A Man Has to Live On Bearing Curses

It took Salomon an entire day to move the basic laboratory equipment and daily necessities Maya Hansen needed into the City of Immortals. He also made a few modifications to his construct robots so they could clear away the ruins within the City of Immortals. Salomon could do nothing about the collapsed skyscrapers; his constructs could only clear a path leading deep into the City of Immortals, where the buildings were relatively more intact.

Maya Hansen no longer had to sleep on the couch. She had hundreds, even thousands, of lavishly decorated rooms to choose from. She seemed particularly pleased with a four-poster bed draped in crimson curtains, as well as the little tea set and skull she had found in the ruins. She took them with her wherever she went.

Another modest adventurous goal the Arcanist and Maya Hansen had set was to find the City of Immortals’ power source. Relying on diesel generators all the time could not support the entire laboratory. They had to locate the city’s generating facilities and reactivate this dead city. As a newly established organization, they needed all of the Brotherhood of the Shield’s research results to build themselves up. Once Maya Hansen had figured out Salomon’s personality, she began complaining about the shortage of staff. Salomon assured her that he would recruit more talent. This place was meant to serve as his rear base.

Recruiting would have to wait until after S.H.I.E.L.D. was destroyed. Salomon intended to take in some unemployed former S.H.I.E.L.D. and Hydra personnel. With magical contracts as guarantees, these people could at least be assured of basic loyalty.

He also gave Maya Hansen a bank card as her salary. It was an advance payment, paid out for an entire year. However, before Salomon set up a teleportation circle for entering and leaving, currency from the mundane world had little meaning to Maya Hansen. She could not even go out to buy clothes, so Salomon had to make the trip himself to purchase what she needed.

There was no doubt that Maya Hansen was beautiful, and intelligent as well. She knew exactly what sort of person her new boss was. An adolescent boy, a mage, a rich man—regardless of his identity or personality, as long as he was male, Maya Hansen had ways of dealing with him. She deliberately changed out of her bloodstained clothes in front of Salomon and wiped herself down with hot water, hoping to see an embarrassed expression on his face. What she had not expected was that Salomon not only did not avoid looking, but openly watched her actions and even let out a disdainful laugh.

This infuriated Maya Hansen.

"Believe me, I’ve seen enough female bodies. I’m not some adolescent boy whose head has been clouded by hormones," he said. "Ms. Hansen, what I need is your brain, your intelligence—not your body. I’m not like Stark. I’m very capable of restraining my desires. It’s a required course for me. I’m not some dog in heat."

So she gave Salomon the finger. After all, he had insulted her along with himself.

Salomon left the matter of exploring the underground city to Maya Hansen. He still had to return to school, so he could only leave behind several constructs to help the biologist excavate the hidden high-tech products within the City of Immortals while also serving as guards. Although Salomon had found no danger when he first explored this place, Maya Hansen was only an ordinary person. She had no ability to deal with danger.

"How is Killian?"

Just as he was about to leave, Maya Hansen finally brought up the crucial question.

"He’s enjoying life in Hell." Salomon waved a hand, with no intention of discussing it further. He did not care in the slightest about Killian’s fate. In fact, he had only heard the news that the president had been rescued while out buying clothes. From that, he inferred that the instigator, Killian, had likely met a bad end.

Seeing the Arcanist’s poor attitude, Maya Hansen instead asked about his choice of university. However, the Arcanist’s answer left his new subordinate somewhat dissatisfied. "Why not Cambridge?" she asked. "I graduated from Cambridge. Are you planning to make a name for yourself in politics? If not, then going to the cradle of enlightenment and the fountainhead of wisdom would be the right choice."

"It’s the best Oxford preparatory school in the world. Good night, Ms. Subordinate." Salomon waved his hand and vanished through the portal before Maya Hansen could throw the skull at him. "I’m a pagan. I’m an unbeliever. I’m going to destroy religion."

"You disappeared for an entire day, Boya." Bayonetta leaned closer and sniffed Salomon’s scent. "I don’t know why you’ve become more childish as you’ve grown up," she said. "You’re covered in the smell of dust. Did you go rolling around in some ruin?"

"Of course not… uh, I was just excavating treasure."

"I don’t care. Go take a bath now, or you can say goodbye to dinner!" The Witch tried to threaten Salomon into the bathroom with dinner, but the Arcanist still caught sight of the disaster in the kitchen. "You should have asked Dinah to help," he said. "You always try to cast spells on the cookware. You should know that won’t work. The Umbra Witches’ innate magic doesn’t include anything for cooking."

"I’m a domestic woman. I don’t need help." Bayonetta rarely showed such an awkward expression, a sight exceedingly uncommon on the usually domineering Witch. Though Bayonetta often called herself a domestic woman, she was utterly incompetent at housework and everything related to it. Ever since she began living with Salomon, all household chores had been handled by him. Thus, every time Bayonetta made a mess of the kitchen and Salomon caught her at it, she would wear the embarrassed expression of someone whose bluff had been exposed. Yet she would do the same thing again next time.

"A domestic woman wouldn’t step on people with high heels, though I do like that… Still, leave cooking to the Artificial Human. She’s our household manager. Oh, a call? Darling, I’ll be back for dinner."

"How much longer are you planning to curse me?" Nick Fury slapped the desk in fury, but immediately afterward, a sense of helplessness filled his entire body. S.H.I.E.L.D.’s affairs had already kept him so busy that he did not even have time to send a team to rescue the president, and Salomon’s curse had driven him to distraction. Whenever he had to take off the rabbit ears, everything he did went wrong—he accidentally spilled coffee on the keyboard, overlooked the most obvious data in a document, accidentally turned the shower temperature to its maximum, and even tripped while going up the stairs.

He had summoned Salomon to Triskelion Headquarters precisely to have the Arcanist lift the curse. "Your curse has tortured me enough, Salomon." He slumped in his chair and spoke with his eyes closed. "Let me go. I really don’t have the energy to keep bearing this curse."

"Then you’ll have to agree to a few things."