Rebirth: Building the Strongest Party with my Overpowered Harem.-Chapter 32: Cursed children X.

Flipping her top up, the infected scars that were once just a mark had spread around her entire stomach, already stretching towards her chest.

Panicking, Alice took a leap back.

The moment her foot touched the ground, she summoned her blade, stretching it to the side as she stared intensely at Adonis.

"It has gotten worse," Adonis uttered, not moving a single inch from where he was.

Alice sneered. "I don’t have to answer you."

"Yes, you do."

Now Adonis was sitting on the ground. "Last I checked, I was the one that saved your life. And don’t get me wrong, you are an excellent warrior, but as far as brains go, you fell short."

Taking it as an insult, Alice was ready to give a remark.

"That said, you have a good heart. I wouldn’t be trying to help you if you didn’t. Most importantly, I’m doing this for the innocent kids that got caught in all this."

Hearing his words, Alice laid back a bit, her blade shattering into tiny particles.

Smiling, Adonis patted the floor in front of him, urging her to sit down.

Alice was embarrassed and wanted to flat-out refuse him. Then again, she didn’t want to ruin the moment.

Thus, she moved forward and sat on the ground reluctantly.

"Good girl."

"Don’t call me that!"

"Hahah."

Blushing, Alice asked a question.

"How do you know about the cursed children? Many people don’t know about them, at least not as much as you seem to. All they know is the kids are dangerous to society. Most have never even seen them before, and yet they judge."

Adonis waved his hand in denial.

"Yeah, yeah, same here, never seen them before in my life. Hell, I don’t even know what they look like."

Alice raised a brow. "You told me you know how to help them."

"I do remember saying that, but I don’t remember saying anything about me knowing what they looked like."

"How does that—"

"What I am trying to say is, just as I asked last time, if I can get a good look at the children, I should be able to help them," Adonis chimed in, now resting his jaw on his fist.

"From what I can tell, it seems you have a way to control mana steadily, or at least I think that’s it. In any case, you are somehow able to disperse excess mana in your body. That is why you can stay around the cursed kids, even though they continuously pour mana into your stream. Any normal person would have died, yet you only got weird marks on your body."

Alice sighed. "How do you know all this if you’ve never seen a cursed child before? You are seriously a confusing man."

Most of his knowledge was from the novel he read, but of course, he couldn’t tell her that.

"Anyway, the entire issue with the cursed children stems from the unlimited mana they don’t know how to control. If I can get in touch with them, I can use my skill to absorb their mana into my body. Though it’s temporary, it should take at least a couple of months before I need to absorb it again."

As he said those words to Alice, he immediately thought to himself,

’Not that my body can contain that much mana to begin with. All I have to do is share it with my soldiers, and it should be alright. Maybe I can even heal them with my healing skills to buy even more time.’

Suddenly—

"Are you insane? Let’s say we do what you’re suggesting. A single cursed child has enough mana to plunge a kingdom into complete chaos. What do you think your human body can do?" Alice complained, her face filled with doubt.

Staring at her for a while, Adonis could only sigh since he was expecting such a response. 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝘦𝓌𝑒𝑏𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝘭.𝒸𝘰𝑚

"Such little faith in me. I guess the only way I can prove it to you is to demonstrate."

"Demonstrate?"

"The mana currently inside that scar on your stomach—if you were to release it, it should be able to kill three people due to mana overflow, right?" Adonis asked while pointing at her.

"Uhn... I... I guess so."

"Perfect," Adonis uttered. "Come forth."

[Death summon has been activated.]

A single dark soldier appeared behind him.

Alice felt frightened for a second, almost leaping to her feet when Adonis spoke—

"Mana absorption."

[The skill Mana Absorption has been used.]

Dark mist poured out of Adonis’s hand, rushing toward Alice and draining her of the mana she had.

Alice could feel it—the huge amount of mana exiting her body with every passing second. Even when she tried to run away, the dark mist pulled her back, causing her to scream as she felt her entire body being sucked into a black hole.

After a while, the dark mist retracted into Adonis’s hand, leaving Alice to fall to her knees, panting heavily.

[You have absorbed mana from prey.]

[Mana has been transferred to Pawn rank soldier.]

[Soldier has leveled up in folds.]

"Would you look at that? It worked." Adonis pointed at her stomach again.

Wasting no time, she wanted to be sure Adonis was right.

She opened her shirt, and there she saw it—her stomach clean, with no single sign of there ever being a scar.

"Impossible."

Alice blurted out, her gaze, once hugged by doubt, now sat with disbelief.

She looked at Adonis as if trying to ask him for some kind of explanation. Instead, tears nearly dropped from her eyes.

For years, she had battled the constant pain of having excess mana being flowed into her body. There were times when she thought she would die, times when even she doubted if she was doing the right thing.

There was no way out. No one knew a way out.

And yet, this young man, claiming to be the leader of the Dancing Corpse, had just healed her of her injuries.

"Thank you," Alice said with a warm smile on her face.

Adonis was taken aback by it, simply because he never expected someone like her to be able to smile like that.

Giving out his own satisfied expression, he stood to his feet, his dark soldier positioned behind him.

"Don’t thank me yet, not until I have saved all the cursed children."

"R-right, you... don’t have to tell me that!" Alice stood up from the ground also, her face completely flushed as she stormed past Adonis.

Adonis smiled and then tailed behind her.

After walking deep into the forest for a while, Adonis found himself walking into a small camp.

There was a building at the center. Though it looked run-down, it was surprisingly very well kept.

A small pond was at the side of the camp, where Adonis could see some children playing in it, while some were climbing trees and playing different sports.

But then, something completely weird happened the moment they realized someone they didn’t recognize had stepped into their camp.

They all began to run into the houses as fast as they could.

Even the little girl who fell down while trying to get down from the tree didn’t look at Adonis twice before she raced into the building.

Adonis could have sworn he heard them lock the door with padlocks multiple times.

He couldn’t help but chuckle weirdly as he watched the kids run like they were being ambushed.

Ahem!

Alice cleared her throat. "Sorry about that, I... kinda trained them to do that anytime they see someone they don’t know."

"Right..."

Taking a deep breath, Alice shouted at the top of her voice—

"Come out right now!!! We have a visitor!!!"

Like ants, the children all walked out of the building. Having second thoughts about Adonis, they stuck together, their red glowing eyes fixed on him.

Looking at them, Adonis was able to tell two things.

One, their aura alone could make him collapse to his knees. They probably knew this, which was why they stood so far away.

There was no doubt if they were to come together in groups, Adonis would have lost consciousness.

And secondly, they were all girls, at least most of them.

The cursed children were 11 in number, and only two turned out to be boys. Not only that, thanks to the mana mutation, they were no longer humans but demi-monsters.

Some had tails, some horns, and different other kinds of monster features.

’How the hell was Alice able to survive so long here?’ Adonis thought to himself.

"Please wait here. I’ll go talk to them," Alice informed before she walked away.

Watching as she ran, Adonis couldn’t help but remember how the original MC let the cursed children die due to his ideals.

He didn’t have the power to save them, and yet he wanted them to have a normal life, which led to hundreds of people dying and the kingdom having to kill the children.

"I am not the MC. And I am not weak."