169 The Day
Selma Payne’s POV:
I was immediately filled with guilt. Could you find another person as irresponsible as me in this world? I threw the newly awakened ‘wolf baby’ to the back of my mind. Although this was not my intention, the damage had already been done.
“I’m sorry,” I apologized sincerely. “I shouldn’t have put you to the back of my mind and ignored you for months. I swear I’ll be careful in the future and won’t be hit by this despicable sorcery again. I think the werewolf grandmasters have a way of helping me build a mental defense.”
“Do you think so?” Maxine sounded a little helpless.
“What?”
“I mean, you don’t know who gave you the curse?”
“Do you know?” I asked.
“Alright, so you don’t know. I hope this won’t scare you. You’re the one who gave yourself the curse, Selma,” Maxine said after sighing softly.
I was stunned. “What?” How is this possible?”
“Yeah, how could that be possible?” Maxine also found it unbelievable. “But that’s the truth. You gave yourself a curse on the spiritual level. If you hadn’t ‘died’ this time, I don’t think we’d ever meet again.”
‘Selma, who were you in the past, and who are you now?” What was I?
I fell into deep thought as I looked at my fair and tender hands, which were as soft as a baby’s.
No matter if it was the scars or the calluses that had been formed after years of training, they had all disappeared. This pair of hands was no different from my impression of them, yet they were so unfamiliar.
‘That’s right. What am I now?’
I suddenly wanted to know what happened that day when I was wrapped in the sap.
“You don’t have any impression of it?” Dorothy’s expression was a little strange. After a few moments of hesitation, she said carefully, “Perhaps it’s a good thing to forget.”
I shook my head. “No, I need to know what happened after that. I don’t think it’s good. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have kept your mouth shut about me.”
I could still vaguely remember the feeling of struggling in the cocoon. It was suffocating but satisfying, as if I had eaten a gluttonous meal in the deep sea.
The anger still haunted me, allowing me to clearly remember the feeling of arrogance and self-abandonment at that time. It was as if it didn’t matter, even if I fell. As long as I could obtain great power and break my fate that was being controlled, I was willing to pay anything.
This made me highly unfamiliar with myself, and the current situation also told me I was a ‘stranger’. My new body had nothing to do with this world. Only the strange power of rebirth reminded me that everything before was not an absurd dream.
Dorothy considered her words carefully before telling me what had happened that day. “You were wrapped up in that sticky sap. We wanted to save you, but the cocoon made of sap was unusually strong, and we couldn’t break it no matter what. We were about to be swallowed by the sap, so Kerner had to take us to the tree to hide.
“We hoped to take you away, but the cocoon wrapped around you seemed to have grown roots on the ground. No matter how hard we tried, we couldn’t pull it out. One of our team members even got his arm entangled in the tree sap.
“We were at our wit’s end. Kerner could only heartlessly try to cut off the team member’s arm, but at that moment, something strange happened. The cocoon wrapped around you trembled violently for some reason as if something had exploded inside. The imprints on our hands only flickered for a few seconds before dimming.
“We were all very worried about you in the cocoon, but the next second, the cocoon started twitching madly, like a water pump, constantly extracting the sap. It grew bigger and bigger, and the color became darker and darker. We tried using all kinds of tools, but we couldn’t break it open. In the end, the cocoon suddenly rushed toward the huge pine tree like a car that had been stepped on the accelerator. Then, it exploded and wrapped around the trunk.
“We were stunned because we didn’t see you then. We thought you were dead. I think I must have collapsed then, so Kerner had to drag me back.
“But no one expected that the sap seemed to have changed sides and started to attack its creator. The branches covered in the sap were like food soaked in stomach acid, quickly being digested. The giant pine tree wailed, and the plants around it seemed to have been given life to help its heart.
“But it was all in vain. In the end, the giant pine tree was easily digested, and most of the plants around it disappeared without a trace under the shadow of the sap.
“Without the heart, the entire forest seemed to have lost its vitality. It became brittle and disintegrated, turning into rocks and snowflakes all over the ground.
“The surging sap almost drowned the surrounding environment. We were washed away like ants by the tide, but the sap didn’t hurt us. In just a few minutes, it was digested by the cocoon in the center, just like its previous master.
“After the sap disappeared, even the cocoon gradually shriveled and disappeared as if its nutrients had been taken away. Then, we found you in the snow, naked, with a high fever, and unconscious.”
