《Path of a Wizard: The Cursing Skull》


 Chapter 1

    YOU HAVE BEEN REBORN AS A SPIRIT FLAME.


    FULL STATUS UNAVAILABLE UNTIL BODY FORMED.


    CURRENT AVAILABLE STATUS: INCORPOREAL, UNDEAD, RITUAL COMPONENT


    ¡°Well fuck.¡±


    I really should have known that taking that crazy goddess¡¯ deal would blow up in my face but the drawl of being a wizard was just too high.


    Alright spirit flame¡­ not sure what that is. Type of ghost I¡¯m guessing. Guess I''ll be forming some type of body sooner or later. Incorporeal¡­ makes sense with the spirit thing. Undead¡­ little redundant with the whole spirit thing. Ritual component¡­ that¡¯s definitely not good.


    ¡°Great spirit from beyond the planes! I have summoned you from the great beyond to serve me! You have answered my call now, bind yourself to me! Together we shall create an army of the undead to destroy this pitiful kingdom and rule the world!¡±


    Well I guess that explains the ritual component. Jackass over there wants me to bind myself. He¡¯s definitely a bad guy. He¡¯s even wearing a long black robe and has the hood all the way covering his face. Can he even see? I don¡¯t think he can see. Sh-should I answer? He probably can¡¯t even tell if i''m here or not.


    ¡°That doesn¡¯t work for me. maybe some other time. You seem like kind of a prick.¡± I yell, startling him.


    Throwing back his hood, he yells ¡°If you will not serve me willingly then I will just enslave you like any other undead!¡± The fanatical gleam in his eyes was scary but not really surprising. What really blew me away was how young this idiot was. He looked to be maybe sixteen tops.


    I knew he couldn¡¯t fucking see. Alright guess its murder time. Now what are my options? ¡°Abilities¡±... ¡°skills¡±... ¡°spells¡±... fuck nothing. I guess I''m a spirit FLAME so do I just¡­ run at him?


    While I¡¯m trying to figure out how to attack my would-be-evil-overlord, he was charging up some kind of spell. Small green flames had gathered around his hands and he was chanting in some language that sounded like latin mixed with hebrew mixed with klingon.


    ¡°CURSE OF ENSLAVEMENT¡± He shouted at the top of his lungs forcing his hands forward in a dramatic gesture. A large hand made of green fire shot out heading directly for me. I realized that i had done absolutely nothing during this entire time other than yell out some basic gaming terms and make fun of him in my head. The hand moved much too fast for me to get out of the way and I had no other plan for how to get out of this.This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.


    Thankfully the giant hand passed right through me. Didn¡¯t even hurt. Guess incorporeal means that curses don¡¯t work on me. Finding this out shocked me but it really demoralized cloak boy. His spell seemed to have taken a lot out of him as though he¡¯d lost a lot of blood. He just sorta stood there after it passed through me with a blank look on his face. I almost felt sorry for him. He was really relying on that to work.


    Well guess it''s my turn. Time to fuck up cloaky¡¯s day. I thought as I rushed towards him.


    It''s an odd experience being a spirit flame. My body feels just like it did when I was human and I run as if I was but I¡¯m actually just a small blue fireball about six inches wide. Being six inches wide let me get right inside his fucking head though. Turns out that having spirit fire inside of your skull is bad for you. At least that''s what i gathered by cloaky screaming at the top of his lungs and trying to rip his own eyes out to get me out of there.


    It took a long time for him to die. Made me pretty sick as well but he didn¡¯t seem like the kind of guy that should be shown mercy. I had killed a few people in my life. Went with the job. But I never took any pleasure in it. It''s just sometimes needed.


    When he finally stopped screaming, he started to really burn. The fire that was me spread. Quickly turning him to ashes. Even burned the bones. However when he was finally incinerated the ash lifted up and spun around like a hurricane. Compressing into the core of my little flame. It was a very odd feeling process. The ash built up in my core and slowly over the course of about eight minutes took the shape of a black skull with my fire as the brain. As soon as the skull finished forming, my consciousness shifted. I became a skull and it no longer felt like I had a body anymore. It was terrible.


    CONGRATULATIONS! YOU HAVE STARTED TO FORM A BODY


    CURRENTLY CLASSIFIED AS: CURSING SKULL


    FULL STATUS UNAVAILABLE UNTIL FORM IS FULLY CREATED


    AS A CURSING SKULL YOU HAVE ACCESS TO A LIMITED STATUS


    CURRENT AVAILABLE STATUS:


    NAME: N/A


    AGE: N/A


    ABILITIES: HEX SORCERY, FORM BODY


    MANA: LVL 1 (ROUNDED UP)


    PHYSICAL: LVL 1 (ROUNDED UP)


    MORE HIDDEN


    Well that really doesn''t explain much. What the fuck is hex sorcery? Which version of sorcery does this world use? But as I thought that, I knew. Somewhere in me just knew exactly what I could do with hex sorcery.


    Sorcery is natural spell casting. No chants, no formula, whatever magic I had would take care of that for me. As long as it dealt with hexes anyways. I also knew what Hex covered. It was not just debuffs and curses. I could do those too and was really only limited my mana and imagination. More complicated and effective I wanted the curse, the more mana it would take from me. However Hex wasn¡¯t limited to curses, I could buff people with the same limitations.


    I¡¯m a support character¡­ fuck. I don¡¯t even have a heal or anything though. Well maybe I could curse people with regeneration? Maybe? Well maybe, as I form more of my body, I¡¯ll get more abilities. I¡¯ll probably have to kill more people. I hope it''s not one person per bone. That will take forever.

 Chapter Two

    After exploring my Status, or what was available anyways, I started to look around and get a feel for my new world.


    Alright not in a graveyard. At least cloaky wasn¡¯t that cliched. Okay so water, food, shelter. Rule of three¡­ shit do I still need that stuff? Okay well shelter still seems like a good idea. It''s the middle of the night and I could end up burning in the sun or something. I mean, that''s vampires but maybe floating skulls burn too? I¡¯m already on fire though¡­ fuck it, still want shelter.


    I was about half a mile from a pretty large looking city. Didn¡¯t look modern but wasn¡¯t medieval either.  I had no idea if I could go there though. Being undead would get me killed in any world i¡¯d ever read about but there was just no way to know. There was a packed dirt road about fifty feet from where I was that led to the city. The road just continued on into the distance however so that wasn¡¯t a great option either. The evil you know and all that.


    While floating there trying to go over my options in my head I had to criticize cloaky a bit. He didn¡¯t even go that far from the city and he was just out in the open. It led me to believe that either he wasn¡¯t worried about the ramifications and this was a standard thing in the city, or he was powerful enough to not care about the rules there. Maybe he was just an idiot and thought no one would catch on to his plan if he did it in the night?


    These thoughts helped me pretend that I was doing something but really I was just stalling. Hoping someone would come and investigate and then maybe put me in a normal body. I could deal with being in a new world but not as a floating skull. That was just too much. I knew how to be a human. I knew how to get stronger, at least physically. Magic i could probably figure out. The stories i¡¯d read never said it was all that hard. Big learning curve but then the hero figured it out and became way more powerful than anyone else in the world.


    I wasn¡¯t a hero. Far from it but i also wasn¡¯t the bad guy. Leave me alone and I''d leave you alone. Great rules to live by. Break that rule and I break you. Better rule to live by. I had no plan in coming here that I''d be a hero or even powerful. That wasn¡¯t in the contract. I just had to come. No expectations other than show up. Nice and easy. However the contract sure as fuck didn¡¯t say i¡¯d be a fucking floating skull with basically useless magic.


    Buffing and debuffing are great if you can wait around for the target to drop dead but I had no hands and I couldn''t exactly hide. I was giving off quite a bit of light.


    I think I should go and try to get further away from the city. There is just no way that some guard or something can¡¯t see me from there¡­ O¡­ fuck is that someone coming? ... Shit they¡¯re running¡­ I should leave, right?... damn they¡¯re fast¡­


    The person coming at me reached me in just a minute and didn¡¯t look winded. I could tell I was screwed if they were hostile. They were tall and very clearly female(big boobs). Dressed in form fitting short cut robes. The robe only went to the knee and was split to make it easy to run. She had thick looking pants and good sturdy boots. The clothing looked what I would expect from a real adventurer mage. Long flowing robes might look mystical but they made it very hard to run and got caught on everything. Good boots are a necessity in any world. That will never change. Well i don¡¯t need them anymore i guess. Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.


    ¡°Hey floaty! Don¡¯t suppose you have seen a babbling teenage idiot around here? Probably going on about conquering the world or something about true justice?¡± she yelled to me from about 15 feet out. She seemed oddly unimpressed by the fact that i¡¯m a FLOATING FUCKING SKULL. But maybe floating skulls are valued members of society here. Probably not.


    ¡°Nope!¡± I yelled back but she didn¡¯t seem to believe me. Just put her hands on her hips and stared me down. Fucking power move. Jokes on her though. I don¡¯t blink. Game se- o fuck that¡¯s a fireball! She had apparently gotten tired of our staring contest very quickly. However her facial expression didn¡¯t change and other than summoning the fireball, she made no hostile moves. ¡°I may have seen the boy. He might have summoned me. I may have killed him and then used his corpse to form my skull. Hypothetically of course!¡±


    ¡°Much better! Hypothetically or not i don¡¯t care. That little pain in the ass has been my aprentice for three fucking years and he had been making me look bad since day one.do you have any idea how annoying it is when all he ever talked about was raising an army and taking over the world? If he wasn¡¯t so gifted, I would have killed him myself years ago. Now you don¡¯t happen to know why that idiot would summon a cursed skull do you?¡±


    Well at least she¡¯s sorta reasonable. Brutal as fuck but i¡¯m really liking it. ¡°Actually it''s Cursing Skull and he didn¡¯t summon me like this. I was a Spirit Flame until I flew into his face. I don¡¯t know why he did it but i think it wasn¡¯t intentional. I think his summoning got hijacked by this goddess that i made a deal with.¡±


    ¡°You were a Spirit Flame. And turned into a Cursed Skull¡­. AHAHAHAHAH you poor fucking idiot! You could have become a spirit dragon but you ended up being one of the hardest to grow humanoid undead.HAHAHA¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s Cursing Skull and How the fuck am i supposed to know i could turn into a dragon?! All i got was some stupid system messgae that didn¡¯t tell me shit! It''s not like I had time to figure out! Your apprentice tried to enslave me with a curse the second i told him that i didn¡¯t want to become his fucking lackey! My world didn¡¯t even have magic! How about instead of laughing at me you offer some information about your world, maybe a welcome to the universe package that doesn¡¯t involve a partially available status and threats of enslavement or death!¡±


    I¡¯ll admit that I lost my grip a bit there but I felt I''d made some valid points. She did too I guess. She stopped laughing as soon as I corrected her on my race. As I continued on she got much more serious and then got a contemplative look on her face.


    She didn¡¯t respond for several minutes and just left me hanging there while she was deep in her thoughts. ¡°Cursing Skulls are different. Not by much. Still hard to gain power but they have much better options for advancement than Cursed Skulls. I¡¯m guessing that you absorbed David¡¯s Hex sorcery. That is very good for you. You might actually be of use to me with that.¡± she finally said.


    Well this could be good. She said that she had a use but that could mean any number of things. That use might end up being some material component for a ritual but it''s probably better than trying to figure out a whole world for myself. Plus she knows something about my status as a Cursing Skull. ¡°What¡¯s your offer?¡± I say after some hesitation.


    I don¡¯t love the rapid pace that her mind changed about my situation. She knew something special that I didn''t and it made me very uncomfortable. Never enter a negotiation without all the information. It''s basic but I just had no other option right now.


    ¡°It''s not so much an offer as a demand. You¡¯re my new apprentice. I need to have one, rules of the college and all that. Since you killed the last one and you have literally no knowledge of this world, it¡¯ll work out great.¡±


    ¡°Do I get paid?¡±


    ¡°HAHAHAHA¡­ no. But I like the effort.¡±

 Chapter III

    Alright this is not going to work long term. This lady is crazy and definitely doesn¡¯t have the best intentions. Note to self: kill her at the earliest opportunity. Gotta follow along for now, i guess . Maybe once she gets me established i can slit her throat while she sleeps? Kinda need hands first. Note to self: obtain hands.


    She didn¡¯t even introduce herself after that, just turned around and started walking back to town. Expecting me to just follow. I looked around for other options but really nothing turned up. Just rolling hills of grass for miles and miles. So I followed.


    After several minutes of walking (floating for me) she finally said ¡°I¡¯m going to explain things and you are going to listen. Do not interrupt. I¡¯m assuming that you are from earth due to the english and your amazement at simple magic. Yes I can tell when a skull is in awe. Not that hard. We have had other people from earth here. We actually have an entire kingdom to the north that is run by a group that some idiot summoned here to make into slaves. Worked out well for him when one of them pulled a gun on him during his monologue. The Earth Kingdom is several thousand miles to the north through unwarded territory. You wouldn¡¯t last a day without the wards up. Also they have much stricter magical morals up there. Even if you made it you¡¯d be killed on site.¡±


    ¡°This world is called nexus. It is the literal nexus of all magic in all the planes and universes. You might see creatures from your myths here. Earth had magic too once but currently magic is in decline. It''s a cyclical process that lasts thousands of years. All the magic slowly retreats to this world along with all the users and creatures that depend on it. Your myths about almost everyone are wrong however. There are no good magic users. The goal of all magic users is to gain more power. Morals are a weakness. Figure that out of die.¡±


    ¡°There are more ways to use magic than there are grains of sand. Rarely will you find two people who use it the same way. Myself and the College that i am a part of will teach you our methods. You will adapt them to yourself, then you will use that power for the benefit of the college. If I feel that your interests don¡¯t align with mine, I will kill you and use you to advance my own powers. The college doesn¡¯t care about you and id doesn¡¯t care about me. All they care about is advancing the higher ups. I am part of them for the same reason you will be, so that they don¡¯t kill me.¡±


    This is starting to sound like my kind of world. Just have to figure out a way to keep all the people from killing me. Most likely kill them and take their shit. Yay for murderhoboing! Wait did she say the Earth Kingdom? Did those idiots rip off Avatar? Probably the guy in charge can use earth magic. Ten bucks says the earth kingdom is run by some asshole who thinks they can fix this world and civilize the savages or some nonsense.


    She says that our mythology is all wrong but i can¡¯t tell if she means the actual old myths that were dark as fuck or the new versions where everyone is a princess and have happy endings. I always prefered the ones where the kids get their ears cut off but I don''t think I want to be on the kids side of it. This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.


    ¡°The rest of what you need to know and what you want to know will be handled by someone at the college. I¡¯m sure someone there will want to experiment on you. Cursing Skulls can grow into liches eventually and several of them are trying to go that route for immortality. And yes immortality is not only obtainable but it''s the first step on the path of magic. If you aren¡¯t immortal, you don¡¯t have enough time to become powerful. I am dropping you off at the school and then going home. I''ll see you in a week.¡±


    She then stopped talking and didn¡¯t look like she planned to start again. We had gotten close enough to the city for me to get a look anyways and I was only half listening to her little rant anyways. Too distracted getting a look around. It wasn¡¯t impressive.


    There was no great palisade or even a gate. We just walked right into the middle of town. The streets were paved here and looked relatively clean. Houses that weren¡¯t up to modern standards but looked well built. Mostly brick construction but the bricks blue instead of red. Slate roofs but no chimneys. Old style gas street lights but they contained some type of creature slithering around inside the glass. It was so similar but everything was just wrong. There were people on the street despite the late hour but no one even looked in our direction. It bugged me.


    Really people? Floating skull with fiery eyes over here¡­ nothing? Alright either these guys have seen some shit and I''m just not that special or they know better than to look at¡­ huh still don¡¯t know her name. She didn¡¯t ask for mine either though. Do names have power here? Like with demons? Or was that the fairies? I should make up a fake name in case anyone asks me¡­ um skully mcskullface? Thats fucking stupid¡­ come on think¡­ fuck it ill just have them call me mark. It''s not my real name but it''s close enough where i''ll respond to it and it''s not like i''ll forget it.


    There''s just too much I don''t know here. She could be totally full of shit and i just wouldn¡¯t know. She said that she¡¯ll be gone for a week so i¡¯ll figure out what i can on my own. This college sounds like they¡¯ll teach me at least the basics. They¡¯ll also be experimenting on me or something too but not much i can do about that. Just have to wait it out and get them to believe that I''m going along with their plans. Make them let their guard down and see me as a non threat. Then its poisoned water supplies and plague rats in the food stores. Could probably curse the fuckers too if i can figure out how to do so safely.


    The knowledge I got from my sorcery told me a lot about using my Hexes on other people. It didn¡¯t matter how strong someone was, they could be cursed but the stronger they were the less effective. I¡¯d have to be the subtle knife. Slowly deteriorating people over months if i really wanted to kill. At least until I got stronger.


    We traveled through the city for about half an hour. Seeing more odd sites. Several people had created what I could only imagine were wizard towers. Each one personalized and made to be better than the others. Looked like some kind of dick measuring contest to me. Who would want to make that much of a statement? It''s like saying ¡®I¡¯m a cocky ashole with too much stuff, come take some¡¯. We passed all kinds of districts that I could not identify the purpose of but all seemed geared toward magical arts.


    Then we saw the college. It was a little plain for my tastes.

 Chapter Cuatro

    The building was a large cube made of the same brick that made up most of the buildings in town. About three hundred feet per side. There were no windows and no adornments, just plain brick except for one door. However it glowed, despite being the middle of the night the building looked like it was in full sunshine.


    I bet it''s bigger on the inside. Must suck to live here if your windows face this place. Bright fucking spotlight at all hours of the night. I wouldn¡¯t complain though. Seems like a great way to end up as a spell component. I wonder how prevalent that is? Maybe non magic users have some other type of power? Chi? I hope not. That would mean I''d have to cultivate at some point and sitting around meditating all day sounds boring.


    I have a status so maybe i can just kill my way to power? Does everyone have a status? Too many damn questions. Hope i can find someone to actually talk to about all this soon. I''m not getting any answers out of this asshole.


    As soon as we entered the area around the school that glowed, I felt an odd tightening around me like the air was pushing on my body from every angle. While moving forward that feeling increased and the door seemed to get bigger and bigger. I¡¯m shrinking. I guess that saves on the spacial enchanments or whatever the fuck makes things bigger. Once we got to the door, a task that took much longer than it should have since we kept getting smaller and smaller. The regular sized door towered above us. This posed no problem for my silent guide though. She just went and pushed it open a crack and continued on as if it was no big deal.


    The interior looked much nicer. Beautifully carved wood paneling, gold filigree, marble flooring that had veins of power running through it. Gaudy as fuck but beautiful. Behind a counter at the back of the long entrance hall sat a teenager reading a book with her feet up on the counter. She didn¡¯t even look up at us as we crossed the whole hall. Even when we were standing in front of her she just sat there continuing to ignore us.Find this and other great novels on the author''s preferred platform. Support original creators!


    The lady who brought me here - i really got to figure out her name - just stood there waiting to be acknowledged. As the minutes ticked on in awkward silence my guide - I¡¯m going to call her Insane Deranged Know-it-all. IDK for short -  got more and more visibly angry. Fidgeting in place, clenching her fists and staring daggers at the teen as she just continued to read. For some reason though, she didn¡¯t do anything. Just kept letting it go one.


    This receptionist is either incredibly powerful or the child of someone who is. Move her to the list of people not to piss off.


    ¡°Mage Angelica, welcome back. I don¡¯t see your apprentice anywhere but you seem to have picked up an undead. You know the rules about apprentices. You break it, you buy it. That better be some pretty impressive undead if you think it¡¯ll pass as an apprentice.¡± the receptionist said after about five minutes of ignoring us. However she never looked up.


    ¡°Yes Lady Mari, I am aware of the rules. You say it like this is the first one I''ve lost. This is a Cursing Skull with the soul of an Earthling. Probably going to be too weak to get his future hands dirt.¡±


    Mage Angelica? But I''d just figured out a good acronym. Damn. Well she said i¡¯d get future hands. That''s promising. I''ll show her exactly how dirty these hands can get. This does bring up more questions though. What qualifies as a mage and what the fuck is a Lady? I hope there¡¯s no nobility here. I know heroes like to curbstomp uppity nobles but in reality they¡¯re the fuckers who have private armies and more magic items than they can even use. I want no part of that shit.


    ¡°Don¡¯t worry dear, I know all about him, we were watching that idiot boy the entire time. It was good entertainment. I really liked the moment where his enslavement spell went right through the spirit and then Markus went and burned him to death from inside his head. Brutal bit of fun. I have the whole thing saved for you. I was thinking about having it painted.¡±


    Fuck they know my name. Probably not good.


    ¡°Other than that, Archmage Sigmund has taken a liking to the boy, er-skull. He¡¯s decided that Markus will be your apprentice, he will also help the archmage. You can leave now.¡±


    This doesn¡¯t seem to be getting better. I¡¯m so fucked.

 Chapter A Cuig

    From there I led my Lady Mari through the school. The only thing she said to me was that Archmage Sigmund was a lich and to not wander off. That seemed like good advice since every hallway looked the exact same but the names on the doors kept changing even when we took eight right turns in a row. Great shrinking and spacial fuckery. How is she navigating?


    After turning in random directions for ten minutes she stopped in front of a door that looked just like all the others. She still didn¡¯t speak to me, just opened the door and waited for me to go through.


    I had prepared myself for Sigmund¡¯s appearance as best I knew how. I had steeled myself against a possibly grisly sight, but nothing could have prepared me for the sight I was greeted with when the door swung open to reveal a tall, narrow frame, cloaked in an ill-fitting tweed jacket, elbows perched on a long, sleek mahogany desk, fingers folded beneath a skeletal chin. It wasn¡¯t unheard of for skeletal archmages to wear some kind of clothing, but almost all of them stuck to the very ¡°doom and gloom¡± type stuff- mostly long black cloaks or hooded robes. This one looked almost comical in his professor-like jacket  hanging loose around his bony shoulders, like a cheap movie prop. He also, bizarrely, had tied a bow-tie around his skeletal neck, opting to tighten it all the way so that it fit snugly around his cervical bones, further exaggerating the ridiculousness of the large jacket. His hand reached up to straighten the tie, which I now saw was covered in tiny ducks.


    ¡°Well aren¡¯t you a stealthy one,¡± he said, not bothering to look up from the stack of papers that he was frantically scribbling across in red ink. ¡°Although, to be fair,, the rest of us have got to actually touch the floor¡±. He shuffled his papers together and turned his eyes, or eye-sockets, I suppose, toward me for the first time. ¡°My name is Sigmund. Who are you and where¡¯s the rest?¡± he said as he stood from his desk, arm out-streatched. The bow tie was now old news, as it had just come to my attention that he was not wearing the matching tweed slacks, but rather a tight pair of boxer-briefs.


    This seems both confusingly inappropriate and unnecessarily modest. Also, were those Calvin Klien? How in Hells did he get Calvin Klien in this world? The import taxes alone must have been astronomical. Okay, focus. They said he was watching me arive and had called me here specifically. This has got to be some kind of ruse to get me on the back foot.Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    I could feel a strange prickling in the back of my head and had the uncomfortable feeling, all of the sudden, that someone was poking around inside of my mind. As I had pondered luxury imports and ducky bow ties, Sigmund had apparently been worming his way into my head and helping himself to my thoughts. You would think that a skeletal archmage would use the whole, giant magic skeleton thing to disarm people and slip past their defenses; Sigmund had gone an entirely different direction, and it was admittedly hard to combat.


    ¡°Oopsies¡± he whispered, in a sing-songy voice. ¡°Somebody got too invested in Ole Siggy¡¯s undies to properly guard their head. You should really be careful, seeing as that¡¯s all you¡¯ve got left¡±. His skeletal face curved into a very unnerving smile and he looked as though he may clap his bony hands together in glee.


    Aww, fuck.


    ¡°Aww, fuck, indeed, old chap. Had I the mind to I could have put an end to your whole ridiculous existence just then.  Lucky for you, that doesn¡¯t really work in my best interest at the moment. In fact, I think you may be just what I needed¡±. Sigmund squared his hands, mimicking a director sizing up a shot. ¡°Ahh, yes, perfect¡±.


    He sat back behind his desk and signaled me closer, bony finger beckoning, voice lowering to a hush. ¡°How would you like to be part of a little business venture, my fine, floating friend?¡± The sudden drop in his voice had made me nervous- what could this all-powerful being possibly think I was good for? Then, in possibly the strangest twist of entire unlikely meeting, he pulled out an enormous suitcase and popped open the locks to reveal to me a jumble of bottles with labels such as: ¡°Hair-RY-Gro!¡± ,¡°Bone Brytener!¡±, and ¡°Docter Iggenious¡¯ All-Naturel Wart Removre!¡±.


    ¡°This is where the real money is,¡± Sigmund calmly explained, straightening bottles and organizing vials. ¡°And you, my unfortunate fellow, would make the perfect before photo for my new advertisements!¡± He gestured to my obvious lack of, well, everything. ¡°I can see it now: you, a lost little unfortunate, and wham, bam¡± he slammed the briefcase shut and looked at me again, his unnerving smile stretched wide across his face ¡°Two drops of ReGro Pro and you¡¯ve got me! A beautiful specimen if I do say so myself¡± he chirped as he gestured toward his awkward, lanky frame. ¡°What do you say, partner? Where¡¯s your head at?¡±


    Oh crap, he¡¯s totally insane.