Aeon Chronicles Online_Book 1_Devil's Deal

by Dante Sakurai

  Then something else in the carnage moved. Something black and shrouded in dark red flames. It blurred through the air in a spiral of smoke.

  A demon?

  “YAAHAHAHAAAHA.” He was answered by a high-pitched shriek and flaming, elongated claws sparking against his Mana Shield. His mana bar drained, his shield cracking.

  The demon cackled as it swatted away a point-blank ice blast. Black, smooth skin. Thin, veined wings. Blazing orbs for eyes beneath little, bone horns. Draesear’s visage flashed before Rowan’s sight as his shield shattered. It went for his head. Rowan was far too slow as its claws slashed—

  Gabrielle appeared in his arms, smoke puffing. Those fiery claws met her stronger, thicker mana shield drawn close to her face. Her wand moved in a blur, an incantation muttered. The demon staggered back in a swirl. A laceration curse tracked it down and tore into its neck. Black blood sprayed a fallen column. It shrieked and struggled, its clawed hands failing to stem the flow.

  Rowan finished it off, freezing the corpse in a block of black ice. He flicked away the level-up notification, panting in cool relief as Gabrielle made a strange sound. Almost like a cross between a sniff and cute squeak. She twisted in his arms and hugged him tightly, her sweet scent filling his lungs, her soft warmth better than anything else. Though her giant hat blocked his eyes.

  “I told ya you’d die down here,” she said in a small voice, “Ya dummy.”

  His heart calming, Rowan returned the embrace. In that instant, he knew she was his—whether she liked it or admitted it or not. He smiled in victory, rubbing her shaking back. She was his. He dared to say, risking it, “Not just a fucktoy anymore, eh?”

  Gabrielle froze. Then said after three long heartbeats, "Say that again and I really will turn ya into potion ingredients." She exhaled and let go. "Don't ya hesitate like that again, Rowan Black. And don't forget your only spawn point is the temple back in town thanks to your dumb plan." She chuckled, meeting his eye for a moment before strolling to the demon's corpse.

  “Of course,” he said mechanically. She’d cornered him on that last part. It was one of the glaring flaws in their plan and both Ambiguous and Gabrielle had pointed it out.

  But he now knew: she wasn’t just his fucktoy. The fuzzy warmth returned and his dark mana mixed with it this time, a lukewarm concerto swelling in his chest. He liked the feeling. Visceral and pure, revealing to him that he’d burn down this whole world just for her.

  “Well?” Gabrielle said. “Are ya gonna raise it? It’s only level 92.”

  Oh right. The reason why they were here.

  And only 92? The levels in this game really were meaningless then.

  [Corpse] Clawed Fire Imp (Demon): Level 92

  Decay: 0%

  “Yeah.” Rowan nodded and approached, the fuzziness settling. He waved his wand to disperse his own ice in a shimmer. The demon’s eyes of fire were gone. Dead. He raised his hand, palm forward, and summoned the whole of his mana. He chanted Lesser Mass Raise in case the thing possessed some good skills.

  Black, liquid mana stormed around Rowan in a chaotic dance, growing after every word, his pulse steady and strong. Every nerve flared with ice as he pushed 80% of his mana into the single corpse. He spoke the final word and bound the newly raised corpse’s will to his own.

  The demon’s eyes puffed to life with new fire. The laceration wound on its neck sealed along with a forest of cuts and scratched caused by Rowan’s ice. It stood, grinning sharp teeth.

  This was new.

  “Ah…” Gabrielle breathed out, “Did your skill tier level up? Cus it healed.”

  Rowan shook his head, a bad feeling growing in his gut.

  The Undead demon spoke, voice distorted and jovial and intelligent, “Ready to serve, boss! Awaiting orders!” Its face twitched once. Then twice. Its smile grew, a forked tongue tasting air for a split-second. “Still waiting here…”

  It was sentient!

  “The fuck?” he blurted.

  Gabrielle too. “Huh.”

  Chapter 22

  More Grinding

  Rowan let the imp chat with Gabrielle while he rummaged through his pouch for that bone wand. The Undead demon wasn’t too helpful other than responding to direct combat, silence, and movement orders. It would crack snide remarks whenever Rowan didn’t will it to silence. It wouldn’t answer any of Gabrielle’s questions on demons or imps or why it was sentient, unlike the Undead townsfolk he’d raised before converting them. They were closing in on an excruciating, high-pitched shouting match.

  “Imp!” Rowan barked, “Shut it and stay on guard.” He could’ve issued a mental command but ordering it out loud felt so, so good. Its claws had killed a greater elemental in three quick swipes, excellent for spawn camping. He’d gained another level since he’d raised the thing ten minutes earlier.

  Its jaw twitched. “Yess bosss!”

  “Awww…” Gabrielle mumbled, “I was close to cracking him.”

  He doubted it. If Rowan’s Necromancer’s magic couldn’t will the imp to start talking then she undoubtedly couldn’t. “It’s giving me a headache.” He shook his head and managed to conjure up a fuzzy image of what the bone wand looked like. His starter pouch wasn’t as responsive as Gabrielle’s legendary scaled pouch, requiring a much clearer intent and mental image to retrieve any given item. Especially those of unique or legendary rarity. The icon in the inventory interface was small and unhelpful. This gimped design made newbies highly appreciate pouch upgrades—as the AI controller likely intended.

  Gabrielle puffed next to him. “Watcha looking for?”

  “It’s a surprise.” He spanked her once just for the heck of it.

  “Heehee… I like surprises!”

  Rowan smirked and pecked the perfect skin on her forehead with his lips. Her cheeks inflated at that and she whacked his Mana Shield. A quarter of his mana bar disappeared. Bloody hell. “How much strength do you have?”

  “More than you.” Her playful expression returned in a heartbeat.

  A lukewarm smile cemented on his face. His beautiful Gabrielle wasn’t going to die anytime soon.

  Ah! A clear image of the bone wand finally popped up in his mind. A fancy, onyx handle. Six thin tubes of bone twisted into a spike. Little engravings on the bone and onyx in the dark language. His fingers grasped the wand in the void of his pouch. Success. How the hell did he remember the ring’s appearance but not this?

  Rowan pulled the wand through the pouch’s lip and reviewed its stats.

  [Retained on Death] Anton’s Bone Wand of Ice

  This bone wand was carved from the skull of the fabled necromancer Anton Plaguerider. There was only enough bone for three wands.

  Rarity: Semi-Unique

  Class Restriction: Death-Knight, Necromancer, ?

  Requirements: 257 Control, 61 Magical Power, 98 Magical Capacity, level 120

  36m Range

  1021-1721 Cold Damage

  523-823 Dark Damage

  520 Cold Resistance

  150 Fire Resistance

  -125 Disease Resistance

  +5 Magical Power

  +20 Magical Capacity

  +55 Control

  +20 Undead Minion Limit

  Grants the Tainted Blizzard spell (Scales with character level)

  Undead minions imbued with cold mana deal 15% more damage

  Just as potent as he remembered. He barely met the requirements after dumping his unallocated stat points into Magical Power and Magical Capacity.

  Rowan slipped the handle onto his right palm and a rush of Ice-Dark mana filled every drop of blood and jolted through every nerve. The wand seeped icy, dark mist. A vortex of sleet coated the floor as the wand’s bonuses took effect, his Mana Shield boosted by over 400 points. Every breath he took dripped mana and mist, the sensation of the powerup unlike anything else. A morsel of knowledge rose in his mind and reminded him he could use the wand to unleash a devastating tainted blizzard.

  Gabrielle leaned in
, eyes wide at the wand. “Heeeeey… that’s like half as good as my level 210 one! Unfair!”

  “Too bad,” Rowan breathed and let go of an insane laugh he’d been holding back. He waved the wand, a streak of icy mana grew in the air. With this in his hand, the world will soon be his. Never again would a pesky imp catch him off guard. He pointed at a pair of Greater Fire Elementals fifty meters down the chamber and fired a Tainted Ice Blast.

  The wand reacted to the mana influx in an instant, infusing and amplifying the spell into a mortar-like, stream of frothing ice, burying the greater elementals under a black avalanche. A storm of freezing wind and mana vapor blew through the chamber.

  You have dealt 16840 total cold and dark damage to two targets! (overkill not counted)

  Incredible. Though the elementals were weak fodder with low cold and dark resistance. This didn’t really count. Gabrielle’s mid-level water grenades killed them with ease.

  "Ooooeh pretty," Gabrielle said, "I knew you had it in ya!"

  Skill level up (X1): Tainted Ice Blast

  Skill Level: 73, 59%

  Skill Tier: 5 (+2, Fired a blast with an Ice-type weapon with at least 1000 total applicable damage)

  Mana Cost: 125

  Effect: Deals 850-1350 base cold-dark damage + 100% weapon cold or dark damage with an appropriate weapon. 73% increased cold-dark damage.

  Tier Effect: 25-35 meter blast radius. Taints on hit (Taint reduces target dark resistance and armor). 160% increased cold-dark damage.

  Rowan didn’t have time to read the level-up prompt. The entire several-hundred-meter chamber had been pulled by the fallout of the blast, fire and lava elementals being extra sensitive to cold mana. They didn’t like what they felt and saw, their thrashing bodies language growing berserk. A stampede of elementals rushed at Rowan between sparse walls and columns.

  And four or five imps judging from smoky swirls among their midst.

  “Uh oh,” Gabrielle said. She tossed a spray of water bombs at the closer elementals—then began charging her ultimate death blast at the tip of her wand. The demons were far behind.

  Pinging Gabrielle to tank the imps, Rowan jumped behind her and pointed his wand at the charging horde. It was time for a blizzard. “Try to spare the imps,” he said before willing a blizzard into existence. He flicked a thought-command to his imp minion, ordering it to slay any close elemental or imp, protecting Rowan as the top priority.

  “Yes boss!” his minion said as Gabrielle’s chant finished.

  Her colossal black beam tore into the charging front-line and detonated in the center of the horde. Over a hundred greater elementals and a thousand lesser elementals disintegrated in the blackness. The imps dodged in streaks of smoke. Gabrielle’s Big Bad Death Attack was much smaller than before. A half to third of the explosion radius back in the town.

  The first enemy imp arrived. Rowan’s imp engaged it in a duel of fire and smoke, their claws sparking as they clashed and parried. It gained the upper hand in seconds—thanks to the dark mana imbue granted by Sazar’s ring. Every swipe left three streaks of black miasma wafting.

  Rowan’s wand sure took its time charging. Ice-Dark mana broiled over the decimated elementals and formed a rain of black, jagged ice and snow. Soon the whole chamber was a symphony of frost and darkness, his blizzard mixing with the fallout of Gabrielle’s attack.

  And his imp impaled its clone through the chest at the corner of Rowan’s eye next to a list of level-up alerts. It engaged another two seconds later.

  “Wooohooo!” Gabrielle sang, jumping with joy, “All that lame power leveling paid off!”

  Indeed it did. “Yeah.” He couldn’t think of anything else to say as he held the channel. His mana slowly drained as the blizzard grew and engulfed every lingering elemental. Their fiery and molten bodies winked out of existence.

  Rowan grinned in victory, in absolute power. The imps couldn’t possibly escape this. But—

  One sleeker, taller imp with larger, beating wings navigated the Maelstrom in lightning smoke and stopped at a long distance to the left. It sneered and screeched and pointed at Rowan with a bony, black finger. A crackling ball of flames coated in black electricity palpitated at its nail.

  Rowan cut off the blizzard, his pulse drumming. His mana was dangerously low. “Gabrielle!” he yelled and leaped behind a column. He pinged her to tank. Tank tank tank!

  Instead, she took Rowan’s arm in a vice-grip. The world spun in a sickening tumble and he dropped to the floor on his hands and knees. And hurled bile and acid. Pungent, disgusting stomach fluids coated his airways as the chamber stopped spinning.

  “Take your time,” Gabrielle said, tone casual.

  He looked up. She stood behind the sleek imp’s bleeding corpse.

  “The— The hell— was that?!” Rowan shouted between coughs, his blood churning in a rage of dark mana.

  “That black electricity is the visual indicator of chaos damage. It’s a special damage modifier that ignores armor and resistances and does triple damage to shields.” She huffed and approached Rowan as he vomited once more. Her warm hand rubbed his back. Her voice dimmed to a gentle comfort. “I had to puff ya away or we both might have died… I am a squishy support, remember.”

  “Fuck you,” he spat. Acid dripped off his chin. Horrible. An icon for the Heavy Nausea debuff blinked under his bars.

  “Nyaa!” she moaned and flicked his ear. “I just saved you again, ya meanie”

  He chuckled and pulled himself together before she spiraled out of control. “Fuck you and thank you, my beautiful Gabrielle.” He truly meant the thanking part. Nothing in the forums mentioned chaos damage or special damage modifiers. He coughed up the rest of the foul liquids and breathed deep.

  “Hmph.” She crossed her arms. “A little bit more like it!”

  “Really, I’d be dead without you,” he said as he calmed. The lingering Ice-Dark mana of his blizzard cooled him tremendously. “I’d probably be struggling in that town still if you hadn’t shown up on the path.”

  After regarding him for many seconds, her features softened. She giggled. “Now that’s more like it. I am the most wonderful Occult-Engineer in Aeon Chronicles aren’t I?”

  “You are.” He laughed at that one while she splashed him with some bittersweet water to clear away his vomit. It helped to a surprising degree. More drug-laced, support water. “Thanks.”

  “No problemo.” She twirled on the spot. “Now raise all those imps!” She pointed at twenty or so chilled, partially disintegrated corpses sprawled throughout the chamber, lowly lit in the soft glow of cracked, chilled lava. And Gabrielle’s mana lamp had somehow survived all of that.

  Plus, there were two of those larger caster imps including the one by Gabrielle’s feet.

  [Corpse] Fire Imp Mage: Level 105

  Decay: 1%

  Excellent. His Undead demonic legion was growing.

  “Level 105. Lucky.” Rowan ordered his waiting imp to gather the corpses and allowed it to speak. Perhaps it was more willing to divulge some secrets after witnessing his power.

  Did all demons possess chaos damage?

  “Yeeesss boss!” It puffed away without answering his unspoken question— or was that an affirmation? Not sure.

  He’ll find out one way or another once they defeated the demon boss below. Though the strength of these low-level imps concerned him.

  Gabrielle grew apprehensive too, twinges of worry twisting her pretty face, seemingly reading his mind. “Mmmmm I’m gonna start crafting a spawnstone with those dark rubies back at the door and hide it somewhere in here. It’ll take a bit.”

  Rowan startled in surprise. He’d forgotten she was a high-level runecrafter as well. “Good idea.” He nodded and strode to the assembling circle of corpses, his mana back to 80%.

  He twisted back and said, “Ambiguous can wormhole straight to us in that cas—” But Gabrielle was already gone.

  He sighed and readied a cast of Lesser Mass Raise.

>   * * *

  Chisel and hammer in hand, Gabrielle nicked away at the stone holding the door’s rubies and whistled a staccato tune each hit without any focus needed. She replayed the scene of Rowan’s near-death over and over—and over—till every little detail was memorized and understood. The boy had hesitated. But there wasn’t much he could’ve done in that situation. He lacked a blink or dash skill and he was still a low-level player. A powerful low-level player thanks to his class. That wand of his was as powerful as a level 180 or 200 legendary and the ring was just incredible. Class power mostly came from skills and gear.

  But it was all trumped by the World Boss tier. Oh ho ho, yes it was. Gabrielle’s innards fluttered at the thought of how powerful she’d become at tier 6—a so-called real World Boss. Not the lesser world bosses of tiers 0 to 5. She’d be truly unstoppable starting at tier 7 or 8 with her Rowan at her side.