Chapter 381: Anxiety And Fears

Claire lay there in the quiet dungeon room, thinking back to that day. The old man had been incredibly vague with his description back then. But she had received a few strange dreams as she grew older, and she slowly learned exactly how her divine blessing actually worked.

It was a pretty simple, but incredibly dangerous double-edged sword type of blessing.

Well, the double-edged sword aspect came entirely from the attached curse.

The blessing itself allowed her to select exactly one person in her lifetime, and once that choice was made, it could never, ever be changed. The one person that she picked would have their soul and their body permanently linked to hers.

And as long as Claire was alive, the person she chose could not die. They could be brutally injured, they could be beaten within an inch of their life, and they could be left bleeding out on a battlefield, but they would never actually cross the threshold of death. The only way the chosen partner could die was through natural, old age causes.

It was a ridiculously strong blessing if used right. But the curse attached to it was the one thing that gave Claire a massive, terrifying disadvantage. It was the one thing that had made her think a thousand times before she ever considered picking a partner, and it was the sole reason why she had never picked anyone until today.

She could use the Soul Link on anyone she wanted, but the curse did not allow her to receive the life-saving effects herself.

That meant if someone killed her, she would die like anyone else. But if someone tried to kill her chosen partner, they would literally be unkillable as long as her heart was still beating.

But of course, this also meant that the one she picked could, in fact, just kill her whenever they wanted to sever the connection. This was because once the person was picked, the power of the blessing would grow based on time and closeness. After a certain point, both of them could tell what the other was feeling. And they could tell if the other was lying or not.

The was such a powerful, reality bending blessing, but it also had the inherent capability to automatically grant the selected person the full knowledge of how the blessing and the curse actually worked as time passed.

Which wasn’t exactly a great thing to happen if the person Claire selected turned out to be a cunning, ruthless person who wouldn’t think twice about killing her after making use of her immortality buff once or twice. She had met multiple high-ranking nobles in the capital. She had seen how they operated, and those experiences had made her incredibly hesitant to ever trust people easily.

Claire slowly sat up on the dungeon floor.

She weakly punched the cold stone floor beside her leg.

"Stupid Adrian," she whispered into the empty room. "I hate you."

Her voice shook as she spoke, and so did her trembling lips. A second later, she just broke down and burst out crying.

The thought of losing him today had been too hard to bear.

But now that she had actually used her blessing, the one single choice that she could never reverse, she was absolutely terrified. She was terrified of the one thing that had haunted her nightmares multiple times over the years.

"Please don’t make me regret this," she sobbed softly into the empty room. "Please don’t change. Please continue being exactly who you are."

As she sat there crying, she continued to spiral into overthinking.

The horrific image of Adrian completely beaten up by the High Elves flashed into her mind. She knew that he could not die out there anymore, not when she was sitting right here in the safety of this weird, dark and empty room she knew nothing about.

But she did not wish to see him like that ever again.

The blessing could easily become a horrifying curse if certain things happened.

She opened her trembling lips and slowly muttered aloud.

"What if he loses his arms and his legs?" she whispered in terror. "He would have to be entirely bedridden for the rest of his life, and he will not be able to die because I am still alive. Won’t he hate me? Won’t he absolutely despise me because he has to suffer through all of that agony just because my blessing wouldn’t let him die?"

She clenched her fists tightly.

She started to weakly punch the hard stone ground over and over again until her knuckles started bleeding.

She finally stopped, pulled her head back, glared up at the dungeon ceiling, and just let out a loud, agonizing scream of pure frustration.

And then, she looked back down before muttering, "What if he... what if everything I’ve seen is nothing but an act? If he survives this and comes out well and healthy... and then he finds out about the blessing, I wonder what he will do. What if he just locks me in here to use the blessing to it’s fullest extent?"

As she thought of this, she couldn’t help but start crying again, and a few minutes later, a glowing rectangular portal suddenly opened up right beside her.

Adrian looked through the portal at Claire, who was sobbing uncontrollably on the dungeon floor.

He didn’t really have the energy to talk to her across the little bit of distance, so he slowly turned his head to look at Aria.

But before Aria could even say anything, Claire noticed the sudden surge of light flooding into the dark dungeon room. She quickly turned her head to look.

Through the open portal, she saw Adrian outside in the battlefield. He was collapsed on his knees, with blood dripping down his chin and pouring out of both of his nostrils. His eyes looked incredibly bloodshot, and there was actually blood seeping out of the corners of his eyes too, making it look almost like he was crying bloody tears.