Suffocation tolerance advanced to level 4

Suffocation turned out to be the winner, the queen having glued my internal wounds shut, and the petrification having only reached halfway up my limbs before my air ran out.

The mage was correct, though. The choker came with me, and I already had pins and needles in my extremities on waking.

"New fashion accessory?" asked my zombie twin. Thank goodness she was still here.

"Queeny netted me out of the air. Turns out she's working with the fox-kin now, and one of their mages decided to be a serious grumpy-bum and stuck this on me. Cursed, and slowly turns me to stone. Extremities first, for maximum psychological damage. He figured I'd never be able to remove it, and would just turn to stone over and over."

"Sorry to have to say this, but you have a serious problem. This whole bondage fetish of yours is getting completely out of hand."

"Being turned into a statue doesn't count as bondage! Can you just get the damn thing off me, please? I have no fingers, and the only other method I have would leave a mess."

"Sure it does. At the speed you're going, you get to experience a slow and enjoyable loss of freedom and movement over half an hour or so. Plenty of time for fun in the meantime."

"Enjoyable?! Oh, let's see how enjoyable you'd find these pins and needles! Nice to see you're back to your cheerful self, by the way, but why aren't you worried about the demon invasion anymore?"

The petrification finished with my fingers and toes, leaving them as dull grey stone that felt cold when I pressed them into my still living skin.

"Then why are you watching it so intently and experimenting with how it feels? Admit it: It's a novel experience, and you're enjoying it. And you aren't the only one fighting back. I haven't been idle while you've been reminiscing with queeny upstairs. It took a while to get started, given that I didn't want to let any of the demon forces into the throne room, but I managed to infect some of the monsters that were hanging around at the top of the staircase. I have a good number of blighted demons under my control now, and I've already taken over a chunk of the fourth floor. Those brains might be a threat to me, but they aren't to the regular mindless zombies."

No, I refuse. No way was I ever going to admit enjoying being hit with a petrification curse. Which I was only hit with because I was basking in the feeling of my silken restraints instead of immediately self-destructing like I should have done.

...Okay, I'll acknowledge it. My responses to bad situations are all completely screwed up. Pain immunity, friend of fear and an infinite lives cheat all feeding into my pre-existing kinkiness have broken me. But I hadn't given in to the parasitic tree's promises, so obviously I wasn't completely devoid of common sense. Yet.

"Please get this collar off me before I awaken to something I don't want to," I begged, causing my zombie twin to burst into laughter.

"But maybe I want a cute Katie statue to decorate my throne room," she said.

"Katie statues don't have brains for you to eat," I pointed out, playing to her weakness. How can she complain about my behaviour when she's addicted to eating brains? Her own brains, nonetheless.

"That is a valid point," she conceded. "Is it training any resistance skills? Curse nullification, I'd imagine?"

"Yes?" I hazarded.

"Then you really should keep it on. I've seen demons that use that sort of curse magic. There was a big floating eye thing that could petrify and a succubus-looking monster that was trying to do something that outright failed on my zombies. Charm or sleep, presumably. You'll want defences before you face them. Give me a few more hours to establish a beachhead downstairs, and in the meantime, pick up as many levels as you can."

"I bet you tried very hard to blight the succubus," I muttered, my hands and feet now stone.

"Tried and succeeded, but don't forget that blighted monsters lose most of the abilities they had in life. I'll bring one up here once the threat is over, but don't get your hopes up. And on your next life, please try to pull a decent pose? And maybe remove your nightie? I'm going to need something to remember you by once you leave."

"The fox-kin think this world will stop existing once I leave. It's why the arch-mage was trying to stop me from completing the quest."

"Do you think they're right?"

"No idea. Queeny didn't seem to believe them, but I got the impression the arch-mage had convinced the other fox-kin."

It looked like floor four was going to get overrun with blight without my intervention then, but I couldn't blame my zombie twin for defending herself. She'd been reluctant to spread the blight until now, but an existential threat can do weird things to someone's morals.

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An existential threat like the world blinking out of existence, for example. Maybe I shouldn't have admitted that bit to her.

Leaving the complicated topics as a problem for another lifetime, I lay back and tried to ignore the tingling sensation as the petrification took my limbs and started on my torso. Breathing became progressively harder as my flesh hardened around my lungs, and then impossible as my lungs themselves petrified. And then, just as I thought I was going to suffocate, it took my heart.

I woke back up a metre away from my previous corpse, which was now completely turned to stone. Apparently the process hadn't stopped when I'd died.

"Remember, pose!" shouted my zombie twin.

"Yeah, yeah," I muttered. "I died before it reached my head, you know. You could have taken the brain."

"I know, but it was interesting to watch."

"And you complain I'm acting strangely!"

"Well, yes, but I'm you too, so isn't it natural for me to be equally weird?"

Pandering to the zombie queen far more than I should have done, I stripped and decided on a sexy pose, trying to hold it as the petrification claimed each new joint.

"Actually, that reminds me. 'Queeny' is ambiguous now. It could refer to you, too. Also, you do realise I'm not going to be able to hold my head or face in any sort of deliberate position on account of being dead."

"Just do the best you can."

It was progressing slower this time, thanks to the pair of curse nullification levels I'd gained on the previous loop, and I picked up another pair this time, leaving curse nullification at level twenty-five.

When I woke up the third time, I wasn't wearing the collar, and the statue had no head.

"Your best wasn't up to much," commented zombie-queeny, by way of explanation, handing me the collar still fully intact. She must have cut my head off to retrieve it before I resurrected. "All slumped and drooly. But I've captured one of the villages. The one that's to your left as you come out at the bottom of the staircase. Get down there and show that tree some real hell."

The first village, then. I nodded and fast-travelled.

New side quest: Clear the blight

This floor of arx sanctus has been infested with the undead blight, twisting monsters, people and even the structure itself to its evil cause. Purge the blight and destroy all that it has infected.

Clear conditions: Destroy all sources of the undead blight on the fourth floor of arx sanctus.

Reward: Gain one class level

Oh? Now that's interesting. How come I never got a quest for floor two? Maybe because I was the one that spread the blight up there in the first place. Rewards are lesser, too, but maybe that's because the blight only just arrived here, while it was heavily established on floor three.

I didn't have any time to ponder that mystery, because the village was a war zone. An imp dived at me from above, necessitating me to fling myself to the side to avoid it. It was slower than other imps I'd encountered, and the glimpse I had as it paused and readied itself for another charge told me why; it was already covered in oozing sores. It rotated towards me, flapped its wings, but instead of making the expected second attack, it started convulsing violently, showering the area in various fluids. The vines that bound it cracked and shrivelled as I watched, then the imp turned around once more, fell to the ground and ran off towards another patch of fighting.

The fighting was going poorly for dupliKatie's forces, and I saw imp after imp being cleaved in half, yet she'd pushed this far into the cavern. The blight wasn't winning this war through combat ability; the blighted corpses were far inferior to their vined, still living counterparts, and had no use of magic or special abilities. Even the imps couldn't fly. Progress was made simply because of the blight's virulence. What had happened to the imp that attacked me was happening to all the tree's demonic forces. Anything that attacked the blighted demons soon turned around and attacked their former teammates.

It was fascinating how similar the blight and guidance actually were. Both were parasitic diseases that seized control of their targets. The main difference was that the blight killed its victims, whereas the guidance took them alive. That was where the blight had the advantage; something alive could be killed, whereas something dead couldn't be resurrected.

Aside from me, obviously.

Actually, the blight had a second advantage. I didn't know what range of demons existed, but everything that had come up here seemed appropriate for attacking me. Fast fliers, mind mages, melee fighters. The sort of things that were useless against blighted, mindless monsters. If the tree started bringing up mages and long range attackers, things that could deal with blighted monsters at a distance without risking infection, the tides of battle could swiftly reverse.

A sudden migraine drove me to my knees, my olfactory perception blurring and stars flashing all over my vision despite the lack of light.

Mind magic nullification advanced to level 27

I felt around for the source, perceive presence picking up one of the floating brains almost directly above me. I flapped my wings, accelerating towards it, and bathed it in flame.

Or tried to, anyway. I missed, and not because it dodged. My flame simply hadn't gone where I thought I'd been aiming. Was it because of the distraction of the headache? Or was it messing with my perception to stop me from seeing its true position?

I flew closer instead, swinging with my sword, and this time my attack made contact. The pressure in my head abruptly ceased, and the brain dropped out of the air. That had gone better than expected; the first one I'd met had crushed my mind before I'd even realised I was under attack. This one hadn't. Had it held back deliberately, resisting the guidance? I could see a sore or two on it, so had it been weakened by the blight? Or maybe my mind magic nullification level had grown high enough to protect me.

From my vantage point above the battlefield, I could see pockets of fighting, but I could also see that victory through combat was not what my zombie twin was aiming for. Individual blighted creatures were breaking off from the groups and running towards the cavern centre, presumably trying to spread the infection over as wide an area as possible, while the minimum possible contingent tied up the opposing forces to let them get away. That seemed like a sensible strategy, playing to the blight's strength.

Then what aid could I offer? Joining in the fighting wouldn't change much. I'd be better off heading for the centre directly, severing the tree roots, or otherwise doing something to prevent the supply of reinforcements. Chances were very high I wouldn't have the opportunity to inflict much damage, but forcing some of the tree's forces onto the defence would mean less to fight against the blighted tide.

Actually, since we were going the blight route... I emptied the water from a canteen and swooped back down to the messily lobotomised brain, filling it up with the black ooze. I bet the central tree wouldn't appreciate being hit by that.

Armed with possibly the most diabolical biological weapon in existence, I flapped my wings once more and shot in the direction of the tree.