Chapter 6: Frantically Levelling up and Getting Dressed to Kill.

The voice was steely and cold, the voice of a man who never backed down from his duty, a man who exuded authority with almost every word. “Jasen, did you kill the demon? I had to take a shit so unfortunately I couldn’t join in with this one. How many initiates did she manage to kill by the way?”

Like I said, almost every word.

I looked at Merillax and she just looked pointedly at the dead apprentice, I quickly stripped him of his coat, throwing it over myself before examining its properties. “Runic Battlecoat, Armour rating 4, demonic resistance allows you to attempt a second saving throw against demonic influences, demonic blade-turning reduces the damage of demonically forged weapons and claws by 20 percent. I skimmed over the description which ended with the innate ability Demonic Renewal: Demonic renewal allows the wearer to resist damage, once per day you can activate this ability to reduce the damage of a hit by 5 and immediately regain 1 hitpoint.

Sounded great to me, but now I needed to level up, burning the face off the hunter had counted as an assist and gotten me the 5 exp I needed but I had to hurry as I could hear boots on mossy stone. The hunter up above was squeezing into the cave through the same entrance I’d used. If I could have gotten up to the entrance in time I would have gotten my best chance at putting him down, firing multiple spells into the squeeze, and then finishing him off with my spear while he was unable to move or defend himself properly.

Jack Wells Class: Spell Candler Level: 2 XP to next level: 0/8

HP: 16

My HP had increased by 6 because of my class and 2 because of my constitution, mana had increased quite nicely to 28 and stamina received a lesser buff to 31. In addition, I was able to select a mana technique and a candle-casting technique. Boots on stone and gravel, steel on leather, he was coming down, soon I would be face to face with the newcomer and I would have to kill him.

Mana Technique:

Mana-Wax, allows the caster to increase the burn time of a candle by utilising their own mana as fuel for the flame, this costs 2 points of mana for every point spent on initial casting.

Overburn: You can channel more mana into a cantrip or Spell-Candle in order to increase its power by up to 50 percent, you also take damage equal to 10 percent of the mana spent.

I immediately selected Overburn and moved to the other selection, this time there were 3 options I could choose from.

Candle Casting technique: Waxen Balm: The drippings of your candles can be absorbed into your body, restoring hit points equal to 10 percent of the mana spent on casting through it or creating the candle in the first place [whichever is highest]. This technique can only be used once per day."

Quick-Burn: You can cause a Spell-Candle to burn all the way through in seconds, unleashing the stored spell in half the time it would normally take but resulting in the spell being weakened considerably.

Shielded Flame: You access the ambient mana that a candle’s flame creates and utilize it as armour. You gain one point of armour for every 5 points of mana spent on casting .

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Waxen Balm seemed great but I only had cantrips at the moment and both of those only needed 4 mana to cast with a limited number of cans at my disposal, so I wouldn’t be doing much healing with that particular technique. Shielded and Quickburn didn’t seem highly useful to me in this situation either. Ah well, I’d be losing health via overburn so I’d take Balm to mitigate it and If I could get a solid supply of candles and some higher mana spells later on then Overburn would probably be pretty cracked.

I nodded seriously at Merillax and she smiled hungrily as the hunter kept coming. I had a real crisis of faith then, as leather scraped stone and the senior hunter called out for his dead apprentice. Had I fucked up here? The first killing had been a mistake but was I going to help kill a second human, deliberately snuffing him out to protect a very cute demoness?

I raised the candle, knowing that even with the level boost I wouldn’t kill this guy in one go and he’d be brutally shredded by Merillax, dying a screaming, burning death with no chance of survival. “Apprentice Jasen. Where are you boy?”

Merrilax had snuffed the light and we waited in darkness now, our prey getting closer and closer. I broke cover, surging out of the dark and yelling about turnips and bat-meat. The hunter took a few steps back and I stood my ground, hacking, coughing and claiming to be a hermit, demanding to know why my cave was being intruded upon. I would save this man from his claw-heavy fate or die trying. The hunter backhanded me to the ground. I’d been hit before, lots of fights in high school but only one after I started working. This wasn’t like those hits though, it had a force behind it that literally raised me off the ground and smashed me into a rock, I took 6 points of damage, the coat's ability had already been used by its former owner so it didn't activate and negate the hit.

I wanted to groan but nothing came out, that had been a hard backhand, hell, I would be nearly dead if I didn’t have my class at level 2. I looked up at the man in glowing runic robes and then realised the glaring problem with my plan. He hadn't seen the chamber full of corpses yet but I was wearing his dead apprentices' coat, it was very obvious that I'd done something.

I tried to babble an explanation or go for my candle, intending to incinerate him with my overburn-boosted cantrip but my body didn't respond even as the hunter came closer. I tried to crawl, to roll over even but the hunter was right on top of me now and he summoned a knife of golden light, raising it above his head to stab down at me, I still couldn’t move. “You have been stunned by Hand of Rebuking. You have failed to resist stun, you have failed to recover from the stunned condition.” I was such an impulsive dipshit, I had a crisis of conscience and acted without thinking. At least I tried to save someone this time, I was pretty sure my last death had been much less impressive.

“Do not worry demon-pawn, your tainted skin and flesh will be of most use to me.”

The hunter brought down the knife and then whirled to thrust it behind him instead. Merillax screeched like a banshee as she was impaled in the process of lunging and the hunter backhanded her into another wall of the cavern. Then he summoned another knife and threw it. Unfortunately for him Merillax was made of sterner stuff than I, she caught the knife, obviously having resisted the stun effect and flung herself back at him. The hunter had drawn his longsword by then and fought twohanded, attempting to beat back the aggressor long enough to get off another Rebuke or Golden Knife attack.

If he’d had allies with him, maybe even some undead to slow her down or take the pressure off him then he might have had a chance. Instead Merillax pulled him apart just like she’d done to his apprentice. It only took another 4 seconds for the stun to end and I was able to shakily stand up. I saw Merillax had him on the ground and he was twitching more than fighting, back now, his hands were missing their fingers, his stomach was torn and she just kept ripping at him. I grabbed the longsword from where it had fallen and put him out of his misery with a single chop to the neck, that chop immediately clanged off of a steel gorget I hadn’t seen beneath the collar of his coat.

So my coup de grace actually ended up being a single, ineffectual chop plus a few stabs to the chest until I found his heart. After that it was done, he would have killed me if I hadn’t done it. I felt sick, I’d just very deliberately killed someone who was trying to avenge a friend of his. What was wrong with me. The Demoness put a hand on my shoulder, and I turned to gaze into her beautiful hypnotic eyes. I realised she had killed the hunter much slower than she needed to. Oh my god, she had wanted me to get the experience points. I checked the tab and saw that the bar had filled to level 3 “Lets go above ground Jack, keep the sword, we have some things to chat about.”