Light hitting him in the face made Hazel stir, the still-nude man slumped over as he had been last night. The sudden explosion of those windows and all the information felt like a dream. The tinges in his hair were the only evidence visible that anything had happened, but the rest of him still looked all-but-the-same.
His pink eyes finally open and he immediately looks up at the roof of the barn in disgust for the sunlight ruining his rest. He was stiff from laying on the ground and sitting up against a wall all night, but even in his current condition he felt... shocking good. The first few attempts to get moving fail no differently than someone who's limbs had fallen asleep may feel, but his natural recovery let him shake that fatigue off and quickly sit upright and stretch.
"By Eleni's wide hips, when did sleeping on the ground feel so good? That weird dream aside, that may have been the best night of sleep I've had in years."
Hazel gets up and looks around for his clothes... but failing to find them, he sighs and approaches the mirror. Near it and folded up on one of their old stools was his pair of pants; although he didn't know where he'd find another shirt from how often he wore his other one, he at least needed to put pants on if he was going to be walking around the farm. But as he's dressing, he catches sight of himself in the mirror.
Comparing his body to what he remembered was impossible now. He's still about six feet tall, but his muscles were detailed to a near point of absurdity than he remembers. For starters, he had the faint lines of abs before... but now his well-defined four-packed core looked like he was a soldier or some noble. Most of it lie in the musculature of his core being tuned up, but even his arms and thighs looked better. Despite being the same height, he just looked bigger and healthier than ever. And that was before he looked at the old pal between his legs.
"Whoa... pretty sure I was always like this, right?"
He smirked and turned, walking closer to the mirror and looking at his perfect blonde hair's new blue fringing.
"Not to mention this; I doubt I found dye last night when I was fooling around, so this is natural right? Mom must've been one of those cushy type demons to have two-colored hair. She must've pity-fucked Dad or had him as some battlefield slave."
Hazel turns and inspects himself a moment more, but finally laughs and shakes all of it off. He felt good, looked good, and definitely slept well; why should he focus on the mirror when he's got the whole day to himself? He had to get off the farm before his father found him, anyway, since he didn't finish his work. It would be a good excuse to go earn or beg for another shirt, anyway. Once securely wearing pants, the deadbeat blows himself a kiss in the mirror and heads for the backdoor of the barn just as he hears his old man start yelling.
"You lazy SHIT! I told you to finish it yesterday! The rest of it's spoiled! How do I explain this to the-"
Although the father was chastising the son, the latter let the door close on his way into the woods behind the barn and stopped listening. It was time to go have some good old-fashioned fun.
----------------------------------------
The Demonic Fringes had been the only home Hazel knew: a place where cambion and those who sire or give birth to them all go to ultimately waste away. Under the Demon Lord's control this place had been at least livable and fair; after the death of the previous Demon Lord, though, the Fringes truly became an out-of-sight-out-of-mind problem to not only the demons but also the conquerors who sought to absorb it. Lawlessness overtook most of the place, but a few villages like the one Hazel grew up in had survived that allure through position or luck. In their case, it was the proximity to the Eterna Empire that kept most people in line.
But on the other hand, it was the high amount of elderly-to-young that kept it largely unruly. Most of the young had been drafted or enslaved during the last battles of the war, including many of his old "friends" who saw fit to move on and leave him on his own. Although he was the only cambion here after all these years, it didn't change just how alone he had felt even back then when countless crushes and flings he had left him ultimately alone and trapped with his father. Being a deadbeat likely didn't help, but all of his talents had never been for the adventuring sort and most wouldn't even give a cambion a chance.
But as he walked into town and past his neighbor's farmstead, the elderly woman laughed at the sight of him and something completely unexpected happened.
EXPERIENCE GAINED: 1 XP
"Huh?"
Hazel looks at the weird blue window and feels deja'vu. The dream yesterday had something like this, too, but it vanishes before he can think too deeply.
"Weird," he grumbles. He casts a glance at the woman before turning back toward the path. "At least she didn't do any of that weird flirting she usually does."
Hazel was either one of two things to the villagers: a monster not worth caring for or a slab of meat worth toying with. He learned the latter the hard way a few years ago when the girl he cared about revealed she was just using him for "practice" so she could learn how to please men. It was the same woman he often ran into even now when heading into town since she lived with the scumbag who ran the only tavern within the next ten miles.
The village properly starts once you walk a few minutes up the road from any of its farms, specifically once you reach the clustered homesteads of its other working serfs. A bannered signpost is kept at each main road entering it to let everyone know exactly where they are, Hazel passing it and looking at it with disdain.
"Welcome to Karkitz, worst shit hole for miles."
The cambion man ignores the glares he gets as he passes the homes and heads up the main road only for a few seconds more, finally turning down the side road toward the tavern.
"I'll bet Agafya will have a shirt I can wear. It's the least she owes me for being one of their only customers. And since I'm the only one who ever made her feel anything compared to that runt husband she married."
A rock hits him mid-stride across the chest but he doesn't turn to look; in the corner of his eye, he can already see the usual kids who live nearby coming to throw them. The ungrateful bastards he'd grown up with had them a few years ago and had taught them to treat Hazel like shit, too, before most of them died in the war. It was all just more reasons he wanted any excuse to leave this awful town or see the Eterna Empire show up. Seeing the stupid faces of these orphans when they're left alone or taken to some training school for the rest of their childhoods would be sweet karma spanning generations. Even if he was conscripted it would still be worth seeing anyone in this town suffer for even a moment like he did.
Hazel turns a bend in the path, finally seeing the small all-wooden building of Agafya's tavern. It was built when the Demon Army briefly settled nearby and had been left operational even after they left despite its utilitarian construction. The swing doors, though, had been propped open almost indefinitely; Agafya closed the inner home of the family whenever winter came and nothing valuable was ever left out when they closed down.
He walks through the doorway and into the lantern-lit tavern, the bustle of chatter around him as the few guests coming to eat breakfast continued their talks. All of the morning clients were elderly men in the village, of course, who came to eat whenever they could sneak away from their wives and see one of the few young women left in town.
"Blessed Eleni," an all-too-familiar womanly voice sighs in exasperation. "Hazel? Where the hell is your shirt?"
EXPERIENCE GAINED: 1 XP
Hazel raises his eyes to the weird blue window and once again is reminded of what happened last night. This time, though, he frowns and wonders if it really was his imagination.
"What the hell is that...? It can't be-"
"Hazel Morstann! I asked you a question!"
The window blips away, Hazel scowling at the inability to get even a moment to think it over. His gaze falls down and on the approaching storm of a woman with a deathly angry snarl.
"Shove off it Agafya."
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Agafya is shorter than him by a few inches so it requires him to actually look down as she gets right in his face. Being so close lets him smell the scent of ingredients from her day-long cooking and management of the tavern, as well as see tiny freckles dotting the pale-skinned girl's face. Although they were the same age, the messiness of his hair compared to her short-cut style made her look all the more fruitfully young. While she isn't ugly, she wouldn't be the most attractive woman you could meet either; her freckles didn't blemish her face, after all, but one of her eyes are sealed shut and darkened from where she was burned by a drunk soldier last year. The eye actually looked peaceful compared to the rest of her face being so pissed off.
"You're walking around like this for what reason?' The soft touch of her hand on his chest makes him look down, only seconds before his vision is obscured by her shoving a shirt into his face. "Are you trying to get killed or arrested? How drunk are you that you're this stupid?"
The cambion takes the shirt and steps back, quickly sliding it up and over his head. As he pulls it down, though, he finds it... tight. Hazel can't pull it down to cover his midriff properly and it strains against his newly detailed abs a little too tightly to the point it's almost uncomfortable.
Agafya looks down and blushes, the ding of that window drawing Hazel's attention upward and off her.
EXPERIENCE GAINED: 1 XP
There it is again. What's going on here?
"Jeez... did you start working out or something lately? It's only been a week since I last saw you, but look at you trying to show off."
Agafya's words distract him but the odd compliment actually takes him by enough pleasant surprise that he smirks down at her and ignores the window. "Well, I try to impress. I've always been better than that husband of yours, so I might as well look it, right?"
The death glare he gets for that question makes him immediately turn and head to his table. Although Agafya married him and defended that marriage, she had been his girl first; her husband Nelk was one of the few young men left, but his pursuit of merchant work meant Agafya was the one constantly left to run the tavern. They'd been married for two years now but during all that time they still hadn't produced a child? Relationships like theirs spread rumors faster than Hazel could if he wanted to ruin their marriage. Between accounts that Nelk was sleeping with other merchant men on the road and how she catered to him, Hazel was already expecting the two to live a miserable life.
It'd serve them right, too, after Agafya broke his heart and married into Nelk's family for money.
He pulls his chair out and sits at the table, propping his feet up into one of the other three chairs there. "My father is being a pain like usual. I'll pay you back if you feed me before I have to head back. For the food, not the shirt."
Agafya glares at him in silence, moving over to the table and kicking him in the back of his propped-up leg so it'll fall. He grumbles and says nothing so she'll leave him alone, at least succeeding in that as she heads back to the kitchen.
Now that she's out of the way... what's up with these blue things that keep popping up? I thought it was a dream yesterday, but I keep seeing more of them. I think it was some... upgrade... interface-
ACCESSING USER INTERFACE...
Hazel blinks at this new window and twitches in his seat, leaning back as a much larger screen appears.
USER INTERFACE
STATUS
HEALTHY 100% | MANA 100%
CONDITION: NORMAL
CURRENT CLASS
CHARM MAGE
VIEW STATLINE LEVEL-UP (INELIGIBLE)
CURRENT QUEST
CURRENTLY GENERATING...
ESTIMATED TIME: 5 minutes, 53 seconds...
------------ MAGIC INTERFACE QUESTS ------------ ------------ USER GUIDE
Wait... this stuff... I remember some of it. That window-
His memory finally clicks and de-associates all of it as just a dream, including the incredible pain of being burned alive. It felt like he died and something was still speaking to him, but death wasn't something someone came back from so easily in Daesal. He didn't understand how, but even demons had to have the correct magic and bloodlines to do something like that. More than likely he just felt like he was going to die...
But his memory recalls more than just the events: it remembers a very crucial mention of having spells.
Magic... Interface?
The screen shifts, morphing into a new shape.
DETECTED FIRST-TIME ACCESS.
BEGINNING USER TUTORIAL.
Hazel ignores the clatter of dishes and looks he gets for staring into space, instead waiting for the box open with more information.
MAGIC INTERFACE
THE MAGIC INTERFACE IS A TOOL USED TO ALLOW USERS TO UTILIZE THE DAESAL PAWN PROGRAM (DPP) AND USE MAGIC.
FIRST: MAGIC IN DAESAL DOES NOT NORMALLY UTILIZE THIS SYSTEM. YOU ARE AN ANOMALY. HOWEVER YOU STILL FOLLOW THE LAWS OF THE WORLD DESPITE USING THE INTERFACE, SUCH AS COSTS AND POWER OF SPELLS.
What does any of that even mean?
MAGIC INTERFACE
THERE ARE THREE KINDS OF MAGIC: WORLD, GODLY, AND PERSONAL MAGIC.
AS A NEW USER TO THE DPP, YOU ARE GUARANTEED ACCESS TO THE SECOND: GODLY MAGIC.
ALL GODLY MAGIC USERS ARE GIVEN AN "ORGAN" COLLOQUIALLY KNOWN AS A GOD'S VESSEL.
Hazel isn't trying to ask more questions anymore since this thing seems deadset on just making him more confused. He tries to focus on absorbing this knowledge... until he feels his chest beat unusually strong.
MAGIC INTERFACE
THE TUTORIAL HAS IDENTIFIED YOU HAVING A HEART-CLASS GOD'S VESSEL.
A GOD VESSEL GROWS IN POWER FROM PLEASING THE GODS WHO PROVIDED IT TO YOU. THE STRONGER IT IS, THE BETTER YOUR MAGICAL ABILITIES WILL BECOME. EXPERIENCE IS DIRECTLY COVERED WITHIN THE USER GUIDE, BUT FOR THE TUTORIAL WE WILL CLARIFY HERE HOW IT IS EARNED. IT CAN BE DONE IN MANY WAYS, WITH THE THREE FOLLOWING METHODS AS THE MOST COMMON:
• PLEASING A GOD
• DEFEATING ENEMIES
• COMPLETING QUESTS
It makes some level of sense, then, what he was seeing earlier.
That experience thing must have been from pleasing a god, then. Wait... is there some pervert god that wants me to walk around shirtless?
Hazel waits as the window morphs, but Agafya returns and sets down a plate in front of him before it can finish. The moment he looks away, he sees it change to a much smaller window.
TUTORIAL PAUSED
Well, at least her interruptions won't make me miss any-
"Hazel, you're being a lot weirder than usual. All my customers are saying you've been staring off at the ceiling ever since you sat down."
His pink eyes flit over her for a moment, but he finally sighs and leans over the table to grab his fork. She had prepared some bread for him and sliced a handful of fruit and sausage; it wasn't anything fancy but it's better than anything he cooks back at the barn.
"I'm fine," he nonchalantly chimes. "And I'd think that me staring at a ceiling is better than me staring at your ass. Or are you suddenly interested in me?'
The frustration on her face is a better answer than one she can give. She merely brushes his comment aside and quickly grabs his fork to stop him from eating.
"Enough. I tolerate the flirting because you're a customer and you were a friend. But the disrespectful way you're brushing this off won't fly. What's going on?"
Hazel doubted she'd believe it if he told the truth.
Oh, what the hell.
"Last night I was set on fire, had all my clothing burned off, made more handsome, and now see weird blue panels that talk to me."
Her lack of change in expression is all he gets, the painful silent look only ending as she turns to go back to work. It was effective for getting rid of her, though.
Agafya really is a right pain. Anyway, it's imperative for me to figure out more about this... DPP. It said I have a God's Vessel and that thing supposedly means I can use magic. So then I got spells I can use, right? Finishing this tutorial while I eat'll give me a good amount of answers, but I'll need to be careful to avoid taking too long. Once that old fart figures out where I'm at, I won't have anymore time today to even try.
He looks at the window again.
TUTORIAL PAUSED
CONTINUE TUTORIAL?
Hazel doesn't think he's too smart, but he does know a good opportunity when he sees one. This DPP thing is his ticket out of Karkitz. All he needs to do is learn how to use it... and then see just how much damage he can do on his way out.