Erica spent most of the time by Jake’s side; she wouldn’t leave him for more than a couple of hours as she hunted bugs with Jess and Matt. This was one of those times. Waking up, Jake looked at the roof of the shuttle, his interface flashing in his face.
Universal constant interface
Name: Jake Everval
Race: Human
Grade: TG Level: 100 Max cap for this grade: 366 Unused
Class: Trooper Shadow Mage
Class level: 1000 Max cap for this grade: 1372 Unused
Profession: Arcane Smith Profession level: 13
stats points available: 37,480
Mana: 23360
Arcane: 23500
Stamina: 23200
Health: 33360
Strength: 1116
Agility: 1225
Intelligence: 2350
Wisdom: 2336
Perception: 1157
Integrity: 3336
All unused levels and grades will be converted to points at a 1:1 ratio at the end of the tutorial.
Title: Demon Master As a new demon, you can have up to one soul servant. Soul servants give their free will over to their master for a boost in stats and new skills to assist their master in their goals. As the master, you receive +50 to class, profession, and grade levels. Warning: soul servants cannot be dismissed.
“You know, it’s a little odd and I’ve said this before, but why does it always calculate the free points before it gives the bonus for new titles? And on that note, how the fuck am I a demon? I’m human, aren’t I? And who the fuck is soul bound to me? Sure not complaining about the bonuses, but it seems to sound a lot like slavery. I’m just not into that stuff. I think I will have to get to the bottom of this.”
Jake went to get up, but his head was still hurting for some reason, and his eyes felt as if someone had kicked sand in them. Jake sat on the edge of the mattress he was on. “Which is another thing. Where did the mattress come from?” Jake thought. Jake pushed through the pain and walked out of the shuttle; to his surprise, the city they were in was now behind him and in front of him right now was a forest.
“Did they give up on the idea of gaining levels by pushing our way to the hangar on foot? Well, I don’t blame them if they have. I was thinking the same thing; I just didn’t want to lose them due to having low stats.” As Jake was contemplating the matter, Erica rushed up behind him. Jake noticed her with perception and turned around just as he saw it—Erica was on one knee.
“Servant greets master, does master have any jobs for me to do?” Jake was in a state of shock. “Well, I guess now I know who formed a contract with me. Erica, get up and don’t call me that; it doesn’t fit me. I don’t own you or anyone else.” “But you actually do.” “What, no I don’t except I don’t own you, and I never will. I didn’t agree to this.” Erica was physically upset. She had hoped Jake would be like the stories and bring her to new heights; in the stories, the demons would always accept their servants, and as such, they would become gods in their own right. But what Jake just said shattered that dream completely. She started to cry.
“Erica, I’m sorry. Please try not to cry. I accept you and I know that you did what you did voluntarily, and it can’t be undone. I just don’t accept the whole slavery thing. How about this: you can work for me, and as such, I will do everything in my power to support you in whatever endeavours you have in the future?”
Erica hesitantly said, “may I ask you what your goals are?”
“Ha, of course, you can, and my goal is to see how far I can go, how powerful I can become to find the limits and see if it is possible to surpass them.” Jake laughed. Strangely enough,
Erica stopped crying and said with a grin, “my payment will be that you shall take me with you in seeing what the limits are.” Jake was stunned; all he had to do was bring her along as he completed his goal.
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“Ok, if that’s what you want from me, then that’s what you will get, and I won’t just bring you with me; we shall break those limits together, so we will need to get much stronger.”
The two of them sat and talked for a long time, which was something Jake normally was not the kind of person to share so much or even just talk to a person outside of giving commands to them; sometimes a bit of light banter is okay, but to talk for that long with someone he hardly knew was something else. One thing Jake found out was that Matt and Jess had decided to leave him the moment they got back to earth, and another thing was that Jake had been asleep for longer than he would have thought. Jess, Matt, and Erica cleared a path out of the city a week ago, and they were now just down a little from the hangar. And there was one more thing: Jess had been able to make ammo for the cannon, but she wasn’t able to recreate the grenades. After talking, Jake got to work making grenades and other things that might just come in handy.
Ding! Profession level increased +350 points
Ding! Grade level increased +90 points
New item (hand cannon ×2 common): A cannon that can be used by anyone with the strength and mana stores to use it; fires an explosive mana bolt at your target. Uses mana to operate, with explosive potential dependent on mana bolt size.
New item (Arcane handgun ×2 rare): A weapon created by a friend as a gift to provide the user with a weapon to fall back on when all seems lost. Infused with a limited supply of arcane energy. Requirements to refill reach E grade and infuse with arcane energy. Soulbound.
New item (Scope of mana common): Uses a mana-infused metal to provide sharpened vision; magnification increases depending on perception stat. Fits F88.
“That’s all I can give them; I hope these items help them out.”
Jake waited at the shuttle for the two of them to get back from their hunt. Erica was off to the side of the shuttle sharpening her axe.
“We’re running out of time; we need to make a run on the hangar. If he is not awake soon, we need to do it without him; you saw what was at the door; that was clearly a spaceship, maybe even a fighter or something. If we are going to go our own way, we need to possess the firepower to do it.”
“I would agree with you on that one,” Jake said, scaring the young man. “On that note, I have a kind of going away gift for you both.” Jake handed the two of them two weapons each and the scope to Jess. “These gifts might be the last gifts I can give you, so I hope they treat you both well on your journey. But for now, let us talk about what you saw up there.” The three of them met up with Erica and talked over the details. Matt came up with a plan that suited Jake because Jake really had no intention of leading anyone ever again; he had finally made his decision: he would preferably just be a mercenary and fight for others than lead ever again, and if he ended up in a position of power over someone, he would just let them do what they want. Being self-sufficient and having his own path, plus now he wasn’t even a human anymore—at least he didn’t feel like one. His interface might say he is, but Jake knew he wasn’t—at least not what he thought of as a human. He was more humanoid than human.
Matt’s plan was that Jake would fly them close to the hangar’s entrance, and then the three of them would jump out and dash for the hangar. Erica and Jess would put up a defence while Matt would get the spaceship up and running. Matt was under the assumption that he could operate the ship; after describing it to Erica, she told him it was an old light fighter. That was the plan to get in; the plan to get out was oddly even more lacking. Supposedly, Jake was meant to fly in and pick up Jess and Erica after Matt had escaped with the fighter; in Jake’s mind, there were several problems with this plan, but to be honest, Jake believed Matt needed experience, so he said nothing while the plan was being planned. After they had talked over the plan, Matt and Jess left together.
“I’m not a fan of this plan; it has too many holes in it, and I can’t figure out what is going on with those two. They have been acting strange ever since they found out about our connection.”
Jake sighed, “Yeah, I think they might be up to something; did you see Jess’s face when I asked how many ships were in the hangar? She knows something, but they’re not telling us; we can only go along with it for now. But once you get in there, do whatever you need to keep yourself safe. Here, take this; it’s a smoke grenade. If you need my help, throw it and I will be there.”
“But I don’t get it; we have been fighting and living with them for a long time. Did we not become friends?”
“Sadly, Erica, this is a great example of true human nature; humans will do anything to get what they want. For example, back in my home world, we had rich and poor people. The government saw this, and the plan at the time was to make the poor people more wealthy, so what they did was raise the taxes on the rich and give the money to the poor, like they were some kind of Robin Hood. But in reality, when you raise taxes on a company that provides food or other staples that people need to survive, what do you think will happen?”
“The price of the goods increased to cover the tax, leading to the poor paying more for the goods they need.”
“And without ever looking at the problem they were causing, the government repeated the same thing again and again. But you see, the government wasn’t giving all the tax money back to the people, so government employees’ wages were increasing every year, but the poor people just got poorer till even the rich people couldn’t afford to pay their workers, leading to the poor people getting even less money till all the people who were not part of the government had nothing left to lose and started fighting the government to strip them of the money and power. So in the end, humans went to war with each other over something each side wanted, leading to thousands dying on both sides for a cause that in the end didn’t matter; and as for those rich people, well, since no one could buy their products, their companies went bankrupt.”
“So Matt and Jess don’t see us as friends.”
“No, not when it comes to profits they could gain; we are just collateral damage to them.”
After talking all night, Jake and Erica decided to just roll with it, and if an opportunity presented itself, Erica would act like a human and collect some profits.
When the sun rose, Matt and Jess returned to the shuttle; both of them just sat down in a seat and waited for Jake and Erica to arrive. As Erica and Jake walked in, Matt snapped at them,
“Where have you two been? I guess you were up all night serving your master.”
Erica just walked past him and sat down, but Jake grabbed the scrawny little shit by the collar and put his fist into his jawbone, shattering it, before sitting in the cockpit and starting the engines, blasting the shuttle into the air.