I wasn’t a demon, at least not in the traditional sense. There was some manner of blurred lines where I certainly had demonic abilities, but I still had a tight grip on my humanity. No growing horns or wings bursting from my back. Not so far, anyway. For the purposes of these memoirs, imagine that I just touched wood. That phrase might not even be a real thing in any world other than my old one. But neither were demons, or at least that’s what I told myself.
Spellcasters were bad news. Three of them, as we found ourselves stuck in a near open space, were even worse. Still, I was fresh off a day of rest and eager to put on a good show. Other Max was a combatant, and where I believed I had previously drawn my competency and cool head in regards to violence. Now fully formed, it felt even more natural. Born to perform, to live at any cost. To erase any that threatened me.
Even as their spells were about to be cast, my cards went out, split. Purple one burst along a shield on the insect-witch, while the second flew off behind them all. An energy flooded the cavern as Wolf activated an ability. There was a loud hiss, and some darkness filled the area as Ren hit the fire that was beneath the cauldron up with a water arrow, extinguishing it. Pragmatic. I seemed to have made myself the primary target by rushing forward already.
The tall witch had begun casting a dark spell, but had to switch to the bear as he launched himself toward her. The smell of something arcane sunk through the chamber as blazing light flickered through the darkness where the two clashed. I had to focus ahead and trust he was fine.
Behind the cauldron, the older witch had her arms raised. A pulsing orb of black energy formed and then launched out toward the center of the cavern. As soon as it had been released, an arrow impaled her thin arm. Other than growling out loud, the witch didn’t even flinch. The card thrown earlier burst out a Hellhound from behind her, the flaming canine drawing some focus away from her next spell preparation. The dark orb rose above the cauldron and burst, sending shards of pointed black energy throughout the area. One scoured through my left thigh, a second along my back—narrowly missing my neck.
Insect-witch sent a spell at me. A curse. I suddenly felt very slow and sluggish, now unable to get any closer, as if I were dream-running. In anger, I sent a single imbued card out. I didn't need to get closer, more the fool her. The pain and feeling of warm blood running down my leg cooled my need to show off. I wanted nothing more than to get revenge. Purple energy crackled along my arms as the flare of her shield glowed brightly in the darkness. But I didn't drop the card—I held it there, keeping it powered. She dropped her follow-up to focus on keeping her flickering shield up, pouring her mana into it. I just poured more of my mana into my card in return.
The card glowed bright purple at first, before starting to turn white as it grew in power. The smell of something burning filled the air and overpowered all the other odors in this underground coven as our two magical energies fought against each other. I didn’t even pay attention to anything else going on in the room. Card stayed energized. Card overpowered all. Card always won.
As electricity continued to arc along my arms, I held my right wrist with my left hand. Both soaked with blood. Pain throbbed through my head as the card shone brightly, constantly pushing against the shield. Mana exhaustion hit and the purple arcs around my arms turned crimson. The card breached the struggling magic shield slowly, carving into it gradually, right before her spell failed.
It was difficult to control the blazing card at such a sudden change of velocities. As soon as it sprung forward, I flicked it straight vertically into the ceiling and let it drop. Muddy earth fell from the ceiling onto the witch's head as she stared at me impassively. Not very flashy, I’ll admit - no wonder she wasn’t impressed. Part of me wanted my strength tested to find out my limits. My attack had gone halfway through her before I shot it upwards, slicing through most of her insides and out of the top of her head. Her hat fell in two halves as she dropped limply to the floor, dark blood and worse leaking from the wound.
My tired eyes scoured the rest of the room. Probably shouldn’t have worn myself down just in the first fight. Three on three was good odds for us, anyway. The crunch of bones from the growling bear was proof enough. A spellcaster's weakness was usually melee, and Wolf was a force of nature just on his own. I looked at the older witch, who was promptly headshot with an arrow, her spell fizzling out. They had more than one weakness, I supposed.
The Hellhound, happy with his contribution to the fight, padded around from behind the cauldron and went over to the elf, who bent over to give him pets.
“It’s sweet of you to always have them come to me.” She didn’t look up at me, but continued to stroke the demonic dog.
“Oh? I don’t do that. Not since the first one, really.” I flexed out my fingers, wondering if I had a better way of cleaning my hands rather than marring my suit.
“Really?” She looked up at me now, a raised eyebrow as I looked back at her. “Max, did you know your eyes are glowing purple?”
“No?” I looked around to try to find a mirror or reflective enough surface. “Have they done that before?”
Wolf coughed up and sneezed. “Ugh, they do taste as bad as they smell.”
“Only once before, when you lost control that time outside the dungeon.”
I caught her look as I stepped around to try to find something to look at. “I’m not possessed or anything.” My eyebrows raised toward her and I held up my bloody hands. “I feel totally normal and calm.” Perhaps not the most convincing show, but hopefully enough to not meet the sharp end of her evil-destroying ability. It must just be an aftereffect of pushing my magic too far.
She rolled her eyes and returned to ruffling the ears of the hound.
“I suggest we loot and find our way out as soon as possible. This place gives me the creeps worse than the Shadow camp.” I narrowed my apparently purple eyes at the tables filled with all sorts of things that I could use - or at least clutter up my Inventory with.
“In my world, witches gain power from their cauldrons. It’s like the focus for the coven, so that’s why I put out the fire.” She stood from the hound to approach one of the bodies.
“I figured it was something smart like that, thank you.” The occult books that I had read weren’t so instructive, and witches were not actually real in my world - so her knowledge was appreciated.
She whistled. “Two Power Tokens, some Scrolls and Wands.”
I checked the body near me.
[138 Gold]
[Power Token (2)]
[Fleetboots of the Strider]
[Necklace of the Wise]
[Wand of Frost Cone (1 use)]
[Odd Skull]
[Emerald]
[Witches Pride]
I whistled at the boots. Three Dex and five percent movement speed increase. One of the better things we had found so far, in terms of Stat distribution. "What do you have on your boots currently?"
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“Just Two Dexterity.”
“Here, have these then.” I grinned. It annoyed me that the pure-Int suffix seemed to be 'of the Wise' when really that should be for Wisdom. Perhaps it was the Intelligence that made me think that. [Witches Pride] fit in the vague Accessory slot, and increased Spell Casting Speed and Magic Damage both by 5%. As if I needed more excuse to push my cards to the limit.
Wolf threw up part of the witch he had eaten. “That’s better." He smacked his lips together in disgust. "My body here also has items to loot, but I keep accidentally closing the blue box every time I go to read things.”
“Did you try imagining a sausage?” I raised an eyebrow.
He shook his head and then furrowed his brow in concentration. Bizarrely cute, if not for the blood covering his face and bowler hat. After a moment, elation struck his face and he smiled, tongue hanging out. “I got the two Tokens, but I’m not looking at the rest.”
“Good enough, bud. Nice effort.” I gave him a pat along his flank, mostly as an excuse to wipe my hands off on his fur rather than my own clothing. I helped him out by looking at the loot on his kill.
[155 Gold]
[Ruby (2)]
[Warriors Breastplate]
[Normal Skull]
[Sword of Fire]
[Headband of Woe]
I blinked slowly. Surely not? That was a lot of loot, and not particularly useful for me. Except for the orange border around the headband item…
“Everything okay, Max?”
“Oh, yeah,” I said, as I stood and turned to face her. “Just found my first Legendary item, is all.”
[Headband of Woe] [Magic Damage increases 5% per 5% Mana spent.]
She returned my gaze impassively. “Is it a bow?”
“No.”
“Will it stop your hands from bleeding?”
“Uh. Maybe the opposite.” I grinned sheepishly. With
She sighed and threw her arms up in resignation. “I give up with you. If you’re done stealing everything, let’s find our way out?”
I watched her pace about, looking for a switch or magical device to flip us back up to the surface. There were certainly no obvious doors or stairs out of here. “Are you just disappointed we didn’t get to do any magic?”
She crossed her arms and bit her tongue. “Am I becoming that easy to read?”
“Sometimes overpowering enemies the normal way is just safer. If you can put a threat down from a distance, then that’s less of a headache.” With a smile, I leaned against a table. I knew that the combined trick stuff would come to us slowly, being how it wasn't such a natural thing for them - but it was great to see she remained eager. “That said, I am also disappointed.”
“Good, I’d hate to think we’d swapped prerogatives.”
Wolf sniffed and looked up at me. “I thought you said you weren’t-“
“That’s not what that means,” I interrupted, waving him away. “This cavern sure is stuffy, huh? Let’s find the switch.”
[Witch's Brew]
[Empty Bottle (3)]
[Incense (4)]
[Sapphire]
Most of the table-bound loot looked a little too gross to want to carry around. Small body parts once belonging to animals, dried leaves and herbs, or mysterious liquids that I didn't like the look of. Useful if I wanted to poison someone, maybe, but my cards seemed to be quicker at getting people dead. The [Witch's Brew] was a potion that the System wouldn't even describe the purpose of—but it looked evil and reminded me of the treants transformation water.
Given that I could barely stand the thought of drinking healing potions, there wasn't much chance of me casually taking a sip to find out what it actually did. A sudden guilt sunk into me, as I realized that Roger was still out of the loop on everything. Walking over to the witch that looked the least maimed, I threw down the
The figure rose, ears cracking out amidst the wiry hair of the puppet. "Boss? Boss!" A wide grin twisted up from under his glowing purple eyes.
"Roger." I grinned back. "Just wanted to let you know I still live."
"Thank fuck!" He leaned the body back against one of the tables. "I was worried as shit after seeing how fucked your head was. Absolutely fucked."
"You're telling me." I tried not to think about it, lest my head start hurting again in reliving the moment. "We have a super important gig coming up tomorrow. More people killing."
He nodded, an awkward expression for the puppet corpse. "That's like my second favorite thing to do. Big dog and the gargoyle will be there too?"
I winced. "The team is still together, yes."
He looked past me at the surrounding area for the first time, seeing where we were and undoubtedly catching the glare of the elf. "I'll get to training then, boss. I'll be ready to crack skulls as soon as you call me."
"Thanks, Roger. Give my best to your family."
As he sunk away and the body dropped to the floor, I turned to the expected furrowed brow of the Oathwarden—but there was none. Either she hadn't heard it, or had just moved on and not taken it to heart. I rubbed my eyes, already tired of the gloom of this place.
With everything now scoured for what looked vaguely useful, I assisted with finding a way out. It took some awkward prodding around, and some interesting revelations that made it look like the coven might have eaten people at some point, before we eventually found the spell artefact that swapped us back to the surface. Thanks to my apparent magical training, I was able to understand and activate it, otherwise we would have lived down there forever. Or at least until Wolf ate us.
“Fresh air!” Ren breathed deeply as we stood in the clearing once more, amongst the grass and beneath a clouded sky.
I grimaced towards the building. The witches were System-created, so might respawn at some point. Should we destroy the house? Was there even a point? Futility pressed down on my sore brain and I attempted to shrug it off. Quest was done. That’s all that mattered right now.
“Did you get any lightning-based spell scrolls?” I stretched my neck out as I gestured for us to leave the area.
“Yeah, one. Arc+.” She withdrew it and handed it over.
“Thank you. Keep any others, use them for devising tricks.”
She narrowed her eyes, but nodded. I practised putting it into my Inventory and then into my hand a few times before putting it away. Scrolls were something I should look into more. There was a slight delay to activating them that made it obvious I was doing so, but not everything had to be an act of deception.
Oh, how I’d changed.
Ren sent me across some Map information, which I brought up as we walked.
“Assassinate the target, do the Elk repeatable twice, and then head back to town to return Quests and level up?”
The route looked fine. We were still quite north and heading to the west. Bridge was far west straight from the town, along the road, so we weren’t in any danger there. “Sounds perfect. I know it said ‘dead or alive’ but I think the less time spent there means getting through the Elks quicker.”
“Agreed. If the timing is right, we might be able to get a night in at the tavern before heading to the bridge.”
One last night of some comfort before our imminent demise. Almost sounded too good to be true, and my brain was hesitant to even play out the actions in my head. I looked at Ren to find she had been gazing at me, her blue eyes piercing through my distracted skull. A shared room seemed like a given, and if I were honest with myself, then I-
“Oh!” Wolf pushed in between us, breaking whatever conversation was going unspoken. “I worked out how to use the Tokens by myself!”
“Great job, bud. That’s super helpful, actually.” I raised an eyebrow in thought. “I suppose I should decide on mine too.”
With so many abilities and passives, it would take forever to eventually upgrade them all, so I’d need to make a shortlist. I wasn’t able to upgrade my keystone
I had already upgraded my most useful passives with Sleight of Hand and Mana Manipulation. Perhaps it was time for something else. Vanishing Act, Finale, Card Fan, Demonic Pact, Summon Demon - all still at base level. Tough choices.
After some humming to myself, and almost tripping over a tree root, I made the decision.
[Summon Demon+] [Demons are more powerful and last longer.]
[Card Fan+] [Card Fan is larger and can absorb more damage before breaking.]
I used both of these skills all the time - and while they weren’t as flashy or trick-adjacent as the others; they increased the base efficiency of how I worked. Unable to let my curiosity go unsated, I dropped a Hellhound+ card to the floor.
A slightly larger summoning circle of crimson runes, and then the hound himself appeared. Slightly taller, and much more muscular. His wide head turned to me as his body lapped with dark red flames. His tongue stuck out as he panted at me as a greeting.
“You’re a handsome chap, huh?” I kneeled down to give him a rubdown. “No heavy lifting for you, my friend, but tell all the others I’m proud of them and can’t wait to see them again.”
He huffed in my ear, a half-bark of acknowledgement, before I let him fade away back to Hell. I looked up at Ren, who had her face screwed up into a pout.
“Sorry,” I said with a grin. “I’ll share next time.”