Luna Valero was cursed, but she had no idea what she was cursed with. Because whatever made her cursed in the idiotic brains of others, for her, it was a blessing that made her unique.
'No wonder everyone called me cursed. They hates my uniqueness'
It was the only logical explanation. For sixteen years, she had lived in the forgotten wing of the Hero's grand mansion.
It was basically a palace inside a palace, except it was a prison. She had a nice bed, decent food slid through a slot in the door, and a whole lot of silence.
Luna peeked outside through the keyhole of her room. It was the only gate that exposed her to the outside.
Pretty much everywhere else was blocked by walls, without any windows or ventilators.
She had never met her family. Not really. She'd only seen them from her keyhole, walking through the perfectly manicured gardens.
There was her father, the great Hero Mateo Valero, with his big, important beard. Her mother, whose face was always a perfect mask of elegance.
And her sister, Lucia, who glowed. Literally.
The girl was bonded to an angel and had a permanent halo effect that was probably a nightmare for sneaking around at night.
Luna had tried to call them once. She had tried waving once. Her mother had flinched and pulled Lucia away, like Luna had thrown a curse instead of an ordinary hello.
'Yeah. Definitely jealous of me.'
Her blessing was strange. It didn't give her boils or turn her hair into snakes, which would have at least been interesting. Instead, it just made people hate her on sight.
Maids who brought her food would avoid looking at her. Guards who patrolled her hallway would walk a little faster when they passed her door.
It was like she had a built-in "please despise me" aura.
So, Luna spent her days being bored. She read the same ten books over and over. She counted the chickens in the coop from her keyhole.
Sometimes, when a chicken got particularly annoying with its clucking, she would focus really hard, picturing a tiny pebble from the windowsill flying through the air and... thwack.
One less noisy chicken.
By killing a few hundred ordinary chickens, the weird little box of text once again appeared in her vision.
[You have slain an ordinary chicken.]
[The curse's buff is doubling the EXP.]
[Congratulations! You have reached Level 4!]
'What did this even mean?' Luna leaned her back against the door, tapping it until she heard a footstep cautiously stopping near the door.
"Hello. I became Level 4."
There was silence. Then, the footstep started receding without any reply, but its receding speed was a few times greater than its arrival.
'They are jealous again.'
In the darkness, her light purple pupils rolled a few times.
* *
In the Grand Hall of the capital city of Luz, Prime Minister Mateo Valero rubbed his temples. Being the world-saving Hero was a lot easier than being a politician.
Slaying dragons involved one, maybe two sharp objects. Politics involved a thousand dull ones, mostly in the form of other people.
In his hand was a scroll sealed with obsidian wax, stamped with the claw of a dragon. It was a treaty. The new Demonic Dragon, who had been torching their borders for months, didn't want a fight.
He wanted a wife.
Specifically, Mateo's daughter.
"Absolutely not!" his wife, Elena, sobbed from beside the throne. "You cannot send our Lucia to that monster! He'll eat her!"
Lucia, standing beside her mother, looked pale and tragic. Her bonded angel floated above her shoulder, patting her head with a shimmery hand.
It was all very dramatic.
The King, a man who was king mostly because Mateo had put him on the throne, cleared his throat. "Prime Minister Valero, the proposal is... generous. An end to the war. All he asks for is a political marriage. A standard procedure."
"He is a demon!" Mateo boomed, his voice echoing in the hall.
"A very powerful demon who will burn us all to cinders if you refuse," the King added nervously.
The treaty was already stamped with the royal seal of Albadia. The King had already agreed. This was just a formality.
Elena clutched at her husband's arm, her perfectly painted tears not smudging her makeup at all.
"Mateo, please. There must be another way." Then, her eyes widened, a slow, calculating gleam entering them. "Wait," she whispered, her voice suddenly losing its tearful wobble. "You... you have another daughter."
Mateo froze. The whole room went quiet. He hadn't thought of Luna in months.
"Her?" he finally said, his lip curling in distaste. "She is a curse. A blight on our family name. What do you think would happen if we sent a curse to a demon? Will they cancel each other out, or will they create some kind of super-catastrophe?"
His chief analyst, a stuffy man with glasses, stepped forward.
"Sir, if I may. The girl is Bondless. She has no divine protection and zero combat training. Her chances of surviving a week in the Obsidian Realm are, statistically speaking, zero.
The dragon will likely kill her out of anger. The treaty will be broken, but it will be broken on his end, buying us more time to prepare for war. It is, from a strategic perspective, the most logical move."
Mateo stroked his great, heroic beard. He hated it when the analyst was right. Sending Luna was a win-win.
Either the war ended, or they got rid of the cursed daughter and bought themselves time.
He let out a long, heavy sigh. It was the sigh of a hero making a terrible, necessary sacrifice. At least, that's what he hoped it sounded like.
"Very well," he said gravely. "Prepare the other one."
* *
Luna was in the middle of a very intense staring contest with a spider on her ceiling when her door, for the first time in her memory, was thrown open without a knock.
A swarm of maids descended upon her.
"What the—"