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This transformation Skill comes with a lot of benefits that weren't mentioned in the description.
All these almost forgotten sensations, everything is much more vivid... The rush of wind on your skin as you run through the fields, the wild beat of hooves on the ground sending tremors up your bones, and the pounding heart in your chest pumping hot blood throughout the body. Each deep breath taken, each jump and measured step pushing you forward faster and faster. The smell of grass and sea breeze. Every sensation is much more pronounced for this body compared to the demon's.
The adrenaline coursing through my veins as we plunge over the edge of a cliff — why did I only now realize there is an actual heart beating in my chest? That each breath had a purpose other than to imitate the living being.
Life is intoxicating, and this transformation made me realize that for a demon everything felt muted; even with the ritual bringing me a semblance of it with the chains of vital energy wrapped around my core... This skill, when used properly, actually gave me a living body.
Yes, I really enjoyed our mad run; maybe a bit too much as together with everything else happening it was distracting.
Why does time seem to slow down when you fall?
-Having functional wings would be nice in a situation like this.
It's fine—
Air swirls into motion as I push my will upon it; a strong whirlwind disperses the mists and the trail of smoke above, carrying and slowing us down. While 'flying' through the air I absently note that the fallen wyvern has started a bush fire above, on the other side where it crashed; flames spreading fast among the dry coastal flora.
15 meters below us, Marcus is currently fighting an odd undead; they seem evenly matched, but the old soldier clearly has an upper hand - some sort of skill making his spear strike out at incredible speeds in a flurry of jabs... Despite that, this enemy simply shrugs off all of the hits that I see cleanly connect, barely making it stumble back a step. Something about that thing is different from the rest of the skeletons we've encountered thus far, the miasma around it is much thicker, giving it an appearance as if it was shrouded in shadows.
It's fine. This V shaped ravine is not that wide and with our speed we will actually reach the opposite wall of it, rather than hit the bottom where the fight is happening.
And since we have arrived, there is sadly no need to keep this form anymore. Magic swirls around through our body and then rushes inside, before bouncing back, changed, reshaping us— such a hard to describe feeling; every time it's used I marvel at how the system can perform such complicated feat in but a moment. In a hearth-beat, there no longer is a living horse falling towards a steep craggy wall while carrying a slightly panicked fire witch.
A small, red demon took its place.
"Red!"
But the hard, crumbling rock is still approaching fast. -I can think about the implications of our discovery later.
Vines, branches and roots erupt from my demonic body, reaching far ahead towards the craggy wall to stop our fall and cushion the landing; Magic stirs inside of us. After losing her mount Caroline started flailing wildly, watching the ground with wide eyes; but we never let go of her through the whole ordeal. I would be fine either way but I have to arrest her momentum with a bit more care - squishy mortal that she is and I'm no superman. Not a problem.
Rose digs into the lime-stone, providing support as we come to a stop on the middle of the ravine's wall.
"—What?" I tilt my head at the angrily glaring woman dandling from one of our vines wrapped around her waist.
"You two are late!" A relived shout comes from below; somehow still heard over the litany of complaints.
Our arrival was noticed; it would have been hard not to, considering it was a rather dynamic entry and Caroline can hold a lot of air for her shouts - I'm sure everyone heard her just now.
I have Rose tear a sizeable chunk from the wall and toss it at the shadowy undead, before it can capitalize on Marcus' little moment of distraction. The big piece of stone is met on the small round shield and bashed away in a shower of pebbles. - Hey, that looks familiar as well.
"—Phew, just get us down there, you crook. Marcus will need help to deal with that thing." She looks at the ongoing fight while biting her lip, finally done cursing me.
> Wraith (9) / Skeleton (10), Knight (15).
Alright, that's new.
Using vines and branches we quickly make our way down to the path where the two were fighting. Meantime, Marcus took the opportunity I gave him to disengage from his opponent and started to retreat in our direction. I can also see that the smuggler captain, standing back on the beach with what looks like a fucking flintlock, really wants to leave already; but the dirty glances he sends to the golem sitting on board indicate they were forced to stay.
Marcus jumps back and tries to join us.
"Get to the ship, we are ready to—"
"Is that Arlon?" Caroline cuts him off, looking at the approaching enemy.
Arlon—? Oh, that guy from before; the bandit leader. That sword, enchanted chain-mail and small buckler - checks out; would have been a problem having to face the guy but he lost a lot of levels; his Rogue class is gone and Knight no longer has a Captain suffix to it. Again, except for the Wraith bit, his levels are the same as other undead's—
*Roar!
Speak of the devil. A smoldering skeleton of a wyvern shows its head over the cliff above and then starts hastily climbing down like an oversized bat, while still carrying its raider... I didn't realize before that undead could look angry.
Annoying bastard just wouldn't stay down.
But my body finally adjusted to the changes after shedding a mortal coil, and everything is back to normal with Magic flowing freely through us.
The spear wielding beast-master is ready to jump down from above while Arlon's reanimated corpse lunges at the slowly retreating Marcus.
Magic rushes through my Mana Channels.
Before his death, the guy was somehow able to predict and avoid my magic— but that's apparently no longer an issue as the stupid bonehead steps right into my spell; his leg gets caught by a blooming ice crystal, rooting him in place before he could swing at the old man. Confirming that my magic connected without the fucker easily dodging, I making the ice grow with Overcharge to trap it for good before he does that other trick of his and breaks free.
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
Tendrils of ice climb up his skeletal body as the crystals grow, grasping greedily to hold it in place ; they have some trouble after reaching its enchanted armor but it's just delaying the inevitable.
"Go to the ship, both of you. I'm tired of this whole situation."
Releasing Caroline from our vines I kick the ground and Blink up— right in front of the now falling wyvern-rider, colliding with the bastard mid-air. This close it can't swing at me with that long spear, and all of the now Rip and Tear infused vines shoot out and run it through, going under its mail and between the burnt bones, grasping at its limbs and spine—
Empower flares up, and we tear the annoying fucker apart - finally!
Its blackened bones shower down onto the ground and hit the wall of the ravine together with broken links of the rusted armor, as I vent and settle half of my latest woes. -Sometimes you really just need to go wild, and the last few days started to stress me out.
The other half of my ire suddenly halted in its descent at the destruction of its partner, griping the wall of the ravine, it's preparing a skill. We won't wait to see what comes; as I land on the wall after tearing past the first enemy, one of the longer branches whips out tracing a long arc through the air and wraps itself around the reanimated beasts long neck, pulling me in fast like a bullet where we then coil ourselves around it.
While this happens I notice that the Wraith is having some problems. The shadows swirling around his bones billow out and try to reach for the ice now gripping all of his lower body, but recoil away as if burnt on touch. Still, cracks are showing as it hacks at its bindings with a sword and the edge of that unusual shield. -Will have to get back to him shortly before he runs away again...
Caroline, while moving back to the ship with Marcus, actually couldn't stop herself and shot a firebolt at the immobilized foe, grinning with satisfaction when it impacted with his skull in a burst of flame, making it drop the sword. -Nice job.
Sitting now atop of the wyvern, we pry its claws off the wall with our Empowered strength. It is still smoking and obviously damaged after the recent crash landing, but these bones are much stronger than the other guy's and resist being dismantled as easily.
We both slide down into the ravine in a cloud of dust as it wipes out strong winds in an attempt to throw us off, there are weak wind-blades flowing in the strong currents but they are impotent in face of our Resilience; those burnt wings won't be able carry it up anymore and so we hit the bottom. As we roll around, tearing out the small shrubs growing by the path, sending leaves flying, Rose finally manages to saw through one of the damaged wings, casting it aside and making whatever wind ability this was to stop.
Fine, since we can't tear it apart and the others already reached the ship I untangle us from the flailing creature and jump away; just as it readies itself up from the ground— a fireball *detonates! inside its wide open jaws sending bone shrapnel all over the place.
The headless thing was blown back and crumbled to the ground in a smoking heap.
Two down, one more to go.
I already feel much better after getting rid of these two and drop the Empower skill.
The wraith wasn't idle and broke most of the ice imprisoning him with another Bash of his shield; it's some sort of a skill, likely from the knight class, but that buckler is also enchanted. He is still trapped though, as I froze it solidly to the rocky terrain and used a lot of magic.
-Let's see you bash this.
There is no point in wasting more mana on freezing it; there are still things I want to do before going back to hell so I will do it the old fashioned way and kill two birds with one stone since the terrain is favorable.
Putting my claws to the ground I reach out with my power, through the earth and to the walls. Let's hope no one needs to use this path anymore— but honestly, I don't care about that.
The galley is already sailing away, propelled by its many oars and disappearing behind the mist, carrying away my investments to safety; our cart and part of the bandit's loot are still here since it was left on the beach by the jetty just as I asked for.
Doing it this way the cove should remain mostly secured; we will be very busy soon and would have to leave it unsupervised for the time being - no need no thief getting to my things while we're out finishing our business.
*Rumble! *Crash!
-Yes, let the gravity do most of the job for you.
I wonder why there's no Gravity Magic on my stupidly long list of available skills?
——
Done with my inspection I toss the thing away.
The slightly dented buckler lands with a clatter inside the cart where it joins the rest of our spoils. Examining its enchantments showed them to be rather underwhelming. It joins a broken sword and a torn chain-mail that also belonged to that Arlon guy. -Why leave magical items to waste even if they are weak?
We dug out his remains after taking care of a small business... There are now a few more interesting things here that we will bring with us to hell - after I test out my theory about the crown that is. Wyvern bones and a big block of ice taking up most of space on this vehicle. Unfortunately someone actually took the spear that belonged to the wyvern-rider when I wasn't paying attention and wrestling its pet. Either Marcus or Caroline must have taken fancy to it; I suspect it was Caroline, she would definitely dare.
Eh, whatever.
What's with the ice?
It contains a valuable test subject of course. Trapped inside it is a certain Skeleton Mage.
We went out of our way to find her roaming around and spirited this skeleton away from among the small horde milling up there on the road- although I'm unsure if we can call these reanimated bones as her. Those are definitely the Hag's... This blue dress worn under the tattered robe— I would recognize it anywhere, even in the sorry state it is now. The gnarled staff it carried was also Merta's. -Damn, whatever.
But it's not her anymore. Just a generic undead using these old bones as a vessel. This much I'm sure off.
—Anyway. I will take care of her remains and maybe in the process learn few more things about magic from my old... hmm, not sure how to call our relationship anymore. I will be up to me to bury her in the end.
...
Lost in thoughts I walk over to the collapsed walls of the ravine; an avalanche of rock buried a section of the narrow path under few meters of broken limestone boulders - I might have gone a bit overboard during that last fight. But going wild like this felt- nice... This should be enough to stop or at least slow down most of the skeletons still roaming out there on the other side.
Strangely they stopped following us the moment we returned back to the cove with our frozen captive.
Mhmm.
There's something odd about this pinkish material, so we also loaded a few samples on the cart for later study - if they survive in hell I could find some use for their odd quality. I pick up an especially colorful piece of debris from the ground and try to figure out what we are dealing with.
> Perian Limestone: Sedimentary rock infused with trace amounts of volatile energy and decent fire affinity.
I was already interested by it back in town; many houses were built with it and I couldn't figure out why the residents would they use such a dangerous material. The stuff back there was already mostly spent and not much of this energy remained in its walls, but this sample here still contains—
My head snaps up toward the road hidden behind the rubble, many undead are seemingly wandering out there as if lost, and I focus trying to reach out as far as possible.
Something's coming—fast, something very dangerous. I can feel shivers run up my spine as my senses focus on it, and we start making our way back towards the beach and the cart left out there with all the hard earned loot.
-Fuck, a group of undead is now making their way down here, and one of them is super bad news... Like, fuck-it-all-I'm-out-of-here, kind of bad. We still have to check on the town, and test how the horde would react to the crown, not to mention... At least that was the plan.
Not sure I care enough anymore. I jump on the cart and create an illusion that would try to hide us from the new arrivals. Gulp.
The dangerous presence stopped right behind the landslide, together with two others; holding my breath I sense as it climbs up over the obstacle without any problem whatsoever. Soon they reach the top...
A skeletal horse carrying a raider—
> Horse (3), Skeleton (10).
There's is a— shade, following them; It's agitated and floating around and near the armored figure. Where did I see it before?
> Wraith (9).
Motherfu—
The rider wearing a black, ominous and highly ornamental plate-armor looks straight in our direction— my eyes meet two empty abysses and I freeze... -There is no time to waste. Shaking off the chilling sensation, I wrap my Presence around the cart as Rose coils her vines around the wooden frame.
Fuck testing the crown, fuck the town and fuck this guy. I'm done.
I reach deep inside of myself and trigger a specific mystical rune present there, critical part of the ritual anchoring us to the mortal realm, giving us the illusion of life.
...And dare to chance a one last Identify.
> Damned*, Death Knight* (40).
"Give it b—"
The runes inside of us flash with power, and the chains of Life unwind themselves from my core— way too slowly for my taste. Held within them was magic of the ritual that brought us here and kept us alive, it rushes out, spreading throughout the aura of my Presence as the terrifying creature points its finger at me...
A magical circle forms and shines with red brilliance.
The world fades to black.
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