Gestation
Page 10
Demons, Imp, Level 102
“Human me-eat!” he crows before rushing at me.
∞ ∞ ∞
Damage taken: 250 (ignored: 834)
338/920
I feel no fear. He can’t kill me. For a full minute, he scratches, bites, and tries to tear at my flesh. The skin doesn’t budge, however, and he can’t do anything. The only damage I’m taking is from fire. I ignore two critical hits, one to the eye and another to the neck, though I almost pay for the error with my life. Some parts of my body only partially ignore damage. It’s a good thing I’m pretty strong.
Taking about ten steps backward, I kill him. He’s a little guy, a head smaller than me, and I’m a kid. As we battle, I realize that imps have half of their attributes in strength and the other half distributed evenly between agility and stamina. In a word, they aren’t hard to kill. They use their claw and two rows of very sharp teeth, they can fly, and they have complete immunity to fire.
From the imp, I get wings and a horn. That’s probably the first food I’ve seen in Hell. Father and I ate raw fish in the boat, and the wings taste something like that, just juicier. The blood is delicious.
You ate imp wings
Strength: +26
Agility: +17
Duration: 59 minutes, 59 seconds
Demonification: 0.2%
Your soul is tied to this world, and your flesh is restructuring to match the new world order.
∞ ∞ ∞
Ah-ha, got it. So, I need to eat demons in order to…become one? I don’t feel any revulsion, and am actually kind of intrigued. Let’s do this!
But I’m still eating raw wings, and I can’t boil them. What about smoking or drying them?
Over the next three hours, I eat thirty imps, building my resistance to fire in parallel. The last imps I eat don’t boost my demonification, however. I focus on my fire resistance, gradually moving closer and taking more damage.
Three days later, I’ve figured it out: I can’t boost my demonification more than 1% per day. Each imp I eat gives me another 0.1%.
In a week, I can get just ten meters from the lava. Any closer, and the heat is too much for me.
∞ ∞ ∞
Damage taken: 4100 (ignored: 2207)
77/1970
Weak healing! Better not go any closer. The fire is bewitching, the flow of lava and puffs of gas. Oh, and a new imp! I step back to a safe distance, kill him, and enjoy a couple of wings.
∞ ∞ ∞
Demonification: 10%
Your soul is tied to this world, and your flesh is restructuring to match the new world order.
Passive ability unlocked: Dual consciousness
You can now think and do two things at once.
Note: If you accept this ability, you will lose 100 intellect and wisdom. Those points will go toward creating your mental body and the energy channels your second stream of consciousness needs.
Accept: Yes/No
I’ve only ever read about things like this. There was something about it in the book on the mental body, something about how superior mages and all grand masters can use several spells at once. It didn’t say anything about how they achieved the ability, however. But I found a way. Two hundred attribute points is forty levels, but that dual consciousness is only available to superior mages. In that same book, I read about how Level 200 mages enjoy an enhanced ability to work with their energy channels. That’s the fifth level of magical mastery or something like that. But whatever - they lose levels, and I’m just losing intellect and wisdom. My limit is 200, so I’d be fine with making eleven additional streams of consciousness. But do I need it? Eh, whatever, I want to see how it works anyway.
Accept!
Oh, right, my healing isn’t as effective now. First, I want to see what I have.
“Attribute window!”
Name: Sagie
Level: 0
Experience: 0/100 (100 left until the next level)
Race: Human
Class: None selected
Basic attributes
Strength: 200
Agility: 179
Stamina: 197
Intellect: 45
Wisdom: 24
Available attribute points: 0
…
Weak healing is so much weaker now. Did I really used to be like this? All it heals is 1127 health, though my survivability cheers me up: 30 health a second. I can completely heal once a minute without even touching my healing. Okay, let’s try my two streams of consciousness.
It isn’t that simple. Using two different spells at once takes incredible focus, though doubling up on one spell is easier. I’m going to have to practice. I want to max out my healing before I really start experimenting.
Healing with both streams, I give something a try.
∞ ∞ ∞
Damage taken: 4100 (ignored: 2207)
66/1970
Weak healing! All I have to do now is think about it. I don’t even have to cast the spell with my hand. I concentrate on healing one part of my body and watch it glow, my hands now free. Getting into a battle stance, I tense up, move my center of gravity, and throw a strike. I throw another one.
∞ ∞ ∞
Damage taken: 4100 (ignored: 2207)
107/1970
I just about missed that, but it’s possible. My hands are free to fight with. I’m faster, too, especially since I no longer have to point at the body part I want to heal. You can’t really tell when I’m fighting imps, but it’s glorious when my muscles fill with blood, my ligaments tense up, I feel the power of my blows, and my fist cuts through the hot air. I need to train, remember everything father taught me, remember everything Finx taught me… Oh, that hurts. Galboa, father… How are they? People are so weak…
∞ ∞ ∞
A month later…
It took me a whole month to make it the last five steps to the lava. A few times, I was a hair’s breadth away from death, though I used one weak healing as my main weapon and another as a backup. When the situation gets out of control, I activate the second spell with a half-second delay. I was right: it just took skill and focus.
∞ ∞ ∞
Demonification: 30%
Your soul is tied to this world, and your flesh is restructuring to match the new world order.
Passive ability unlocked: Quadruple consciousness
The next imp I eat gives me a fourth stream of consciousness, though my intellect and wisdom have been 200 for a while now. I got what I was looking for. Ah, and there’s my lunch. Another imp comes hurrying at me.
∞ ∞ ∞
Demonification: 40%
Your soul is tied to this world, and your flesh is restructuring to match the new world order.
Passive ability unlocked: Quintuple consciousness
You can now think and do five things at once.
Note: If you accept this ability, you will lose 100 intellect and wisdom. Those points will go toward creating your mental body and the energy channels your second stream of consciousness needs.
Accept: Yes/No
Passive ability unlocked: Demon possession, Level 1
You can strengthen one part of your body by 40%. Using this ability will cost an equal amount of health and stamina.
∞ ∞ ∞
I’m starting to like this whole becoming a demon thing. There aren’t any external changes, as far as I can tell, but I know what a demon body can do. One ritual in demonology is possession, where a demon is placed in the body of the victim and can do what it wills with it. In most cases, humans use just a tenth of the potential their musculature offers, while possessed bodies use all of it. The only problem is that broken bones and torn ligaments render the body useless all too soon. That means that I’ll be able to strengthen my whole body when I’m completely demonified, though I’ll use my health instead of my strength. But that’s for later. I have so many streams of consciousness now. I accepted the third stream, leaving me with just 100 ea
ch of intellect and wisdom, though I slowly and carefully step away and wait until one point appears for both of them. Ten minutes later, I’m the proud owner of a fourth stream of consciousness. I’m going to have to be careful now. After figuring out how to use two streams of consciousness, four is a piece of cake. They’re all focused on healing, too. One weak healing restores just 100 health each time, but four streams gives me 160 every two seconds. An hour later, I’m able to go back to the lava.
∞ ∞ ∞
Damage taken: 53250 (ignored: 51777)
527/2000
Resistance to fire: +0.02%
Thermal damage ignored up to 51919/second
My resistance to fire is all the way up to 15.17%, but I’m still afraid to get any closer to the lava. I stop five steps away from it, sit down in my meditation pose, and hold my arms out. At that distance, it’s a minimum of 1000 damage. Theoretically, I can heal myself four times a second and keep from dying even if I go closer, though I’m wary about taking unnecessary risks after my betrayal. I only have one life.
Just for fun, I go through the loot I’ve gotten from the imps. Besides the horns and the wings, which I’m tired of eating, there are rings, pieces of skin, and several necklaces. The pile of clothes, which I don’t even look through, goes straight into my bag after I take out the rocks and other junk. I don’t know what anything besides the usual stuff is, so there is no point putting it on. Way back when, I’d put on some simple things that gave me two points for each of my attributes, though their low durability meant they quickly broke under the relentless heat. Too valuable for that… I’m better off in my impregnable underwear, covered as I am in ash and soot. My hair has lost color and turned a grayish hue.
In real life, it’s been a month since my last punishment for fighting. The guys started leaving me alone. I’ve proved myself worthy of my place in this harsh world, proved my right not to bow to anybody. Vaalsie apparently reconciled himself to the fact that I won’t be joining his collection team and won’t be talking with the psychologist. He isn’t even giving me debuffs anymore. I study for eight hours a day, which helps with the monotony. My free time is spent building myself up in Project Chrysalis. Every four hours, I log out of the game to exercise and get some food.
Time passes, and a small pantheon of young gods appears. Almost all the clans worship someone, and all the priests of the new divinities do what they can to attract NPCs.
Project Chrysalis greets me with the usual scenery.
Once, father and I went hunting at night. He told me a story about monsters and special guilds. The latter brought people together to hunt the monsters and complete special quests. Father wanted to be someone like that when he was little. I didn’t, but I want him to be happy. I wonder how father and mama are.
∞ ∞ ∞
Damage taken: 65550 (ignored: 63733)
183/2000
Resistance to fire: +0.02%
Thermal damage ignored: up to 63852/second
There’s a lot you can learn yourself. For example, there’s calculating how effective different investments are and determining when they’re worth going through with. In terms of my health, there’s nothing else for me to do here, and using clothes to boost it is pointless. Just one wrong step would mean death so, I’m going to have to find other ways to develop. I use three streams of consciousness for telekinesis, holding an enormous boulder up in the air. That does the most to boost my morale. I kill imps using my bare hands to work on that skill, finding that partially strengthening myself works wonders. I can take their heads off with a single swipe of my palm.
The hardest thing is doing several different tasks at once. Just now, two stones fell into the lava, something that happens a dozen times a day. They’re getting smaller and smaller, since the lava just melts them. Sadly, one limitation of telekinesis is that it doesn’t work on live objects, otherwise I’d be throwing fireproof imps around.
Also, I read.
Demonology turns out to be a really interesting book. The use of demons works based on Solomon seals. The stronger the creature you want to summon, the more valuable the sacrifice should be, otherwise the demon will kill you. Nobody summons the higher beings of Hell. The seals have been lost, and the sacrifices would have to be incredible. In a word, that isn’t my ticket out of here. At least, I’m not sure how it would be.
Blood magic focuses on the elements of the human body. Besides blood, you can use hair, fingernails, toenails, and bones. They’re used to establish who they belong to, look for a person based on their biological material, and temporarily amplify magic or physical skills. That last bit is especially popular among the dark mages - blood knights, vampires, and simple mages who drink the blood of intelligent beings. That’s why nobody likes that area of magic. The dark side gets colossal power, strengthening their mental body to the point that they can do amazing things. The more you work this way, however, the more of you it requires. I wonder what a knight in full armor with triple strength, agility, stamina, and speed could do. The book says that adherents to this form of magic are death machines in times of war.
Malefics work on the mental body. The stronger they are, the shorter their duration. Your mental body influences your physical body, so boosting its resistance to damage and your morale lessens the chances of getting curses and debuffs, while also blunting their effect. Some classes can remove buffs, though that’s mostly healers. Buffers work against malefics.
The book on mysticism is old and mostly philosophical. There’s some information about cults and the symbolism of the ancient gods, neither of which interests me.
Artefactorica is the science of artifact creation, and it’s related to craftsmanship. Artifactor mages are highly valued, though it’s really hard to boost that skill. The higher it gets, the more demands it places on the quality of your work. The different kinds of material all have their own nuances, too. Spells barely work on wood and bone, since they already have their own aura. But if you really want to… Gems can store mana and give you additional bonuses. Also, the quality of the material influences its durability. Then there’s the fact that artifactors can mix materials when making a single object, only enchanting it when they’re done. The creation boosts its owner’s attributes or offers some other effects depending on the spells that were cast on it. It’s a tantalizing hobby. I need to do something with all the junk from the imps, too.
Necromancy, on the other hand, is legally banned. Raising a fallen foe or summoning his soul as a ghost is a bit unethical. There are ways of attaching a summoned soul to armor that you control, though necromancers have to know chimerology if they want to create the dead, flesh horrors, or bone hounds - any undead, basically. It’s dirty, unpleasant work. On the other hand, they’re an invaluable military resource when you’re at war. The higher their intellect, the more undead they can raise and the stronger they can make them. Every undead takes mana to exist. If the level of the summoned soul or raised dead (or their intellect) exceeds that of the necromancer, they can attack him. Bone dragons are the pinnacle of the dark art.
There’s a reason that ways of working with the mental body are kept hidden. Superior mages don’t want the secrets behind their power to get out, after all. The introductory course raises mages’ energy structure to the point where they can go on from there themselves. Getting to work is actually the second level. The physical body is linked to the mental body, which is why you can accelerate metabolism and therefore boost morale. Under a certain level of stress, you’re hungry enough to eat the neighbor in an hour, and that hits you with a bunch of debuffs, exhaustion and overwork, for example.
Working with the mental body can fuse you with your element. The mages get a hybrid body that is both primary element and human, with an immunity to attacks of that type and a 100% boost to their spells. The most valuable information for me is that mages can “boost the damage they do by working more narrowly with the energy of their element.” That means that mages theoretically un
derstand the difference in structure between various world orders.
These methods are used to create familiars, which are responsible for creating a second stream of consciousness or supporting a second spell.
There’s only one chapter devoted to working with the astral. According to the descriptions I read, the astral is a three-dimensional space which only the soul can inhabit. While there are small, closed islands of calm, they look like bubbles in what otherwise appears to be a world not unlike ours with soil, sand, water, and all the rest. Via the astral, the soul reaches other worlds or goes back to the respawn point. The farther you are from your respawn point when you die, the more time you spend there before you can respawn.
There are all different kinds of beasts in the astral, most of which are neutral. Some are aggressive, however. The astral is a world of souls, from the simplest to the most complex. Even the gods spend most of their time there, though they can also appear in the physical world. The creation of an avatar is the physical embodiment of the god’s astral projection.
Interestingly, time there is three times as slow as in game reality. I can only assume that this refers to a deeper immersion into the game. It was via the astral that I was sent to Hell, incidentally. Moving between worlds takes an incredible amount of energy, which is what the demons noticed. The funny part is that I didn’t die. When my health hit zero, my body and I were sent together to the Fields of Ash. It’s just that a portal like that takes so much energy that archmage Tiberius Sen is probably the only one who could have opened it.
It might seem like mages are all-powerful, but swordsmen give them a run for their money. With the help of alchemists and artifactors, they can do the same kinds of things: altering their body, boosting their resistance, and increasing the damage they inflict. Master swordsmen, like healers, improve their bodies to become faster, stronger, tougher.
Black obsidian daggers are the most dangerous weapons. They do incredible amounts of damage to the mental body and accompany that with long-lasting debuffs. Swordsmen are designed to kill all things living. Mages consider them worthy adversaries, and both have hidden classes that can combine areas of expertise.