The Strongest Curse Master

"Ava, you can bring flowers or a garland," Layla spoke through Ava' curse smartphone and the latter nodded. Meanwhile, I was struggling with how to break it to them that they weren't invited. Before I could, Layla asked, "When is the funeral?"

"I will text you the details when everything is set," I said, unable to find the words to break it to them, seeing their earnestness. But I did warn Ava, "You need to behave yourself around the cyborg animals. They are not your pets, but beings with sentience. Otherwise, I will personally kick you out."

"Don't worry, I know what I did wrong. After the funeral, we will be best of friends. Just you see," Ava assured me solemnly but for some reason, something told me that whatever she was planning would blow up in my face.

"Great," I uttered, not wanting to waste breath and let nature take its course. I was done trying to control every little detail. Besides, it was too late now. I should have never caved and invited them to the funeral.

"Ava, if you plan to attend the funeral, we better finish the team practice session first," Layla said using the funeral as leverage. Knowing that her usual combination of begging and threatening was losing its effect on Ava.

"Fine," Ava agreed reluctantly. She wanted to spend more time with the boy, but knew he was busy and she would become a nuisance to him. Therefore, she decided to clear up her schedule first. Besides, she had a pretty decent conversation with him. That should last for a couple of hours.

"Ace, see you later." Ava bid the boy goodbye before transforming into a beam of light and shooting into the sky.

Making sure Ava had left, I decided to show my face to my parents while I checked up on Dame Wasp and see if she could spare one of the speclimes. Without a toy summons capable of helping me deal with the network, I felt crippled. Specarc or Specorc or Specwork were more than capable of filling the gap left by the absence of Dame Wasp in my ranks.

Yes, earlier I stubbornly didn't plan to disturb Dame Wasp even when the curse terrorist came knocking at our door or the curse caster's innate tool was right in front of. But since then a lot has changed and if I plan to keep my promise to Dee3 and my cyborg animal friends, I need someone who can break into the local C.I.B. servers and surveillance systems to guide me as I orchestrate a heist to steal Mr. Birdie's curse prosthetics from their Property & Evidence Unit.

I could ask Dee3 for help, but something told me she wouldn't like to help with another heist, even if this one was for her. Besides, I didn't want to put her in a position where she would compromise her ideals. This was very important to me. I would rather break my promise than force my friends and family into something they weren't comfortable with.

As I headed towards my house, my curse smartphone received a text with an encrypted file through a secured network from an unknown contact ID. The text read, 'This is the best I can do, rest is up to you.'

'Whose is this?' I wanted to reply to the text, but seeing the charges of sending a single text on this secured network, I stopped as all the money was managed by Dame Wasp and my personal accounts barely had ten dollars. Somehow, I had access to all the money in the world, yet I was still a pauper.

Shaking my head, I used the status screen to ask DD, 'Help me convey to Specroll to decrypt this file.'

Compared to the other Speclimes that learned my native language in seconds, Specroll had yet only managed to learn the bare minimum of the basics and still needed complex commands to be conveyed to it in hexadecimal. Fortunately, DD learned the Speclime's native language with her strong foundation in mathematics, finding their language interesting.

After DD conveyed my order to the Specroll, it didn't take long for it to decrypt the file. Though it wasn't as smart as the other Speclimes, the file's encryption was too primitive compared to what it was used to dealing with. So, it didn't pose a challenge to it.

I wasn't afraid of the file being a trap, because the OS Dame Wasp specifically made for my smartphone was too advanced for whatever this world's curse techs could throw at it. Therefore, I opened the file without a second thought to find that it contained the information about where Mr. Birdie's prosthetics were stored and detailed blueprints of the local C.I.B. branch headquarters marked with a path through it avoiding its curse tech surveillance system.

It even contained a detailed plan of how one could break into its property and evidence unit without getting caught to get Mr. Birdie's curse prosthetics. It even involved information such as when was the best time to break in, staff rotation timings, the personnel to look out for, their habits, etc.

Going through the file and processing it, I knew for sure that it was Matthews who sent me the text. If what she shared were accurate and not a trap to catch me red-handed, it would save me the trouble of disturbing Dame Wasp over this. So, the million-dollar question was, can I trust Matthews on this one?

I decided to trust Matthews for a change. Mostly because I would be using my toy summons to conduct the heist a mile away from the local C.I.B branch headquarters. Even if something goes wrong, I can recall my toy summons and have enough evidence to show that I wasn't involved in the break-in in any way.

I decided to show my face to my parents and assure them that I am alive and fine before heading to the local C.I.B. branch headquarters.