{Guild] - An organization managing people of similar talent, enabling them to better develop their abilities . Provides necessary information and facilitate teaching basic skills. Hell has number of guilds, for example [Torturers' Guild] [Adventurer' Guild] [Explorers' Guild] [Summoners' Guild] and so forth.
{Adventurers' Guild] - Gathers people venturing into other universes, issues all kinds of missions concerning creatures with foreign soul types and affinities.
Frei was tapping his finger against a table, he was not quite happy with the whole current setting. staring at the screen of his computer. It was a bit of a disappointment. No, he was completely shocked to the point of fear. Just how much was the whole hell business digitalized? Will the archdevil be some sort of a corporation CEO leading his company Macrohard towards an unshakeable monopoly?
He could not tell, as after he had chosen the option to be teleported to {Adventurers' Guild], he had not been transported into some pub-like establishment full of dangerous individuals, spilled drinks and beautiful girls behind counters. He had been teleported into a small room with dark red walls with a single table and a chair in its center, a computer standing there,
Sadly, there were no games to play. Damn! What a pity!
He could open some guidelines, but he never liked tutorials and manuals and decided to sniff around instead. One of the most central features of the system was the list of missions.
"Well, I guess the incentive to take a mission is simply the fact that no one wants to sit in a small room like forever." Frei snorted, it was a despicable setting, there did not seem to be any punishments for not taking missions or slacking off, you could just sit there and sit there and sit some more, until the world ended.
"Devious." He muttered and clicked on the missions icon that was in the center of the screen, What appeared was really a list of missions.
Objective Rank Party Size Difficulty Collect ten souls Hellspawn 2 30 - 20 - 0 - 0 - 0 Kill a target Hellspawn 2 - 3 30 - 0 - 30 - 0 - 30 Search and destroy Hellspawn 4 - 6 30 - 0 - 40 - 0 - 40 Survive ten days Hellspawn 8 - 12 0 - 100 - 100- 120 - 100 Guard a target. Hellspawn 3 - 4 30 - 20 - 30 - 0 - 0 Scout a location. Hellspawn 100 - 200 0 - 500- 1000 - 800- 800 Guard a location. Hellspawn 20 - 30 200 - 100 - 200 - 0 - 0
Frei growled, annoyed by the fact that there was not a single solo mission and it was clearly on purpose. What was the intent behind it? He did not like it at all. Looking for some explanation for the Difficulty column, he found out that the numbers represented the number of souls the party as a whole should have allocated in specific types of abilities. The first number represented offensive abilities, second defensive abilities, third sensory abilities, fourth stealth abilities and the last number represented abilities that had to do with movement.
The list continued on and on, his head nearly exploding with the number of missions he could take. He seemed to be limited to missions of his rank only and when he selected a mission, he could see the list of people that had an application pending. After some more observation, he noticed that sometimes people were disappearing from the selected mission. At first, he thought that it was due to them being afraid to take it, it took him a moment to understand that there was no limit to the number of missions one could apply for, but the moment one of them started, that person would logically disappear from all the others.
Before selecting a mission, his conscience gnawed on him to the point he had to admit defeat and opened the guideline section, he really had to find out some tips about his further evolution. Also, he was interested in a way to get out of the system a bit. It would have been nice to find a place where he could just chill and do nothing, but he had a hunch that it was exactly the sort of thing the whole system wanted to prevent. Although you could do exactly that in the small red room, but it felt more like being imprisoned than on a vacation.
"Fucking slave drivers! Everyone is a fucking slave driver!" Frei raged, banging a mouse in his hand against the table.
Wait, was he not similar to the hobo in a way? No way!
"Fine, fine nothing against some work from time to time, on rare occasions." He mobilized his mousefinger only to find out there was not much information about evolutions. He did not need some guide to tell him that he should collect more souls of the same type to evolve. After finding out what he had already known, he decided to choose a mission that would enable him to stay in a location for a long time with the least possible number of party members. He wanted to stay somewhere longer to collect more souls of the same type.
"Waaait!" Frei straightened up in the chair suddenly.
"Do I even want to evolve? Higher rank means more dangerous missions. .. ." The answer was no, but only if he considered it in the framework of a spawn's missions.
"That is irrelevant, I do want to evolve." In his mind, his very reliable friend appeared. The work he did was definitely slacking off, but he had not seen anything similar in the missions for hellspawns, that meant that there would be more opportunities in the future.
Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
"Right, I get it, it will be the same as in a company. The ones at the bottom cannot slack off and even their ass being wiped is monitored, but the ones up . . . " Frei smiled, nodding his head with profound understanding. Yes, when one managed people, you could simply send some poor soul to do the work instead of yourself.
He would rise to the top and then, he would have some leeway to do what he wanted, thus nothing. Life and death were a sad business at times, but when you had a soft cushion, good drink and other tasty stuff to dull the edge . . . even the sadness might turn a bit pleasant.
Frei fought valiantly with the constantly updating missions table and the second he disappeared from the small room, he glimpsed the mission he managed to secure for himself.
Objective Rank Party Size Difficulty Thorough reconnaissance of a world Hellspawn 3 - 4 0 - 0 - 45 - 40- 40
"What are you doing Raghask?! It is forbidden to use . . ."
"Shut up, do you think that we are well-off to the point we can avoid taking risks? You have never understood anything Karnak!"
Frei looked around himself and saw five people, fine, three were apparently his fellow spawns and the remaining two seemed to be natives of the place he had been transported to.
The spawns were two males, one staut with long brown hair and the other thin and sinewy, his face full of sharp lines, dominated by a beak-like nose. His hair black and short, his face reminded him of a humanoid crow. He was exactly who Frei imagined when he heard the word sheriff. The female spawn had long, black hair, but was definitely not giving off the vibes of a model, she was more like a warrior-princess type and not the naive one. It felt strange that all three looked like they were still humans.
"Huh, Lancelot, Xena and a crow-sheriff. What a combination." Frei sorted it out in his head quickly and focused his attention on the remaining two people that were arguing.
"See, from this moment on I will have four terrifying beasts under my command, who is the fool now?! Kneel before your master!" The one wrapped in all kinds of dark cloth with steel buckles everywhere barked a command.
"Idiot." The warrior-princess simply turned away from Raghask and walked through the thin wooden wall after she had transformed into her demonic form, the remaining two of them followed her, not sparing the man a single glance.
"That is boring, let's have some fun." Frei thought while listening to the command and kneeled in front of Raghask just for the fun of it.
"What have you done?! The three will run amok in the city, we need to stop them!" The other man that seemed more conservative shouted angrily. He looked like more of a military type, wearing leather armor, his style sharply in contrast with his cultist-like companion.
"Give me the cursed item!" He stretched out his hand, but Raghask had no intention to give him anything.
"We?! There is no we anymore! Beast, kill this man!" Raghask abruptly turned at Frei and issued a command.
Frei watched the exchange and used his [Soul Sight] in the meantime, finding the results very amusing. The colors of the souls in front of him were blue, resulting in his wide smile. Based on his understanding, the only souls he should be hesitant to touch were white and grey, as for the others . .. bon appetite!
He could be in a completely different universe, something that would not surprise him given the nature of the {Adventurers' Guild]. For a second he considered who to kill.
Both of them? Nah, he needed to fit in, even though he looked human, the humans here were clearly different. Both the men in front of him had slightly bluish skin, he needed some cover at least for now. If he let Karnak live, he would only do something stupid for sure. With similar thoughts, he used his trusted [Black Bullet] to paint one of the wooden walls blue with Karnak's blood. He nearly scared himself by the harsh truth that the sight of blood bothered him less and less. Was he turning into a killing machine?
Frei wondered, why had the smartass summoned hellspawns into a wooden hut. Were these kind of things not done in deep cellars?
"Done master." Frei continued to play his role perfectly to the point his new master ogled him like his first love.
"See, I have a demon to serve me! Now, everything will turn around in my favor! Devil, grant me godly powers now!" Raghask seemed to be carried away by his moment of victory, not giving a damn about his dead acquaintance.
Frei decided to leave him for a second to chill out and focused on his stats and abilities. He needed to redistribute them after the unfortunate death.
[Souls] - 2 affinity-arcane 46 affinity-lithoid 22 affinity-plant 77 affinity-none
His souls seemed to have increased by one arcane soul, he shuddered when he realized that he was probably in the universe of his dear broad shouldered friends, but on their home turf this time around. If it was really them . .
He looked at the hole in the wall and said his prayers for the three. Frei did not know the level of the angel that had completed his mission for him, but it was certainly not some heavenly equivalent of a hellspawn, but way above. He remembered their attacks and felt phantom pain in his left hand. The worst was their ability to devour souls, they were able to end him for good, no resurrections.
"I will need all the stealth I can get." Frei mumbled.
He sighed, farted. groaned and went ahead to pick his abilities, now enriched by the plant affinity abilities he could choose from.
[Steel Bark]* - 10
[Plant Form]* - 10
[Undergrowth]* - 10
[Sense Life]* - 10
[Growth]* - 15
[Venom]* - 15
[Thorns]* - 10
[Penetrating Vines]* - 20
A minor problem was that the act of trying out abilities did not stop nor slow time and he had to simply guess what was better. It was not important anyway, as he could change abilities if he wished so and there would certainly be some time for further testing later.
He opted to continue in his strategy to pile up defensive abilities on top of each other, choosing [Steel Bark] and [Sense Life]. It was unfortunate that he had so few plant affinity souls, as collecting different types of souls seemed to be the way to become very strong compared to other denizens of hell of the same rank.
Soul Power 77/46/22/2 [Black Bullet] - 15 [Soul Sight] - 15 [Stealth] - 10 [Supernatural Physique] - 10 [Demonic Transformation] - 10 [Telekinesis] - 10
[Hardened Skin] - 10 [Rock Spike] - 15 [Merge] - 10
[Steel Bark] - 10 [Sense Life] - 10
He continued to groan soundlessly for a second, mourning the loss of some of his Lithoid abilities, he had to find those handy creatures in the future. After all, it might not be an accident that they were present alongside Broad Shoulders, maybe there are ways to get plant and Lithoid affinities in this universe.
"Listen to me demon! Tell me how do I make myself immortal now!" Meanwhile, his master was raging, not pleased by his minion's sudden inaction.
"Sorry master, but I can't grant you anything, nor do I know how to make you immortal." He responded to Raghask, wondering how much he knew about hell.Judging from his careless attitude, probably not much.
"Fine, I will disguise you as my acolyte. At least get rid of the fool's body." His master turned around in a theatrical manner and Frei started to think he should correct his delusions about who was the boss in their relationship.
"Well, but he will not betray me this way, when he thinks that he is the boss right?" Frei smiled and looked at the body he was supposed to get rid of.