A full minute later I was still sitting there waiting for him to wake up, and I was getting impatient. What was taking him so long? I couldn’t sit here looking cool and aloof forever.
I decided to try out one of my other new skills to hurry things along a bit.
Concentrating on the shadows clinging to me, I caused a tendril of shadow to wrap around the handle of the faucet behind me. With some effort I tugged it enough to cause a flow of cold water to pour into the sink. Then I shaped a scoop of shadow to catch some of the water and carefully levitated it over to where the unconscious man was resting.
The strain of manipulating two Hands of Night and extending one of them nearly a meter away was more intense than I’d expected. While the skill didn’t cost any mana or stamina it was obviously taking something out of me. I quickly shut off the water behind me and let that shadow hand go. Then I upended the water scoop directly over Rich’s head, dousing him in cool water and causing him to splutter and cough awake.
I looked down at the poor guy from my perch and waited for him to get his bearings. As soon as his eyes locked onto me, I spoke. “Sorry about that,” I said, gesturing vaguely in his direction with the dagger. “I got bored of waiting for you to wake up.”
“Are you a daemon?” he asked, fear evident in voice.
“What? No. Aren’t you a demonologist? Shouldn’t you know what a daemon looks like?” Now that I thought about it, I guess I did look a little demonic.
“Wha… what are you then?” he asked.
I sighed. “Do you not have an inspection skill? Fine, whatever, allow me to introduce myself. I’m Nyx, the Master Shadow Thief.”
“No, that’s what I mean,” he said, pulling himself up into a seated position. “Analyze showed me your name and uh… titles? But that’s it. Everything else is just question marks. I’ve never seen that from anything other than daemons.”
“Oh, that makes sense.” I shrugged. “I’m a goblin if that’s what you were wondering, but more importantly I’m a Traveler. You know, like you. Nice name by the way.”
The man blanched and looked aside, his cheeks going pink. Unlike the other two devilkin I knew his skin color was a boring shade of white you’d expect to see on your average Caucasian from earth. He basically just looked like a white dude with horns.
“Ah, well, you know. I thought it was a game and all… I thought it would be funny.”
“I’ll give you props for going all in on it, that backstory has an impressive density of dick jokes for the number of words. Can’t you change it though?”
This was an honest question. I'd checked my own sheet, and I had the ability to edit Tavi’s name, but I couldn’t edit the “true name” I’d given System at the very beginning. I suspected this guy had a different true name than what I was seeing, so this should be his character name and presumably editable.
This raised some questions about my new secret identity title. If I could just change my display name, what was the point of having a title that did the same thing? I suspected there was more to it than that. Perhaps some skills could reveal previous names?
“Shit, you can see that?” His face paled and I watched his eyes dart around as he navigated menus. A moment later he sighed, and a message appeared in my log.
Richard “Dick” Johnson is now known as “Richard.”
He was lower level than me, so I didn’t need to touch him for a new casting of Identify to show me his updated info. Just as the log indicated, his name had been shortened to just “Richard” and his custom description was entirely removed.
Now Identify only gave me some basic information about him, including that he was a student at the Malbolge Institute of Demonology. This time I also noticed that he was tagged as a Traveler, not just a Devilkin. It made me wonder if my Dual Nature skill was preventing that tag from showing up when I got examined.
“I can’t believe nobody told me that was visible, they’ve just been laughing at me behind my back this whole time,” he said.
I was starting to feel kind of bad for this guy, so I tried to reassure him. “I had to use a skill to see it, so they may not have noticed. I’m guessing your Analyze skill works similarly.”
He shook his head. “No, they definitely saw. I’m apprenticed to a higher-level demonologist and he has a few other apprentices… We all get Analyze at level 1.”
“Well, why didn’t you change your info sooner? Why wait?”
He shrugged, looking dejected. “With everything that’s been going on I kind of forgot. Everyone’s just been calling me Richard. You’re the first person that’s brought it up.”
He suddenly brightened. “Hey, do you think they didn’t get the joke? Like, maybe they don’t have dick jokes here?”
I quashed that immediately. “No way, dick jokes are universal.” Then I relented a bit. “You’re right though, they might have missed a lot of the more culturally specific references and maybe even the puns.” I hesitated before continuing. “I don’t think we’re speaking English or whatever language you used on Earth, but whatever they did to make us speak this language is so complete and effective I can’t even remember what English sounded like anymore. I feel like I’ve spoken this language my entire life, and so I think if I understood the puns they probably did too.”
His face fell a little at that, but he still seemed a bit more hopeful about his situation. He also seemed to realize he was sitting on the floor of a public bathroom and painfully climbed to his feet. He was obviously still hurt, and probably needed healing, but seemed to be trying to tough it out.
Standing, he was a good bit taller than me from my seated position on the sink, but the disparity would have been even worse if I’d had both feet on the ground. I waited patiently, continuing to work on my nails. I’d forgotten that they were trimmed down claws, and they needed some upkeep.
Richard seemed to pull himself together some now that he was back on his feet. He glanced at where he’d been laying and frowned. “What hit me? I was walking into the stall and then something hit me. It was crushing me.”
He rubbed his sore hip, then looked at me, suspicion starting to darken his face. “Did you attack me?”
“Not exactly, you just happened to walk into the stall at the wrong time.” I gave him my best evil grin. “I’d say it serves you right for walking in on me, but to be fair the lock on the door is busted and I didn’t expect anyone else to come in here.”
He continued to look at me with suspicion and took a moment to obviously look me over head to toe. “Uh huh… sure. One question then,” he said, raising an eyebrow at me. “Why are you in the men’s room?”
I froze. Had I really… yes, I had. Across the room from me in plain sight were a pair of urinals. I’d had to walk past them to get to the stall I’d been using. I mentally facepalmed. Briefly I considered just telling him the truth. Unlike the natives he would understand exactly how I’d ended up in this situation, though he’d probably assume I’d picked this body.
On the other hand, knowledge was power. There was a good chance that knowledge about me could translate into power over me. I didn’t want anyone having any more power over me than I could help, particularly not for this new Identity I was working on. A master shadow thief couldn’t have an embarrassing backstory.
I shrugged as nonchalantly as I could manage. “I didn’t realize this was a gendered bathroom. It’s not like anyone else was here.”
“I had to walk past the women’s bathroom to get to this one.” He told me.
Damn. I thought fast. “I guess I just wasn’t paying attention. I didn’t come in here to use the facilities anyway,” I told him.
“Uh huh. So why did you come in here?”
It was my turn to eye him. I needed to regain control of this situation. “That’s my business, why should I tell you? If I hadn’t stayed to make sure you were ok, you wouldn’t even know I’d been here.”
“You’re the one that dropped a… What was that anyway? Some kind of rock? Did you drop a boulder on me? You owe me an explanation.” He narrowed his eyes. “Is that my ritual dagger?”
I glanced down at the dagger. “Oh, yeah I took it off you to make sure you didn’t do anything stupid with it when you woke up.” I continued trimming my nail as I spoke, making no effort to return the dagger.
I pretended to be fully absorbed in my nails for a moment while Richard ground his teeth in annoyance. When he looked like he was about to speak I cut him off. “I guess there’s no harm in telling you. I needed a private place to open a loot box. They put on a big light show when you open them up. You had the misfortune to be standing where the loot appeared.”
He blinked in surprise. “A loot box? Does this game have microtransactions…” He trailed off, noticing as I smirked and lifted one ear in amusement. “Right. Not a game. I keep forgetting. How’d you get a loot box then?”
I shrugged. “Reward from getting an achievement.” I paused, considering. “My turn, what’s a demonologist actually do?”
He frowned at me. “Why do you get a turn, you’re the one that crushed me.”
“I get a turn because if you want more info out of me, you’re going to have to keep me interested in this conversation. I’m out of here the moment I get bored.”
He considered that for a moment before responding. “Demonologists summon and bind daemons.”
“You’re going to have to do better than that,” I told him.
He sighed. “Fine. You know what a daemon is right?”
I nodded. “Mostly, I think. Sort of extradimensional janitors, they eat decaying parts of reality.”
“Close enough. Daemon’s don’t actually exist, they are personifications of a natural process that we Demonologists hijack and force to incarnate. They are inherently unreal, so by default no natural laws apply to them, we basically trick that unreality into using its own ability to ignore the laws of reality to put itself into a form we can sort of control.”
I leaned forward, nails forgotten. “Why though? What’s the point?”
Rich shook his head. “My turn. What’s a Shadow Thief?”
I frowned, then spread my arms and motioned down my body in a “Here I am” motion, I also tried to quirk an eyebrow at him only to remember that I didn’t really have eyebrows anymore. I could sort of make the ridges above my eyes work the same way, but in the shadows he probably couldn’t tell.
“You’ll have to do better than that,” he said.
I rolled my eyes. “It’s a better answer than you know. I’m not just a shadow thief, I’m the shadow thief. One and only. It’s a class I discovered. Basically, a thief class but with shadow magic.”
I thought about it for a second trying to come up with a better description. “To be perfectly honest I haven’t had it unlocked long enough to know all the details.”
“You discovered a class? How?” he asked, eyes going wide.
I grinned and responded, “How about you tell me what you get out of summoning daemons first.”
He grunted. “It’s no secret. Daemons can break the rules of reality. They are one of the sources of magic. The act of binding them limits their power, but even the weakest of them can treat physics like it’s a joke, and we can use that to do some crazy stuff. You just have to keep them fed and under control.”
“Huh, interesting.” I finished trimming my nails and then gripped the dagger’s blade with a tendril of shadow, extending it out to Richard hilt first. “How do you feed them?”
Richard took the dagger hesitantly, returning it to his belt. “Souls mostly,” he said distractedly, poking at my still extended shadow tendril. “Can you feel stuff through this?”
“A little yeah, while I’m concentrating on it at least.” I let the tendril go and it melted away. “What do you mean by souls? Do you have to do human sacrifices or something?”
“What? No! Nothing like that. Not really at least. Pretty much everything has some sort of soul, it’s just the conceptual representation of a creature. A goat or a chicken works just as well as a human, though the daemons will tell you they taste different and try to convince you to use stuff they like more.”
“I have so many questions about that. Why do they eat souls? Shouldn’t souls be spiritual not conceptual? Does every creature have a soul, even undead ones? If a daemon eats someone’s soul does that mean they don’t get an afterlife or whatever?”
“I’ll tell you what, I’ll answer those, but you have to tell me how you unlocked your class. With details.”
I mulled that over for a moment. “Fine… It’s not that complex. I’ve been unlocking as many skills as possible looking for synergies. I was already a thief, so when I unlocked some shadow magic skills, I learned one of them and it ended up causing a class evolution. It was actually this skill that’s making me all shadowy right now.”
“But you discovered a new class, right? How is it that nobody's found that class before if it was as easy as learning one shadow magic skill?”
I shrugged. “Not really sure, but I discovered this skill too, so apparently nobody had access to the right skill to unlock the class previously. I’m pretty sure the requirements to discover a class are different than the prerequisites to join one that’s already been discovered. I’m guessing that this skill being assigned to the thief class was the discovery requirement, but joining the class has more generic prerequisites.”
“Well, how’d you unlock the skill then?”
“I’m not really sure.” I sighed. “I have a skill that lets me unlock skills from monsters I kill, and this was one of them. I’m not sure why it even counted as a discovery since I got it from a monster. I’ve got an open bug report right now about it because as far as I can tell I didn’t even qualify for the prerequisites but still got a free rank in it for discovering it, so there’s a lot of weird stuff around it.”
“So, you glitched your way into discovering a class?”
“Maybe, yeah. It’s either that or I don’t understand something about the skill system.” I uncrossed, then recrossed my legs in the other direction, trying to get more comfortable. “Either way that’s how I did it.”
He sighed. “Some people have all the luck huh?”
I chuckled darkly. “Did I mention I did all this while being stuck in prison? I got arrested basically instantly when I got out of character creation. My luck isn’t all good. That’s why I had to come here to open my loot box. If I opened it in my cell, it’d be a problem.”
Richard raised his hand in concession. “Sorry, I didn't mean to indulge in self-pity there. I suppose you held up your end of the bargain… What were your questions again?”
I repeated my questions to him and nodded thoughtfully as he considered his response. “Bear in mind that this is just what my teacher has been telling us apprentices, so it may not be the full story. Daemons eat souls because souls represent the reality of a creature, and daemons eat reality itself. They can eat other things, but the closer something is to conceptual reality the easier it is for them to eat.
“A soul isn’t a spirit, despite what you are probably thinking. The spirit is a different thing. Spirits are how our souls connect to our bodies, sort of an interface layer, and from what I understand they function more like a physical body than a soul does.
“If you ever have an out of body experience, it will be because your spirit got detached from your body, but when you die your soul gets detached from your spirit. Spirits are also where all our skills and levels are. When we level up it’s an abstraction of the increasing power of our spiritual body.”
He paused for a moment. “This is where it gets weird, to me at least. Have you ever heard of platonic ideals?”
I had, but wanted to hear his take on it so shook my head.
“It’s this idea the Greek philosopher Plato came up with, or hell maybe one of the gods told him about it and he just took the credit. The idea is that all physical reality is an abstraction from conceptual reality, so for example all rocks everywhere are various interpretations of the ideal conceptual rock.
“There’s this massive conceptual representation of every classification of object that’s effectively universal. Daemons can’t eat that sort of concept because it’s too big, they have to narrow it down into smaller bite-sized pieces. Some things are attached to one of those big concepts almost directly, and so daemons can’t eat them. That doesn’t mean they can’t mess with the physical representation though.”
I rubbed my forehead, where a headache was developing. “So, what makes something have a soul rather than one of these… ideals?” I asked.
“The way I understand it, there’s not really a difference other than distance from the ideal. Spirits are all unique to a degree, but a pebble and a boulder are both pretty close to just being a rock. There’s not a lot to differentiate them conceptually other than size and material. They are closer to their ideal than you or I are to the ideal of a human being, given how individual we are.
“It’s possible for stuff to pull further away from their ideal over time though, and when that happens their concept becomes more unique and they essentially tear off a soul from the original ideal… I say tear, but the ideal isn’t harmed by this process, it’s just the source of the new individual soul, and it's likely some connections will always remain to it.”
My head was swimming with the implications here. Ignoring the fact that he’d forgotten that neither of us were exactly human anymore, he seemed to be telling me that our soul was basically our identity as an individual, while what I’d been thinking of as a soul was actually a spirit.
“Man, this explains some stuff.” I shut up before I revealed more than I wanted to.
I was now all but certain that part of what was happening to me was that I was using Tavi’s spirit in addition to her body. Valera had said the process had consumed her soul but didn’t mention spirits. I hadn’t realized there was a difference until now.
If skills and levels were attached to the spirit, then I had to be using Tavi’s spirit since I’d inherited her build. I was going to need to research this more to find out what the implications of attaching a new soul to a spirit were, but I didn’t want to directly question Rich about it in case he managed to figure out my motivations for asking.
“Does it? I’m glad it makes sense to you because it’s a real mind-bender to me.” He told me.
“To answer the rest of your questions… Undead can have souls yeah, as far as I know everything technically does, including objects. It’s just that most monsters are very close to their ideals, so they don’t have a unique soul like you and I do. It’s pretty easy to tell though, if you examine something and it has a unique name then it’s got a real soul, and if its name is just a description or type then it has an ideal.
“As to the afterlife, I don’t actually know. We haven’t really talked about it in class, but I think it’s likely that when we die our souls just go back into one of the bigger ideals, possibly to get spun off again later. I’m not sure what happens to spirits. I’ve heard souls imprint on their spirits so maybe your spirit is what gets an afterlife, if there even is one?”
Yep, that checked out for me. Now I understood why inhabiting Tavi’s body was having such a major effect on my personality. It wasn’t just her brain chemistry influencing me, it was literally the pattern of her soul that had been imprinted on her spirit. She was gone, but the imprint remained.
Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.
That must be why it was so easy to get in character. It was like water flowing through channels that had already been carved out, it could make new channels through erosion but flowing down the existing ones was the path of least resistance.
I had a lot to think about here, but now wasn’t the time.
“Alright, thanks for the lesson.” I hopped down off the sink. My butt was falling asleep from the hard surface so looking cool was going to have to take a back seat to being able to feel my legs. This conversation was probably just about over anyway. On the other hand…
“Say, I don’t suppose you’d be willing to teach me your daemon summoning skill, would you?” I asked.
“What? I can’t, it’s got a demonologist prerequisite, you’d need to learn the class.”
“I might learn the class someday, you never know. I told you I’m trying to collect unlocked skills just in case.”
“I don’t think I can do that. You need permission from The Adversary directly to become a demonologist. I don’t think he’d want me spreading knowledge of their skills around.”
“Nah, it’ll be fine. He likes me. Also, I already unlocked a demonologist skill, it’s just one of the higher level ones. It’s called Devil in the Details–heard of it?” I suspected he hadn’t considering I had gotten the discovery bonus for that skill. Level 50 Demonologists had to exist in the world, so I suspected it wasn’t part of the core class skills even if it did require the demonologist class.
“No… What level is it? I’ve only got ten levels in Demonologist.”
“It’s level fifty. It’s a tier ten skill so probably not something everyone gets access to.”
“Tier ten?!” He practically shouted. “That’s divine tier. Anything at ten or above is supposed to be basically a divine gift. How do you even have that?”
“Long story, but like I said The Adversary likes me. Tell you what, I’ll teach it to you if you teach me your demonologist skills. Since you can actually learn it, you’d be getting a way better deal than me.”
He thought about it for a longer time than I would have, given the same opportunity. He stared at me the entire time, seeming to look into my eyes even though I knew he couldn’t see anything there except pools of darkness. I borrowed a trick from Tavi and waggled my ears at him as if to say “I’m waiting…”
“Fine. I better not regret this though.”
“No promises on that, but I’ll hold up my end of the bargain.”
We spent the next several minutes describing skills to each other. All that was necessary to unlock a skill was to describe it in detail. It didn’t have to be perfect but did have to give a good idea of what the skill did and its limitations. In the end I unlocked five new skills, all of which had Demonologist levels as a prerequisite.
> Analyze
>
> Active Skill (Tier 3)
>
> Prerequisites: Demonologist (Level 1)
>
> Rank: 0 / 5
>
> PP: 0 / 6
>
> Activation Cost: Mana (Low)
>
> Activation Type: Instant
>
> Cooldown: N/A
>
> Allows you to view hidden details about a log entry or notification, such as timestamp, actor information, skill details, etc. The amount of information revealed increases with your ranks in this skill.
> Create Lesser Daemon
>
> Active Skill (Tier 5)
>
> Prerequisites: Demonologist (Level 3)
>
> Rank: 0 / 5
>
> PP: 0 / 10
>
> Activation Cost: Health (High), Stamina (High), Mana (High), 1 Reality Shard (Tier 0 Soul or better)
>
> Activation Type: 1 Minute
>
> Cooldown: 1 day
>
> Using a shard of broken reality and your own life force, you can coax an unreal entity known as a daemon into being. When you use this skill you must select a name for your new daemon, and you may try to imbue it with a degree of personality (Note: It may gain one no matter if you want it to or not, but if you try for a specific result it is less likely to be random). If the daemon is successfully created you will also learn its true name, an identifier that may be used to command or alter the daemon using other skills.
>
> When you create the daemon you may provide it with arguments and commands to better define its place in reality and stabilize it. A daemon may be provided with any number of arguments, but it can only be given a number of commands up to its tier, and these commands can only be changed using the Update Lesser Daemon skill.
>
> Daemons created with this skill will be Lesser Daemons. The tier of the daemon will be equal to the tier of the reality shard used to create the daemon, to a maximum of the rank of this skill.
>
> Note: Daemon’s will discorporate after a time if not supplied with additional reality shards. How long this takes depends on the tier of the daemon and its level of stability.
> Read Lesser Daemon
>
> Active Skill (Tier 2)
>
> Prerequisites: Demonologist (Level 1)
>
> Rank: 0 / 5
>
> PP: 0 / 4
>
> Activation Cost: Mana (Low)
>
> Activation Type: Instant
>
> Cooldown: N/A
>
> Using this skill you can view the character sheet, commands, and other information about a daemon, free from their normal meddling. To use this skill you must know the true name of a daemon you wish to read, and the daemon must be of a tier equal to or less than your ranks in this skill. This skill will fail if used on anything other than a Lesser Daemon.
> Update Lesser Daemon
>
> Active Skill (Tier 3)
>
> Prerequisites: Demonologist (Level 3)
>
> Rank: 0 / 5
>
> PP: 0 / 6
>
> Activation Cost: Mana (Medium), 1 Reality Shard (Tier 1 Soul or better)
>
> Activation Type: Instant
>
> Cooldown: N/A
>
> By feeding a reality shard to a Lesser Daemon you can alter its nature so that it follows different commands. To update a daemon you must know its true name when you use this skill. You can update a number of commands equal to the number of ranks in this skill, and must expend a reality shard of at least the same tier as the daemon you want to update.
> Delete Lesser Daemon
>
> Active Skill (Tier 1)
>
> Prerequisites: Demonologist (Level 2)
>
> Rank: 0 / 5
>
> PP: 0 / 2
>
> Activation Cost: Mana (Low)
>
> Activation Type: Instant
>
> Cooldown: N/A
>
> By speaking the true name of a Lesser Daemon you can cause it to discorporate, returning to the unreality it came from. Note that deleting a daemon does not guarantee that ongoing effects caused by that daemon will be removed.
When I asked Richard how he’d managed to use Analyze on me, he revealed that it was possible to examine anyone or anything without even needing a skill. I’d done this early on to my original shirt but hadn’t realized it could be used on people. He had simply examined me, then used Analyze on the resulting notification for more information. Neither of these had triggered a notification on my end, unlike Identify would have.
He was also weirdly excited about his new skill when he found out what it did, to my consternation. I’d been trying to figure out how that skill was supposed to be helpful for high level demonologists but had come up with nothing.
“What’s the big deal with that anyway?” I asked him. “It seems pretty neat but not terribly useful.”
“That’s because you haven’t used Read Lesser Daemon. It doesn’t just let you view their character sheet; it also lets you view their logs. If you’re trying to figure out exactly what a daemon did, being able to step through their logs would be invaluable. I can only imagine that being able to experience it from the perspective of the daemon would offer even more insight. Analyze should help me narrow down what logs I want to view then step into them. This will be a huge help when I can learn it!”
At that exact moment the door to the bathroom swung open as a large red hand pushed it aside. The two of us froze, watching in mounting concern as The Adversary himself ducked to get his horns through the doorway, muttering under his breath as one caught on frame for a moment.
He looked up at us, then frowned. “Ah, In… Ta… Excuse me, Nyx. I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you had company.” He looked at Richard with mild confusion. “I see you’re a demonologist, but I’m afraid I don’t recognize you… are you a friend of Nyx?”
Richard managed to look both relieved and disappointed. “I’m Richard sir… You might remember me as Dick?”
The Adversary let out a guffaw. “Hah! Yes, I remember now. I see you’ve figured out how to revise your character sheet. My apologies for not warning you in advance, but it would have given away the nature of your situation, which was not allowed at that time.”
Richard’s expression relaxed considerably. “Oh, no problem. Thanks for taking me on despite my poor taste.”
“If I might ask, why are you two having a clandestine meeting in one of my bathrooms?” The Adversary asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Sheer. Fucking. Coincidence. Believe it or not.” I told him. “Rich here walked in on me opening that loot box I reported and got crushed by the reward I selected. I stuck around to make sure he was ok, and we got to talking a bit. He’s the first other person from Earth I’ve met so far.”
The Adversary let out a rolling laugh that rebounded around the room like thunder. When he finished, he reached over and opened the bathroom door, holding it open for us. “Well, come on, no need to hang about in here. Nyx, I need a few moments of your time to go over these latest bug reports. When I saw you were in Jira already, I figured we could do a quick stand-up meeting rather than clogging up the ticket system.”
The lot of us filed out of the bathroom and onto the show floor. Through the isles I could see the cashier, intently scrubbing down the counter with a rag and some generic cleaner. She’d used so much I could tell it was lemon scented from across the room.
“Rhel dear, could you get Sam on the line. Ask him to prepare a private meeting room for me would you?” The Adversary called out to her.
The poor cashier froze like a deer in headlights, then jumped to grab a phone off a charging stand that I hadn’t even noticed before she grabbed it. A moment later she was whisper-yelling into the phone while the rest of us waited.
“She’s a good girl.” The Adversary confided in us. “I’ve known her since she was a little thing. Her mother is one of my best field agents, and her sister is on her first field assignment right now. Rhel is too kind-hearted for field work, but she’ll make a great support agent one day.”
I blinked and wondered if we were talking about some other cashier. The devil girl hadn’t exactly struck me as “kind hearted” in my interactions with her. I guess he’d know best though, maybe she was just going through a phase.
“Sam says you can use his office sir! He says come on over!” she squeaked, at least two octaves higher than I was used to hearing from her.
“Excellent! Come Nyx, let's not keep them waiting.” He turned to Richard. “I’m afraid I must speak privately with Nyx but it was a pleasure meeting you again Richard. Continue to do well in your training and I’m sure we’ll meet again soon.”
Richard started to stammer out some sort of reply, but neither of us heard it as The Adversary placed his incredibly large hand on my head and the entire world shifted around us. The next thing I knew we were standing in the lobby of Sam’s Daily Devil Deals. Unlike last time, several people were standing in line in the waiting area, and this time Sam himself was standing just in front of where we appeared, already bowed over at the waist.
“Welcome Lord Adversary, to Sam’s. Thank you for gracing us with your presence today. I have prepared my office for you and your guest. If you will please follow me,” the satyr said.
“It’s good to see you too Sam. Please, lead the way. I apologize to you and your customers for the interruption.”
“Please, do not apologize sir. We are always delighted to receive you.”
We followed Sam past the waiting customers and into the hall leading to the show floor. I could feel the eyes of the people waiting in line drilling into me, and I gave them an ear-splitting grin as we walked by, just to add to their confusion. I was still covered in roiling shadows, the Embrace of Shadows skill being a simple sustained skill it had essentially reserved some of my mana for an indefinite duration.
The three of us took the same route I had last time, crossing through the showroom and startling the single guest being shown around the room. I noted that the current client was a human or human-looking man, and that every single one of the salespeople was a stunningly gorgeous female satyr.
Sam’s wife, Bea, had warned me that Sam used sex as a sales tool, and it was interesting to see it being employed against someone else. I mentally began to prepare myself for another encounter with Javril or one of his brothers, or cousins, or whatever… Last time I’d been caught off guard, but this time I had my hands firmly on the reins.
Sam led us into his study, which had already been prepared for our arrival. A sampler platter had been laid out on Sam’s desk, along with a bottle of wine and empty glasses. He held the door for us but did not enter.
“Please make yourselves at home, and do not hesitate to call if you need anything. Simply ring the bell on the desk and I will arrive with all haste.” Then he shut the door with a firm click, and I was suddenly alone in a room with the god of evil.
The Adversary walked around the desk and sat heavily in Sam’s chair. He grabbed a cracker with some sort of topping on it from the sample platter and popped it into his mouth as I pulled myself onto the same chair I’d sat on the last time I was here. It was still too big for me, and I sat cross-legged on it, resting my back against it.
As I did, I noticed for the first time that The Adversary seemed a bit out of sorts. The last time I’d seen him, he’d been sharply and professionally dressed, and while he was wearing similar clothes his collar was unbuttoned and a tie hung loosely from his neck. He looked like a guy that’d just worked a long shift and couldn’t wait to get home.
He seemed to notice me looking him over and smiled ruefully. “I apologize for my unprofessional appearance. We’ve been preparing for this launch for some time but it’s always a stressful experience when users get their hands on your work for the first time. We’ve been processing more bug reports than I was expecting, so the entire development team is working overtime on fixes.”
“Sorry I’ve been adding to your workload,” I told him. “I know how stressful that can be.”
“Think nothing of it, you’ve reported two serious issues that we need to deal with ASAP,” he said, waving a huge hand through the air in dismissal. The movement was enough to stir papers on Sam’s desk.
“After reviewing the logs System determined that exploitation of the loot box system has been going on for years within the native population. They can collect bug bounties just like you can, so up until this point each beta tester that has discovered this bug has decided not to report it in favor of getting three times as much loot from those boxes.”
He sighed and rubbed a hand on his bald head. “System is tracking down and flagging all the extra loot now so we can see the extent of the damage.”
I winced in sympathy for his predicament. “What will you do with all the extra loot? And what about the people that didn’t report it?” I asked, curious as to what the penalty was for actively exploiting a bug and not reporting it.
“I’m not sure yet, we might need to handle it on a case-by-case basis. Many of the actual exploiters are long deceased and the items have ended up in other hands. I may issue quests to my followers to attempt to recover them, but I doubt divine or system intervention will be the path we take there. As for those items held by the original exploiter, that is more easily handled. Such items will be forfeit, even the one they could have rightfully taken, and will end up in Sam’s inventory for future sales.”
A dark look came over The Adversary’s face for the first time since I’d known the rather jovial devil. “For the exploiter themselves, well, I believe you are familiar with deific curses at this point, yes? System can do something similar and is empowered to do so as punishment for those who seek to break his rules. Unlike we deities, System has no need to play games of influence and power, so his punishments need not hold back for fear of a rival taking advantage of the situation.”
I took a mental note to stop pissing off System, then used a tendril of shadow to spear a tiny sausage from the sample platter and pop it into my mouth. The Adversary pulled out his notebook and flipped through a few pages while I chewed.
“Believe it or not, that whole fiasco isn’t the only reason why I wanted to talk to you today. Your first bug report of the night caused quite a stir and I wanted to explain what we found.”
I leaned forward in my chair. “So, there was a bug? I wasn’t sure if I had just misunderstood something about how all this works.”
The Adversary raised his hand and tilted it back and forth in a so-so gesture. “I’m not sure if I’d call it a bug so much as unintended emergent behavior...”
He paused for a moment, thinking. “Here’s what happened. First, you unlocked a skill which had previously been unique to a particular monster. It is intended that it be possible to learn monster skills in various ways and those who do so get credit for discovering the skill, assuming they can find a way to qualify for it.
“Many skills have multiple sets of prerequisites, and when you unlock a skill, you only get to see some of the possible prerequisites to learn the skill. Which prerequisites you learn are determined by how you unlocked the skill, and in the case of learning it from a defeated monster, you learn the method the monster used to qualify for the skill. Frequently this is simply species levels, but not always.”
The Adversary paused to pour a glass of wine, offering me some as well. “Normally you would have needed to either find different prerequisites that you satisfied, which is usually done by researching the skill and trying to find other ways to unlock it, or you could have used your Innovator skill to bypass the prerequisite. The reason neither of those was required is that you had already learned the skill.”
“What do you mean I’d already learned it?” I asked, confused.
“I know you haven’t had much opportunity to experiment with that Devour Essence skill of yours, but you’ll find that the mechanics of it are quite interesting. When you use it on a spirit it gives you access to some of that creature's skills, this unlocks them for you as you noticed, but it also gives you temporary ranks in those skills by treating your Willpower as the number of progression points invested into each one. This effect temporarily bypasses prerequisites, similar to skills gained from titles.”
“Oh, I get it. I qualified for the skill while I was using Devour Essence, so it gave me the free rank even though I didn’t qualify for it when I assigned it to a class.”
“Bingo,” The Adversary said, looking pleased. “The only actual bug we found in the process is what happened next. There actually is already a check in place to make sure you still qualify for a skill before allowing you to learn it, even if you have a free rank available. You managed to short circuit this by assigning the skill to a class that evolved as part of the assignment, and that evolved class satisfied a different set of prerequisites you weren’t even aware of, allowing you to learn the skill. The check for evolving the class was done when you assigned the skill, but before it double-checked you still qualified to learn it.”
I nodded thoughtfully, scooping up another sausage as I did so. “That sounds like it would have been a real brain teaser to figure out.”
“Indeed. I had to help troubleshoot it personally, which is rare these days.”
“So, why didn’t I unlock the class when I first used Devour Essence?” I asked, then immediately answered my own question as it dawned on me. “Oh, it’s because the skills weren’t assigned to any class, were they? I only got the class unlock when I assigned Embrace of Shadows to the Thief class.”
“Exactly, and the same is true for title skills. You’ll never unlock a class from a temporary skill because skills need to be assigned to a class before they are checked for either class evolutions or discoveries. Evolutions are sometimes a bit easier to pull off as they generally require less skills known, but entirely new classes don’t care if your skills are spread out over multiple other classes.” The Adversary leaned back in his chair adopting a more professorial tone as he explained.
The sound of a throat clearing interrupted our discussion, and both of us looked over towards the closed door to the room. Instead of a satyr, System stood just inside the room. When he had both of our attention he spoke, addressing The Adversary. “My Lord Adversary, while you are permitted to discuss the details of bug reports with involved parties, I fear you are drifting into more general topics.”
“Ah, of course. My apologies.” He flipped pages in his notepad then reached towards his ear, grabbing at the area he normally kept a pencil in our previous encounter. Not finding it, he grimaced and then summoned one out of thin air and used it to write out a quick note on his pad. When he finished, he ripped that page out of the notepad and held it out to System, who walked over and took it from him, reading it with interest as The Adversary turned back to me.
“Infinity I’m afraid we’ll need to cut this discussion short, however I did want to speak briefly about your rewards for finding these bugs. The bug related to your class unlock, while devilishly hard to troubleshoot, is not a major vulnerability. I think you may be the only one currently capable of exploiting it in a meaningful way.” He motioned to System, “I’ve authorized System to fulfill this reward on my behalf, to avoid the appearance of favor and ensure the reward doesn’t go beyond the allowed scope for this level of bounty.”
I glanced at System, not sure what that meant. He noticed my confusion and clarified. “The Lord Adversary has issued a reward of restricted information. While not a material reward, information as you know can be quite valuable. You have been issued the equivalent of one Lesser Blessing worth of information, to be provided by me either via the petition system or in person.”
“This will allow you to request information that would normally be unavailable to you,” he continued. “Either because it is not generally known outside of myself and the pantheon, or because you simply lack access to it. I will adjudicate the value of the information you request and provide answers until you have exhausted the limits of this reward.”
That did sound pretty good, and now I understood why The Adversary had delegated fulfillment of the reward to System. “Got it,” I told them. “That works for me, thanks.”
The Adversary picked up where he left off. “As to the bounty for the loot box exploit, I judge this to be a very serious zero-day vulnerability, already being actively exploited in the wild. We do not yet know the extent of the damage this particular exploit has caused…” He glanced at System. “Do we?”
The artificial god shook his head. “Not yet, reviewing every loot box ever distributed is proving time consuming, as several different methods were used to liberate extra items from the Garden of Possibilities. I’ve already seen evidence of everything from dimensional storage to teleportation effects being effective, so I’m having to review everything in detail. One enterprising fellow seems to have found a way to duplicate the items as well.”
“As I suspected… It may be some time before we know the full extent of the damage, and therefore how much we should be rewarding you for putting a stop to it. None-the-less, there are procedures and rules in place for this sort of occurrence. The level of bounty you will get from this is outside of my authority to confer directly, it requires unanimous approval from the prime deities of the pantheon. Fortunately, when I presented them with my findings even Lord Limitless agreed that you deserved full credit and rewards.”
I perked up at that, surprised that Limitless would put aside his grudge like that. Perhaps I had misjudged the strange deity… System quickly disabused me of that notion.
“What The Lord Adversary is neglecting to mention is that he conveniently failed to inform the assembly which of his so-called ‘agents’ had discovered this vulnerability. As your name was never mentioned in the discussion, I doubt Lord Limitless even realizes he authorized this reward.”
“System, don’t be so cynical. I’m certain Lord Limitless would judge this case on its merits alone even if he knew, but as the identity of the researcher is immaterial to the case, I saw no need to bring it up and distract from the business at hand.” The Adversary admonished, but his red eyes sparkled like distant bonfires as he returned his attention to me.
“Like I said, we won’t know the full extent of your rewards for some time yet, but this tier of bounty has a minimum rewards list attached to it. Now that the assembly has signed off on it, I am awarding you these minimum rewards immediately and System or I will follow up when our investigation has concluded with any additional rewards you may have earned based on the results of our audit. System, would you do the honors please.”
“Naturally, sir.” He turned to me. “For brevity and since we are face to face at the moment I am going to condense and abbreviate the number of prompts you are about to receive to the bare minimum needed to issue your rewards. We can discuss the details afterwards.”
> System Message
>
> Stuff happened!
>
> This space intentionally left blank.
>
> Rewards:
>
> New Achievement (“Employee of the Month”)
> Unlocked Title (“Quality Assurance Specialist”)
> +10pp (Universal)
> 10x Scarab Token
> Infernal Contract VIP Membership
> Skill Upgrade Script