A few subjective minutes later, we made our way into the castle. We encountered no resistance as we climbed down. Lucus had sunk a piton into the stone around the door, and the others used a rope to lower themselves into the room. I hung out on the ceiling for the time being.
The floor here had once been a vaulted ceiling, with thick wooden cross beams helping to hold it up. How any of the architecture in this dungeon worked while upside-down was a complete mystery, but I put it out of my mind as I watched my friends navigate the rubble strewn floor. Scan wasn’t picking up anything of interest, and I moved to join them as they made their way to the door at the top of the inverted staircase.
The room remained exceptionally creepy, but nothing jumped out at us, and no traps went off. My boss senses were still going crazy, and it was putting me on edge. From my elevated position I could also see out the open main doors of the keep and into the inverted courtyard and the main gate beyond. Finally, looking this way, I saw what I’d been missing.
There were claw marks at the edge of the door leading outside. Large ones. When I saw them, I tensed, but then relaxed as I finally understood what this meant. The dragon we’d fought earlier hadn’t just been a patrol, it had been a wandering mini-boss. We’d encountered it in the wall, but if we’d managed to clear that checkpoint faster, we probably would have encountered it here instead. Overall, we’d gotten lucky, there was enough room for it to fly in here.
The door at the end of the staircase was close enough to the floor that Lucus was able to boost Arven up to try the latch. It didn’t budge, and I started to send shadows into the cracks looking for a locking mechanism, but before I could find one there was a click, and the doors swung inward.
Inside stood a man. No, not a man, but something that looked like one. His skin was gray and lifeless, and his eyes were like two burnt coals. Scan told me his name was “Muladi, Dark Seneschal” but despite being named he was not an elite. After a moment the creature spoke with a dry, atonal voice.
“Ahhhh… You have arrived. Excellent. The Duke has been awaiting you. Please follow me.” Then he turned on his heel and walked back down the dark hallway to the throne room.
“Maybe not so different after all…” Arven muttered.
Lucus helped the others climb up, allowing them to use the shield as a stepladder while I slipped in from above. When everyone else was inside, he used it to help lift himself up, then turned around and pulled it up after him with Arven’s help.
We followed the strange undead and I remained attached to the ceiling and under the effects of Hide. The seneschal hadn’t looked at me yet, so I wasn’t sure if he knew I was there, but felt no need to enlighten him if he’d failed to notice me.
Before long we passed two other connecting hallways before passing through an archway leading to a small antechamber. The moment I passed through the archway I tensed as a notification appeared in the corner of my vision.
You have been affected by “Greater Reveal Identity”
Arven had told us this might happen, it was a feature of the real keep, and we’d planned accordingly. After a moment, a prompt appeared, asking me if I wished to attempt to resist the effect.
This spell was attached to a trap on this room. Visitors who did not willingly identify themselves would be subject to a powerful curse so long as they remained in the keep. It wasn’t the sort of thing you wanted going into a boss fight, so for those of us that had something to hide, we’d simply unequipped the titles we cared about keeping secret.
It was a weakness of the system that could only be exploited if you knew to expect it, but security through obscurity had never been a winning tactic. I let the spell reveal my current titles, then immediately got to work swapping them out.
The seneschal walked right through the antechamber without pausing. He threw open the huge doors to the throne room and took two steps into the room.
Unlike the room we’d come from, the doors here were basically floor to ceiling. The throne room was a bit oddly designed, it was two stories tall, but you were intended to enter with a view of balcony and the raised dais that normally contained the throne. Entering normally involved descending a small flight of stairs, symbolically and physically lowering yourself before the Duke. Now the effect was somewhat spoiled.
“Your Grace, the petitioners you were expecting have arrived. Please allow me to present Blademaster Arven Wyse the Prisoner, a Whirlwind Skirmisher. Called Hero, Lucky, and Traitor. Prisoner Dawn the Lucky, a Cleric of the Adversary. Prisoner Dorian the Founder, a Valerian Loresinger. Prisoner Savas the Lucky, a Rogue. And finally, Adventurer Tavi the Founder, a Master Shadow Thief. Called the Rule Breaker, Revolutionary, and Quality Assurance Specialist.”
He had motioned to each of my friends as he announced them, but when he came to me, he seemed to stumble for a moment, then simply gestured broadly before bowing to the Duke and his court. Said assembly was quite the sight. Even as the seneschal withdrew, closing the doors behind him, I took in what stood before us.
The room had two floors, one of which was a balcony that ran along two parallel sides of the room. This was of course upside down. Skeletal Royal Guards armed with bows and arrows stood on the underside of the balcony shoulder to shoulder.
On the ground floor a throne and simpler chair had been arranged in the rough middle of the room. I idly noted that the smaller chair had lost one leg at some point, and some enterprising skeleton had replaced it with one of their own limbs.
On the throne sat a pale skinned man in what looked like ceremonial armor. His eyes were red, but the red of blood rather than embers. He had no irises nor pupils, yet strange currents seemed to move just beneath the surface, creating subtle shifting patterns of dark and light. The only reason this was visible from our location was because of the man’s overwhelming elite aura, which gave him shockingly visible coloring.
Beside the man sat a woman with no face. She was semi-transparent, and wore a tattered veil. I could see that nothing but a skull lay under it. She too was visibly elite, though not so much as the man beside her. Scan identified the two of them as Duke Talcion, the Lord of Ruin and Duchess Varillis, Maw of the Void.
Though they were the only ones seated, they were not the only ones on this floor. Beside the Duke and Duchess stood a ghoul in fine blue robes and carrying a gnarled staff. This was Court Wizard Sarath, and alone in the room his eyes seemed to fix upon me.
Under the balcony were more royal guards, though these were mostly ghouls wielding melee weapons. There were also two more Houndmasters here, each with two Kennel Cadavers. At the Duke’s feet rested yet another Kennel Cadaver, but this one radiated an elite aura and was simply named “Bruno”.
I took in the forces arrayed before us. To me, this looked like a hell of a boss encounter. If Arven was right and System attempted to enforce plausibly completable dungeons, then I didn’t understand how this encounter made any sense. The Duke rose from his chair and spoke, his voice was as cold as the light that illuminated this world.
“Ah, our guests of honor. I began to think you might never arrive. What a pity that would have been, we get so few guests these days.” He seemed to look over each of my party members one by one. “It seems one of you is missing. Where is this Master Shadow Thief I’ve been hearing so much about?”
The wizard cleared his throat. “Your Grace, if you will direct your attention upwards, and to the left, you’ll observe a patch of shadow there. I believe the thief to be located within.”
I made note of that. So, he couldn’t see me exactly, but had managed to work out my location anyway. Good to know. It was also really interesting that unlike every other undead we’d encountered here, these could talk and possessed obvious intelligence.
The Duke looked up in my direction. “Ah, yes, I see it now. Come little thief, show yourself to me so I might greet you properly.”
I considered letting them continue to guess at my position, or teleporting away and hiding elsewhere, but didn’t want to give up too much too quickly. I also wanted to see where this was going, and the plan called for some stalling at this point so a little conversation couldn’t hurt.
I gathered some of my shadows until they resolved into my normal cloaked form, and pushed the darkness away from my body so that I could be easily seen. I’d positioned myself in a semi-seated position against the wall, but when I felt myself observed, I stood at a tangent to the wall and gave a short flourishing bow with my cloak.
“So, I finally get to meet the one who has been stealing the very substance of my realm. When I was informed, I was at first furious, but then I began to look at it as a compliment. Of course one such as you should wish to become closer to perfection. I am disappointed to learn that you have not yet taken the final step and embraced undeath, but no matter, we can resolve that shortly,” the Duke told me.
“Look at them dear, they do not deserve your gifts,” the Duchess hissed. She hadn’t bothered to stand. “Thieves, prisoners, and traitors all.”
The Duke turned back to his wife. “Yet they made it here, dearest. Surely that is worth something… No? Ah well. I suppose they’ll make a nice meal at least.” he sighed.
I let the shadows consume me again and reactivated Hide. I could see where this was going. I made sure to let my shadows visibly expand over a larger area and began to shift slightly while keeping the apparent center of my shadows in place. No point in concealing myself if I made my position obvious.
The Duke sat back down on his throne and waved a hand idly. “Ah well. I had planned to offer you a conversion to undeath and a place in my court, but my dear wife has found you wanting. This audience is at an end, I am satisfied. However, I simply must insist you join my wife and I for dinner.”
Lucus raised his shield. “I don’t think we’ll be doing that.”
Arven drew his swords, holding them lightly to both sides. He didn’t yet bother to activate any skills. Indeed, he looked relaxed. Dawn and Dorian shared a look, but neither made any move, while Savas simply looked around the room nervously and fingered his new dagger.
The Duke crossed his legs and leaned back on his throne. “Funny. I don’t remember asking.”
All the guards on the balcony raised their bows. The guards on this floor advanced and then lined up in front of the throne. The Duke gave us a cold smile, showing off fangs.
“End them.”
The air filled with arrows, the guard rushed forward, and the wizard tossed a bolt of lightning. It all slammed into my friends with thunderous force… and nothing happened. The arrows and guards bounced off an invisible wall a little way in front of Lucus. The lightning bolt had streaked towards them at first but curved in midair to strike the wall where I had been moments before, missing me and appearing to be devoured by the shadows I was holding there.
There was a moment of near silence while the skeletal guards reloaded, and ghouls picked themselves up off the ground. The Duke held up his hand, causing his forces to halt. “What is this?” He asked the wizard.
“Some sort of force field I believe, your grace,” he scowled as he cast several spells. “It resists examination and divination.”
The Duke looked at my friends with obvious confusion. “What is the point of this? Why delay the inevitable? We are timeless, you are not. Do you think to win some moral victory by making me wait for my meal?”
Arven was wearing one of his rare smiles. It was just as cold as the Duke’s. “Oh, it’s nothing to do with you. We just didn’t want to get caught in the explosion.”
Then the entire room burst into flames.
***
“You know, I think I do,” I told Arven, pulling out a scarab. “I’ll need to visit the Exchange though, so I’ll be right back.”
“I feel an odd sense of apprehension,” Dorian told the air as I faded away.
I appeared in the entryway to Sam’s, my titles already adjusted to display my fake identity. I was a bit worried I’d run into one of the two people I’d stolen a scarab token from on previous visits, but it was a risk I’d need to take. I was probably going to need both of them before I was done here, if I had my math right, so hopefully neither of them would come looking for their missing property just yet.
I’d done some thinking and decided that it was a bad idea to go into my first boss fight without fully taking advantage of my available resources. None of us really knew what to expect, but this dungeon had gone unbeaten for decades. That fact had started to really worry me. Surely in all the time at least one group had made it this far, but if so they hadn’t survived to tell anyone about it.
I had a rough idea of what I wanted to do, but I was going to need to verify that some things worked like I hoped they did. I had noticed some issues with my build both from a mechanical and thematic level, and I saw an opportunity to pivot before I went too deep down my current path.
A lot of the problem was that I was largely built around being Tavi. When I had thought this was a game, the idea of being a thief or rogue class hadn’t even crossed my mind. I’d been working with it as the hand that was delt to me, but it didn’t suit me as well as it had Tavi. Fortunately, I had two spirits attached to a single soul, so I had room to work with.
I had time to think through things as I stood in line for entry into Sam’s. It was interesting to see that Sam’s was getting more business, and normally I would have wanted to chat with the people in line with me, but I had a lot to think about and several things to do. Also, these people all seemed weirdly stiff. I briefly wondered what was wrong with them before dismissing it and turning my attention inward.
My first task was opening a petition to System, asking to spend my information reward clarifying a few points related to crafting with my Soul Forge skill. I’d been reading The Adversary’s book, and it was giving me ideas at a faster rate than it was giving me skills. I had picked up a new one the previous night, but it wasn’t exactly useful just yet.
The main thing that was bouncing around in my head right now was something Valera had said way back in the actual Forge of Souls. She’d talked about how other Travelers were getting to create avatars for themselves much like a normal game, but that this process consumed the body and spirit of the person they were replacing. She’d also said that for Valerians the process never really ended. I would effectively always be in character creation.
Despite her saying that, I hadn’t really seen much to indicate this was the case. However, I now knew Soul Forging was at least one way for me to tap into that potential. At least one other was likely hidden behind that massive Tier 50 penalty I was under from my Valerian species. These things were side notes, however, as in reading the book I had come to understand more about the nature of spirits and souls.
Spirits were essentially just power given form, and that form could itself have certain characteristics that defined it. It was clear to me now that progression points were just a System abstraction for what was essentially unallocated spiritual power. Without System, creatures increased their spiritual power more naturally, but the same process still occurred. The allocation of spiritual power was just based on whatever you happened to be using your spirit for or striving to attain.
System had made that process almost mechanical. He was preventing us from automatically allocating our spiritual energy like we would naturally and was instead allowing us to choose how it was spent. Most spiritual energy had an alignment however, caused by whatever had generated it in the first place, and that alignment meant that it was more difficult to use for things it was not aligned with.
This is where cross path penalties came into play. System had some way of removing the alignment from spiritual energy but doing so must cost some of that energy. Universal points I assumed were comprised of energy System had already stripped of its alignment.
I was actually doing something similar with my Refine Spirit skill, which I used over and over as I waited in line. Creating spirit crystals appeared to un-align them from their original sources as well as disconnect them from whatever soul or ideal they had originally bonded to. I suspected I would eventually be able to use spirit crystals to enhance myself directly, much like progression points, but so far had not discovered how to do so.
All of this had made me wonder a lot about my soul-space skills. Spirits made sense to me, but souls were still strange. Understanding that System was in many ways just an interface on something that already existed, almost an operating system for reality itself, had made me wonder what exactly my soul-space skills were actually doing.
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On the face of it, conceptual storage made a weird kind of sense, but once you knew the basics of how spirits and souls worked the logic broke down. It felt like a game mechanic, not an abstraction from reality. Considering that my inventory system had proven to be one of my most powerful tools, I felt like I needed to understand it better. This was especially true in light of what I was planning.
I typed up my questions to System very carefully, outlining my existing knowledge and suppositions. I wanted to get as much out of the information reward as I could and that meant not being charged for things I already knew. At one point someone else in line said something to me, but I was so deep in my work that I didn’t manage to parse what they had said, and when I didn’t respond, they eventually gave up.
I reached the head of the line just in time to finish re-reading my petition for the second time. Satisfied, I submitted it.
“Ah, lady Nyx, welcome back to Sam’s.” Said the doorman as I stepped up. “You currently have no balance on file. Will you be viewing the selection today or have you come to purchase a previously viewed item?”
“Both,” I told him, handing him a scarab. “And I’d like to speak with Bea if she’s available.”
“I shall inform the lady,” he said, bowing as he accepted my scarab.
The door to the hallway opened, and to my surprise it wasn’t Sam there to greet me. System himself stood in the hall and motioned for me to join him. “Walk with me, won’t you Nyx?” he asked.
I heard murmurs behind me as I walked over to him, and I glanced back to see a small group of customers who had been waiting in line behind me looking between the two of us with speculative expressions and even some fear. Not for System I realized, but for me.
I kept forgetting that I looked like a fucking ring wraith most of the time… Ah well, might as well roll with it. I gave them my best shark impression of a smile, letting the shadows pull back from my blood red eyes for a moment. About half of them flinched. Then I turned away and grabbed both doors with shadow hands, pulling them closed behind me as I walked through them.
I had to keep up appearances, after all.
***
“As to your first question,” System said. “You correctly surmise that there is more to it than the skill suggests. To understand what is going on requires a term that is not in your vocabulary. That term is ‘The Empyrean Concert’ which is frequently abbreviated to simply ‘The Concert’ by those familiar with it.
“The concept of The Concert is required because the word reality is not large enough to contain the truth of existence. There are in fact many realities, all equally valid, and The Concert is how we describe their combined existence and interplay. There is a type of movement inherent to the concept that is difficult for most mortals to grasp.
“Without going into too much detail, know that every soul possesses its own reality, unique to it. This reality is conceptual, and it is shaped by your perceptions. As you live you build up that reality, giving it structure and weight. What you are is that reality, and it is you, and it may only loosely be based on the reality we share here together. When you move something into your soul-space, you are removing it from our shared reality and placing it solely in your own. All conceptual magic works in this way, affecting the realities that exist inside us.”
I was a bit dubious. “You’re saying everyone has a universe inside them? Why?”
“Not a universe, a reality,” System clarified. “Our shared reality contains a universe, and it also contains the concept of physical space and physics and any number of other things. Your personal reality might contain none of those. Consider the dungeon you are in for a moment, you already know that dungeons come from reality fragments, and that there isn’t much of a difference between a reality fragment and a soul. Ask yourself then, is the reality of that dungeon the same reality as our ‘prime’ reality?”
I saw his point. It obviously wasn’t. “So, if that’s the case, it means we all have something like a dungeon inside us? I thought I was supposed to be unique in that regard.”
“Not quite, what we all have inside us is just that - us. Our combined experiences, thoughts, memories, and perceptions. Call it your identity if you prefer. What you did by taking that reality seed inside your soul-space was to prove that your soul was bigger than it was, that your very identity could contain the concept it represented. Really what it meant was that you were capable of growing beyond yourself, something you had already begun to demonstrate,” he said.
“You’re referring to when my soul merged with Tavi’s.”
“I am. Though a soul-space works a bit differently than that. The contents of a soul-space are not part of your identity, they are merely things which you have confined within your reality. This is why your little trick with Dorian succeeded.
“Your soul has become large enough to contain the concepts of others, but things in your soul-spaces are not incorporated into your identity. Otherwise, Dorian would have become a part of you just like Tavi. That’s really the best way to think of your soul-spaces, imagine them as dividers between both what it means to be you and the other concepts you are storing.”
We were in Sam’s study once again, and this time System had taken a seat in Sam’s chair while I sat in my normal position. I’d had a look at Sam’s inventory on our way in, but there hadn’t been anything there that had changed my current plans, so I’d told Sam to go ahead and let in the next customer and asked to use his study to talk with System. I didn’t plan on going back that way, but I had let him know I’d probably be making a purchase of a previously stocked item before leaving.
Now I got out of my overly large chair and began to pace, trying to process everything that System had just told me. I was pretty sure he’d actually just answered all my questions, if indirectly, but after a few moments I decided I needed to be extra sure of at least one thing.
“I think you gave me enough info for me to answer most of my own questions, so let's skip to the end. I only want to know one thing. Will it work?”
System gave me a knowing smile. “Yes.”
***
In the end I thought of one more question that hadn’t occurred to me before, and when I’d asked it, System had warned me that answering it would expend the remainder of my information reward. I felt like I’d gotten a lot out of this already, so I agreed.
My question had been about elites. I wanted to know how they worked, and why their gear only worked for them. To my surprise the answer turned out to be related to what I’d just learned. As it turned out, elite monsters were simply more real than anything else.
Elites were uncommon in the prime reality because it was such a vast place and concentrations of reality in a single creature were exceedingly rare, even with System’s direction. In dungeons the scope of reality tended to be much smaller, and so individual creatures native to it were sometimes made elites by virtue of being more important to the dungeon’s concept.
As to what being an elite did, it worked like a modifier on top of spiritual energy, and for me System had chosen to represent that through the attributes system as it best modeled what was actually happening. In truth it was more like having my current total level increased, so what System was doing was essentially showing me an approximation of how effective my stats were considering my current level.
He’d also explained how levels related to spiritual energy “for free” because literally any of my friends could have explained it if I’d asked… The fact that Tavi only had a vague idea told me it was just one of those things she hadn’t cared enough about to pay attention to, even though it was common knowledge.
Finally, he’d also explained that elite gear worked like it did because the gear itself was part of the creature’s identity and was only real enough to exist because the elite was effectively willing it into our shared reality. It was almost like an inverse soul-space and was why I was able to keep them in my soul-space without them suddenly vanishing.
I had essentially stolen the concept of it away from them. If I could then find a way to link that concept to me, I’d be able to keep it around permanently, but so long as it had the elite tag it would still be dependent on my spirit for its power. In game terms, an elite item was effectively part of a monster’s power budget.
When System had left, Bea had come in with tea and a plate of food for each of us and I discussed my plans with her over lunch. Bea was definitely not a subject matter expert, but it helped just to have someone to talk to. The whole time I continued to use every spec of mana I could creating spirit crystals. I was sure I was going to need a lot of them.
In true Tavi fashion, I was planning to do something completely insane, but instead of just leaping into it and hoping it worked out I was doing everything I could think of to ensure it had the best chance of success. It was funny though because the original idea had been Tavi’s in a very real way. On our first day in the dungeon she’d made a build choice for me largely based on a whim and a pun, and now I was about to crank that joke up to eleven.
When we’d finished lunch Sam walked in and took his seat at the desk. “Lady Nyx, a pleasure to see you as always. I would however appreciate it if you’d find somewhere other than my personal study to have meetings with various gods and spirits beyond mortal comprehension.”
“What, you’re telling me you don’t have some kind of recording spell going on in this room at all times? You must be getting all sorts of juicy info from these meetings,” I scoffed.
Sam turned beet red and started to stammer out a denial, but Bea cut him off. “Of course he does, dear, but the gods and System never let it record anything. It’s been quite frustrating for the old goat,” she said, giving her husband a loving grin.
I laughed, then turned back to Sam. “Well, I think I’m about to make your day, so buckle up. I’d like to buy one of the items I saw yesterday, and one of the items I saw on my first visit.”
Sam’s eyebrows rose, but then a strange look passed over his face. “I’m sorry, but Nemesis was requisitioned by an Agent of The Lord Adversary…”
It was now my turn to give him an odd look. “I didn’t mean Nemesis. I want to buy The Heart of Fire and Endless Horizon,” I said, sliding four scarabs over to him. Along with the one I had paid to get in, these were all my current tokens.
Fortunately, Bea had told me that the free entry coupon I already had would allow me to visit the Exchange just like a scarab would, but of course couldn’t be used to buy anything. That was good because I’d have hated to lose access to the bathrooms here, even temporarily.
“My apologies for assuming,” Sam said, sweeping up the tokens with a smile. “The other items in those collections have already sold, but both of those are still available. Please wait right here and I’ll have them brought in.”
***
My next stop was, predictably, the bathrooms. I was about to do some fucked up shit with the world strongest fire essence, and the bathrooms at the Fair Deal were the only place I was dead certain were completely fireproof.
Normally when I arrived at the Fair Deal the only sound was from the very distant sounding elevator music that seemed to play from a single working speaker in the ceiling. That, and the occasional sound of a buzzing fluorescent light, or Rhel turning a page in her manga. This time, however, I appeared in the middle of what seemed to be an all-out brawl.
Rhel was here, mostly in her normal position behind the counter, but her book was on the floor several meters away, lying open against one of the display cases. Across the counter from Rhel was another devil, this one a regular succubus. Where Rhel was a light blue color, this devil was a more traditional red. She also had large batlike wings. More importantly, she was beating the shit out of Rhel, holding the other girl in a headlock and repeatedly slamming her face into the counter.
“What the fuck?!” I yelled. The two devils were screaming at each other incoherently and I didn’t think either of them heard me. It was surreally like watching a fight break out in a waffle house.
The old me would have hesitated, and perhaps weighed the merits of getting involved in a fight like this. The new me, the me that included Tavi, had no such hesitation. Before my brain had even processed what I was doing I was flying at the new devil, fist drawn back in a tiny but powerful sucker punch right to her stomach, which, to be fair, was about eye level for me.
There was a woosh as air left her, and she staggered back, releasing Rhel. “What the fuck are you doing?!” I yelled at her as she tried to catch her breath.
Rhel took that opportunity to jump over the counter and launch herself at the other girl once more. Black blood was streaming down her face, and she was a mass of bruises, but that didn’t even slow her down. She began clawing and biting at the other girl, mostly ineffectively, but no less ferociously.
“What the fuck are YOU doing?!” I screamed at her, using Hands of Night to yank her away from the other girl and into the air. For all her fury she was still just a level 15 cashier, which was probably why the other succubus had been kicking the shit out of her.
The other devil recovered from my sucker punch and rushed at me this time, almost catching me off guard as I yelled at Rhel. I managed to dodge her just in time, my shadows taking the claws that were meant for my face. Belatedly I realized I’d become a third participant in a bitch fight. Whelp, that was fine, I’d just need to show both these girls who the baddest bitch here actually was. I guessed it was as good a time as any to test this idea…
With some small degree of satisfaction, I turned on Devour Essence and targeted the reality seed inside my soul.
The air around me bent as the aura of an elite took form. My shadows swelled and darkened, writhing with new physical presence. I jumped into the air and caught the red devil girl with a backhand as she spun to face me after my dodge had left her over extended.
The crack of the blow connecting made me worry that I’d accidentally broken her neck, but instead she just went flying into one of the nearby display cases, thudding against it without so much as cracking the glass. She struggled to stand for a moment, then collapsed, apparently out cold.
I turned to look at Rhel. “You going to give me any more trouble?” I asked her.
She shook her head several times.
“Who is that girl?” I asked, pointing to the unconscious devil. “And why was she attacking you?”
“Shees muh sssistah.” Rhel managed to say between cracked and swollen lips, and probably also a broken nose. “Becuus shhe’s uh BITHCH!”
I looked between the two of them. I wasn’t seeing the family resemblance. “Uh, are you going to like, cut her throat while she’s unconscious or anything like that?” I asked, worried about leaving the two alone but impatient to get on with what I was here for.
“Thass uh reely guud ideea!” Rhel said, starting towards the fallen devil. Before I could react to stop here, she pulled up short, shoulders slumping. “Nuh, uh fergott… Thuh Boass wuld bee maad. Sheesh hoasin da oreal.”
It was very difficult to understand what she was saying, but I managed to parse that she wasn’t going to kill her own sister right this moment.
“Cool… I’m just gonna use the bathroom, why don’t you put her outside and maybe lock the door so she can’t get back in.” I wasn’t sure if the other devil had gotten here by walking in the front door or by using a scarab… Wait… I created a shadow hand just to facepalm with. What was I doing? I really needed to remember that I was a thief. “Hold that thought,” I told Rhel.
I walked over to the unconscious devil and searched her. She had a nice necklace with a black jewel hanging from it, but I wasn’t interested in jewelry. Instead, I found her scarab token tucked into a pocket on the inside of her pants, which were themselves some kind of heavy leather armor. It did not look like a comfortable way to store something.
Congratulations, you have received enough XP to become a Level 8 Shadow Thief!
Wait… I’d stolen three of these at this point, and the others had been at much lower levels. Why had this one been the first to level me up? Sure, the first one had been an accident, and I guess the other one had been freely offered in return for being taught… Fuck. I’d screwed myself out of a bunch of XP hadn’t I? Hell, the bonus XP was the only reason Tavi had stolen Valera’s statuette in the first place, and I’d killed her before she could get away with it.
I was a fucking terrible thief.
I stored the scarab and seriously considered stealing her armor too, it was really nice and clearly built to protect vital areas while allowing for full mobility… but it was too big for me to wear, and the chest piece was probably too close to a shirt for me to use anyway. Better not. I didn’t want to accidentally kill her by taking away all her defenses.
“Alright, now throw her out and lock the door,” I told Rhel.
She… grinned? Snarled? I couldn’t tell. Her face was hard to look at. Either way she grabbed her sister by a horn and dragged her towards the entryway. I made myself scarce, not wanting to have my hair set on fire by the climate outside. As I did so, I noticed something interesting. I’d left Devour Essence turned on and it was not draining my mana as fast as I thought it should. After watching it for a moment, I realized why… the size of my mana pool was increasing with every tick.
I scampered into the bathroom and had a closer look at my character sheet trying to figure out what was happening. It wasn’t until I reset the skill that I was able to make sense of it.
I had already figured out that using Devour Essence on the Reality Seed wasn’t going to be all that different from using it on the spirit of an elite. Elites were more real than other creatures, but what could possibly be more real than a shard of reality itself? There was no reason to believe they’d behave any differently, except that the size of the seed in my inventory was obviously so much greater than anything else I’d consumed so far.
What I hadn’t realized was that it was strong enough to create a positive feedback loop where the increases to my Willpower score were allowing me to draw more power from the seed with every tick, raising my stats even more. I was literally getting stronger the longer this was turned on.
Unfortunately, the effect of each subsequent boost was less than the previous, falling off exponentially. In the end I only ended up with about a +13 bonus to all stats, with over half of that coming from the initial activation. Still, that was nothing to laugh at, as my lowest stats were currently at 12. On average this was nearly doubling my total stats.
The initial activation more than paid for itself with the increase to my total mana. I could likely make this a lot more efficient by increasing my natural Willpower and getting more multipliers to my stats, but for now it was still a cool and unexpected benefit.
I also noted that the seed itself didn’t seem to be harmed or lessened by draining its essence, which didn’t surprise me. I suspected I could drain it forever, in any quantity, and it would never run out. I didn’t know exactly what its nature was, but it was clear that it had something to do with being fucking massive.
I sat down and got to work. It was time to put all my plans into motion, and I was nearly giddy with excitement.
Earlier when I’d spoken to the satyr researcher about reality seeds, he’d mentioned that using them in crafting typically limited them conceptually. I had decided that I didn’t want to do that, not yet at least, but it had occurred to me that perhaps by using the seed as a base item and applying properties on top of it I could expand its concept rather than limit it. Confirming that had been part of the point of questioning System.
I opened up my Soul Forge interface and added my reality seed as the base item, then put the Heart of Fire in as the secondary. The reality seed had only a single property, “Endless” while the Heart had several, including “Affinity (Fire)”, “Affinity (Divine)”, “Affinity (Love)”, “Affinity (Passion)”, “Affinity (Obsession)”, and “Affinity (Loss).”
The Endless property had no adjustment options, which made sense. Reality Seeds were absolute representations of a concept, you couldn’t tweak the values on a binary state. The Heart, however, did allow me to alter its properties. I didn’t hesitate to zero out the Loss and Obsession affinities. I was unwilling to add those to something so close to my soul.
Finally, I maxed out the Fire affinity at 100%, up from its starting value of only 90%. The Love, Passion, and Holy affinities I left unchanged, at 20% each for the first two, and 50% for the latter. Each change - positive or negative - increased the crafting cost, so I didn’t want to change more than necessary. Every property on both items had a 100% chance of being applied to the final result, likely due to the quality of the materials, so what I was doing was only adjusting their effective power levels.
Lastly, I had to pay for it. To this end, I’d been preparing for hours, constantly draining my mana creating ever more and larger spirit crystals. When using spirit crystals, the soul forge would give me back change in the form of lesser crystals if I overpaid, so I’d spent all day making the biggest crystal I could.
It was a tier 5 whopper that practically buzzed with power when I took it out of my soul-space to look at it. Spirit crystals were odd things, similar to my soul gem but visibly radiating power in the form of a soft blue light. It was hard to tell, but I thought the actual material of the crystal was clear as glass.
With some trepidation, I slotted in the crystal for payment and confirmed the crafting.