Chapter 14: Too much leather for this kind of dungeon

Sarah’s vision quickly cleared up as she made her way through the portal.

You have entered a dungeon.

A timely system message reaffirmed what Sarah could already infer, and she was immediately surprised by the change in surroundings. She had entered what looked like a natural cave with the earth forming a wide room surrounded by brown dirt walls with a clear path in front of her into the depths. Strange gemstones were imbedded in the earth all around her, giving off a glow that lit up the tunnel in a faint otherworldly light. The walls and ground were quite uneven, giving the place the appearance of a naturally forming cave rather than one formed by human hands. With a quick glance and a sigh of relief she noticed the portal was still behind her, giving her an exit if things went south.

Any thoughts? She asked Lucifer, happy to have her companion back despite his demonic nature and willing to use him where possible. And what better time then in a cave that clearly wasn’t from this Earth.

“The mana level is higher in here, but not beyond your level, meaning you should barely exceed the level of the monsters inside. For now, you should use your ritual magic to enhance your new knife. Once you get one more level, you will cross the 100-intelligence threshold which will open many possibilities for you to use your rituals to summon forth some more powerful help.”

She took another look at her status, noting she was very close.

Name: Sarah Rose

Race: Half-Greater Demon

Class: Hellbringer

Level: 16

Strength: 7

Agility: 8

Wisdom: 69

Intelligence: 94

Vitality: 13

Endurance: 7

Charisma: 13

Unused Stat Points: 0

Abilities:

* [Ritual Magic] Rank 2 Level 1

* [Demonic Mana Manipulation] Rank 1 Level 6 -> Level 9

* [Soul Sense] Rank 1 Level 1 -> Level 2

* Empty -

* Empty -

Perks:

* [Adaptive] - +1 free stat points per level.

* [Ritualess] - You may substitute reagents for mana in your rituals.

* [Demonic] - Your mana has the demonic attribute.

Six points away, she wondered what she would be able to do, but Lucifer was unwilling to say. Her only use for her class so far was enchanting her knife, which she proceeded to do again by covering it with some of her blood and pushing her mana into it.

Demonic knife – Tier 1 (Common)

Again, common rarity, but at least it was tier 1 - whatever that meant. She didn’t exactly have a frame of reference, but it was capable of killing the Level 3 wolves before with just a glancing blow so she felt safer just holding it.

Thus far she had hardly used her summoner class beyond this enchantment and slinging some mana bolts around with her [Demonic Mana Manipulation], and from what she was told the mage class was far stronger at using mana this way. Although she doubted others with the mage class could out-damage her with her current stat advantage, that advantage may close up if she couldn’t find monsters to level herself up. But although she was definitely not using her full potential right now, she was ready to learn some new tricks.

And so she ventured deeper.

Careful with her footing she made her way down the tunnel and into the depths. Her eyesight was strangely good in the darkness, and with just the light of the faint crystals around her she could see most of the way in front of her. The tunnel started to widen, and so she strained her eyes to look out for anything that could emerge from the darkness. She gripped her knife and prepared herself for the enemies she was certain would soon appear.

She was totally unprepared for the blow that struck her in the side.

Unlike in the comics, her body was not thrown 5 meters across the tunnel to dramatically impact the wall and yet leave her unscathed. Instead, it really fucking hurt and she fell on the ground immediately in a cry of pain with her left shoulder feeling like it had been hit by a car. She somehow still had a hold of her knife in her right hand and so she swung it and cut through... the wall?

A large section of the wall seemed to be moving, dragging itself to stand over her. It took maybe a second before her brain registered the human shaped dirt that loomed in front of her in the narrow corridor.

Dirt Golem – Level 11

She rolled to the side as it tried to step on her, swinging her knife out again and striking the leg, slicing straight through the dirt limb like butter. Thankfully, this meant its follow up punch down went wide as the lack of limb caused it to fall over on its side. She pulled herself to her feet and stumbled a few steps back, taking a second to breathe.

The golem was human shaped, made entirely of dirt identical to the walls around her which explained why she did not spot it on the way through. It struggled to stand up and balance itself with part of its leg from around the centre of its calf down completely missing, but with a hand on the wall it pulled itself up and looked at her. Her [Demonic Mana Manipulation] told her there was no demonic mana from her weapon ravaging it from the inside like what occurred with the wolves. That mana had allowed her to kill the wolves from just a glancing blow, but considering that this was a golem it likely had no insides to ravage.

But it didn’t make the weapons useless, still able so slice clean through the limbs of the golem where a normal knife would get stuck.

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Speaking of, the golem seemed unwilling to approach her, using the wall to keep itself upright and obviously now lacking the ability to walk forward properly. The tunnel was wide enough that she could easily avoid it, but she thought it likely wouldn’t be a good idea to leave an enemy behind her, injured or not.

The golem tried shuffling towards her, using the wall as support and causing her to take a few more steps back, but she realised at this point she seemed to be quite safe. So she did the smart think and started forming some bolts.

It took less than a minute before it was just dirt on the ground. Her left arm feeling very bruised but still functional, she moved the knife over while she shot more demonic mana bolts at the golem until it collapsed. She shot the first few in its head which seemed to do very little, then shot one at its chest which caused it to start approaching her much faster giving her the idea that this must be working. Careful of her footing in the uneven tunnel, she simply backed off until it no longer moved and she felt a rush of experience entering her.

You have levelled up.

She let out a sigh of relief and felt her whole body try to relax after the adrenaline rush she just experienced. She considered more vitality, since the 13 points there put her at the upper limit of the bounds of a normal human and were likely the only reason she didn’t take massive damage on the outset. But in the end, she wanted some new spells.

Putting 4 of her free points into intelligence, and the last spare point into wisdom, on top of the +2 to each stat she got from levelling up, she finally hit the 100 points in intelligence mark.

For being the first from your planet with 100 stat points in intelligence, you unlock the Perk;

[Intelligence Prodigy]

* You have perfect recall.

It felt like something smacked her in the head on reading the message, and gripping her head in her hands she proceeded to have the worst headache she had ever felt for all of two seconds. Then suddenly, it all cleared up, and she felt… normal.

Trying to test it out, it took her a moment to think up of… what she should think up of. She tried to bring back memories of her high school maths class, and memories of solving derivates popped right up to the forefront of her mind.

Now that’s cool. Not sure how it’ll help me right now in a cave but ill figure that out later. Any thoughts Lucifer?

“This is typically the reward for reaching 1000 intelligence, so it intrigues me on what you will be rewarded at that time instead.”

Maybe I should focus on wisdom now if there’s bonus rewards…?

“Not many classes focus on wisdom, and not many humans are at your level, so you may have a chance of taking that perk too. We shall focus your free points on that then until 100 and see where to go from there. Now, while your mana regenerates, we need to discuss some new spells. Golems are highly resistant to mana, so we need to get you some tools a bit stronger than those bolts.”

What can I do?

“There are many routes a summoner can take, from summoning elementals, deities, spirits, animals, or any mix. You can bring forward beings from another plane, such as myself, or form completely new temporary beings out of mana. At any point you can use your mana to summon a being of any kind, but [Ritual Magic] lets you take this one step further and summon something beyond what is typically possible for someone of your level, at the cost of time. With your greater demonic heritage, you also have greater control over beings you summon that are attuned to demonic mana. Finally, 100 intelligence is considered a requirement for a summoner to have the mental capability to understand the mind of your summon.”

So being a greater demon plus rank 2 [Ritual Magic] plus 100 intelligence means…?

“It means you are incredibly powerful for a level 17. Let’s get started.”

From some discussion, it seemed most summoners were split between using the [Summon] skill or the [Ritual Magic] skill. The first was far easier to get and allowed for a near instantaneous summon, but the summoned being would not last for very long. Alternatively, [Ritual Magic] took far longer to cast, but the summon remained until either killed or dismissed. It seemed the [Ritualess] perk she had negated a lot of the consequences of using [Ritual Magic], removing the problem of speed.

So she could basically summon beings only slightly slower than those with the [Summon] skill, but they stayed permanently. It made her wonder why all summoners don’t use [Ritual Magic].

Lucifer decided to answer that for her. “While you can have both, it is better to focus on one and increase its level than to split your focus. Most start with [Summon], being far easier to get, and so never really change.”

But surely [Ritual Magic] wasn’t simply a better version, she wondered.

“Not at all. What happens if your summon dies? What happens if you’re caught unprepared? Someone with [Summon] may be able to quickly bring more support, while you require absolute concentration and extra time making it incredibly difficult to use [Ritual Magic] while already in battle.”

“Not to mention, most summoners lack the needed materials for [Ritual Magic]. If we were in my abode, the materials we could use would allow you to summon beings over twice your level. Unfortunately, while [Ritualess] lets you skip much of the difficult part, you do lose some strength compared to what a full ritual would allow.”

“But compared to [Summon], a ritual will let you guide what kind of being you want to summon. Let’s start with some imps.”

According to Lucifer, using her blood would let her establish a stronger connection to the demonic realm. There was also significance of the act of sacrificing her blood, which apparently played a strong part in the strength of the ritual. This opened a whole new can of worms, and apparently sacrificing your first-born child would greatly power a ritual. Same with giving up symbolic objects, not that she had anything with her.

A bit distracted, she started thinking about her family and wondered how her mum was doing. Knowing her she’d be leading an army already with men swooning around her, being a famous actress did that. She was even out filming an action movie before this, and with her security detail she felt pretty confident she was fine. Not that they ever really had a good relationship.

She decided to stop stalling and made a large cut against her left forearm, closer to the elbow. It must be a byproduct of the ritual process but she was amazed to see the cut seal itself up almost instantly afterwards, although not before a large amount of her blood had already left her. The blood that did come it dissolved in the air, turning into smoke that gathered together Infront of her. About half of her mana disappeared, also being pushed into this smoke that became denser and denser.

And then out came a fat baby.

To be fair, it did look pretty evil. Hovering in the air with little wings that did not look like they should be able to support him, the imp had red skin and small crude horns spiralling out from its head. Gripping an equally small trident, it glared around at the cave before settling its beady black eyes on Sarah intently. It even let out a little cackle in a high pitched voice as it looked down at her from its position in the air. But for how menacing it tried to be, it kind of made her think of a fat baby dressed in cosplay.

Are all demons like this. I’ve never actually seen what Lucifer looks like…

“No.” The demon in her head sounded positively insulted at her insinuation. And so she quickly changed topics.

So what does it do? She thought.

“It’s an imp. There are many kinds, but they are usually fire aligned and very stupid with a penchant for violence. Inspect it.”

Imp – Summon Level 24 (Uncommon)

Now she was surprised. For something she dismissed so quickly the imp eclipsed her own level 17 self. It was too bad she wasn’t able to see its stats and abilities, but with some quick mental gymnastics she found she could order it around mentally quite easily and it followed not only her words but her intentions behind them.

For instance, telling it to fly to a point behind her, it manoeuvred around her easily rather than barrelling directly through her. Likewise, telling it to do a flip made it do so in the air, and then giving it the same direction but thinking about a normal flip led to it doing so on the ground.

And despite being a fat baby, it landed the flip pretty impressively too. I guess the extra stats can do that. It looked at her with a flourish and she could swear it may have even winked at her.

It also surprised her that it was uncommon, but after discussion with Lucifer she found out that having tier 2 in her summon skill meant she would summon uncommon beings rather than common.

It didn’t cost her any mana to give it commands, but she could feel part of her mana pool was unusable to her, going towards maintaining the summon itself. That part of her mana pool was gone and not regenerating. While not debilitating, losing what felt like around a third of her mana was slightly worrying, but more than worth having a level 24 minion.

She was just thinking about summoning another when she heard some noises from deeper in the tunnel coming towards her. Maybe it was time to test her new summon out and see how strong it really is.