice could shove his opinions and his venomous tone up his invisible magic ass. Ah, he didn’t have one, right. Then in his mouth where it came from.

Interestingly, the voice appeared to be unable to read my thoughts unless I targeted them at him. It was some relief. My intuition told me that if the voice heard what I just thought, he would’ve reacted.

Good thing that I still could eat and think at the same time, because I had a lot to think about. This voice, in particular. How he called himself? Tori… the Best? The pest, that what he was for now. How and when did I catch him? How much truth was in his words?

‘What are you doing in my head?’ I asked Pest as my body kept mechanically tear and swallow pieces of flesh and bone.

‘Sucking out your EXP and wait for someone to fucking kill you and set me free from your dumb skull since I can’t control you, and I had fucking tried.’ Pest’s sneer was audible. ‘At least you have plenty EXP to steal.’

I paused in alarm. Even though I still couldn’t believe in my heart what Pest was saying—really, a talking curse?—I checked out my character sheet, regardless. Nothing much had changed, except for one line…

EXP: 8263

My INT wasn’t as good as it was, but I remembered that it was 8268 EXP the last time I spent it on anything, and I didn’t burn any EXP in exhaustion. I just lost 5 EXP to… to the draining curse, apparently. In only few minutes.

‘Fuck,’ I swore. Pest’s gleeful laughter was my reply.

There was no way I would just wait for the curse to drain my EXP, then skills and then stats until someone kills me. This what the kobold was sick with, wasn’t it? The draining curse. He moved so slowly because his DEX and STR must’ve been close to zero. I doubt it had much CON and therefore HP either. Somehow I caught the curse from him.

As far as I knew, there was the only thing I could do in this situation, and I went for it with grim determination. Curse or no curse, I had revenge to do.

So I ate faster.