Chapter 2 – Game Start!
“Whaaaaaaa!” When feeling returned to her body, she was falling again, this time from a greater height. This program really liked throwing her around, didn’t it…
[A/N: No, but I do! ;D]
With a loud “oof.” She landed on her butt again and quickly got up, rubbing her painfully throbbing backside once again while looking around. She had woken up in a dark cave without any light source but she could still see well. The rough stone around her opened up into a large cave. Before moving there she decided to inspect her body. Except for the slight pain where she had landed her body felt fine. In fact it was very light. She quickly twisted around to take a look at her back and confirmed the devils tail and long black hair on her back.
She reached towards her temples and also confirmed rough horns growing out of her head and surrounding two pointy ears. Her heartbeat sped up as she thought about it… She was really in the game!
“Getting used to your new body, I see.”
Quickly glancing around, she couldn’t see anyone. “Here, here, look up!”
She raised her head and saw a small boy flying above her head, waving down.
“Hey there, I’m Tim! Are you new here? You’re pretty late in escaping, you know?”
“H-hello, yes, I’m new. My name is Na- no, Demon. What do you mean escape?”
“Whoa, you mean you got out without even wanting to? It’s the first time I saw a devil escape from hell without knowing it…” You could nearly see the nerves in his head twitching as he stared down at her. “Well anyhow, it’s my job to show newbies the ropes around here, so that includes you.”
“Thank you!”
“No problem, newbie!” He landed next to her.
When his feet reached the ground his wings shrank to a small size comparable to hers. He looked about 11 years old and had a naughty glim in his eyes. He was wearing normal unicolor short pants and a black t-shirt. 3 short horns were growing out of his forehead, giving him a somewhat unnatural look and his eyes were pitch black.
“Well then, let’s get started!” He smiled at her and came over.
“Ah, wait!” He looked at her questioningly. She hadn’t even had the chance to properly look around yet. “C-can I first look around a bit?”
“Ah, sure. I’ll wait then.”
Demon surveyed her surroundings. She was standing in what appeared to be a mineral cave. Looking around she confirmed several small ponds where water had been dripping down from the ceiling. Over the centuries beautiful blue stalactites and stalagmites had formed that provided the area with minimal light. There must be a special mineral in these mountains. They also contained a lot of crystal, seeing as the slight blue glow was reflected by millions of small shards in the ceiling and floor. The whole cave was sparkling. It was simply breathtaking.
Demon slowly stepped forward and walked towards one of the bigger ponds.
Its edges were rough and glowing light blue on the edge, growing darker and darker towards the middle, the deepest part of the pond. The water had dripped down and ran along the wall, eroding it over the years, finally forming a pond. The wall behind it was very smooth and several large crystals were embedded within. The water had uncovered them.
She turned back towards Tim, who was sitting close to where she had fallen, watching her curiously.
Behind him there was a large black crack in the floor cavern, running along the back wall. It looked like a meteorite had hit the place, a large crater had formed and the floor seemed charred despite being made of solid stone. It looked like a gaping mouth, ominous and greedy. A large scar within the beauty of the cavern.
Frowning Demon got closer to the edge of the crack and looked down. After a few meters of rough rocky surface she could only make out a deep, creepy darkness.
“Don’t fall back in now.” Tim warned her.
“Nnn… I-I won’t.” ‘So that’s where we “escaped” from… We ruined such a nice place…’
Seeing as Demon just kept staring at the crack, Tim got a little impatient. “Are you done?”
“Y-yes.” She startled out of her daze and turned towards her little guide.
“Okay, then let’s get started.” He got up excitedly, his wings shivering in anticipation. “First of all you’ll have 2 default skills as a devil. One of them is to fly.”
“Huh, I can fly?”
“Yea.” He walked behind her and touched the base of her wings.
“Can you tell where I’m touching?”
“Yep.”
He moved her wings for her, familiarizing her with their feel.
“Now imagine the bones you feel there growing longer, expanding gradually... Good!”
She closed her eyes and concentrated on the feeling in her back, imagining the bones and muscles in her wings growing and expanding.
“Great, that’s enough!”
She opened her eyes again, looking back only to find that her wings really did grow by a lot. The wings that had previously only reached up to her shoulders when she stretched them were now gigantic in comparison. She expanded them to their full size. She estimated them to be approximately 1,50 m long each. ‘B-big!!’ She stared at them. ‘So I can only fly in big caverns?’ she was a bit disappointed.
“I’ll warn you now, your body will use stamina up faster while you’re flying. But you will also need less wing capacity the more you practice. Meaning the better you get at flying, the less you have to grow them out to fly. They won’t be in the way so much after a while, so don’t look so down, ok?” Satisfied with her relieved nod, he continued. “Now try flapping them. You’ll have to learn to control them from the very beginning again. After all our bodies are very different now that we aren’t in hell anymore.”
She decided to try it and concentrated on her back again, asking her newly discovered bones and muscles to move. She recalled the birds she had watched in childhood and tried to imitate them.
As she moved her wings she shot into the air like a rocket, hitting her head on the ceiling of the cave with a loud ‘thud’.
“Owwww!” she complained as she rubbed over her head.
“Whoa, easy there… Well it seems you at least know how to use them” Tim said dryly “Now you just need to work on your self-control.” Demon blushed fiercely at that. “Well, you’ll have plenty of room and time to practice… I’m surprised you learned the basics this fast to be honest, most of us had more difficulties… after all you suddenly have to move within completely different dimensions that before. Anyhow, back to our topic.
You’ll probably have realized already but devils have night-vision. Meaning we can see even in the deepest darkness, which is really useful seeing as we are mainly active at night. Of course without any light source at all even we can’t see anything, but this is a cavern complex very rich on minerals and crystals that give up a faint light naturally, so we don’t have trouble even without daylight or fire.
Let’s land so I can explain some other important things to you.”
They slowly drifted down to the surface of the cave again, landing and letting their wings shrink again.
“Okay, so we can fly and have night vision. Another huge difference from our time in hell is the time this place follows. The day-night circle is very different, so every 24 hours down there will actually amount to 5 whole days in this place. Since our mentality isn’t used to that and we don’t really rely on the day-night system down here, the devils will mostly stay awake 4 days straight and then just sleep for a whole day. It’s up to you what you do of course. Just warning you beforehand.
The other racial skill we have would be Life Absorption. Meaning we can bite people from other races or animals and drink their life force to restore our own life. But be careful, you can only use this skill when you’re actually hungry or your fangs won’t grow.
By the way, you can check up on your skills again through your skill information window in the character screen. To call that one up just shout ‘character window’ and it’ll appear.
There are several other useful buffs for our race, and we also have a few weaknesses so keep paying attention now, this is important.”
“O-okay.”
“During the night or in deep darkness like down here all our attribute and skill effects will increase by 80%. Our agility will also double when we’re flying. Our senses are sharpened since we’re creatures of darkness after all and at the same time spells of darkness or destruction will double in effect.
But for power there is a price to pay. On Holy ground or during the day all of these buffs will be ineffective and our skill and attribute or status effects will be decreased by 50%. If the sky is overclouded the weakening effect goes down to 20%. Additionally if we’re exposed to sunlight directly for more than about 30 minutes our skin will start burning painfully and we’ll be weakened considerably for the rest of the day. If you stay in the sun for one hour straight you’re dead. So don’t, seriously. If you come in contact with items made of silver or other holy objects you’ll also receive heavy burns and the same weakening effect. These are the only ways we can be killed. Sunlight, silver or objects with a lot of faith penetrating the body. Otherwise we won’t die, even if our heads are cut off. Of course it’d be pretty hard to move while you just have a head though… Anyhow, remember that and stay away from them.
Did you get all that?”
“I think so. Time here goes faster than usual by 5, we’re stronger during the night, but weak during the day. Stay away from sunlight, silver and holy objects, right?”
“To put it simply, yes. Now then, let’s practice your flying for a bit while we look for something to practice your life absorption on.”
They started flying again, Demon now careful to control the power output of her wings better. She asked curiously
“Is there a way to see my stamina and health?”
“Yea, just call “Show healthbar” or stamina bar and they should appear in the corner of your vision. That way you don’t have to look at your status window every time. Of course you can always close and disable all the options permanently crowding your vision. Too much info isn’t good, is it?” He winked at her.
“R-right, thank you.” She called up both bars. They didn’t show a numeric value, but rather just depleted gradually. She guessed she could check the numbers only when calling up the status window. She made a mental note to look at that later.
“Does the person or animal I drink from die?”
“No, they’ll just be weakened for some time. They also won’t remember that you drank their blood, unless you want them to.”
“Will it… hurt them?”
“Hmm, I think someone described the first bite to hurt as much as getting stung by a bee, but then our fang’s poison kicks in and numbs the pain, actually making it pleasurable for them.”
Demon blushed. “Nnn… I see.”
“So you wouldn’t wanna hurt someone then?” The boy glanced at her sharply.
“T-that’s…Well, it’s just good to know about your skills, right?”
“True true” the devil laughed.
Demon sighed. ‘Correct answer’ she thought. She didn’t want to offend him… and since he was a devil she thought he wouldn’t respond well if she openly denied it.
‘That aside… is he really a programmed character? He doesn’t seem unnatural at all!’ Demon was amazed.
“Ah, down there! It’s a human. He probably got lost or something.”
Demon followed his gaze. He was right. A scared looking human boy was sticking to the cave wall, feeling around in the darkness. He couldn’t see what was in front of him and never knew when he’d run into a wall or hole in the ground. He was probably looking for the way out.
Once she was aware of him she could actually smell his fear in the air. It was a stingy smell, similar to sweat, but different. They approached him and landed quietly a few feet away.
“I-is someone there?” The boy had intuitively guessed someone was watching him and was terrified.
“Go and eat“, Tim’s voice echoed in her head. She looked at him questioningly. How did he get into her head?!.“Oh, this? You can do it too, it’s called whispering. You just need to know someone’s name and face to do it. Concentrate on the person and think about a message you want to send them.”
“Like this?” She had concentrated on Tim.
‘This even works on NPCs?’ she wondered. She had read that usually only players could communicate across far distances among themselves.
He nodded, then motioned for her to go drink from the boy.
“It only works at a short distance though. Approximately 2 km.”, he explained, answering her unasked question.
She quietly approached the boy now, watching as he kept clinging to the wall, feeling around for hindrances. His neck was completely exposed. He whimpered. “I want to go home…”
‘So the language for the other races really isn’t the same as ours?’ She had figured she just didn’t understand him correctly earlier, but it was really unknown words to her. Once again she was impressed by the elaborateness of the game. She kept creeping closer to the boy and stretched out her hand towards him, growing out her fangs like Tim had shown her.
‘Wait, what am I actually doing right now… I’m about to bite someone and drink their blood, aren’t I? How don’t I feel awkward about this??’ even though she thought that, she still continued until her hand almost reached the boy. Then she stopped. She gulped.
“Hey, Tim. As I thought, I don’t want to bite him. Can I go look for another animal?”
For a moment that human didn’t seem like more than a steak to her. The thought scared her. Very much so. She didn’t want to hurt anyone anymore. Not anymore.
“Are you showing kindness to them? Are you that naive?” Tim growled angrily
“…”
“Newbie. Do you know why that boy is here?”
“…”
“His village is pretty close to one of the entrances to the cave labyrinth we live in, you see. And since the villagers there were scared of us they threw him down here. As a sacrifice you see.”
“???” Demon was shocked.
“So they… want us to e-eat him?”
“Yea, they don’t want monsters like us to harm them so they throw their children down here. To keep us from hurting them… not like we usually do.”
“Something like that… why… ”
Demon’s hand shivered in anger for a moment and tears rolled down her face. She bit her lips.
“H-hey…” Tim started trying to comfort her, he didn’t foresee such a reaction. But then… his words got stuck in his throat.
Demon took hold of the boy’s arms, pressing him against the cave wall and opened her mouth, burying her fangs deep within the boy’s throat, tears still running down her cheeks. Her eyes were glowing red with anger.
“W-what are… AAAAH!” The boy’s voice echoed through the cave, slowly dying away as she continued drinking his blood. ‘It tastes good… like dumplings.’ She stopped drinking when the boy went numb, catching him in her arms.
“Good job” Tim said laudatory, raising his eyebrows. “Now let’s go over to the city and I’ll introduce you to everyone.”
“Wait.” She stopped him. As he looked at her questioningly she said
“He won’t remember I bit him, right?”
“Yea”
“Then to thank him for the meal I’ll have to save this child.”
“…”
“I can’t?”
“You know, I keep thinking you’re too friendly to actually be a devil. You might be the one we were looking for…” He whispered the last part to himself.
“What do you mean?” She picked up the boy’s body and held him close. She had only partly understood the last part.
“I did mention how a lot of us managed to escape from hell, right? I mean it was a dreadful place. No one in their right mind would want to stay there… even beings born to be evil like us.
So we planned our escape. We put a lot of time and effort into it… but unfortunately… something went wrong. Something else escaped with us. It was something the Elves had managed to seal away with great difficulty centuries ago. So now it roams the land again and the other races obviously blame us devils for what happened, hunting us and killing us. That’s why we decided to live within these caves. The labyrinth like structure and darkness protect us. We had originally planned to live peacefully with the other races of this continent, but now we see ourselves forced to fight them to survive. We even dissolved our oath to not drink their blood.
I think someone like you might be the key we’re missing to solve this war.”
As he said that he turned away again, taking to the air.
“Then again, I’m not a charity, so if you want to take him out - do it alone, I’ll wait at the gate. It’s still in the middle of the night so you don’t have to worry about sunlight at least.”
“Thanks, I understand. But can you tell me which way leads outside?”
“…”
He was already too far away to hear her question, but waved back to her as a reply to her thanks.
She sighed, holding on to the boy tighter. Then she spread her wings and flew up into the cave. She closed her eyes and examined her surroundings with her other senses. They had left behind the crystal cave from before and now entered a lightly more crude part of the cavern labyrinth. She could smell dust and something was rotting away nearby. But there was another smell. It smelled aromatic… the smell was faint but it smelled like needles… the smell of a forest after rain.
She decided to head towards that smell, memorizing the way she went as she flew over ravines and several holes in the ground. After landing several times to regain her stamina she reached an area where the caves where made out of light grey rocks and finally found an exit of the labyrinth-like caves. She shot out of the cave like a bullet and sucked in some air, eyes wide. She stayed still in the air for a while, simply looking around.
She had ended up flying out of a cavern situated high in the air, within a cliff overseeing beautiful hills and only small mountains in the area. It seemed she had found the edge of the mountain range. The view was simply breathtaking. The clear night sky was glittering brightly with billions of stars, extending before her eyes. She could see hundreds of galaxies in the sky, but the most beautiful and shocking of all… There were 5 moons! 3 of them were slightly overlapping each other with the biggest one in the middle being the farthest away. The other two moons were a small way apart on the upper left and lower right of the construction of the other 3. They all had different colors as well. The big middle one had a pinkish glow, while its counter pieces were light blue and white. The two smaller moons set apart from them were deep red. The surface must be made of very different minerals. She finally managed to turn away her gaze from the moons and let it wander across the night sky.
Then she got her next surprise. ‘Wait, this is a game, correct?’ The land before her stretched towards the horizon. She couldn’t see the sea at all. Just how vast was this continent?
Even she couldn’t make out the landscape in detail that far away, but she would have seen the moons’ reflection on the water. But it was all land. She could make out several smaller mountains in the vicinity, then the land turned into hilly regions with forests and farmland further into the continent. She was floating above a rather big needle forest. As she turned around she saw that some of the trees had even shown enough determination to live to grow up along the cliff’s surface, wherever just a little space was available for their roots to hang onto the sparse bits of meager soil.
She looked up along the cliff, confirming that the mountain was at least 4 km high. She could only imagine how high the mountains deeper in the range would tower up. As she turned back towards the moons she noticed a few lights glowing warmly in the distance and headed towards them, remembering the purpose she had come here for. Then out of the corners of her eyes she noticed her Stamina bar… it was blinking red. ‘Uh oh…’ She quickly descended, but as expected… she didn’t make it to the ground.
“Kyaaa!” Several meters above the treetops her stamina ran out and her wings wouldn’t move anymore. They even stimulated the muscle ache she got from straining them too much… not that she cared about that right now.
“Nnnn…” She curled up, hugging the boy to her chests tightly to protect him as they fell towards the trees below her. Then she hit the first branches. They painfully pushed themselves into her back and hit the air out of her lungs.
“Guh….” They crashed and rolled down the trees, snapping several branches until they finally hit the ground, leaving Demon breathless, lying on the soft needles as she stared up at the stars.
‘That hurt……..’
“Owww….”
The boy was luckily still unconscious. She had managed to hold onto him and he was lying on top of her now, breathing quietly.
She slowly got up, trying to ignore the fact her entire body was hurting and examined him. Just a few scratches. Good. She sighed, finally examining her own body. She had scratches and wounds all over. Needles and bark were tangled within her hair and had messed it up pretty badly. Luckily her wings hadn’t been pierced, seeing as she had shrunk them back when they were falling. Her gaze fell on her health bar. 1/3rd of it was left.
‘Close…’ She stretched slightly and sat back down to recover while untangling all the different part of the trees from her body while thinking.
She assumed the lights she had seen before her… crash were from the village of the boy. There hadn’t been any other signs of civilization close by, so that had to be it.
After she recovered and looked less messy she took to the air again and crossed over the forest, a small river and some wide grain fields before she finally landed outside the village gate quietly. She remembered how Tim had warned her of the humans’ hatred of devils so she didn’t dare to enter the village herself.
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She placed the boy before the gate carefully and was just about to leave again when she heard the howling of wolves nearby. ‘I can’t leave him here if there are wolves that close… Also… right… they might just throw him back in. I don’t even want to think about how long he’s been wandering the caves to get lost in a place that deep into it. At this rate he might die.’
She sighed and decided she had to take the risk. She knocked onto the gate loudly intending to lure out the city guard, but nothing happened. So she continued knocking on the gate until she could make out heavy footsteps approaching the gate.
She placed herself behind the child, eyes still glowing red and spread her wings, trying to look as intimidating as possible. Fuelled by her anger she couldn’t leave quietly anymore.
She watched as the unprepared guard opened the gate and fell back with a scream.
“Human” she addressed him
“This child… you threw him into our cavern, didn’t you? So we would eat him.”
The guard tried to run without answering, but she quickly jumped above his head, landing in front of him and cutting him off.
“Uaaaaaa!” The guard screamed again. He was obviously terrified of her.
“Answer me. Don’t worry, if you answer me I won’t hurt you.” Demon came closer, eyes glowing dangerously.
“Y-yes. We thought you’d leave us a-alone if we…” The man’s voice failed him at this point and he unwillingly sat down, knees shaking.
“As you wished I sucked his blood, human. Now let me tell you, it was disgusting. Don’t you ever throw down anyone again, got it?”
“Huh?” The guard was baffled.
With those words she quickly spread her wings and flew off up without a sound, watching from the darkness as the still stunned guard slowly went and picked the unconscious boy lying in front of the gate to carry him in.
Notice: Due to your actions: Infamy +250
“Whaaa!” She let out a startled sound as a transparent window popped up in front of her.
‘Wait… infamy?? Well… I guess… I did… threaten him, didn’t I…’ She hung her head.
Then she made her way back to the caves, watching a pack of wolves wander through the fields as she flew above them, continuously telling herself she had done the right thing. She entered the caves again, easily navigating her way through the labyrinth back to where Tim had left her. Then she also headed the way she had seen him leave in, leaving nothing but emptiness behind as she went.
She finally discovered the city walls and couldn’t stop herself anymore. She landed and collapsed. “That was so… scaryyyy! Waaaaaah, what have I doneeeee! Of course I didn’t do the right thing!” Her scream echoed through the cave, luring back Tim who had waited for her sitting above the entrance gate.
“Hey, hey, are you okay?”
“Waaaaaah” Demon cried.
“Whoa, what happened?”
Demon stutteringly told him what happened outside, sobbing and still crying. The NPC couldn’t hold back anymore. He laughed out loudly and patted her on the back.
“What, from how you cried I thought they killed him or something. Doesn’t that mean everything went well then?”
“B-but I… was acting s-so scary. I bet those people hate me now. I even got infamy…” Demon sobbed.
“Hey, that was already the case before you did that you know.”
“…”
“You did well. Now no one else will be sent down here, right? You know, not every devil who finds them stops drinking before they die. You saved the other humans who’d have been sent you know?”
“R-really?”
“Yes, really. Now let’s go in, alright? The others really want to meet you.”
“O-okay.”
After a few moments she was still sobbing so he flew back towards her.
“Hey, Demon. You did the right thing.” He patted her on the head. “So stop crying already, got it?”
“G-got it… Thank you.” Demon smiled.
He then offered his hand and pulled her to her feet.
‘She’s just like a small cub…’ he thought with a smile.
They grew out their wings and started flying again, Demon following behind him when a thought crossed her mind. “Before we enter, please tell me… are you really a NPC?” she had become suspicious. Could this much really be programmed? She didn’t want to believe that Tim didn’t have real feelings anymore.
“Huh? NPC? What’s that?” Tim looked at her curiously.
“N-nothing.” The fact he didn’t know what a NPC was confirmed it. ‘The amount of work and effort put into this must be tremendous… this… it’s incredible.’ she thought. To cover up her weird question she quickly added
“S-say, those gates. W-why do we have gates if all of us can fly?”
“Oh, that? That’s because some of us are uncomfortable flying. And we also allow trade with the other races. In theory anyways. Since not all of us can fly it’d be a pain getting them inside otherwise, right? We also prepared some fireplaces for when they visit, but they haven’t been used yet. We do prefer the darkness after all”
“I... I see.” Now that he mentioned it there wasn’t a single light on in the entire city.
“Ah, the Lord wants to see you first, so let’s fly to his castle. It’s that black one at the back.”
Demon nodded as a reply. As he had said she could spot a magnificent black castle towering in the center of the cavern city. They headed towards it, landing on a wide round square in front of it. No one else was around. She couldn’t spot anything moving at all. It seemed like a ghost town. When she was about to point that out to Tim he spoke again
“Milord, I have brought the newbie Demon to our city.” He was bowing deeply, addressing someone behind her. She quickly turned around and followed his example.
“I see. Well done, Tim. You may return to the Arrival Point now.”
“Yes, milord.”
As he was about to leave he suddenly remembered something and fixed his gaze onto the Lord. They were looking at each other for a while before the Lord finally nodded.
With a final bow Tim then said his farewells to Demon and flew away, leaving her alone with what seemed to be the ruler of the devils without any clue on what to do next.
‘I wonder… did they whisper to each other?’
“Raise your head.”
She did as she was told and raised her head, standing leisurely in front of the devils’ Lord. He was a tall guy with cold eyes and two long horns growing out of his head. A long cloak was wrapped around his shoulders, preventing one to closely took at his figure. His purple eyes glowed dangerously in the dark and his cold stare seemed to look right through her as he observed her, piercing directly into her soul. Just as she was starting to feel afraid he averted his gaze, making her sigh lightly in relief.
“Devil, what is it that you seek in this city?”
“I… I seek freedom.” The answer came from her heart. That was truly why she had started this game.
“Freedom, is it.” The Lord gazed into the distance with an unreadable expression.
“…” Not knowing what to say, Demon stayed quiet.
They stayed quiet for a while, gazing over the quiet city. Then the Lord started again
“Tim has told me that you rescued one of those trying to steal that same freedom from us. Are you aware of the consequences, devil?” His voice sounded cold.
Demon stared at him quietly, finally growing angry and saying
“So you suggest I should have left an innocent child there to die? Isn’t it more in the interest of us devils to achieve peace with the other races rather than killing and fighting each other?”
The Lord quietly gazed into her glowing eyes.
“Indeed what you have said would be the best.” The rage inside her got extinguished instantly and was replaced by confusion.
“Then why…”
“But as things stand now peace is impossible.”
“…”
“Young devil, we have tried living alongside the other races peacefully when we had escaped our confinement in hell. However, having found out we accidentally set free another evil onto the continent they have antagonized us. Without having harmed a single one of them we were hunted down for no reason, finally managing to find a place to stay underground. Here, where their bloodied swords cannot reach us.
We have waited for a long time, young one, for a devil worthy of entrusting this task to. And I find myself wanting to believe in
your actions despite myself.”
“Me? W-what can I possibly…”
“You are young and still innocent. Your heart has not yet been overtaken by darkness. Somehow you have survived living in hell without losing your sanity. Demon, what will your answer be? Will you try to achieve this impossible task I suggest to you? Will you try bringing peace to this race of darkness?”
His eyes in that moment were filled with such sadness Demon couldn’t refuse.
“Yes. I will try.” Just as she said this a notice appeared on her screen.
Racial Quest: ‘Unity’ Received
A smile spread across his face and moments later bats swarmed around them, covering their bodies and lifting them up into the air.
“W-whaaaa” Demon unknowingly let out a scream and closed her eyes.
“You may open your eyes, young one.”
She slowly opened her eyes again, staring at the now bustling city below her in astonishment. The bats had set her down on the very top of the Lord’s castle.
“Welcome, Demon. To our capital under the earth. Welcome to Firchten.”
The devil smiled at her coldly.
First to receive Devil racial quest: Unity
Reward: Fame +200
Intelligence +50
Wisdom +30
Friendship with devil Lord 10/100
“Congratulations on clearing the Tutorial, Demon.”
“T-thank you.”
“As you have learned about your race a little now, it is time for you to become stronger, both mentally as well as physically. I still see naiveté and childishness in your actions. You must overcome them. Otherwise you cannot possibly complete your task.”
“I understand. H-how do I get stronger t-though?”
“… for now, why don’t you pay the adventurer Instructor a visit? And Demon, age for devils is not necessarily reflected by your growth. Therefore I have decided to place a restriction on your body. From now on you may only leave the closer proximity of the city with my approval or once the seal on your hand decides that you are ready. Do you understand?”
“A-alright… I understand. Thank you very much!”
“Farewell, young Demon. Until we meet again”
“G-goodbye”
With those words the Lord vanished, leaving her alone atop the high castle as she was watching the city below her. The city was bigger than she had originally thought. It extended for the full length of the cave and was completely surrounded by a deep rift even she couldn’t see the bottom of so she’d have to be very careful when flying over it... When she scanned around the area she recalled what she had read in the game manual.
‘That one should be the smithy, the tailor shop, alchemy shop and over there is… the tavern, the restaurant and the theatre. But where are the class instructors?’
As she was looking around she recalled one more thing and opened her character window. She took a look at her Character Status.
Basic Status Display:
STR (Strength) 5
END (Endurance) 5
AGI (Agility) 5
INT (Intelligence) 55
WIS (Wisdom) 35
LUK (Luck) 5
STA (Stamina) 100/100
Satiety 200/200
Infamy 250
[Slot open]
[Slot open]
[Slot open]
Unused Stat points: 30
These were her basic statistics, stats for short. The completing of the tutorial had given her additional Intelligence and Wisdom which were the most necessary stats for magic based classes. ‘This makes the decision about that easier I guess.’
She originally hadn’t known what class to choose, since she wasn’t that comfortable moving her body physically as of yet. But as a magic user she would mainly use spells to fight, so she wouldn’t have to move around that much either. Or so she hoped.
Having reached her decision Demon put her unused skill points completely into INT.
Everyone had 3 open stat slots where stats could be created in. You could also delete stats from those slots if you wanted to so players could create stats useful to their class.
In general you could add stat points to every stat you wanted, except for Satiety and Stamina. Those had to increase naturally.
She had read the game manual thoroughly, but experiencing it for herself was different after all. ‘I mean, I still haven’t really gotten used to seeing again… it might be hard.’
“For now, let’s try going to the square to see if other players are around” Demon sighed. She really wasn’t confident she could talk to another user even if she tried. In the first place it might prove hard to tell users apart from NPCs. Their programming was surprisingly detailed, if she took the lord and Tim for a standard example. And there were no cursors or similar in this game to indicate if you were a player or an NPC. This also meant no one would know your name. The only way for someone to find out was to ask directly as far as she knew.
‘Speaking of users, should I whisper Julian?’ she asked herself quietly. He had told her he’d help out if she needed anything but…
“O-okay, let’s try it! He said his name was Etoille, right?”
She concentrated on the name and whispered him.
“H-hello?”
Nothing happened. Maybe he wasn’t online after all. ‘Oh well, I can always try another time… I mean… wait… right… I need to know his face to whisper him.’ she figured and swiftly got to her feet. Now it was time to find the Adventurer Trainer. ‘But before that, let me actually look around the city.’
Just as she was about to grow out her wings she got an idea. ‘This might be fun if it works.’
With these thoughts Demon jumped off the castle and fell towards the ground. “Wheeee!” she screamed, then grew out her wings just as she was about to hit the ground and dampened the impact to a minimum. She basically didn’t make a sound when landing, but the draught from her wings had caused a strong force that made the dust on the street whirl up in a little storm, catching the attention of everyone in the area.
‘Oops’ she realized everyone was staring at her curiously
“S-sorry” with these words they went back to their business, continued their conversations or walked by in a hurry.
Nao sighed in relief. She figured she had done something bad. She wasn’t good with attention…
Suddenly an old devil walked up to her, laughing heartily and patted her on the back causing her to cough.
“That was quite a landing” he laughed. “Not everehone can flah that well, ya got mah respects all right.”
“T-thanks” She had a bit of trouble understanding his accent.
“Wait, now that I take a look at ya I ‘aven’t seen ya before.”
“Y-yes, I just arrived today”
“Oooh, so ya just escaped and yar wings are alreade that strong, eh.”
“T-that’s…” Nao blushed and looked away.
“Hahaha, sha, ain’t ya! Well, let me introduce mahself first then. The name’s Fido.”
“N-nice to meet you, I’m Demon.”
“Welcome to Firchten, Demon.”
“Thanks!”
“HEY, EVEREHONE! WE GOT A NEW FACE ‘ERE!” he suddenly shouted.
“Wa—waaaaah?”
As soon as he said it a huge crowd gathered around them, curious to get to see the newbie and started throwing questions at her and wanting to shake her hand. Demon went pale. ‘Sooo many peopleeee…’
“Welcome, newbie!”
“Whoa, she’s a cute one.”
“Don’t die on us, ya hear?”
“Hmmm… think she’ll make it?”
People around her started babbling all together, leaving her in a daze, at a loss for what to do. Noticing her nervousness the old devil then patted her back again.
“Now, now everehone! Don’t scare ‘er, alright? Ahaha”
“…”
“Whoa, Fido took a liking to this one huh, how rare.”
“……”
“Now, Demon. Let me introduce ya to some pals o’ mine.”
“O-okay…” Nao’s voice was barely audible even to herself.
“This is Aido, e’s our blacksmith and next to ‘im is our tailor, Mrs. Fika.”
He introduced her to all the merchant NPCs in town and she made a mental note for all of them, shaking their hand and trying to act as normal as possible. Finally all the introductions were over and her head was steaming and bright red.
“Nnnn… T-that was so mean, Mr. Fido!”
“Ahaha, well t’was necessary, right?. And just Fido’s fine, misseh.”
“I guess… o-okay.” She wasn’t able to retort. “S-so what do you do for a living, F-fido?”
“Me? I train lil newbies like you.” He winked at her.
“Ah! Y-you’re the Adventurer Trainer?”
“Exactleh!”
‘Noooooooo’ she nearly gave up hope at that moment. There was no way she could be happy about this development.
“So if ya ever wanna learn some new moves or ya want a job, just come ta me!”
“Y-yes…”
“Ah yea, everehone of us livin’ in the city ya met will be mentioned in tha map, arite? So ya can come find us even if we aint home and we’ll do business with ya.”
“G-got it. The default map, right?”
“Ye, tha map’ll automatically show onleh places and people ye’ve met. Ye can bueh some complete maps ‘swell but those’re a helluva expensive, so ya better explore yerself I saeh.”
“I see, t-thank you.”
“Well, since I alreadeh saw ya, ye want me to give ye a job, newbie?”
“S-sure.”
“Then yer first job is ta find another adventurer like yerself an team up with ‘em, got it?”
“Eeeeeh?”
“What, don’t wan’ it?”
“I-I’ll take it…”
“Great! Come find me when ye’re done.” With those words he left.
Quest: -Make a Party- accepted
Demon was crying inside as she stared at the system message. ‘Why that… everything but thaaat! I can’t talk to people that easily, you knooow?!’ *sob* She slumped over, feeling completely drained of energy and sat down squarely on the road, catching the attention of disgruntled NPCs.
Her sharp ears caught restrained conversations between them
“Hey, look at the new girl, isn’t she acting weird?”
“Yea, yea. Think she’s bad for business. Should I scare her off?”
“Hmm, I don’t know, she might be a customer …”
Noticing she was acting weird she quickly snapped out of it, got up and flew to the outskirts of town, sitting down on top of the city gate, sighing loudly.
Just then she got another system notice
Racial Skill –Fly- has reached basic lvl 4
It had already leveled twice before when she transported the boy outside of the caves if she remembered correctly. She hadn’t paid any attention to it though since she had been preoccupied with other thoughts.
She quickly called up her skill window, recalling what she knew about skills.
You could create a skill by repeating an action multiple times. If you repeated it long enough the system would notice a pattern and create a skill you could then use with assistance from the system. When the skill got created certain effects may be added to it, like increased damage or similar. But sometimes the system will add requirements to the skill use, or a certain cast or re-cast time, depending on the action.
So she’d have to experiment around a lot.
Whenever you used a skill, Stamina will be consumed. Sometimes Health or Satiety also drop which made it impossible to continuously use them. You had to rest in between and replenish your strength.
But if you wanted to level a skill you had to keep using it which meant you’d take a long time to master it fully. She had had to rest 3 times while carrying the boy to the village to regain her stamina. If someone or something had attacked her then she’d have been helpless.
‘That’s why I’ll have to practice more to quickly gain mastery of Flying, since I don’t like walking…’
Her skill was at basic lvl 4/9 at the moment. As far as she knew there were 7 Mastery stages in total. With every lvl and stage the time you had to invest into mastering a skill would increase. So she’d have to fly a lot. But the effort was worth it. With every lvl of skill mastery the skill effects got better, either decreasing requirements for use of the skill or increasing effects the skill added.
It also helped that shed have to grow out her wings less, since they would probably get into the way a lot…
She hoped once she mastered the skill she’d be able to fly continuously since it was that much fun.
She looked over her other skills. Night Vision didn’t have a mastery stage, so she guessed that devils were simply born with it mastered. Life Absorption was at basic lvl 1 since she only used it once. She didn’t have any skills besides those three yet.
As far as she knew there wasn’t a limit to the amount of skills she could create through.
As she was still thinking about the skills, suddenly a small group of devils flew up to her and landed on the gate next to Demon. She looked up at them curiously as they came over to her.
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