Bo sat down in the middle of the demonic dome, the core in both hands. His battle with the Anubite had left him emotionally and physically exhausted. There’d been no time to think or feel during his battle against Gontar. Every moment had been a tightrope walk over the abyss, where simply surviving was the only goal.
But he’d seen flashes of what had happened to this town during the invasion, and now the weight of those visions settled on his shoulders like a lead blanket. Bo needed time, just a few seconds, to make sense of this mess.
This is not the way. You are a warrior. Get up. Destroy the core. Absorb its power. Thoughts and feelings are for after the battle is won.
“No, Barbie,” Bo said. “Losing touch with what’s inside you is the short path to becoming a monster.”
You may need to complete that transformation to save your people.
Bo refused to believe the devil was right. But he couldn’t lie to himself and say that what had happened today didn’t leave him feeling conflicted. Yes, he’d wiped out a small army of monstrous fiends who had destroyed this town. He’d crushed Gontar’s vessel and freed the spirits of all those poor dogs who’d suffered at the hands of demons. But Bo felt different now. Stronger, sure.
But he was also willing to mete out violent, brutal justice in ways he couldn’t have imagined just a few days before. Defeating monsters was perfectly fine in his eyes; that’s what heroes do. What worried Bo was the possibility that he’d no longer be able to tell monsters from anything else. In a world filled with supernatural terrors, the natural tendency was to slaughter first and ask questions later.
That is a worry for another day. I know you do not wish to hear this, but you are far from out of the woods. Every minute you spend on such thoughts is a minute you are not working toward the destruction of the grunge elves. And I assure you, they are not plagued by such doubts.
Bo’s head sagged, and his hands tightened around the demon core. As much as he hated to admit the truth, Barbie was right. All the pitmaster could do was watch for signs that he was losing himself in the tide of battle and hope he could pull himself back before he went too far. Maybe Jenny or Slick could help him with that.
“How do I do this?” Bo asked, his eyes fixed on the core.
Devour it. It is what you do.
Bo imagined the core dissolving into pure energy and flowing into his core.
Nothing happened.
“Fine,” he grumbled, and raised the core to his mouth.
He’d opened his jaws to take a bite, but the crystal didn’t give him the chance. As soon as it touched his lips, the ruby red core liquified and poured down his throat in a rush. Some of it sloshed over his mouth and scaled his chin through the thick cover of his beard, but most of it hit his belly like a bucket of lava.
This was not like the dungeon core. It hurt, and all of Bo’s energy was turned to the simple task of surviving the ordeal. Little by little, the intense heat inside him died down. But as the liquid power cooled, it settled into spikes and blades that threatened to cut Bo apart from the inside.
You are being quite melodramatic. Calm yourself. This is merely your core’s reaction to a new power source. Change can be painful.
Which was the understatement of the century. The demon core’s energy flowed out of Bo’s core in streams of acid that coursed through his entire body. The sounds of searing meat and the smell of rot overwhelmed the pitmaster’s senses. Something was changing inside him, and Bo fought against it with every fiber of his being.
Stop. The harder you fight it, the longer it will take for you to absorb the demon core’s energy.
Bo turned his thoughts inward to focus on his breathing. He felt his thoughts growing clearer as he pushed the pain from the forefront of his mind. The agony was still there, but he chose to focus instead on the changes being wrought by the core. Rather than resist them, Bo did his best to direct the changes down new paths. While the core wanted to grow a pair of horns on his head, Bo shunted it down a more discrete path to his legs. Those were already a pink mess. Whatever the demon core did to them would only be an improvement.
And that’s how, after finally absorbing the demon core’s strength, Bo found himself with a new pair of hooves. The black, cloven mutations had torn his old man’s boots to shreds as they replaced his feet. The pitmaster tried not to take that as a sign from the great beyond that he’d just screwed things up.
I think they’re lovely.
“You would,” Bo said, and then a seizure hit him like a runaway truck as a message blasted through his vision.
GRAIL SYSTEM ADVANCEMENT REPORT
Name: Beauregard Euless Houston
Heritage: Human (native)
Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
Core Level: 2
Alignment: Neutral Good
Origin: Earth 696
Deck Type: Striker
STR: +3, DEX: 0, INT: 0, WIS: -1, RES: 0, CON: +4
Status: Healthy (1 Demonic Transmogrification)
Deck Upgrades
Maximum deck size increased from 10 to 15 cards.
Hand size increased from 4 to 5 cards.
Current Deck: 8 Cards
Carnivore's Cleaver, Danger Spice, Hackstorm, Hog's Hop, Hungry Hungry Devil, Juice Boxer, Severance, Webspinner
Advancement Rewards (2nd Level)
Please select one of the following:
* Gain 1 Ability Advance.
* Gain New Hand This ability shuffles your current hand into your deck and draws a new hand of your current hand size-1 cards.
* Gain Discard Draw talent that can be used . This ability allows you to discard a single card and draw a new card from your deck. This ability does not reshuffle your deck.
PLEASE SELECT YOUR ADVANCEMENT REWARD TO CONTINUE
Bo weighed his options. Raising his Strength or Constitution would help him muscle through fights. That seemed like a passive bump, though, not something he could actively use to increase his odds of winning a given battle. It also wouldn’t help him at all against creatures who couldn’t be resisted with Constitution or out-muscled with Strength.
The New Hand talent was interesting, but Bo could already see a problem with it. If he had a completely bad hand, then tossing it for a new hand was a good strategy. On the other hand, a mediocre draw couldn’t be helped by it because Bo had so few cards that he’d only end up with the other half of the mediocre pile. Plus, he’d short himself a card. That wasn’t a good trade, in his opinion.
The Discard Draw talent was the only really great option. With it, Bo could dump a bad card and have a decent chance of getting a good one. It also would let him toss affliction cards straight out of his hand, which was a great way to get around that particular pain in his ass. Bo selected the new talent, and the message faded away along with the seizure.
“Why do game designers always do this crap?” Bo muttered. “They show you all these options, but most of them are subpar. You might get one solid choice out of the whole bunch. Just give me the good one.”
It is a test of your perceptiveness. If they gave everyone the best options, then all of us would be equal. Where is the fun in that?
“That right there is why people will think you’re evil, Barbie,” Bo said.
The sound of crunching gravel pulled Bo’s eyes to the dome’s entrance. He had his cleaver equipped and regained his feet fast for such a big guy. The weapon seemed to hum in his grasp, eager to cut down any demons who hadn’t been banished back to demonland when Bo pulped the puppy monster.
“Easy, big guy,” Jenny said. “You okay?”
Bo stepped toward his friend, his eyes roaming over every detail. An angry red cut drew a line above her right eye. She had bruises on both cheeks. She’d lost a good chunk of her shirt’s bottom half, and her jeans were so ripped and ragged it’d be easier to turn them into cutoffs than patch them. Small cuts dotted her exposed skin, and her left forearm was wrapped tight in what looked like the missing hunk of her shirt. Blood had soaked through h the makeshift bandage, staining the fabric a deep red.
“I look better than you,” Bo said. “How bad’s that bite?”
“Never said I got bit,” Jenny said.
“I’m not blind,” Bo said, chuckling. “You were out there dealing with the dog men. I’d say a bite was a fair guess as to why your arm is all bloody.”
It was Jenny’s turn to chuckle. “It is a good guess, but the truth is that one of Martin’s boys caught me with the tip of his hatchet on a back swing. Hurt like a mother, but it’ll be fine. Speaking of not being blind, care to explain what happened to you?”
Bo shrugged. “I fought some dog men. Anubites they’re called. Killed a bunch of them. Then Gontar showed up and blasted me. Killed his meat puppet with some help from a good bunch of doggos. The end.”
Jenny raised an eyebrow and put one hand on her hip. Her other one pointed at his feet. “Explain the hooves, big guy.”
Bo raised one hoof and gawped it with faux surprise. “I had no idea about that. Thanks for telling me.”
Jenny gave Bo a shove, which had about as much effect as a toddler pushing against a brick wall. She pulled her hand back, looked Bo in the eye, then suddenly threw herself at him with all the force she could muster.
Bo caught Jenny’s arm when she bounced off, which kept her from sprawling across the floor. He carefully helped her regain her balance, then grinned. “I went up a level.”
“No fair,” she shot back. “The legs, though.”
During Jenny’s test of strength, Bo had come up with a story he thought would work. Because it was the truth. He explained how Juice Boxer gave him a big boost when he healed himself over his natural wound limits, with the side effect that it had also turned his feet into hooves. That was annoying, but it was a magic world. Surely Bo would find some way to undo the change.
“Why is it called a Demonic transmogrification, though?” Jenny asked. “Seems kinda sinister.”
“I don’t make the rules,” Bo said. “Maybe because the heals came from popping demon skulls?”
Jenny raised an eyebrow and put her hand on Bo’s chest again. This time, she left it there, her eyes locked with his. “And it doesn’t have anything to do with the mysterious Barbie?”
Bo tensed. He did not want to have this conversation until he was on better footing with the devil inside him. Honestly, he didn’t want to talk about it until he’d found a way out of the possession. That meant a new body for Barbie, because Bo wasn’t about to eject the demon without somewhere for it to go. That’d be no different from murdering the devil. Barbie had helped Bo more than once. The pitmaster wasn’t about to do him dirty like that.
How kind. I will remember that when you try to shove me into a ceramic pig or something equally ridiculous.
“Hey, uh, Jenny?” Martin called from outside the dome. “You think you could send Bo out here. We’ve got a little problem.”
The former YouTube star rapped her knuckles on Bo’s chest. “You’re lucky. Go see what Martin’s gotten himself into.”
“I’m not going alone,” Bo joked. “What if there’s a monster out there?”
Jenny tugged on Bo’s beard. “Come on, little boy. Let’s see what’s scary.”
They didn’t have to get far outside the dome to see Martin’s problem. A pack of silver, semi-transparent wolves had gathered around Salt Life and all his friends. The spectral hounds had their heads lowered, their muzzles peeled back from glistening teeth. The creatures didn’t so much as glance away from Marting when Bo arrived. If anything, their growls got louder, and their eyes glowed more brightly.
“Any idea what to do here, big guy?” Martin asked.
The ghost wolves snarled and snapped when Martin spoke. Their circle tightened, forcing the men they’d surrounded into a tight huddle.
“Sorry, man,” Bo said. “I’m not sure what the hell is happening here.”
The wolves bristled, their fangs dripping silver saliva, and began to howl.