I slowly wake up and look around. Somehow I am back in the room Xiantha, and I share at the inn. I am alone, so I call out in my mind for Xiantha, she responds back “ About time you wake up, you have been dead to the world for almost three hours. Tabby took Etalia to have her implant installed. I am here with her waiting for her to wake up if you want to join me. Knowing how long we were out I suspect that she will not wake up for another hour to an hour and a half so no rush. ”

I thought that was a good idea, so I went ahead and got up and took a shower. I then grabbed some food and headed to the medical center to wait for my new friend to awaken. I asked Xiantha about how her training had gone since I spent most of the day learning the summoning ritual. She told me about how they had her against training dummies, then an obstacle course, then sparring against others. She told me about the suggestions the trainers had given her and how she enjoyed being more mobile than trying to stand toe to toe with her opponent. She told me that they tested the poison in her tail and that it caused a weak paralysis that would make opponents slower and weaker.

After hearing about how she fights it honestly scared me. My imagination ran rife with images of her circling around her prey and injecting it with poison. She was a highly dangerous creature that I had known only a short time. I was just thankful that she seemed to like me, and that she needed me to stay alive. I guess that some of my thoughts got through to her because she reached out to me and said “ You tried to save me, you are my friend. I will protect you as you protect me.”

That did make me feel better, so I smiled at her and thought “ Thanks.” I then asked her “What do you want to do once we get our basic training done? We can’t continue to live in the inn forever running up more bills. We need to start working on freeing ourselves and making a life we can enjoy.”

She responded “I want a home. On my world, you go from shelter to shelter until you get big enough that very few can mess with you. Until then you are prey and must keep moving as much as possible. I want a place that no one can chase me from, somewhere to be safe. That means that we need to pay off our debt first and then we can be free. I think I want to try one of the other worlds though. I do not really care for being stuck underground like this. We need to check with Tabby and see what the requirements are to go to another world.”

I certainly agreed with her. At first, this was an alien beauty, but even with the artificial lighting, it was still suffered from being dark, with no weather, and no stars. I missed being above ground. Knowing that on Earth my partners could not go to the surface, I had to agree that it would be best to leave my home planet. I could always visit in the future; I would just have to do it alone.

A few minutes later Etalia started to awaken. I said, “It’s OK Etalia, Xiantha and I are here for you.”

She quickly sat up and started waving a hand in front of her face I realize she saw the implant box and quickly explained what it was and about the implant, she calmed down after that and we headed back towards the inn to get sleep as it was close to midnight. We also explained about the telepathy, and we found out that we could all speak individually or to all of us at the same time. That was going to be really helpful when trying to coordinate while fighting. I also realized that sleeping would be an issue as our current room only had two beds, when I broached the subject Xiantha said “It will not be an issue tonight, the bed is human size, and we are not. We should be able to share a bed for now at least.” Etalia had not eaten at all since her hunt had gone bad, so we went to the desk and asked for some food for her and snacks for Xiantha and I, then we headed up to our room to eat and go to sleep.

The next morning I woke up to my alarm at six, I sent a message to Tabby, and she met us for breakfast at 7. After greeting us, she said “I think I can safely say with two demons you need to focus on spells to empower and heal them more than damage abilities. In the meantime let’s have Xiantha continue her training and help Etalia start training this morning.”

We agreed, and Xiantha led Etalia to the training center while I went with Tabby back to the classroom. She sat me down and taught me three spells over the first half of the morning.

Soothe Black Blood

Costs 5 Mana *threat level to Cast. Heals for Int*1.5 +wis*1 per Cast

Basically, this was a scaling spell that would improve as I gained intelligence and that the mana cost would also increase as my threat level increased. If I had one thousand intelligence, the spell would heal for one five hundred hit points. The downside was that the mana cost was tied to threat level, so if I gained five points in strength, my mana cost would increase without giving me better healing like if I had gained intelligence or wisdom instead. The second spell was a buff that increased the strength and dexterity of demons in my care.

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Demonic Vigor

Costs wisdom/5+15 mana to cast and lasts 30 minutes. Increases Strength and Dexterity by 15 plus 1 point for every 5 wisdom.

The final spell I received was a damage shield and shielding spell. It would reduce the damage my target took while causing anything that hit it to take damage at the same time.

Soul Shield

Costs 1 mana per second the spell is channeled cost increases by 1 for every 30 intelligence or wisdom gained.

Target gains 1% mitigation plus an additional percent for every 15 intelligence or wisdom.

Anyone striking target of this spell takes 5 fire damage plus additional 5 damage for every 15 intelligence or wisdom.

This spell was interesting I had to continually use a chant to keep the spell active, but it would reduce the damage that was being taken. Tabby also warned me that the mitigation part of the spell suffered from diminishing returns. Once it got to 15% it would start taking 20 intelligence or wisdom for an increase, then 25, and so on. The damage and cost would continue to ramp up, but the mitigation would not be as great.

Once I had learned the spells she escorted me to the training center to join Xiantha and Etalia so that I could practice casting the spells on them so I would not fail as much when I cast. Once we got there, my demons took a break, and we ate some lunch together. I asked Etalia about her statistics and found out that she was actually a little older than Xiantha and was built a bit differently.

Etalia

Imp Demon, Female

18 years old

Threat level 2

Strength

12

Stamina

12

Dexterity

10

Intelligence

8

Wisdom

9

Health 120/120

Mana 80/80

She also had her poison tested, and it was a different kind from Xiantha, Etalia’s poison actually caused whoever was stung to get increased adrenaline and caused their body to overheat and do a minor damage over time. When we finished up eating they went out and started sparring with each other, and other people and I practiced casting my spells on them. I noticed right away that Etalia’s style was much different from Xiantha. Xiantha almost fought like a ninja, she jumped away from blows and attacked from off angles using her tail as a weapon as much as possible causing distractions and never meeting a foe head-on. Etalia though battered her way through opponents. She would use her tail to parry blows that came towards her and use her claws to make attacks while her opponent was vulnerable. When they fought, each other Xiantha would not make a lot of hits because of how much Etalia would knock aside her attacks. At the same time, Etalia could not hit Xiantha at all due to her dexterity and movement.

It took about half an hour of casting heals and buffs on my demon girls before I saw my first improvement. I finally had gained a point in intelligence. I kept casting as much as my mana would allow and during the following four hours, I gained another four intelligence and two wisdom. I finally had hit threat level two. It did not matter though as Xiantha gained three dexterity, one strength and one stamina which moved her to threat level three. Etalia also gained another three stamina, one dexterity, and one strength. When we finished the day, we sat down with Tabby and asked her about hunting on another world.

“If I were you I would head down below town. There are some areas that we have cultivated to have monsters that drop items needed for crafting. This will allow you to make some money to buy transport through the portal. If you check your implants using the “jobs” command, you will see requests that vendors and others have put in for help with getting materials or killing certain animals that are overpopulated. Like I said ten percent will come back to us to pay towards your debts, other than that you will be able to stop racking up more debt. A pass across the portal costs 200 credits each, and the lower threat level requests will pay from twenty to thirty credits each quest. With the three of you, you could most likely handle requests around threat level 5, but those would be harder. They would pay from thirty-five to forty credits each quest.”

I then asked about an extra bed for the inn room, and she told me she would get it taken care of. At that point, we headed back to the inn for the night to look over the job board and get dinner while getting to know Etalia better. Tomorrow would be our first real hunt, and we needed to work together well if we wanted to decrease rather than increase our debt.