A warm breeze rolled through hell, making me feel… sticky. Not an uncommon feeling down here for a variety of reasons - but something I was growing evermore tired of. Even the brief splash of water from our stores did little to help. Didn’t want to waste our emergency hydration on getting clean, when grime and gore were only around the next corner.
I picked the third crown up from the ground and placed it on my head, the silver headwear absorbing into the main one that was permanently affixed atop me. My bones ached all the way up from my feet to my fragile skull. As if my skeleton was eager to burst from my skin suit and leave this wretched place without me.
Simple fact was, I was dying.
Drunk too deep from the cup of demonic power and started drowning myself.
If the others could see it, they made no indication. Ren could read me like a book, the text printed twice the size, but hadn’t twisted my arm about all this danger. If they didn’t know, I wasn’t about to tell them, either.
I would go to any lengths to get us out of here.
Trying to ground myself, I ran my tongue across my teeth. Normal, as I was in my human form. A weird sentence that hardly touched the sides of what a bizarre existence I now lived. I was half sure I’d wake up soon, my body between fresh linens with the soft elf beside me - and this would have been a nightmare.
For now, I relented to the System menus telling me I had four crowns to spend on upgrading my demon abilities. I did not wish to - I wanted to rebel. Mashed around the options on the intangible screen until I gave me something else that I wanted. A new skill, perhaps - as my current ones only had one upgrade level, and I was avoiding touching Domain Escalation.
There we go - if I chose to discard them permanently, I could gain some stats… or three of them granted me a new skill. With two more crowns awaiting my claim, I could wait and get two skills, or get a new one now and upgrade it - possibly snatch a skill or two just by forcing the System to give me things.
I blinked away the screens and shook my head. With such a limited resource, I’d be pragmatic and wait till I had all six waiting my attention before making a decision. Would be kicking myself if I spent them all now and then missed out on something really broken.
As I was clearly lacking that kind of thing.
Speaking of which, I hit my golden STAR to get my Level Seventeen upgrades. Ignored the usual stat distribution… eyes ran through my passives quickly.
First gave me a 10% damage boost when below 50% health - very nice, very dangerous. Second gave me a boost to Dazzle chance for five seconds after I landed a critical hit. While most things died after my cards exploded on them, I was quite a big fan of the System pushing the whole critical card thing.
Most important, however, was the new active ability.
Brow furrowed, I drew it from my deck to hover in front of me. The symbol on it was a heart, but it had twisted horns. It shimmered between red and black, while the card itself seemed to be bathed in flickering shadow rather than the typical arcane purple.
“New card, trickster? What does this one do?” Ren stepped over now that I had finished deliberating over my power increases.
“Hmm. I’m not entirely sure.”
“Oh?”
I held my hand out and allowed the card to move through the air, slowly at first, and then I sped up. Sliced around just the same as any of my normal cards would. Then I let it fade away.
“There’s some bullshit you’re not telling me about.” The elf crossed her arms. Her shredded and dirtied outfit was sobering. We all looked like we’d been put through a literal meat-grinder.
“It acts like a proxy for my skill casting, and it also counts as a demon.”
She nodded slowly. “Aren’t most of your skills a card you throw already?”
I shrugged. That was why I wasn’t super energetic about the reveal. Maybe my mind was just lagging, but the ideas were coming through like old sludge.
“Here, hold your arm out for me like you’re casting a spell.” I raised my eyebrow, and she did as I asked with no hesitation. Hand outstretched to the open space ahead of us.
I vanished and appeared twenty feet ahead of her, then held my hands up as if she was about to rob me. Twin magic cards, blooming with purple light shot from her hand, spinning towards me. They severed my hands from my wrists before gouging through most of my neck.
Fake body gurgled and slumped to the floor, handless, as the real me appeared back beside her with my hands in my pockets.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
“You can use Transposition again, at least - and could turn the demonic card invisible?”
“Correct on both counts.” I gave her a glum smile. “Even more than that, he even has a little inventory of his own. Or her own, I suppose. It's unclear.”
“Really?” Ren raised an eyebrow at the card now hovering beside me.
“Just three items, I assume so that I can load the cannon from afar… but…” I sent the card over to one of the corpses beloning to a slain prince. With a small gesture, a glass bottle ejected from the card, full of radiantly blessed water. It broke on the body - which started to melt away.
“That’s some fucking bullshit in the making.” She shook the disbelief from her head. “I’m surprised you’re not giddy over it. All the remote tricks you could do now.”
“I’m tired, Ren.”
Her brow furrowed before she stepped forward and pulled me in to a tight hug. Although we’d had no shortage of shameless physical contact in our time down here, this simple act threatened to tear my heart in two. Or that might just be the demonic power.
“I can fill those ears with mushy reassurance if you like,” she offered. “Or bitch you out. Maybe even find somewhere private… tell me what you need, Max.”
A heartfelt promise to do literally anything to make me feel better. While our physical and mental health had taken the abandoned mine cart down through the barbed wire factory, our love had endured. Pristine and unwavering.
“You are my strength, Ren.” I kissed her gently on her dirty forehead. “With you by my side, I am invincible.”
“Honeyed words, trickster, but I need you to promise me three things.” Her hands ran through what clumps of my hair were just thick with sweat and not near solid with dried gore.
“Anything.”
“Kill the king. Live. Make me your queen.”
I smiled. Two of the three sounded pretty doable. Living, however… I could only do my best. Perhaps she could see the darkness swirling me down the drain as she leaned a little closer to my ear.
“Let me tell you what we’re going to do on that throne if you succeed.”
My eyebrows continued to raise as she whispered to me. Once her lewd fanfiction ran out, she leaned back away, her blue eyes sparkling.
“You had me at… well, all of it, really.” I tilted my head. “Are we going to struggle to adjust to the normal world when we escape?”
With a shrug, the elf let me go and stepped away. “I imagine we’ll settle back down closer to how things used to be, but we have changed. We won’t know until we get there, so let’s get moving and find out.”
I gave her a bow and then turned to the bear. “Ready to make a move, brother?”
He groaned and righted himself up to his feet. “I dislike hell and demons.” His eyes went between me and Roger. “Aside from you, brother.”
The rabbit rolled his eyes, but didn’t contest that. He seemed just as eager to get this all over with as the rest of us were. I looked up at the swirling nothing that classed as the sky down here. Odd that we hadn’t come across a flock of my hell-birds after all this time. They often had short lives acting as a defensive shield for me - so I could understand if they held a grudge.
We started to move.
I spun the new demonic ace out and around my hand before letting it float beside me. It felt different from the others. Not quite like it had a will of its own… but there was a power to it. Probably whatever latent energy that allowed it to be classed as a demon. Didn’t move of its own accord or have anything to say, but if I told it to maintain a set distance with me… it did.
So it continued to hover just over my shoulder as we walked, slowly turning. Two purple cards swirled around my extended left hand while I shuffled my mundane deck in the air just over my right - cutting the deck every so often. I frowned and thought.
Loading up my ace with bottles or weaponry might be helpful… but what if it could activate spell scrolls? A bending of the rules... but what was new?
I filled up the three slots in it with some of the magic scrolls we had accumulated in our time down here, and sent it zipping out thirty feet ahead of us.
With a grin, I made the gesture with my hand, tugging at the invisible strings of the magic that joined everything together. Partly sure the scroll would just be ejected out onto the ground, yet knowing the System would play by my tune, anyway.
Fireball ejected from my demon card in a high arc. I switched places with it, sending out a large sphere of electricity from a [Jolt Orb Scroll]. Switched back and immediately had the ace blow a [Smoke Cloud Scroll] to obscure the fact that I had vanished. The two spells sent out into the air collided, exploding and crackling like a large firework.
Ren’s hand pressed against my lower back. “That’s the trickster that I love.”
I smiled and gave her a wink. Some amount of faux bravado holding that confidence up, but a genuine streak of happiness wormed its way through. I was only a few steps away from outclassing everything in this world. A way to reset my Transposition or increase my Invisibility and it would be hard for anyone to contest my power.
Especially with the rest Party backing me up. Supporting the show.
“Almost a shame that we’ll have to leave soon…” I winced away as both of them shot me glares that near killed me on the spot. “For one single reason.”
Ren rolled her eyes. “Level cap.”
“Once we return, we won’t be able to get any higher than Seventeen, with the area cap being Fifteen.”
She shrugged. Any energy used to maintain the ire toward me evaporating. “You know it would take weeks to get to Twenty, though. Maybe even months.”
“Of course. I wasn’t suggesting we stayed.” Okay, I was partly fishing for a reaction to that idea. “Only that being max Level when going against our other problems would have been another layer of safety.”
“Boss, there is a chance that taking the throne would get you to Eighteen.” Roger caught up to us. “Not that I know how all that fucking stuff works, but it’s likely there will be more than the two princes assisting the king.”
“An army then. A last stand.” I gave him a nod.
Normally something I’d wince at. Large groups usually were our weakness due to our damaging abilities not being multiple target. With the spell scrolls we had accumulated, we could give most mid-tier mages a run for their money. Especially with Ren having the Inventory manipulation now too. I had watched her switch scrolls through her wrist mounted holder once and it was… well, very attractive.
A version of me from the past might have rolled my eyes at the System just giving her a way to use sleight of hand in a literal sense, but I didn’t really care at this point. Easily given or not, I wasn’t going to gatekeep Ren’s progress as my partner in illusion.
While my eyes were tired and dry, my bones threatening to erupt from my skin, and my organs a few shakes away from disconnecting from each other, I… forgot where I was going with that train of thought.
There was some calm settling within me, knowing this stage of our adventure was soon to end, one way or another.
Next stop on our tour; the demonic palace itself.