After Hela dispatched everyone else to carry out their tasks, she finally took a serious look at Duke’s left arm: "It seems you’ve gotten yourself into quite a bit of trouble."

Even Hela saying this indicated that the curse was indeed extraordinary, as the Crawford Clan placed significant importance on their direct descendants. 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝚠𝕖𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝕖𝚕.𝚌𝗼𝗺

If it weren’t so serious, even Merrick wouldn’t find it so troublesome, as he could directly devour some of the Curse Power.

"But fortunately, Momo can handle this thing," Hela said after a spiritual investigation.

Momo then crawled out from Hela’s right eye, traveled along Hela’s arm to Duke’s left arm, and stopped at the location of the Curse Power.

Momo, as a Level 2 Nightmare Beetle, finds the Curse Power to be the best food.

It lay flat on Duke’s arm badge, where beneath the badge, the Curse Power had gathered, suppressed by the badge’s power to prevent it from wandering and causing greater damage.

Momo emitted an extremely subtle, yet space-tearing-like hiss.

Crystalline spines appeared on its back, suddenly lighting up with a deep, all-consuming dark purple glow.

An indescribable wave, cold and void-like, chaotic in essence, radiated from its tiny body, enveloping Duke’s arm in an instant.

Its body, covered with fine scales, arched slightly, and its six slender yet fearsome appendages firmly grasped Duke’s arm badge.

It did not attempt to damage the badge but positioned its mouthparts—unlike typical insect mandibles—more like a miniature, constantly spinning void vortex precisely over the badge’s core rune node suppressing the curse.

A sharp sound, piercing enough to penetrate the soul, exploded in Duke’s mind. He felt as though his left arm had been dipped into boiling magma and icy depths, these extremes tearing wildly at his flesh and nerves.

The badge trembled violently, with tiny cracks appearing on its surface. The suppressed Curse Power, like an enraged serpent, frenetically strained against the badge’s constraints, trying to backfire on Duke.

Just then, Momo’s vortex mouthparts sharply accelerated, unleashing an irresistible, devouring force characteristic of absolute consumption.

This suction wasn’t aimed at physical matter but directly targeted the intangible yet real Curse Power.

Visible to the naked eye, strands of energy as viscous as ink, emanating an ominous black aura, were forcibly extracted and separated by Momo’s tiny vortex from the badge’s rune crevices and deep within Duke’s flesh.

These black vapors twisted and roiled, vaguely coalescing into vague, pained human faces. From those faces, it was scarcely discernible that they bore Bell’s likeness, emitting silent screams and malicious curses.

These curse origins, carrying terrifying erosive and tracking traits, as if pulled by invisible threads, frantically surged into Momo’s vortex.

Momo’s body seemed to become an abyss without a bottom; no matter how much black mist poured in, it was instantly devoured and dissipated.

Duke felt the pain in his left arm peak, as if the entire limb was about to tear and dissolve.

But amidst this extreme agony, he clearly sensed that the chilling Curse Power, like a malignant growth entrenched deep within his marrow and constantly eroding his Life Force, was being uprooted.

An unprecedented sense of relief slowly emerged alongside the intense pain.

This process lasted about ten minutes, but for Duke, it felt as long as a century.

When the final stubborn wisp of black mist was forcibly extracted by Momo’s vortex, the arm badge on Duke’s left arm, meticulously crafted by Merrick, finally emitted a crisp crack and shattered completely, falling away as dim metal fragments from Duke’s arm.

The pain rapidly ebbed like a receding tide, replaced by a profound mental exhaustion and an indescribable lightness.

The dark purple glow on Momo’s body slowly withdrew. It seemed very full, letting out a tiny, bubble-popping sound of satisfaction, then lazily crawled back into Hela’s right eye, seemingly to rest after its meal.

Duke exhaled deeply; the separation of the curse had been an immense burden on both his body and mind.

Throughout the process, he realized deeply how deeply rooted this Curse Power had been within him, penetrating even to the spiritual level.

The Curse Power was like a sharp thorn driven into his body, then transforming into hundreds of thousands of root tendrils, deeply embedding in his flesh, marrow, and spirit.

This made the Curse Power immensely difficult to eradicate. Merrick had noticed how troublesome it was at a glance and found it incredibly challenging to entirely extract it from Duke’s body.

Even cutting off the entire left arm proved futile, as it extended to the level of Spiritual Power pollution.

If Duke hadn’t reacted quickly at the time to contain the influence of the Curse Power, things would have been more complicated now.

Because this Curse Power could invade a person’s Spiritual Power and even soul, rooting itself within the soul like a tree, making it almost impossible to extract.

Luckily, with the Nightmare Beetle, Momo could precisely extract and devour these Curse Powers from Duke’s body.

However, Duke suffered greatly during this process, and he should be thankful it didn’t reach the soul level, or else he would have endured that type of soul-deep pain.

It would have been comparable to punishments endured by slave creatures, but a hundred times more painful.

Even Duke wasn’t sure he could withstand such torment, fearing that by the time the Nightmare Beetle finished devouring the Curse Power deep in the soul, he would already have been rendered an idiot by the intense pain.

Recalling the faces he had just seen, Duke roughly understood why this Curse Power was so strong.

It was likely that the curse had been activated using Bell’s soul as a sacrifice, and the stronger Bell’s resentment before death, the stronger the curse’s effect.

Duke could sense the strength of the Curse Power, indicating Bell’s immense hatred towards him; no wonder Bell was angered to death by him.

"The Crawford Clan are truly ruthless, to initiate a curse at the cost of a soul..." Duke mused.

Utilizing a soul as a sacrifice meant Bell completely lost any possibility of resurrection. Though the chance was already slim, it now became zero.

Generally, after a wizard’s death, they would need to have had extremely strong Spiritual Power and a robust soul before death, to even have the slightest chance of transforming into a pure Undead Mage.