by Oliver Mayes
“Do you mind if I upgrade your structures? I can get your Demon Forge and Gateway up to the next tier, then give them back to you.”
“That’d be awesome, yes please!”
“Transfer ownership to me.”
As soon as the Demon Forge’s basic information turned blue, Damien focused on it and checked the upgrade cost. There was a strange requirement, a material he hadn’t seen before: consumer iron. That was the name of his new demon. He’d seen Archimonde’s version eating ore by the Demon Forge outside the Dark Tower. Simple enough, except the consumer cost 8 souls to summon. Back to the same problem: there’s very little an occultist can do without soul energy.
Damien only had a succubus attached to him. Dismissing it at half cost would leave him 4.5 souls short. Scorepeeus63, on the other hand, had plenty of minions at hand. Hadn’t Lucifer said Damien was now the highest authority, second only to Lucifer himself? Bartholomew had taken control of his minions on several occasions in the past.
The vampire had appropriated Damien’s imps on his first day, allowing them to build his first Soul Well while he evaded the crappy child services. Just this morning, Bartholomew had babysat his minions after Damien had abruptly logged out following Lucifer’s torture session. Archimonde had taken minions off him during combat. If they could do it, so, presumably, could he.
How?
He’d picked up the ability to give orders mentally by instinct. That hadn’t worked out so well with the spells, but the management of minions had always come intuitively. He’d simply give Scorepeeus63’s minions orders. He stared at the back of an imp’s head and thought at it.
I bind you to my will.
His Soul Summon Limit went up a point. Gnarly, my dude. He could take control of minions from other occultists, without their permission. Now he could see why Bartholomew had been so excited. This was extraordinary. He focused on the imp and the stat box appeared above its head.
The minion’s level had gone up in line with Damien’s. The stats had not. Hmmm. Hmmmmmmmmm. Would this work in reverse? If he gave Scorepeeus63 one of his minions, would the minion’s level decrease but its stats remain in place? If Scorepeeus63 leveled up with the minion in his roster, would the minion’s stats then continue to increase?
These were very interesting questions. There was only one Damien needed answered then and there. He brought the imp to his side and dismissed it. The portal it hopped through spat out a half soul in exchange. Aw yiss.
“Score, I’m borrowing some of your minions so I can build the structures. I’ll also need access to your inventory chest for the raw materials.”
He started by dismissing his own succubus for 3.5 souls. Then, without asking for permission, he picked out a wraith, a hound and three imps from Scorepeeus63’s control and dismissed them all at half cost for the remaining 4.5. He had the 8 souls he needed. He pointed at the ground to summon a consumer. The rune burning into the flagstones bore the consumer’s defining features: the outer edge of the circle was ringed with teeth, the middle was a spiraling corkscrew tongue.
The minions remaining in the enclosed space clambered onto structures to get out of the way. The sigil was as large as an incubus’s. When the summoning was complete, the portal opened within it as usual. What was unusual was that rather than the consumer climbing out of it, the portal rose off the ground, with the consumer’s feet appearing first as the portal drew upward.
The rift reached the top of the consumer’s head and winked out of existence. Its head and body were, broadly speaking, the same thing. Damien had seen this creature from a long way away and had even killed one in the dark, but hadn’t had time to appreciate just how weird it was.
Two large black orbs sat on either side of the slathering maw, from which hung the slimy tongue. The arms were short, not even long enough to reach each other across the thing’s front, but powerful. Damien opened the consumer’s stat window to see how powerful it was and got a bit of a shock. This thing was weird across the board.
Consumer
Strength: 80Agility: 20 Intelligence: 20
Constitution: 250 Endurance: 80Wisdom: 100
Abilities: Feeding Frenzy, Tongue Lash, Mana Eater, Caustic Juices
No surprises regarding the theme of the abilities. Damien had seen at least three of them in action, two of them used by Archimonde itself: the Tongue Lash and Mana Eater. Caustic Juices was likely related to the behavior he’d witnessed in Archimonde’s base, where the consumer was eating metal brought to it by imps.
Feeding Frenzy he wasn’t so sure about. It sounded like a combat ability. Probably took effect after killing an enemy by eating it? In which case Damien himself had been used to trigger it on one occasion, he just hadn’t lived afterward to see what it did.
None of the primary stats were particularly high. The one that stood out was constitution. The consumer had as much health as some base structures, around the same as if Damien possessed an incubus. The consumer would have 5,000 hit points if he possessed it. That seemed pretty unreal. He’d have to test it in a few situations to know how to use it properly.
“Score, I still need those materials. Score?”
Scorepeeus63 had become uncharacteristically silent. Damien turned to him and saw his mouth hanging open.
“Score, when you’re ready I need twenty iron.”
“Twenty iron...right, on it.”
Scorepeeus63 dropped it at his feet and Damien chucked them one after the other into the consumer’s mouth. After five chunks of ore the consumer’s mouth clamped shut and it began to chew. Its mana pool began to drop steadily. That explained what the high wisdom stat was for: converting regular iron into consumer iron took both time and energy. How much time, Damien had no idea. That was a resource he didn’t want to use inefficiently.
He turned his attention to the Tier III Gateway and found that would require consumer iron as well. Yikes. So from Tier III onward, his structure-building progress would be tied to this minion’s ability to produce materials. Not a good prospect. He had to go collect more soul energy to get more consumers, so he could speed this up. Fortunately, Scorepeeus63 had given him possession of a Tier II Gateway.
“Score, I’m giving this demon to you. Make room in your Soul Summon Limit. I’ve got to get more soul energy, bring more consumers back with me. You take control of him for now. The Tier III Demon Forge needs twenty consumer iron total, so once he’s done with that batch put your imps on construction and feed the consumer more iron. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
He stared at the consumer and thought at it.
You belong to Scorepeeus63.
The consumer was far too busy chewing to acknowledge the order, but it left Damien’s Soul Summon Limit. Scorepeeus63’s happy squeal confirmed the transferal. Damien checked the consumer’s stat window: the stats had decreased. Fair enough; if the stats hadn’t gone down, that would’ve meant Damien could give a level 1 occultist a level 50 incubus and completely break the game. Not that Damien was averse to finding exploits.
Damien channeled a portal for the first time in four days and was presented with two options: ‘Daemien’s Gateway’ or the ‘Fields of Eternity’. His Gateway to the Inner Circle was still intact! Thank goodness there was next to no player activity there yet, and that he’d been so careful in choosing where to build it. He channeled the portal and ended up right where he needed to be.
The next few minutes had a very different feel to them than when Damien had first passed through that zone. His ability to remain stealthed in the daytime, coupled with his mid-ranged weapon and much improved stats, made farming a very easy prospect. He snuck across the zone, killing anything on the way that looked like a good prospect. If there was any species he didn’t like the look of, such as the large armored rhinos, he could either avoid or outrun them without difficulty.
It took him about fifteen minutes to get his hands on 10 souls, running in one direction and killing anything that looked appropriate along th
e way. Some mobs were now too low level to be of much use, not a concern on his previous trip. There was no shortage of enemies with question marks above their heads, with whom he maintained very safe social distancing practices. Especially Scolopendra-Millicornu, the massive flying bug, which occupied a vast territory. Stealthed in the light of day, it was not difficult to pick his moments.
Despite getting his 10 souls, Damien was reluctant to use them. If he summoned a consumer now, it would slow him down and he may well end up dying to try and protect it. He couldn’t send it through a portal back to Scorepeeus63, because he couldn’t transfer ownership without passing through the portal himself. He ran onward into a marshland, which was inhabited by a tribe of spear-wielding Lizard-Men all around the right level.
Most were higher than necessary, but it was the most consistent group of mobs he’d seen in the Inner Circle so far. There were pros and cons to this: since they were all the same, if he knew how one behaved he’d know how they all behaved. On the downside, they could use tools and displayed basic group intelligence. He’d have to watch their movement patterns for a while and cull them one by one without drawing attention to himself.
Damien took cover behind a tree, knee deep in water. The terrain was not ideal, especially for crouching around in Shadow Walker, but at least he could use his kunai to get around quickly by aiming at the trees scattered around. If that happened, it would probably be with a view to retreating. If he wasn’t careful, they’d discern his whereabouts and he’d go from the hunter to the hunted. This much he knew from his interactions with predatory groups displaying basic intelligence in the past, both in game and out of game, both PC and NPC.
First he had an important decision to make: how to use the 10 souls before initiating combat. He could summon regular creeps to help with the process in the manner to which he was accustomed, he could summon the consumer and test it, or...he could test his activated Pride ability. If it were as circumstantial as Archimonde’s it could make life a lot easier.
While a small voice in the back of his head told him to play it safe, a much louder one insisted he activate Pride. He’d wanted to do it for a long time, there were a large number of enemies here to collect souls from, and there weren’t any players to see the ability in use. It was the right move. Said the loud voice that wanted to see what it did, come what may. Damien put his hand over his heart.
“Pride.”
Damien hadn’t thought this through. His body expanded so fast there was a rush of air, not unlike a minor Ex-Imp-losion. His head smashed into a bough of the tree he was sheltering behind, which snapped then tumbled off him to splash into the water. That alone would’ve been enough noise to alert anything within a hundred yards of his location.
Damien finished transforming, utterly disoriented. He was now approximately the same size as the tree his head had smashed into. It had been a small tree, but he was now a large player. Very large. Too large to hide behind anything in his vicinity. As if that wasn’t bad enough, his entire body had turned bright red. Not optimal camouflage. There were screeches from all around as the Lizard-Men pushed in to remove the threat from their territory.
This was less than ideal. Damien didn’t have time to check his new abilities. He knew the incubus abilities though, intimately. They weren’t complicated: Charge and Enrage. One for covering distances quickly and adding momentum behind attacks, one that doubled his strength and endurance when he had less than half health.
His enemies were coming to him and ideally he’d rather keep his health high, so neither of those abilities was particularly useful right now. Better to stick to his weapons. He hurled a kunai at the nearest enemy, preparing to pull himself toward it to finish it off quickly. There was no need. His kunai passed straight through the level 53 enemy and into the ground behind it. He’d one-shotted it.
He pulled back the kunai, neglecting to twist to release since his enemy was hanging dead on the chain. He found himself hurtling across the ground instead. Apparently he’d thrown the kunai so hard it had passed through two feet of water and embedded itself deeply enough in Arcadia’s surface to function as an anchor. He knew that technically Arcadia was still bigger than him, but Damien found this a little unfair. He hadn’t been able to see the kunai through the murky water, let alone prepare himself for the unforeseen consequences.
Before his hand reached the kunai and his momentum was halted, Damien made a pair of linked discoveries: the first was that Lizard-Men had a lot of fluid inside them. The second was that it was blue. He discovered this because the chain led straight through the chest of the Lizard-Man in question. His closed fist, far larger than the kunai that had made the initial hole, made contact with the Lizard-Man at a speed the Lizard-Man’s evolution had not accounted for. It exploded. He wouldn’t be looting that enemy.
Fortunately the blue blood was washed away almost as soon as it had coated him: by rancid bog water. Damien was pulled headfirst into the muck. He twisted his kunai and raised his head out of the filth just in time to receive a spear thrust to the face. Then another one in the same place as he pulled himself to his feet. Which was when Damien’s body bulked up.
Damien’s new Enrage was “slightly” more visually pronounced than that of his regular incubus: his arms, legs and torso had nearly doubled in size to match the effect of the buff. He was massive.
It hadn’t been as dramatic as his transformation into Pride, taking a full second rather than a tenth of one. Damien took stock of the situation and punched the offending Lizard-Man in the face, kunai first. Its crocodilian snout caved in like a crunchy accordion before the crumple effect proved insufficient to save the mind sitting behind it. The Lizard-Man’s back hit the water so hard, what was left of it bounced off the surface like a skipping stone, high into the air. It may as well have hit concrete.
It died.
Damien shrank back to his original size, but that’s not where his attention was focused. Everything he knew about this game told him that he was the one that should be dead. A quick glance at his health bar informed him that despite taking two critical hits to the face, he was nowhere near death. Not even close. He had almost half his hit points left. They were sitting at 3,297/4,800. He had nearly 5,000 hit points.
“Wha—”
Damien surprised himself with his own voice, not only because he could speak at all but because of the quality of it. He sounded almost exactly like Lucifer. It was the cherry on the cake: his voice was much deeper than it used to be, his body was going through rapid changes nobody had bothered explaining to him and it seemed everyone in his vicinity didn’t like him.
Business as usual.
Damien recovered from the shock and arrived at a conclusion, based more on what had just happened to the two Lizard-Men than what was happening to him. This form was freaking sweet. However, he still stood a good chance of dying if he didn’t get this under control. He sighted another lizard entering his attack range and threw a kunai straight through its head. Another one-shot kill. With the same throw aimed at the head it was hardly a surprise. What was a surprise was that his health bar jumped up. Not just a little, but a large chunk.
He must have seen it wrong. He did the same thing again, with the same result. His health was recovering in bursts each time he killed. Damien had thought he’d have to find an opening and make his escape, but this changed everything. He’d always played evasively, now he could play aggressively.
He Charged toward the next opponent, who was winding back his spear for a throw. He’d taken three steps when his speed abruptly increased and the world around him became a blur. He didn’t have much time to recalibrate, but nor did the Lizard-Man who was halfway through throwing his spear. His braced shoulder collided with the Lizard-Man’s neck almost as fast as he’d superman-punched the chest cavity of his Lizard-Man colleague earlier. The Lizard-Man’s neck snapped and it was punted backward, flying across the swamp until the momentum was partially stopped by a tree. Partially, because
bits of the Lizard-Man disconnected and flew out from either side of the tree it had wrapped around.
It died.
What followed was ten minutes of Damien stamping his authority over a culture he didn’t understand for his own gain. Once Damien finished with the Lizard-Men, he found their village and killed not just the Lizard-Men, but the Lizard-Women and Lizard-Children, too. When he ran out of Lizards, he murdered the next thing that happened to fall into his line of sight, only stopping to recruit consumers when his Soul Reserve was capped. All thought of testing them in combat was gone. Sometimes he forgot to summon a new consumer when his Soul Reserve was capped, because an enemy had caught his attention and he wanted to sic it more than he wanted to achieve his actual goal.
He was having fun.
Damien was very pleased with the way he’d played his class. He wouldn’t have done it any other way. But it had always been extremely mentally taxing. Small mistakes cost him dearly. Big mistakes cost him twenty-four hours and more. After playing so cautiously for so long, it was an untold joy to let go and mindlessly stomp around as an unkillable machine. Damien embraced it more with each preposterously easy kill until he was laughing the whole while, without a care in the world.
Eventually he ran out of space in his Soul Summon Limit and ran out of enemies to murder. He reluctantly ground to a halt. If only it had always been this easy to farm souls. He had five consumers taking up most of his Soul Summon Limit, and the remaining five slots were filled with imps. His Soul Summon Limit had gone up a point from 44 to 45, which implied his wisdom had increased. He paused to look at his stats to find out what on earth was happening to him. His stat page provided much of the answer in pretty simple terms.
Class: Occultist
Level: 51
Health: 4,800/4,800 Stamina: 4,450/4,450 Mana: 3,960/3,960
Strength: 290 Agility: 394 Intelligence: 70
Constitution: 480 Endurance: 445 Wisdom: 396
