Chapter 27: Derro in the South.

Victoria was reading a slim, old looking book, it had a cover of peeling brown leather and faded letters mostly obscured by her delicate fingers. She put it down the moment she saw me in the doorway, I knocked on the open door and slipped inside. "Good evening Victoria, how are you feeling today?"

She looked like she wanted to pick the book up again and disappear into it. "I'm good, I thought about going down to see you actually. The whole thing with Karl though, didn't really give me time to do much besides reading up on Carnifect demons again."

The little brown book was labelled Demonic Transfiguration and its Uses. She followed my gaze. "Yeah, my reading took me a bit further than I'd gone before, you know about the advanced classes? Wizard, Fighter, Thief, Sorcerer, all of those require the spark of an adventurer to awaken within you and link you to the system via a fragment of the Akashic Record. But the advanced classes are less natural, they either create a spark where there was none before or they transplant one. Karl is experiencing this very thing, the demonic taint of the shadelock that attacked him spread through it's venom and once injected into his blood began propagating. If we hadn't acted it would have diffused throughout his body and he would have mutated like the others. But when we were forced to amputate..."

I got it, "The taint left his body through the wound, began using the free space to create something new, its sentient then? Or at least as much as a tree or vine is sentient?"

Victoria nodded. "It recreated the lost limb and did it pretty quickly too. His profession levels got converted to class levels at a 4-1 ratio and he's now a Demonclad:2 Fighter:3. Does that mean anything to you?"

I shook my head. "Afraid not, is this a good or bad thing?"

Victoria pursed her lips momentarily. "I'm guessing bad, this morning he was only Demonclad level 1 and fighter: 4."

I got the picture. "Hand me a book on the subject then. Let's get to it.

Victoria could read a lot faster than me but I was no slouch, I read voraciously through highschool and only stopped when I became a drunken steelworker living out of a mortgaged apartment. "I don't know if I'm going to be able to whip up any spells to help with this one, I tried most of the components I had today. Lots of duds, a few offensive, maybe one defensive, nothing curative."

We sat in companionable silence, skimming through tome after tome, looking for any section on minions of demons, methods of demonic control, the corruptive nature of the Carnifect etc.

The information we gleaned wasn't enough to put our minds at ease but it was a start. Sometimes an individual of particular stubbornness or significant conviction will become tainted by demonic means. Unlike most they will not find their alignment shifting though this is much less likely if they are suffering direct demonic influence.

So Karl had been tainted in the forest, resisted conversion for 2 days after amputation and then when Ranyai had died his class had been awakened and the demonic taint had manifested without the corrupting influence of the Carnifect trying to pull him into its service.

"So, possibly a good thing, depending on if it keeps spreading or stays as a single freaky limb. Any idea what he can do with this Demonclad class?" I asked, Victoria still didn't look happy about it though. "Yeah, rip things to pieces mostly, and the more levels he takes the more organs, limbs and other parts will be taken over. He think's he can control the spread now but If he goes too far his willpower will fail and well, that's that."

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I didn't know who would put him down if that became that. I had a feeling it would be a team effort though.

"Alright then, should I leave you here, head home and read one of your books?"

Luna froze, lips slightly parted, she looked eminently kissable in that moment but I resisted the urge. She had kissed me the first time and I think she still needed to unpack the feelings it had created in her.

"If you'd like to, I wouldn't mind having someone to talk to about something besides my sister's new boyfriend though."

I raised an eyebrow at that. "Yeah, they've had a will they/won't they sort of thing going on with each other since they were both young. Dad used to tease her about it, mum pretended not to see it. They never did anything though, still thought she had to at least pretend to be a potential heir for mum. Then, last night she saw him without the arm and all that will they/wont they just went away and they did."

Made sense, I could imagine the hell she'd put that man through given the relentless flirt that she was. "I know you want to talk about something else but what's the backstory on Karl here?"

Victoria sighed good-naturedly. "One request is too much for you Jack? Very well, Karl's a year older than Luna, he inherited his dad's skill with a sword, didn't hurt that he was trained 3 hours a day since he was old enough to hold one. He would then pass that training on to Luna when they played together, Mum hated it but I guess she looked the other way for Dad's sake"

I smirked. "Well, I thought she was the impulsive one of you two. But you certainly pounced on your crush a lot faster than she did"

There it was, I'd said it, brought that single kiss out into the open and made it something we had to talk about. Victoria grimaced, but the look turned into a happy smile to quick to be genuine distaste. "I guess that is a different conversation isn't it. I've been kissed before Jack, you were just taking a while so I thought you might be intimidated by my title."

She'd hit the nail right on the head. I let her know how right she was, and she shook her head as she explained. "Court life isn't not the life for me Jack, neither my sister nor I have any interest in running a town and even less so in expanding our governances. Mum wants to take a more active role in the lives of our associated farms and villages, we wouldn't be any good at that.We'll make her proud in other ways though, instead of administrating the new regions we'll serve as their protectors, this Derro Incursion, raiding parties from the ogre clans, cults and necromancers will be our targets. That's the plan anyway."

I wanted to be there, alongside her, this was what we'd talked about, exactly what I wanted to spend my life doing. I asked how her mum felt about the idea and Luna's expression showed the bittersweetness of the situation.

"She has emancipated Luna and I from our duties while allowing us to take part in family activities when possible. She wants to see us succeed, to make a difference in ways she knows she cannot. She told me that if she had really wanted a successor then she wouldn't have married an adventurer"

Victoria paused, unsure if she should say the last thing on her mind. "She doesn't seem angry, just sad. She wants us to be safe"

I reached out and squeezed her hand reassuringly, Victora smiled gratefully and squeezed back. For a while we just shared each other's time, talking quietly and holding hands across the table. Eventually the topic got back to adventure.

"Alright then, when are we going after the Derro?" I asked.

Apparently, the team of adventurers would be here in the next couple days. Balthazar would stay behind and defend the town if need be while we all journeyed south to find where the Derro had surfaced and then we'd wipe them out before they attacked anyone else. Multiple farms had been raided already, the men taken as slaves and everyone else slaughtered in sacrifice to the unknowable allies of the Derro. Apparently, these underground dwellers had all made pacts in order to survive increasingly hostile subterranean environments. According to Victoria every individual, tribe, clan or group of Derro encountered in the last 500 years functioned more like cults than any other societal configuration due to these pacts. This particular group was partial to bloodletting, every one of the bodies that had been found so far was neatly and totally exsanguinated.

"The current theory is these Derro have access to some kind of paralysis magic, there's been very little signs of struggle and only a single lethal cut on each victim, no other damage besides that. The adventurers are coming with some method of countering immobilizing magic and Balthazar thinks he can brew a few potions that will have the same effect. Do you have anything?"

I shook my head cheerily. "Nope, not a single thing. I'll kill some cultists though"