I finally left the Mage’s association with a full satiety bar and a class to roll with. I had thought the interrogation I went through to get my class would be the most harrowing part of this trip, but then I met Samantha.
Samantha was the apprentice Elenore had spoken of. After Elenore finished teaching me the class, I restored my disguise and she lowered the barrier temporarily to call for Samantha. A short while later, a small girl around 18 years old entered the room and shut the door behind her. Her brown hair was tied in a simple braid that hung down her back, and she wore a modest brown robe and a pair of glasses. Overall, she gave off the feeling of a quiet, bookish girl. I would soon discover that impression was wrong. Very, VERY wrong.
After the barrier was back up, Elenore explained the situation to her. I had been told she would be overjoyed to meet a real demon, but it turned out that was a huge understatement. No sooner had Elenore told her what I was and why she had been summoned, than she was kneeling on the ground clinging to me, begging to see my true form. I tried to pry myself free and explained that I didn’t need to transform to feed, but her grip was far stronger than one would expect from such a small girl. She absolutely insisted on seeing me transform before she would let go or agree to anything.
Not seeing any choice, I agreed with a sigh. This apprentice may be even harder to resist than Elenore was. Speaking of Elenore, I suspect she had expected this from the beginning, as she was standing by the desk enjoying the show, showing no signs of helping me handle this crazy girl.
After transforming, I asked Samantha if she was sure it was alright. I confirmed she did realize I was going to be consuming a portion of her life. The girl looked at me feverishly as she said she understood, and wanted to get started right away. It was at this point Elenore finally spoke up.
“Remember, you absolutely must use your ability hypnotize her so she doesn’t remember you draining her.”
I did find it slightly strange that Elenore insisted on this. I had never drained anyone aside from a rat who wasn’t hypnotized before, so I didn’t have any idea why. Perhaps having your life drained is actually a painful process, so she’s trying to protect her apprentice.
I looked Samantha in the eyes and activated Seduce. As usual, her expression immediately went neutral and she stared blankly at me, awaiting my orders.
I decided to do this quickly, so I put my hands on either side of the apprentice’s face, and brought our foreheads together, much like I had done with the cult leader. With an acceptable amount of contact secured, I activated my Life Drain and began restoring my satiety.
It didn’t take very long for me to reach my maximum satiety, so I released Samantha and had her sit on a nearby chair until the Seduce wore off. I decided to stay around because I was somewhat curious about how much she would remember of our encounter. Besides, it would be rather unfair for her if she didn’t have any memory of meeting me since that was her payment for allowing me to feed from her. I sat in another chair to one side of her, while Elenore sat in front of us.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve seen that. I must say, your choice of contact was rather… tame.”
“Honestly, I’m not really comfortable with more than that, particularly with someone I just met. Now that you say that, I’m a bit curious how Orinana went about it.”
The elderly woman chuckled slightly with a blush on her face.
“Well, it depended on where we were and who was around. Sometimes it was just holding hands, while other times she would embrace the person. Then occasionally when we were in the baths or alone in our room… well... Heh heh heh.”
Oh my. This conversation took an interesting turn. I can’t help but notice she seems fully aware of being drained though, so she was probably not always under Seduce’s influence. Perhaps it isn’t painful after all. For better or worse, before any more details could come out Samantha’s consciousness returned. She looked at Elenore with confusion.
“What just happened?”
“Tell me, what do you remember?”
“You called me to your office. I believe you mentioned something about meeting a demon. I think there was someone else in the room as well. Then I suddenly found myself sitting here.”
So it really did completely remove all memory of the actual encounter with me. That’s both impressive and somewhat terrifying.
“Well, stay calm and look to your side.” Elenore said, pointing toward me and grinning.
She looked at Elenore questioningly, then turned her head toward me slowly. Once she realized I was there, her eyes went wide with shock.
“You… you’re a…”
“My name is Lilith, and I am a succubus. The lapse in your memory is due to one of my abilities. You may not remember it, but you agreed to allow me to feed off of you in exchange for meeting me. I apologize if you are unhappy with that now, though.”
The girl began to shake in her chair, and I began to worry she was going to attack me. While it is true that she gave consent, the fact is she has no recollection of that, and may not believe me.
“Unhappy? UNHAPPY?!? HOW COULD I BE UNHAPPY ABOUT THIS?!? I finally get to meet a real demon! This is the greatest day of my life!! I would be happy to let you feed off of me any time you want. NO! Actually you must absolutely come to me whenever you need to feed! My door is always open to you, so visit me as often as you can!”
As she shouted, she jumped up again and ran across the room and began examining my wings and tail. At one point she reached up and tried to grab one of my horns, but I moved my head to keep it out of her reach. This girl was clinging to me enough without having a convenient handle like that.
I wasn’t about to agree to using her exclusively as a meal, though. I’m planning on travelling, so I can’t come back here for food. Besides, in all honestly this girl frightens me more than her master does.
In the end, Elenore was only able to coax Samantha to let me go after showing her the book I had brought with me, which excited her almost as much as my presence. I did have to promise to stop by occasionally to allow her to study me when I was in town, with the promise of a meal as payment. That agreement made, I was finally allowed to restore my disguise and leave the mage’s association. I may not have had to perform a challenge to get my class, but I still ended up taking longer than most people.
As I was leaving the building, I noticed Aurora was standing nearby. I made my way over to her.
“Hey, were you waiting for me?”
Aurora nodded, then looked up at me.
“You look tired. Did something happen?”
“Well, lets just say I want to avoid this place for a while. We’ve got some time before we plan to regroup at the inn, do you have any plans?”
My attempt at changing the subject seemed to work, as she shook her head and didn’t continue to ask what happened in the association.
“Well, I intend to do some shopping for better gear for now. Want to come with me?”
“Alright. I want to get some new things too.”
As we walked, I asked her how her class training had gone. It seemed she had obtained the priestess class, and with that gained the light magic skill, as well as a couple of spells. She also mentioned she wanted to get a new weapon, because one of her spells was a healing spell that was more effective than the one that her staff gave her.
After selling the wild dog hides we had obtained that morning, we returned to the western district to look for magic focused items and armor. First we went to a store that specialized in mages robes. After some looking around, we found a white robe with an ornate golden pattern sewn into the fringes and a golden belt around the waist for Aurora. The robe also improved both her intelligence and willpower slightly, so it was an upgrade in virtually every way from the simple grey robe she had been wearing.
Aurora asked me if I wanted to find a better outfit as well, but I decided to keep my gown for now. My reasoning was twofold. The reason I gave her was that this robe already gave a slight boost to my intelligence, which was the primary stat I was interested in. The cloths that gave a bigger bonus were more expensive than I was ready to spend just yet. Of course, I could get one that has a bonus to multiple stats like she did, but for now I wanted to save my money for a bigger upgrade.
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The reason I didn’t say was simply that I was fairly sure I had gotten lucky with this outfit, and have no guarantee that luck will hold. I suspected most outfits are going to be even skimpier than this on me, so I was simply putting off changing for as long as I could. There was a chance an “upgrade” in my armor would be something like a bikini and knee high boots, and I wasn’t quite ready to parade around in that just yet. I’d have to chance it eventually, but not just yet. Hopefully, the developers still kept my outfits tasteful at least. They did with pretty much everyone else, after all. Most female armors in SWO were more toward the realistic and practical side, so unless they want to look like that, most characters did have a choice.
With Aurora in her new robe, we headed to a shop for weapons for casting classes. We first looked through the staffs and wands in one of the larger stores. There was a wide selection, all of which granted basic spells for nearly every school of magic known. Aurora picked up a delicate looking white wand that granted the Purify spell which would remove poisons and other status ailments from the target.
As for me, we began looking at some specialty stores for other casting item types available. This seemingly random assortment of items were only usable as a casting weapon if your race or class had the proper affinity towards them. There was no clear way to tell what was and was not usable, but I could vaguely feel which items I could use as I browsed through them.
Most items that the Enchantress class gave me an affinity toward were various forms of jewelry and other decorations. Many fancy looking bracelets and rings would give me access to additional mind magic spells. However, I was looking for something to supplement my damage output, and as expected spells from Enchantress equipment wouldn’t do much damage.
On the other hand, items that my race gave me an affinity for were often rather strange things. I question what class would give one access to some of these items, as that was more than likely the true reason this store carried them. I don’t expect to find stores catering to succubi, after all. Among my options were amulets with pentagrams on them, strangely disfigured skulls and bones, ceremonial knives, and finally most appealing to me, a few whips.
Before anyone asks, no I am not into SM play. Besides, I’m fairly sure that doesn’t use long bullwhips like these, but rather shorter things like riding crops. Though again, that’s not really my thing so I may be mistaken about that. Anyway, I gravitated toward the whips more because they could be used as an actual weapon as well as a casting item, and I could finally live my fantasy of being a whip wielding, fedora wearing archeologist. Well, at least part of it. I don’t know if I’ll be able to find a fedora anywhere, but I will absolutely be looking for one.
The whip I finally decided to purchase was made of a black leather that matched my outfit well, and came with a spell called “Flame slash”. It was a spell used by spellsword types to ignite their weapon, doing fire damage in addition to their physical damage with the next strike. The whip itself doesn’t do a large amount of damage, but I was still pretty excited to try it out later. Anything would be better than having to get up close with a dagger or my claws like I had been doing.
Our equipment secured, we decided to stop in the central district and stock up on a few essentials before returning to the inn to meet with the others. There was still a while before the agreed upon time, but we didn’t have any other pressing tasks. We stopped in an alchemist’s shop and picked up some healing and mana potions. Aurora wasn’t certain why we would need the healing potions, but after I explained to her how they were often faster and occasionally there would be situations where the healer couldn’t do their job she bought a few as well.
As we began walking south toward the inn, an energetic voice stopped us.
“Aurora, Lilith! Wait up!”
Turning, I saw Celeste running towards up. She had a huge smile on her face and waved as she charged at us, leaping into an embrace with a somewhat uncomfortable looking Aurora before firing off a chaingun of excited speech.
“That was so fun! I had to go alone into the forest outside town and fight a strong wolf for my class. But now I’ve got a really fun sounding class, so I’m looking forward to trying it out!” She finally let go of Aurora and took a step back. “Hey wait, you got new clothes! And a new wand! No fair! I want new stuff too!”
After that, we were made to go shopping throughout the busy central district for gear for the excited spearwoman. First, we stopped in a weapon shop to find her a new spear. Celeste chose to keep with the short spears for now, as she wanted to focus more on maneuverability and a larger one would get in her way. Frankly, that was probably the best. The twins had chosen to make their characters rather small and slender, so a bigger weapon would look out of place in her hands. Comical, but out of place.
She finally chose a short spear with a narrow, steel head. The haft was made of a flexible yet strong wood with a strange blue tint to it. It should be able to stand up to continuous use for a while with only basic periodic maintenance, as long as she didn’t start using it as a bludgeoning weapon for some reason.
I recommended she look at the leather armors at the shop I had sold the rat and wild dog hides to, but she explained that her new class focused more on avoiding damage rather than absorbing it, so she was going to wait to upgrade her armor for now. Instead, she bought a new buckler made of a treated wood and studded with iron. According to her, she would have stopped using the shield entirely, but a few of her new abilities needed one, so she was keeping it.
She also purchased a few healing potions and some maintenance kits for her spear before we once again began walking south toward the inn. Due to our encounter with the Celeste and her subsequent shopping spree, we were now barely going to make it there by the time we were planning to meet, but I doubted the others would mind too much. Along the way, I asked a question I had been wondering about for a while now.
“Hey, how did you two manage to coordinate your appearances like that? I can’t imagine you did it through the integrated text messaging. Did you plan exactly what you would look like ahead of time?”
Celeste grinned and pulled Aurora close to her.
“Nope, we actually went into the character creation together. Our pods are both in my bedroom right now. We setup the parental link on our gaming pods so we had to be together at the beginning. Then I generated a random character to try to get a rare race. Since that didn’t work, Aurora decided to be the same race as me and designed her character to look almost exactly the same. Then once we were actually in the game, I released all of the restrictions on her account so she could move freely as well.”
Celeste’s face practically glowed with pride at their trick to stay together, Her expression practically begging for me to acknowledge the brilliance of their trick. However, that means Aurora will need to transport that pod later when she goes home. Well, what they do offline isn’t really any of my business anyway.
“I see, that was a clever way of doing that.” I turned to Aurora, “What would you have done if she had managed to get a rare race?”
“... It was Celeste’s idea. If she had gotten a rare race, I would probably have generated a random character too. We still would have started together, we just wouldn’t look the same.”
“I was actually hoping to get something like a centaur. Then I could have charged into battle with her riding on my back. That would have been awesome!”
That… actually would be pretty cool, now that she mentions it. Although I have a hard time viewing Aurora as a skilled rider. She would probably be ducking behind Celeste’s human portion trying to hide most of the time.
“Well, don’t give up all hope for a rare race. There are supposed to be ways to get one in game as well. You’re dream of being a mount may still be fulfillable.”
As we laughed over that image, we made our way into the inn room we had rented. There, we found Richter and Jayren lounging around. I greeted them with a wave.
“Hey, sorry we’re a little late.”
Richter looked up and nodded to me while Jayren waved back.
“Not a problem. Kiera had to sign out for a bit, so we’re not in a big hurry anyway. Nice equipment.”
Thanking him, we sat down. These two had also upgraded their equipment. Jayren now had a plate mail chestpiece and chainmail covering the rest of his body. He had also gotten a new kite shield and a sword to match. Richter’s armor was the same, but he had a new pair of daggers on his belt.
As I sat down, Jayren noticed my whip and looked up at me with some incredulity.
“What kind of class did you end up with that you’re using a whip?”
“Oh that? It’s just a caster weapon. It comes with a spell to ignite it to do additional fire damage with my next attack. But let’s save the class discussion for when everyone’s here, so we can go over everyone at once.”
“Mm, good idea. We can all describe our classes later than.”
As I relaxed in my seat, I noticed I had recieved a friend request from a character named Amber at some point while we were shopping. Guessing that was probably Sarah, I accepted it. As I leaned back in my chair to relax, a message popped up.
Amber: About time. I was beginning to think you were ignoring me.
Lilith: Well, I was. I had an invite from an unidentified sender, and was talking with my party members. Which do you think took priority?
Amber: Oh, right. You didn’t know what my name was. It’s Sarah, if you haven’t guessed.
Lilith: I did. I wouldn’t have ignored you if I didn’t already suspect that.
Amber: Hey! Anyway, I rolled a gnome, and am currently in a city deep in the northern mountains. You should come visit me.
Lilith: Alright. Horvath and I have to go get Ashley first, but we can head that way afterward.
Amber: He went with Horvath again, huh. And he talked Ashley into playing, too!
Lilith: It was her idea, actually. Her name in game is Simona, by the way. I’ll let them know what your name is so you can send them friend invites as well. For now I have to go. Once the last member of my current party signs back in we’re going to plan our first dungeon dive.
Amber: Okay, have fun. Try not to get them all wiped out, and tell me about it later.
Lilith: Oh right. Do me a favor and look around at the stores up there when you get some time for a stethoscope.
Amber: Do I want to know?
Lilith: You’ll have to look forward to it if you find one. It’ll be great.
Closing that conversation, I sent a quick message to Horvath and Simona, warning them of the incoming friend request, then went back to relaxing and waiting for Kiera to come back.