“Be careful with that!” Siti cried out in terror.

At this point, the last of the villagers had already left, and it was just me, the Grand Master, Siti, and the girls. Salicia was staring at the dagger while Terra was holding it out extremely casually. Siti reached out and plucked it from her fingers extremely cautiously. Terra looked at her with a confused look.

“Why?”

“This knife is poison to anyone from this world!” Siti explained.

“Is it the knife you’re looking for?” I asked worriedly. “Is this the one you were talking about.”

Siti looked at the knife carefully and then nodded. “This is it!”

I looked at the knife in her hands. It was made out of a material that resembled obsidian glass. There was something strangely odd about it, and I noticed that it seemed to have some kind of aura around it. The light immediately around the blade just looked slightly darker than everywhere else. I supposed if there was some kind of dark soul-reaving blade, it would look like that.

“What is it, anyway?” Miki asked, the knife clearly making her uncomfortable.

To a Spiritualist, a soul-reaving knife must have an inherent wrongness to it. As something that could kill the soul on contact, it was an extremely terrifying weapon.

“If this knife cuts someone, it will immediately begin to corrode their soul. After being infected by its essence, you will no longer be able to access mana or use magic. Typically, if the wound is left untreated, the curse will kill you within a day or two. If the wound is fatal or the curse kills you, there is no chance of resurrection, as the soul would already have rotted. Furthermore, those that are killed with this curse are highly likely to end up as curses themselves and become… well…”

“Dungeons.” I finished her words.

I didn’t know that the knife was so deadly. It had a lot of interesting abilities, and it also seemed to have some strange connection with dungeons. I just didn’t know enough about it to know what it meant.

“Then, shouldn’t we destroy the knife now?” Miki asked, still eyeing the blade nervously.

“Not here!” The Grand Master said. “We’ll take it somewhere safe first, and then destroy it there.”

Siti nodded. “It will take me some time to be able to perform the spell that will toss it into the void.”

I nodded. “Fine. Once we’re in Deeksville, I want it destroyed immediately.”

I didn’t mean it to sound like an order, but just looking at that knife gave me the creeps. I couldn’t imagine what someone would do if they obtained the knife with nefarious purposes. I lifted my hands and immediately began to create a Portal. Once it was finished, I started ushering everyone through. There was no saying when the bandits might attack again, especially since the wall no longer had any soldiers on it.

As if having that thought triggered their presence, I heard a trumpet call out, and then the sound of heavy footsteps racing toward the city. It looked like we were going to abandon Regency just in time. The girls started to jump through the Portal one at a time. As the Grand Master came up for his turn, he looked at me and shook his head with a frown.

“After all that looking, you were able to obtain it in seconds. I don’t know what to say.” He sighed. “Perhaps, if I hadn’t been so snobbish and secretive in the beginning, we could have saved a lot of time and lives.”

“It’s fine.” I smiled at him and then held out my hand. “Let’s keep working together in the future. For Aberis.”

He looked down at my arm, and then reached out and grabbed it. “For Abe- geh…”

He suddenly jerked. His eyes looked extremely surprised. I stared at him in confusion as his eyes widened in shock and surprise. Then… I saw a dark blackness creeping up his veins from within his body. His mouth opened, but no words came out. He fell back, and despite my best efforts to hold to his arm clasping mine, he collapsed to the ground, dead.