Transmigrated as a Ghost

Listening to Roxene’s explanation, Marcus could understand where she was coming from.

Certainly, Mrazivý as a being closely intertwined with the ice element had a natural weakness to fire. While Roxene being an immortal wolf could still be harmed fairly well by poison which regeneration would do little to help with.

“And as for why you are getting hit by curses is because they are likely the only thing that are truly effective against you. For an entity with a light or darkness affinity normally the opposite would be a weakness, but you are immune to both. Your ghostly nature also makes you immune to poison and death magic, plus any elemental magic not any more effective then simply the power behind the attack. Sure, you can be hurt by fire or lightning from a potent source, but not in the same way as a flesh and blood creature. Even destruction magic which would be as effective against you as anything else can be mitigated if the user does not have the ability to use spiritual energy. Really, the only effective way to attack you without spiritual energy is with curses which can target you even if you go into your ghost form.” Roxene said, giving her speculation.

Hearing this Marcus was quite surprised. He normally pegged Roxene as more of a meathead, but it seemed that she could really use her brain if she had to. Normally only leaving the thinking to Marcus because she does not want to get involved.

“But what reason could it have for doing this?” Marcus asked, hoping she had an answer.

At this she frowned, and said, “I am not sure. This place is sometimes quite sadistic, but there is always a purpose to it. Ultimately this trial is to make us stronger. We need only figure out what that is.”

With Roxene having no good speculation for why the dungeon was subjecting them to attacks from their weaknesses, all they could do was keep moving forward.

“I will let it curse me a few more times to see what happens. The effects against me seem to be the least damaging so it would be better if I act as our guinea pig.”

Unable to refute this, Mrazivý and Roxene stepped away and allowed Marcus to throw himself against the sphere that seemed intent on attacking them with their weaknesses.

‘What sense am I going to lose this time.’ Marcus thought as he touched the sphere.

However, instead of losing one of his five senses, Marcus was hit with a far worse curse.

“What the hell! I cannot move my mana!” He shouted out when the curse took effect.

Swiftly he opened his status and found that the name of the curse that was affecting him now was called mana stagnation.

This curse made it impossible for him to wiled his mana in any way. Whether it be to cast spells or enhance himself.

Having heard him shouting out both Mrazivý and Roxene were incredibly worried and asked him to explain what was going on.

“But if you cannot use your mana that means you cannot cast the healing magic spell that would dispel it. What are we going to do?” Mrazivý said as she began panicking a bit.

Marcus himself was in quite the bad shape. This was the first time he had felt so powerless other than the first time he arrived on this world and slipped into the ground uncontrollably.

‘Get ahold of yourselves. We have other ways to deal with this. Marcus, try using your spirit healing. It does not use mana and should still work.’

Roxene’s voice resounding in their heads, both Marcus and Mrazivý calm down and stop freak out.

Focusing on his spiritual energy Marcus could feel that it was not affected and began enveloping himself in the soft glow of his specter power.

Unfortunately, just using it on himself was unable to break the curse. Though he did feel some sort of resistance in the core of his body where his mana resided.

‘It is like someone has closed the gates and chained them up. I can feel where my mana is, but its flow is being blocked. In that case I need to break the chains and release it.’

Trying once again this time instead of just using his spirit healing on himself and letting the ability act on its own, he channeled it towards his magic core which was being locked up.

He then imagined the healing spiritual energy taking the shape of saws and rapidly cutting through the chains around his magic core.

Time seemed to flow slowly for him as he concentrated harder than he ever had with manipulating spiritual energy and tried to break the curse.

One chain snapped, then another. Followed by more and more breaking apart until the metaphorical gates to his mana were unleashed and the curse was lifted.

With a sigh of relief Marcus let go of his razor focus and collapsed to ground as the tension left him.

‘Wow that was more difficult than I thought it would be. Spirit healing may be able to fix anything but using it to deal with curses is defiantly not easy.’

“Are you alright?” Mrazivý asked as she places a hand on his should in concern.

Reaching up with his own hand, he placed it on top of hers and slowly stood up with a smile on his face.

“Yeah, I am fine now. I managed to dispel the curse with my spirit healing. Though it was harder than I imagined it would be.”

With the news that Marcus was no longer affected by the mana stagnation curse Mrazivý and Roxene both rejoiced.

“For a bit there we were questioning whether to snap you out of the trance you seemed to be in. But you were concentrating so hard we let you keep at it for over an hour and are glad we did not interrupt you.” Mrazivý said.

“Wait it took me more than an hour?!” Marcus said a bit astonished.

He had thought the time seeming to go on forever had just been some trick of the mind since he was embroiled in a difficult task, but it had actually taken quite a while.

“I see. I can only hope I do not get hit with that same curse again. But I suppose all I can do is keep at it.” Marcus said with a sigh.

Resignation on his face he touched the black sphere again and was hit with another curse.

Luckily this time it was not as bad, and he was afflicted with something called enfeeblement which lowered his strength stat.

A quick casting of his healing magic and the new curse was gone just like the others.

Over and over again Marcus got hit by more curses, attempting to figure out what the special dungeon was trying to accomplish. When he finally came across the answer while checking his status.

‘Curse resistance Lvl 1.’

Reading off the newest addition to his skill list, Marcus now understood what this floor was about. It was forcing them to take hits from their greatest weaknesses and gain resistance to them.

‘I still have not cleared the test, but I think this is likely the answer. I probably need to get it to a higher level first. If by the time I have not reached level five it does not seemed to be working, I can think of something else.’

With a new plausible theory to work with Marcus relayed his thoughts to Mrazivý and Roxene.

Both of them agreed with his logic and figured it was worth a shot to test out. Though they both grimaced as they thought about having to suffer through being constantly assaulted by flames and poisoned.

Over the next twenty hours Marcus continued to let himself get hit with numerous different curses, and at this point he had gone through so many he rarely got hit with one he did not already know of.

Then finally after taking hundreds of curses he got the skill up to level four and the sphere stopped hitting him with curses and the dungeon announced that he had succeed.

His curse torture now finished, Marcus jumped up into the air in joy and began celebrating his achievement.

He had gotten through one of the worst trials yet, and no longer had to subject himself to what was essentially hell.

Unfortunately, this meant it was Roxene and Mrazivý’s turn. Now that Marcus was finished, he could stay on standby to heal them whenever their own ‘training’, if it could even be called that, became too much.

Days went by as Mrazivý was constantly engulfed by flames and Roxene had to endure many different poisons.

In both their cases they were never hit lethally, but it was certainly painful. And after losing about an inch of her hair Mrazivý had learned to create an especially strong ice barrier around her head to prevent herself from going bald by the end of this trail.

“Finally, level four fire resistance.” Mrazivý said as she collapsed onto the floor.

The stronger her resistance to fire got the more intense the flames to continue pushing her, but now she had finally reached the level the dungeon was looking for.

Not long after Roxene succeed as well and the black sphere of nightmares disappeared, and in its place appeared three chests.

“These had better be good after all we went through to get them.” Mrazivý said with a frustrated tone.

Marcus and Roxene nodded in agreement. Expecting the torture they had to put up with to have amazing rewards to compensate.