The rest of the trip back to Far Felsen was uneventful. No demons, wretches or otherwise, crossed their path, though they did spot a caravan of six wagons with dozens of guards on horseback following a road coming from the west towards the city. A fortified settlement was somewhere along the coast west of Felsen and the caravan looked to be a merchant supply train coming from that locale.

Seeing the wagons trundling down the road from her overwatching position on a hilltop prompted a small thought in Jadis’ mind. A passing whim, but the idea stuck with her all the way back to the city walls. She decided to ruminate on the idea for a while and, if it still stuck with her, she’d bring it up with Aila and see if it was viable. But for the present, she had other more important matters to focus on.

Getting back into the city was hastened by having the two guards with her, a small benefit to her escort. Once inside the gates, Aila insisted on visiting the healing clinic first and foremost. Jadis didn’t argue. With all of her accumulated injuries on Syd, she was happy to pay a few coins to speed the process of healing along.

The guards didn’t peel off once they were inside the city, instead following them at a close but respectful distance all the way to the clinic. When Jadis tried to politely persuade them to leave her be now that she was back in the city, they just as politely refused. With a sigh, Jadis resigned herself to having the guards trail her, though she planned on bringing the matter up with the magistrate at some point.

Once Jadis and Aila had made use of the priest’s clinic, they turned their demon eyes in at the city hall to collect their bounties. The eye of the Arcane Corruptor of Flesh had a high payout, and while the wretches weren’t worth too much individually, with more than thirty to turn in, the overall take away was a hefty sum of coin.

Jadis tried to split the total with Aila, but she refused to take half since she hadn’t been able to helpfully participate in any combat until the end. Instead, she only took the coin for the three twisted wretches she had killed with her force bolts.

“We’re a partnership now,” Jay insisted as she passed Aila her silver coins. “From now on, I don’t care how many you actually kill, we’re working together so we split the profit evenly.”

“A four-way split then?” Aila asked with an arched eyebrow.

“You know what we mean,” Dys said, giving her a flat look.

Aila nodded and smiled. “I do. Just, I couldn’t take any coin from the fight with the sea bull in good conscience. I did nothing to help. In fact, I made things worse by forcing you to save me when I fell. I know you don’t blame me for that,” she cut Syd off as she opened her mouth to protest, “but I see my secondary class as more than enough of a payment in this ‘partnership’ of ours.”

She thought for a moment, then gave Jadis a sidelong glance. “Even if the class is probably weird and perverted.”

When they left the city center, Jadis noticed that the two guards had disappeared and two different guards were now following her. The two men kept their distance and made no attempt to talk with her, but they did stay fairly close by, closer than the guards who had been trailing her the day before.

Opting to ignore them, Jadis followed Aila to a merchant shop that specialized in magic beast components. Aila essentially sold the information on where to find the body of the slain sea bull, using a copy of the signed note from the guard as proof the corpse existed.

“We’ll get far less coin this way,” Aila explained to Jay as an aside. “But we don’t have the means to bring the body back or carve it up for sellable components. They’ll give us a cut of the profits this way. It’ll be less than we could get if we could do more ourselves, but it’s better than nothing.”

“Are they going to get it now?” she asked, watching a group of five burly men leave through a side door of the shop, tools and equipment draped over their shoulders.

“It’s still early in the day,” Aila pointed out. “They should have plenty of time to get there and back before nightfall. Better to get what they can now before scavengers or worse get to the body.”

After the merchant’s shop, she and Aila grabbed a quick meal at the Archway restaurant before heading back to the inn. Both were eager to discuss Aila’s new skills, but not where prying ears could potentially overhear.

The guards at least didn’t follow them into the inn.

Once they were both tucked away in their shared room with several large pitchers of ale, Aila drew out the details of her newly updated status sheet on a piece of paper for Jadis to see. She still couldn’t actually read any of it, but she appreciated the effort her companion was putting in to try and teach her the local script.

Aila of Red Tree

Race: Human

Primary Class: Cart Driver (20)

Secondary Class: Nephilim Powered Arcanist (3)

Tertiary Class: None

Combined Level Rating: 23

Health: 100

Magic: 100

Attributes

Strength: 10

Dexterity: 15

Agility: 20

Vitality: 10

Fortitude: 15

Endurance: 15

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Arcane: 77

Divine: 0

Eldritch: 0

Focus:10

Resilience: 5

Will: 10

“I have six unused attribute points I can spend, five from reaching level twenty and another one from level two in Arcanist,” Aila explained.

“Are you going to put those points into arcane?” Jay asked, taking a sip of ale from one of the pitchers.

Aila was sitting at the small desk, writing things out, while Jadis’ three selves were surrounding her sitting on the floor cross-legged. Each of Jadis had a full pitcher to themselves, treating them more like a mug. The size fit better for her at least. All of them had taken off their armor and put their weapons and loot aside. They had also all taken some time to wash up, which left them feeling a lot more refreshed after the stressful, exhausting day.

“Possibly, but I’m probably better off putting them into focus or will. Your ritual has already given me a huge boost in arcane power. I can afford to use the free points on other things and maybe rely on skills that will increase my arcane attribute instead.”

“Speaking of,” Syd said, “what skills did you unlock for level three? Anything… Nephilim related?”

Aila smirked and shook her head. In quick strokes of her pen, she outlined the two options given to her.

“No, they aren’t depraved. They actually look entirely respectable.”

Arcanist’s Spike Trap Modification

Passive Skill. Adds possible variation to any Arcanist spells. Cast a rune circle with a diameter variable based on applied spell to a solid surface. When activated by a living target touching the area within the rune circle, a variable number of force spikes with variable height based on applied spell will pierce upward from the circle. Base cost of spell decreased by 0.8 times. Duration increased to number of hours equal to 0.5 times arcane attribute.

Arcanist’s Explosion Modification

Passive Skill. Adds possible variation to any Arcanist spells. Create a powerful explosion at the point of impact of a spell. If the spell has no point of impact, the explosion will remain inert until the spell expires, at which point the spell will explode. Base cost of spell increased by 2 times. Duration unaffected.

“Oh, yeah, those do sound kind of normal,” Dys said after Aila had read out what she’d written down. “Not pervy at all.”

“No, not at all,” Aila agreed. “But they are odd. They remind me of wizard skills, but they’re slightly off.”

“How so?”

“Wizards often get skills that let them modify their spell’s elements. Fire bolt becomes ice bolt. That’s normal. These skills are saying they can alter the base mechanics of the spell while leaving the element, force, intact. Wizards can’t do that.”

“Can any class you know of do that?” Syd asked curiously.

“Not that I can think of, no. Plus, it says in the description that the skill can alter any arcanist spells I may have. Most wizard skills that allow for modifications I know of are narrower in scope, focusing on specific types of spells or even just one. It’s strange that these skills aren’t putting any limitations on what spells I can apply them to.”

Jay rubbed her chin, a far off look in her eyes.

“Seems like there will be a lot of variety in the results depending on what modification is applied to which spell. Could be fun to experiment with.”

Aila tried to hide a vaguely devious smile as possibilities filled her head. Jadis could practically see the mad genius gears turning.

“Which are you going to pick?” Dys asked, interrupting Aila’s likely creatively destructive train of thought.

Aila wiped the adorably Machiavellian smile off her face and straightened her back.

“I can see uses for both,” she said while ignoring Dys’ knowing grin. “But I think the most effective modification for now would be the Spike Trap.”

“Really?” Jay questioned, leaning back. “I’d think you’d want to go for the explosion. You could probably wipe out a whole pack of wretches with a big enough explosion. Probably effective against grundwyrms, too.”

“True,” Aila allowed, “with how strong the base power of the force bolt is, the power of the explosion would likely be high. But the cost would be increased to fifty magic points. Even if I put all six of my free attribute points into focus, that means I could only cast that explosive version of the spell three times before I’m spent. I think that would limit my combat capabilities too much, at least at this level.

“Spike trap, on the other hand, would reduce the spell cost to five points. Even without increasing my focus, I could cast that version of the spell twenty times before running out of magic. And it would only take me an hour of recovery to get two more casts.”

“It’s weaker though, isn’t it?” Dys presumed. “If it’s going to reduce the cost by eighty percent, it’s got to be a less powerful version of the spell.”

“Maybe, maybe not,” Aila shook her head. “I’ve seen earth spells of a similar nature at work on a battlefield. They cost less because your enemy has to step on them to activate, and your allies can set them off too, making them risky. But those earth-based spike trap spells can be extremely powerful when applied properly.”

“Well, I’m convinced,” Jay announced, raising her pitcher up in a toasting gesture. “Here’s to spike traps!”

“Thinking about it, imagine if you laid a few of those on the ground and we knocked some demons down on to them,” Syd said with a shudder. “I bet that’d be a quick way to end them, regardless of how strong each individual spike is.”

Aila smiled wickedly. “I can think of a few more ways to use the spell than that. The description doesn’t specify it has to be on the ground. Just a solid surface. I’ll have to test its limitations, but there’s a lot I can do with ‘solid surface’ as my only restriction.”

With her decision made, Aila selected the Arcanist’s Spike Trap Modification skill. She also put five free points into her focus attribute so that her total magic pool would increase to one hundred and fifty. Her last point she agonized over for a few minutes, but eventually on Jadis’ suggestion, she put the point into vitality so that her health total went up to one hundred and ten.

Aila was going to remain in the backline as much as possible, but a few more health points could make a huge difference if anything ever went wrong.

“So, are you going to try it out?” Dys asked eagerly. “I want to see what this spike trap looks like.”

“I’m not sure—” Aila started hesitantly, but Jay waved off her concern.

“Oh come on, it’s not the explosion one! Just put the trap down on the floor over there and we’ll see what it looks like. The floors are made of stone, anyway. It’s not like we’ll hurt them any.”

It took a little cajoling, but eventually Aila held out her hand and a ring of faintly shimmering, practically translucent runes appeared on the room floor, safely far away from all occupants.

The ring was a foot in diameter and even knowing that it was there, Jadis had a hard time seeing it. There was no glow to the runes, not exactly, so she imagined the trap would be even harder to spot in the dark. Examining the pattern, she could see that the runes were three distinct symbols repeating themselves in a pattern. Jadis wondered if symbols were part of an actual language, or if they had no real meaning.

“With my arcane stat at seventy-seven, that’s going to stay there for thirty-eight hours,” Aila pointed out.

“Not if we test how it reacts when I set it off,” Jay mumbled, reaching towards the ring.

“Wait!” Aila cried out, but Jay’s hand was already in motion.

Jay’s fingertip brushed against the surface of the stone floor just the barest inch within the circle of runes. Instantly, a ghostly transparent spike shot up out of the center of the circle, nearly taking the tip of Jay’s finger off. If she didn’t have the reaction speed she had, the spike very well could have cost her an index finger.

The spike was no joke, either. It reached three feet from base to tip, the base fully encompassing the round circle of runes. The thick spike shimmered for a few moments longer before fading out of existence along with the runes on the floor, leaving no trace behind.

Aila slapped the back of Syd’s head.

“Ow! What was that for?”

“For being a reckless oaf! Don’t touch dangerous magical traps thoughtlessly like that!”

“I didn’t touch it!” Syd whined, pointing at Jay. “She did!”

“You’re the same person,” Aila rolled her eyes. “So I’m going to smack all three of you.”

And so she did.