When Iver's fingers touched Dong Ya's waist, he clearly felt her tense up.
She didn't dare dodge Iver's touch, but her body instinctively resisted it. The abdomen tightening unconsciously, the muscles tensing... those were precisely the lingering traces of fear left behind by the Salt Erosion Torture.
Yet when Iver actually touched that petrified flesh, she couldn't help crying out.
A surge of heat instantly spread from the point of contact throughout her body. It was like touching the skin with a scalding-hot towel. But that heat had merely accumulated on the surface of the skin, whereas the heat at this moment was like a needle, slowly and firmly piercing through the petrified scales to touch the bones and flesh beneath.
And Iver clearly felt that something had come alive.
The sensation was like touching a black box filled with insects. The stinging pain of being gnawed, the unfamiliar texture... accompanied by a horrifying sense of contact, it spread inward along Iver's fingers where they touched Dong Ya.
With his special vision, Iver clearly saw wisps of orange-yellow smoke seeping out from the petrified scales and slowly crawling up along his fingers toward his arm. It was like gripping a lit cigarette in his hand, the smoke leaving Iver's skin with an obvious dry itch.
"Interesting..."
Iver grew somewhat interested.
A curse had actually managed to affect him. This was no longer a purely ordinary curse. It must contain some divine essence.
--In other words, this power should have come from the Seventh Level.
It wasn't merely a matter of being a Sixth Level Ritualist. His opponent also possessed a suitable piece of equipment or a special Path Trait, allowing him to gain an additional level of priority.
If Iver hadn't possessed the powerful curse resistance of "Dissolving Soul," the