n-/In

Out of the dead bodies, a strange dark smoke appeared and made its way toward Raze. It entered through the pores of his skin, connecting with his Dark core inside and lighting up the ring on his finger.

[Dark Attribute: 18]

"Well, that's one way to confirm their death," Raze thought.

The effect of having a Dark magic core was that certain actions would increase one's affinity with dark magic, and one of them was taking a life. Having taken two lives, he had an increase of two points, but the expression on Raze's face didn't look like he was pleased at all.

His eyes were fixed on the large man who was lying flat on the floor. His head wasn't bleeding, even though there was a hole through it. It was one of the effects of using Dark Magic.

"I told myself that I wouldn't do stuff like this again," Raze said, as he raised both hands to the side of his head. If all his hair wasn't white already, he was sure some of it would have started to grey due to the stress. "Who am I kidding? Knowing me, it was always going to turn out like this. I just didn't think it would happen so soon. I guess I need to try and sort something out."

The first thing Raze did was partially open the outside door and turn the wooden signboard that was hung from "open" to "closed." He then closed the door and locked it, making sure no one could get inside.

Now he needed to figure out what to do with the bodies. Searching around the area, he looked at the items to come up with some sort of plan, and eventually, he found a couple of swords.

It wasn't so uncommon for the general public to carry around weapons, even if they weren't Pagna warriors, and Raze could use this in his favor.

The first thing he did was drag the body from behind the counter around to the main floor of the shop. Shortly after, he braced himself for a few moments.

"People like you guys don't tend to have families, right, or anyone that loves you? Yeah, I mean, look at their ugly faces. They would be lucky to even be compared to a potato," Raze told himself as he shoved the sword deep into the shop owner's chest. Now blood did start to pour on the ground.

Similarly, Raze had to do the same with the large man, but with another weapon. The main issue was he had to stab through a skull, which was a lot harder work than he thought. In fact, with his strength, it was near impossible.

In the end, the man's head was unrecognizable, and Raze wasn't sure if it was better or worse. After creating a few more stab wounds with each other's weapons, though, he was finally done and covered in sweat, sitting down on the ground away from the crime scene he had created.

"A disagreement between business partners in the pawn industry, that doesn't sound too far-fetched. Maybe them two killing each other at the same time is a bit dramatic, but it will have to do," Raze thought.

"It's unlikely that they would ever pin the blame on me anyway, and the Red Brigade Clan has been investigating a string of murders, so what's one more to add to the list? I'm just a weak, fragile boy in their eyes anyway."

Taking a look at the crime scene one more time, Raze wished he still had his expertise in magic to spice it up a bit, but it would have to do. He was counting on one thing, though.

"Having touched everything and everyone, my fingerprints are all over the place. They won't have anything that will allow them to pin this on me. Heck, even if they did have a fingerprint system, they wouldn't have mine."

There were two reasons why Raze had come to the pawn shop. One of them was to sell the crystal, but after selling the crystal, he had planned to buy a few items.

"Now that there is no shop owner, that just means all the items in here are free, right?" Raze started to look around with this thought in mind.

In his possession were still four crystals, and there was no longer a need for him to sell them for income. Right now, he was looking for items that he could enhance with black magic that would give him the best effect.

"The trickiest part in all of this is because of my black magic, every item that I enhance will have a cursed effect."

In the end, Raze had selected a few items to enhance, and with the shop floor being relatively large, he could do his enhancements right there on the shop floor. The first item he had chosen was a black robe.

There weren't many figures that went around walking in black robes, at least not Pagna warriors, but they were also sold in quite a few places. He could understand, since a robe wouldn't protect one from a sword whereas armor would.

However, he did remember seeing some of the Pagna warriors in the portal world wearing light clothing as well, and there was also the founder of the Dark faction. The statue that the children were made to clean. He also wore a robe that covered up his face.

"Maybe that's why so many robes are for sale but not many people wear them?" Raze thought as he was drawing up the magic circle underneath.

He remembered a lot of the basic enhancements, and the Dark magic would always make it slightly better than what he had learned. But the one thing he never knew about was what type of curse effect the item would have.

Placing the magic crystal down, with the magic emitting from his hands, it swirled down and activated the circle. The crystal was starting to break down, and the robe started to glow with a faint purple on the outside.

The crystal had completely disappeared, and the robe fell back to the floor.

"Show me your effects," Raze asked. Black magic whispered out of his mouth, reacting with the robe, and an image started to appear in front of him, written out.

[A basic Cursed Robe]

[...]

[]