Ashtoreth called out toward the upper platform. “You okay, Dazel?”
Distantly, she heard a squeak.
“Good.”
She turned her attention toward the demon corpse in front of her—surely she could eat its heart? She could feel it with her [Consume Heart] ability, but getting it out might be a problem.
A dark form glided down to land on the hilt of the greatsword jutting from the eye of the corpse in front of her.
“I thought that thing was a melee weapon!” he said.
Ashtoreth scoffed. “Um, actually,” she said. “Labels are for soup cans, not greatswords. Say, how long did that take me?”
“What? Was I supposed to time you?”
“Just guess.”
“I don’t know!”
“Just guess, though.”
“I wasn’t timing you!”
“Thirty seconds, tops,” Ashtoreth said, grinning.
“How—what—how did you do that?”
“You weren’t watching?” Ashtoreth pouted. “You could at least be a Speedwagon.”
“I don’t understand what that means.”
Ashtoreth let out a forlorn sigh. “And I’m starting to doubt our compatibility as a result.” She frowned and looked back at the corpse. “At least the fight went okay.”
“Wait a second,” said Dazel. “Hold on—did you mean to put the sword in the back wall?”
“So you were watching!”
“You planned that whole thing!” Dazel accused. “From the start!”
Astoreth affected a stiff, gloating voice. “Everything that has transpired has done so according to my design.”
“Please no,” he whined. “Don’t tell me you’re actually competent! I’m going to be here forever.”
“Forever and ever!” said Ashtoreth. “Better start trying to make the best of it by embracing your role as my cuddly familiar friend!”
Dazel made a gagging noise.
But Ashtoreth had put a hand on a hip. “Love beats hate and hope beats cynicism,” she said, wagging a finger at him. “I’m gonna get you, Dazel—now look around for a boss chest, would you?” She grinned. “I’ve got a big decision to make!”
She brought up her third aspect selection:
{You must advance your racial progression path a second time before you can choose your third aspect}
“Oh,” Asthoreth said. “Right.”
{Racial Advancement}
{Choose an upgrade to gain, then choose to retain or replace all other options}
{Retained upgrades will be offered again next time you advance your racial progression path. Replaced upgrades will be replaced with new options.}
Upgrade [Devour Flesh] with [Connoisseur]:
You gain 10% of the consumed creature’s resistances as well as its stats.
Upgrade [Blood Drain] with [Blood Memory]:
You can glimpse some of a creature’s memories when you consume their blood.
Upgrade [Hellfire] with [Hellfire Aura]:
Creatures in close proximity to your hellfire are affected by any auras you possess.
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Gain a beneficial aura that renders allies immune to damage from your hellfire.
“Say,” Ashtoreth said approvingly. “These aren’t bad at all.”
There was a dead boss right next to her, and she was about to eat its heart, so [Connoisseur] seemed like the obvious choice.
[Hellfire Aura] would be useful once she actually had allies. [Blood Memory] seemed like it could have all manner of uses, but wasn’t the best choice when she was trying to quickly overtake the tutorial.
She chose [Connoisseur] and retained both the others.
Then she started looking at her last aspect:
{Choose an Aspect}
{Once made, this choice cannot be undone. Your aspect will either grant you a new ability, or significantly upgrade one of your existing racial abilities.}
{When you’ve chosen 3 aspects, you will be given a class and gain the power to level up. Your 3 aspects will become your ability progression paths.}
[Hellfire]
Primary stats: MAG
[Hellfire] focuses on using profane flames to destroy people, places, and things.
Choosing this aspect will improve and add to the capabilities of your racial [Hellfire] ability, and move that ability into the [Hellfire] progression path when you gain your class.
[Might]
Primary stats: STR, VIT, DEF
[Might] focuses on using calculated applications of brute force to overwhelm your enemies.
Choosing this aspect will grant you the [Mighty Surge] ability, which allows you to greatly increase your [Strength] for an extremely small time period.
[Telekinesis]
Primary stats: MAG, PSY
[Telekinesis] focuses on moving objects through mental and magical power alone.
Choosing this aspect will grant you the [Animate Object] ability, which allows you to enchant an object to move according to your will, converting it into a minion.
[Domination]
Primary stats: PSY
[Domination] focuses on exercising varying amounts of control over another creature’s mind. This can be to control them, paralyze them, trick them, or merely extract information from their minds.
Choosing this aspect will grant you the [Mental Domination] ability, and move your [Command Profane] ability into the [Domination] progression path when you gain your class.
Ashtoreth looked over her options.
“Well it’s not an easy one, but really, that’s a good thing.”
The thing about being an archfiend was that she had a very balanced set of stats, even after becoming a vampire. Her two prior aspects, [Drain] and [Armament], could work well with both physical and magical abilities—but each of them had physical stats.
So she ruled out [Might]: even if it was a good pairing for her gigantic sword, [Consume Heart] along with her ability to cast from [Blood] and her archfiend’s balanced stats meant that she’d want a magical aspect to take full advantage of all her resources. She was already planning to use her moderately high [Magic] and [Psyche] stats to bolster her sword swings with the [Proximate Telekinesis] upgrade that she’d retained when building her sword.
Since her weapon could already be telekinetically controlled, she ruled out [Telekinesis], too—the sword was really the only thing she was interested in throwing around, and she hadn’t chosen the [Minion] aspect that would really make [Animate Object] shine.
That only left two options.
[Domination] or [Hellfire]? [Domination] was also an aspect that really shone with the [Minion] aspect to synergize with it, and she wouldn’t be getting one. Her command ability had been incredibly powerful so far, but it was well-known to be one of the more powerful abilities innate to archfiends. And it was sure to work on most everything in both the Hell tutorial and back on Earth, aspect or no.
[Domination] might have been her choice if she didn’t know that its powers were minimally effective on powerful foes, which were the ones she cared about most. Sure, she might be able to freeze them in place or get a read on their thoughts, maybe even throw some of their own minions at them… but she questioned whether that would be worth a whole aspect.
Still, it was close. Not taking either [Domination] or [Telekinesis] felt like it was as much a choice of personal style as one borne out of reasoning.
She was left with [Hellfire].
[Hellfire] could deny large areas by setting them aflame, damaged almost everything that existed—including demons and devils—and would likely have better interactions with her [Armament] aspect than [Domination], if not [Telekinesis]. The big problem with hellfire was that its high damage came at high [Mana] cost… but her build supported that.
“Okay, I guess it was easier than I thought,” she said.
{Choose [Hellfire] as your third aspect?}
Ashtoreth beamed. “Heck yeah!”
{You gained the [Hellfire] aspect and can now upgrade your [Hellfire] ability.}
{Your three aspects will now combine to form a class. Synthesizing…}
{Class Synthesized. You are now a [Bloodfire Annihilator]}
{Ding! You level up and gain 11 DEX, 11 STR, 15 VIT, 13 MAG, 7 PSY, 7 DEF}
{You may choose a path to advance.}
It was finally happening! Not only did she have a class, but she had two more upgrades to choose.
Ashtoreth grinned and looked at her newfound power.
“It’s… beautiful!”