It sort of frustrated Ashtoreth, how quickly he did it. After all, it took her almost two hours to carve out the runes she’d memorized for her pre-planned magical ritual, the one that would expend the shard to reorder the tutorial.
Hunter came over to her when she was halfway finished and Dazel had fallen asleep on the ground nearby. “We’re probably going to find a place to sleep further into the forest,” he said. “Kylie’s minions will keep watch.”
“Okay,” she said, nodding. She was looking forward to joining them. She was exhausted. “I’ll be over when I’m finished. Then I can help make things seem more comfortable.”
“Can I ask you something?”
“Uh-huh?”
“What is it? The shard, I mean. You said your mother was going to use it against your father. And when Dazel saw it, he completely changed. It sounds powerful, but I don’t understand how.”
“It’s like a container,” she said. “Or maybe more like a warhead. It’s a pure dose of the deepest chaos that exists at the edges of reality. It’s anathema to the system itself.”
“So why doesn’t the system just kill you for having it?”
“Hmm,” Ashtoreth said, frowning. “Well, for one thing, it’s not clear that the system has that kind of agency. It’s less like it’s a god of order and more like it’s the spirit order itself.”
“So it can’t just kill you off?”
“If it did, one of you would be able to take the antithesis shard,” she said. “And then someone is still walking around with its kryptonite.”
“Is it really wise to mess around with something like this?” he asked. “Aren’t you worried you’ll… upset the system, somehow? Even if it can’t lightning bolt you from a clear sky, it can probably do something.”
She shook her head. “While it’s possible to use a shard to force or break the system in some way, that’s not what I’m doing. I’m trading with it.”
“Oh,” he said. “I see.”
“I give it the shard, it gives me a serious advantage. It doesn’t grant me any wish I want, but it does put a heavy finger on the scale in my favor. Think of it as an incentive for the system’s disarmament policy.”
“So the shards are safe to use,” he said.
“As long as you use them by giving them to the system in exchange for a favor, yes.” Ashtoreth looked over at where Dazel slept on the ground, his chest slowly rising and falling. “I have a feeling that earlier, when Dazel was talking about the shard’s full potential and telling me that this was a waste… he was most decidedly not talking about trading it to the system.”
“All right,” Hunter said, seeming to consider the cat for a moment. “I’m going to go help them set up some kind of camp. Good luck with your spell thing.”
“Thanks.”
When it was finally done, the shard vanished into the interaction point without much in the way of spectacle or fanfare. The glowing orb of light fractured, then gathered into a perfect sphere once more.
A message appeared:
{A boon of reclamation has been granted to Vampiric Archfiend Ashtoreth.}
{For 363 days, all creatures who were victorious in this tutorial will not be expelled to Earth at the completion of this tutorial or any further scenario. Instead, they will be given up to 24 hours of respite, then sent to a newly-assembled scenario that will be balanced for their current power level.}
{Death has been temporarily removed for this period. Should you die, you will be respawned at the start of the next scenario. Should all of the victorious die, the next scenario will begin immediately.}
{Your maximum level will be limited to 300 for the duration of this period, but you will still be able to gather item rewards and tradeable cores once this limit is reached.}
“Lookin’ good,” she said, smiling. At long last, she was on track. They had so much time to prepare for the invasion. And while it wasn’t absurdly high, level 300 would be more than enough to tilt things in Earth’s favor, if they played their cards right.
“Mmm—worked?” Dazel said, raising his head. “Yeah, looks like it worked.” He rose, then began to stretch.
“I’m going to collect my tutorial rewards,” Ashtoreth said. “Then we should go sleep. Tomorrow will be the first day of the regimen, and we need to train the humans.”
“‘We?’” Dazel asked.
“Yes, we,” said Ashtoreth. “You and Kylie are going to get along great, I can tell.”
“No you can’t.”
“I can. I have instincts for these things.”
“No, you don’t.”
“You’re going to teach her so many useful spells.”
“Ugh.”
“—And the more she pets and cuddles her demonic cat tutor, the more she’ll realize how much life has to offer her, and how good it feels to be as talented as she is.”
“I’d say ‘keep dreaming’, but I really don’t want you to.” Dazel narrowed his eyes at her. “I want you to stop.”
“Let’s see what I got for being the MVP,” Ashtoreth said, reaching out to touch the orb of light.
{Ashtoreth. You are 1st rank in performance for this tutorial. In addition to a boon core and a loot parcel, you will receive an upgrade to your class.}
{You gain [Tutorial Boon Core]; Tier 1. This cannot be traded.}
{You gain [Tutorial Loot Parcel]. This cannot be traded.}
{Ding! You can upgrade your class rank from C to B!}
“Look at that,” she said. “A class upgrade!”
She took a look at her current class:
[Bloodfire Annihilator]
C-Rank Class
Stats on Level: +4 DEX | +4 STR | +7 VIT | +7 MAG | +1 PSY | +1 DEF
This class grants the following benefits:
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- You merge your [Blood] and [Mana] into one resource, [Bloodfire], which can be spent to fuel your abilities and regenerate any damage you sustain.
- Any hellfire that you create can now be absorbed to replenish your [Bloodfire].
- You can now form your armaments out of hellfire. When you dismiss an armament, you may cause it to burst into hellfire.
She smiled fondly at it. “All right—powerup time. Show me what you got!”
{Choose a Class Upgrade}
{You will add the listed stat bonuses to your current class. Your current class’s tier will increase one step.}
{You may forgo upgrading your class to gain 21 levels and be offered a different set of options the next time you get an opportunity to upgrade.}
[Bloodfire Spellreaper]
+3 VIT, +3 MAG
- Half your [Vitality] counts as [Magic] for determining the purposes of ability effects, and you gain a spell slot every tier.
[Bloodfire Devourer]
+1 DEX, + 1 STR, +3 VIT, +1 MAG
- Absorbing [Bloodfire] over your maximum will grant you a customized bonus to stats in the form of a [Bloodfire Bestow] whose power is determined by your maximum base [Bloodfire].
[Bloodfire Assassin]
+3 DEX, +3 STR
- You can expend a high amount of burning hellfire to teleport yourself to its location, and you gain [Defense] penetration equal to your level.
“Huh,” she said. She read them all over again and added, “Huh.” She frowned. “None of these classes sound as intimidating as a [Bloodfire Annihilator], to be honest….”
She took a closer look at [Bloodfire Bestow]:
[Bloodfire Bestow]
[Bloodfire] absorbed over your maximum will grant a temporary buff to your stats whose effect will fade in strength as it expires.
Absorbing [Bloodfire] equal to your [Bloodfire] maximum will grant a buff that takes 1 hour to decay.
Stats granted by absorbing [Bloodfire] past this point will decay much more rapidly.
The stats granted by this ability are equal to the [Bloodfire] spent divided by 30. You can choose the proportions in which the stats are distributed.
“That seems pretty nice,” she said. But even a few spells could completely change her efficacy once they got to Earth.
“Input, Dazel?” she asked.
“Sure.” He flew over to land in her arms. “Show me what you got.”
She used her diadem to write the options in the air in glowing letters. He read them over.
“Huh,” he said.
“I know,” she said. “I figure you’ll say the spells, right?” Spells can do anything.”
“Nah,” he said. “I mean normally I would.” He sighed. “It’s hard.”
“What?”
“Your build is great,” said Dazel. “Really, I mean that. It’s full of answers and it’s viciously punishing to just about anyone.”
“Why thank you, Dazel. That’s such a nice thing to say.”
“But your defenses are trash.”
“...There it is.”
“They are!” he said. “You’ve got what, 7 [Defense] per level?”
“Yes,” she said. “How’d you know?”
“Your race is 6, vampire adds none, and your class will give the base of 1 because your aspects aren’t [Defense] granters.”
“Oh. That makes sense.”
“A [Defense]-focused entity of your caliber would be gaining more than 20 points a level,” Dazel said. “And you’ve got 7. It’s not mid, it’s low. More than that, you have no reactive defenses.”
“I have excellent dodging skills.”
“You have okay dodging skills,” Dazel said. “Shooting yourself in one direction so hard that it breaks your bones is less effective than a teleport, especially when you need to be wielding one of your three weapons to do it, and even more so when you have to disarm yourself.”
“I guess that’s fair,” she said. “But it also makes me feel bad.”
“Look, the claw-fighting style where you plant your sword and then slide around is great,” he said. “Credit where it’s due, almost no-one will have the technique to fight you hand-to-hand when you’re that slippery. You’ve got the unpredictable movements down. And for some reason, even though you’re just a child, your actual hand-to-hand skills are… extreme.”
“I’m glad you noticed. But?”
“But when you fought your sister, all she had to do was score a good hit with her ice blasts to end the fight then and there, whereas you had to trigger her mana barrier with something massively damaging, then follow that up with a second killing blow to end the fight. If you weren’t more skilled than she was, she’d have easily crushed you. It’s a bad mentality.”
“What mentality?”
“Fighting isn’t about proving who’s more skilled, it’s about winning. You have such a great set of resistances, too.”
“Exactly,” Ashtoreth said. “They help me get away with skimping on [Defense] so much.”
“But why would you want to use them that way?” Dazel asked. “You’ve got the defenses of a normal fighter despite the fact that you dump-statted [Defense], and that’s a waste.”
“I don’t even know if I got offered any [Defense] aspects.”
“See? That’s a personality flaw in my book.”
“Hey!”
“You could have built good [Defense] and been next to impossible to kill. And great [Defense] could have made you actually impossible to kill for most of the things we’ve run into.”
“But not the ones that mattered,” Asthoreth countered. “Not the dragon, not Pluto, not Gethernel, not the mech with a giant laser….”
“Fair enough,” said Dazel. “Fine. I still say you’ve got a gaping hole in your build. If you take the spells, you’re just going to use them to shore up your defenses and they’ll be worse than the other two.”
“Wow, Dazel,” Ashtoreth said, starting to pet him.
“What?”
“I figured you’d go for spellcasting supremacy, is all. You were a mage, right?”
“Spells are fantastic,” he said. “Don’t get me wrong. I’d much rather your deficiencies not exist—you’ve could be getting back to Earth with long range teleportation, no need to rely on others. But a dead Ashtoreth’s of no use to anyone.”
Ashtorteh frowned. “Well, actually—”
“Okay, sure, most of our enemies would love to eat a dead Ashtoreth. But you see my point.”
“You thinking the teleport or the stat buff?” she said, appraising the list again. “I’m thinking the stat buff. Higher-tier fiends can get teleportation anyway, even if it won’t be as good.”
“That’s overpowered,” said Dazel.
“I should very much like to think so myself.” To the system, she added, “[Bloodfire Devourer], please.”
{Class Upgraded. You are now a [Bloodfire Devourer]}
{You gain 48 DEX, 48 STR, 144 VIT, and 48 MAG.}
[Bloodfire Devourer]
B-Rank Class
Stats on Level: +5 DEX | +5 STR | +14 VIT | +8 MAG | +1 PSY | +1 DEF
This class grants the following benefits:
- You merge your [Blood] and [Mana] into one resource, [Bloodfire], which can be spent to fuel your abilities and regenerate any damage you sustain.
- Any hellfire that you create can now be absorbed to replenish your [Bloodfire].
- You can now form your armaments out of hellfire. When you dismiss an armament, you may cause it to burst into hellfire.
- Absorbing [Bloodfire] over your maximum will grant you a customized bonus to stats in the form of a [Bloodfire Bestow] whose power is determined by your maximum base [Bloodfire].
“Stats!” Ashtoreth said in a sing-song voice.
“You mean [Defense],” said Dazel. “Specifically [Defense].”
“Yes, sure, [Defense]. Even if I can’t die now for another year.”
“You should still get used not having the buff anywhere but [Defense].”
Ashtoreth rolled her eyes. “Sure thing, boss. I’ll learn how to not die.”
“Woe is you.”
“Now let’s open this box, gain some levels, and give the rest of the cores I harvested to the humans.” Ashtoreth said. She looked off in the direction of the forest, where the humans had made their camp, then yawned.
“Honestly, I really want to get to bed.”
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