You Cursed a Demon God??

The priestess, who had been slaughtering her way through the battlefield, suddenly turned to look at Yveta.

Yveta was the main reason the Children of the Forest had been exposed. But the priestess couldn't get to him just then; three courageous human knights stood in her way, determined to bring her down.

The Hearthstone Great Witch said, "I think that priestess is after you, Your Grace."

"We shouldn't fight someone who's burning through her own life."

"If we can just stall for a few hours, she'll wear herself out. There's really no need to fight her."

Yveta nodded in agreement.

Exploiting an enemy's weakness was the best course of action.

And the biggest problem with being a priest was that you couldn't keep going for long.

They were about to leave the battlefield when the Treant Person Leader, holding a Knight Sword and clutching the wound in his chest, blocked their way.

The Children of the Forest leader, Ji, snarled, "Don't think you're getting away, you bastard!"

The Old Witch blinked, then said, "Were you hit by a Damage Curse earlier?"

The Children of the Forest leader, Ji, also paused. "So what if I was?"

The Old Witch breathed a sigh of relief. "Then that's nothing to worry about. Let's go, Your Grace."

"A Damage Curse isn't like a cut from an ordinary sword. It's a vicious spell that causes the wound to turn into some kind of rotting, human-pus-like substance, steeped in malicious magic. Normally, only someone harboring deep malice could cast it."

"But some of your magic seems to contain malice on its own, so you don't need to harbor any yourself. And that part of your magic has even raised the Damage Curse's power to the strength of a spell cast by a Formal Wizard."

"That guy's already useless."

Only then did Yveta realize that the Children of the Forest leader, struck by his Damage Curse, had lost the ability to fight long ago.

They had reached the hall's entrance and were about to escape. The Treant Person Leader, who was supposed to stop them, tried to sprint after them.

But the moment he exerted himself, thick yellow-black liquid began oozing from his wounds, giving off a foul stench.

He collapsed to the ground, and nearly got killed by a Knight Attendant who had spotted his chance.

That was the trouble with a melee.

It wasn't one-on-one. You could easily die from a rock flying at you, or from a sword thrust by some unremarkable figure nearby.

If a Treant Person hadn't noticed what was happening and rushed to help, Ji would have died by the Knight Attendant's sword.

Meanwhile, the Children of the Forest priestess tried to pursue them, but the three knights held her back. She smashed one knight away with a giant's fist, then stomped on another. But a third knight used his smaller size to slip behind her, then wildly slashed and stabbed at her heels with his Knight Sword.

He kept making the Children of the Forest priestess bleed.

The priestess turned and punched that knight, but by then she could no longer catch up with Yveta.

Seeing Yveta and the others nearly out the door, she flashed a furious look. "I prophesy that the human named Yveta—"

Yveta paused. A prophecy?

He remembered the Forest Duke he'd met earlier.

No way. Is this woman trying to curse me to death?

The Old Witch was taken aback too, then burst into delighted laughter.

"Your Grace, we have a way to deal with her."

"She's actually going to prophesy about you."

She was actually going to prophesy about a demon god.

Although divination in the witchcraft system and prophecy in the priest system were two different things,

witches used divination to speculate about good and bad fortune in the future, while priestesses' prophecies were more like curses.

They prophesied about the future according to their own wishes. In essence, it was a form of Curse Technique.

But there was one thing both systems had in common.

You absolutely could not prophesy or divine the future of a being with immense spiritual power.

Otherwise, something disastrous would happen.

The Children of the Forest priestess was clearly afraid Yveta and the others would escape. In her desperation, she had resorted to her curse.

"I prophesy—The human named Yveta will die before me."

"His heart will fail under the strain, and his blood will begin to clot until it stinks."

The Children of the Forest priestess was taking a gamble. She bet that Yveta's level wasn't high, because this Curse Technique couldn't be used against someone of equal rank.

Even against a Knight Attendant, it could only make the target temporarily ill.

Still, all she needed was for the curse to affect Yveta.

Even if it only slowed him down for a while, that would be enough to stop him from getting away.

The Children of the Forest priestess did this for three reasons. First, she thought Yveta had limitless potential and feared that, if he continued to grow, he would become a tremendous threat to the Children of the Forest.

Second, she simply wanted revenge and wanted to be the first to kill him here.

Third, she had just seen Yveta and the witch beside him holding the Ambrose's Forbidden Book.

It was a book that must never fall into human hands.

So she cast a curse—or, rather, made a prophecy.

In an instant, the vicious look in the Children of the Forest priestess's eyes turned to shock.

The spiritual power the curse consumed in that moment was simply too great.

"No! Why does cursing a child require such a terrible price?"

Disbelief flashed through the Children of the Forest priestess's eyes. She tried to stop the curse, but too much spiritual power had already poured out in that instant.

It was like a dam bursting. There was no controlling the torrent.

She couldn't stop the prophecy.

Normally, the prophetic abilities of low-level priests were relatively safe.

Their level was too low, so the price they paid was limited.

They weren't at risk of dying immediately; at most, they would lose some years of their life.

But in that instant, the Children of the Forest priestess's body shriveled. Her once imposing, godlike Little Giant form turned into a withered, emaciated husk.

And she kept shrinking.

In the blink of an eye, her body had become skin and bones.

Even her bones continued to deteriorate. They grew so brittle with age that they began to crack.

The giant the priestess had become now looked as if she had been drained dry, with nothing left but skin.

That was the price she paid for cursing Yveta.

The spiritual mist she had summoned also vanished.

The knights present rallied and fought back with renewed vigor. The Treant People, on the other hand, grew listless and much weaker once the mist was gone.

Soon, most of the Treant People present had been cut down.

The remaining Treant People saw that the tide had turned and fled.

The Treant Person who had impersonated Anger secretly helped the Treant Person leader, Ji, to his feet. They jumped out the window, landed on the lawn below, then ran off like a pair of stray dogs.

The priestess remained in her pitiful, skin-and-bones giant form. She knelt in the hall and lowered her head, her breath faint as she said to Yveta, "You aren't human."

The next moment, she died.

The triangular altar beneath her feet shattered. The Ancient Tree Soul seemed to wail over the death of its priestess, hurling furious curses at all the humans present. But with no priestess there, it couldn't take revenge on them, and could only fade away helplessly.

The battle was over.

Many people were relieved to have survived. Some stabbed every Children of the Forest corpse with their swords to make sure none of them were playing dead, while others insisted on checking every human in case a Children of the Forest was hiding among them.

Many of the knights present looked toward Yveta.

They silently wondered what the giant-like priestess had meant when she said, just before dying, that he wasn't human.

Yveta looked at them and shrugged. "Everyone... I have something important to tell you."

Everyone tensed at once.

Were there still enemies here?

"Don't be nervous," Yveta said. "I mean, hurry up and get someone to put out the fire!"

"And gather troops at the castle immediately. The Children of the Forest may have retreated, but we still need to guard against a counterattack. I don't know whether the Baron's Territory has a large force of the Children of the Forest, but they seem determined to seize the barony."

Yveta was worried that, now that they couldn't take the territory through deception, the Children of the Forest would attack it head-on.

Some knights followed his instructions, while a few old retainers of the Moro Family were left confused.

Why was an outsider giving them orders?

Had he taken command here?

Branton didn't say a word!