Jak's POV
The crystal tablet that was next to Domina's head begun showing every one of domina's actions in fast forward from his reincarnation into a small fire demon to his current state. Jak was rather disapointed that there was nothing to nag about in the recording, but she probably didn't know that part of the Domina's memories were not shown on the display, the most juicy parts. Jak also couldn't hear what they said since it was all going too fast for her to hear.
In other words the memory crystal did show her the truth but not all of it. The Devil had skillfully saved Domina from some trouble and even smiled like an innocent person would.
"Kaj, I want to conquer Allastar will you help me?"
Domina asked, he really wanted to conquer the world and to this Jak could do nothing but laugh, after all she liked challenges and challenging the whole world, even the gods themselves was much to her liking.
"Then lets go to back to Allastar, with you at my side I won't even need to use psychic powers"
Domina said while laughing out loud.
The The doom knights all around them just stood there awaiting to go to the cental Ruin, the largest of the ruins on this moon.
It looked like a large dome, inside supported by multiple columns and on a throne sat a person.
His face was imposible to see and his bone helm had winded aries horns which were fused with the helm, while his bone armor was only complemented by his red cloak, in his hands he held a large double headed axe with an orb attached to end of the handle.
The man didn't even speak as he stood up when seeing the doom knights approach, but he could do nearly nothing as they swarmed the building, but before the fight could begin Domina's voice shouted out.
"Stop!"
Domina shouted while he himself entered the Dome.
His size was that of a normal human, well maybe a somewhat tall human, since he was 2meters tall, next to him walked Jak on the right and the Devil on the left, Yummy was walking next to Jak while the weaker Doom knights were walking behind them.
The plan was to make the stronger ones take the front while the weaker ones were used to strike fear in the oponent's mind, after all only a few were able to attack at a time, but their numbers could make any opponent fall into despair.
"Dear guardian, if you let us use the portal we will create no problems for you, if you don't then don't blame us for what follows"
Domina said with an arrogant tone.
The guardian didn't speak at all he simply swang his axe and waves of hellfire, scorching red flame came from it trying to attack everyone arround him.
Of course the attack failed, the scorching heat not only didn't attack them but it was all sucked Dry by Yummy. Even AoE magical attacks were just a treat for her, making her become a little stronger again.
The guardian threw his axe towards Yummy which begun swirling like a chainsaw cutting open a path through the Doom knighs in front but before the attack could come a hand grasped the handle of the flying axe and disassembled the orb from edge of the handle.
"Thank you for the gift"
Said the Devil as he held the orb, he then knelt to Domina and offered it up as a gift or something.
"Master, this is something that you might like, it's part of Doom's soul, there's a total of six such orbs, each holding a part of Doom's demonic soul"
The Devil said, still awaiting for domina to take the glowing red orb from his hands.
"You can keep it, not that it will do any good to me anyway, You the guardian, how dare you kill so many of my servants!"
shouted Domina but what he didn't know was that not even one had trully died, even those that had been cut in half hadn't died.
He wasn't an idiot, their Hp had reached 0 but Doom knights have one ability Domina didn't know about.
Unless their master had died they would never die, of course each time they resurected Domina would take some damage but with his now boundless Health it was impossible for anyone to defeat them.
This was the Devil's plan all along, normal lesser demons when they died would just be sent back to the demon realm but Doom knights were special, their armor stabilized their demonic energy in this realm, making them invincible.
"Foul Demon, you will never resurect Doom!"
Shouted the guardian, by his tone Domina could only understand one thing, he was totaly nuts.
"Perfect, why does the guardian had to be a madman?"
Domina complained, he was rather mad about the whole guardian thing from the start, he was also curious why would someone guard a portal in the middle of nowhere. Well this solved most of his questions.
Bang!
An explosion came from Jak's glyth, she had already decided to test how strong this enemy was.
"Could you leave him for me, I want to see if he's worth to be kept alive or not"
Jak said, she was somewhat reluctant in acting like the leader of demons, mostly she felt disgusted at the thought of being surounded by demons all the time so she let Domina be their leader.
"Jak you don't need to ask me, but if I find you cheating on me don't think too poorly of me"
Said Domina, of course the second part was just teasing her, he knew full well how devoted she was to him.
The legions that had surrounded the guardian subtided like ants opening a large space at the middle of the dome for them to fight.
Jak smiled as she went forth and shouted.
"Come, lets fight!"
The guardian was left dumbstruck, he probably hadn't expected that the first one from the demons to challenge him would be a human.
Before he could even speak his axe struck the ground before him, not only had the Devil given him back his weapon but he even reattached the orb back in place.
He probably wanted to say something but before he could even talk, just at the moment his hand had reached his axe, Jak charged at him and begun bombarding him with attacks.
The rapier was sharp and vicious, each attack went precicely for the gaps of his armor but he was no simple person, long ago he used to be a great mage and now he probably was the last time-space mage alive.
As he used time slip to slow the time around them making each attack miss, he remembered events from long ago. He remembered how he and his 14 companions had went off to seal the demon portal on Allastar.
Of the fifteen that set off that day after the sealing of the portal only four survived, but now after so long only he of the fifteen was left.
There was deepseated hatred against the Demon called Doom, but the hatred wasn't because of the lesser demons but because doom himself had abducted and killed his wife, another one of the 15great mages, otherwise known as the 15 chosen of the gods.
The battle was now becoming even more errantic, Jak too had used some speed oriented spells and was nearly catching up with his slowing spell's effects.
The guardian could only guard against her and as confused as he was now he could do nothing but defend.
He could see a smile on Jak's face, after having fought for half an hour she wasn't even out of breath and her attacks were becoming even more fierce. The guardian was of course one of the immortal npcs and was originaly programmed to guard the gate so that the players from Allastar could come and attack the demons, not for the portal to be used by the demons to attack the players.
"Do you give up?"
Asked Jak with the rapier pointing at his neck.
His Magic points were up and the slow effect had vanished, he might have been strong but his speed was lacking terribly, while Jak only had attack and speed at her disposal, if she wanted to she could have also used her psychic powers each time her blade touched his axe, turning him into a bloody pulp, like she had done to Yummy before.
"Why are you siding with the Demons and why did you give me my weapon and the orb back?"
The guardian asked before answering her question.
"Are you an idiot, how would we have a duel if you lacked a weapon, and why do we even need that stupid orb?"
Jak said, of course she had no idea what the orb was.
The guardian begun laughing hysterically as if he was going crazy again.
Jak instantly went on guard awaiting for him to go into some sort of berserk mode.
"Hahaha, sorry for that, it's just hillarious, how you said that this orb is useless for you"
The guardian said while still not able to catch his breath.
"And why is that?"
Jak said somewhat puzzled, she couldn't understand why this npc guardian looked more and more sane with each moment that passed.
"First of all, you came for the portal, right?"
The guardian asked with a haughty tone.
Jak could do nothing but nod.
"The portal can only be opened if you have three orbs, there are six in total, and on this planet there's only one such orb, mine, the rest are either on Allastar or on Skyl"
Hearing the guardian's explanation Domina looked at the Devil with a somewhat irritated face, you could even call it angry.
"Master, why use the soul orbs of another Doom demon while you yourself can produce even more than three such orbs"
The Devil said to his defence.
The guardian's eyes begun blazing, Jak could now see two flames where his eyes were supossed to be in the darkness of the bone helm.
'Yup, this was probably a berserk mode'
Just at the moment the Devil had stoped the guardian charged towards Domina, his speed was crazy fast and like a beam of light he was in front of Domina and slashed towards him, hundreds as if not thousands of times, before they could even take a breath Domina's seemingly boundless Hp was being torn to pieces.
His speed made even Jak gasp a breath in terror, she of course didn't know that if Domina died he would simply be teleported back to the Demon world but there was a problem she had found out earlier.
The guardian teleportation couldn't take her to the demon world.
After a single minute Domina's health had reached Zero, you would have thought that the Devil would have done something to save him, but it was impossible cause it wasn't that the guardian had become incredibly fast, it was that he had stopped time, players could still catch a glimse of him but npcs couldn't even react to what was happening.
Domina could only see afterimages of the guardian slashing at him with his double axe, he didn't even feel the pain from the hits, it was simply too fast for him to comprehent that he was hit.
The first critical minute everyone was trully angry, the second minute that Domina had no Hp but was still alive everyone was somewhat shocked, the third minute they were not believing their eyes.
The guardian was hitting Domina with all he had and normaly speaking any person would have died in the first minute but Domina's psychic power upon death worked and he resisted Death, his life points going into the negative but he didn't care, after all he was no longer a weak damsel in distress, he was probably the mightiest demon there is on Allastar, maybe the second after "D", thats how he called the Devil.
"Why won't you die!"
Shouted the guardian, he was now out of his berserk mode and although monsters would percieve Domina as dead right now, creature with even a little intelligence could figure out that he was not dead at all.
"Are you an idiot, do you think that I would come here personally if I was so easy to kill?"
Domina said, but to these words the guardian became somewhat panicked, it was not only the guardian, the whole game system at the moment tried to figure out what was going wrong but couldn't find anything wrong, all the numbers were correct, Domina had a negative unlimited life points right at the moment, but how come he wasn't dead, the system tried again and again to kill him but the result was that it could not.
Domina at the moment only felt a light tickling sensation each time the system tried to kill him.
Domina kicked the guardian while holding his healm.
In one movement his helm was no longer on his head and he was shot flying into a column in the distance.
Domina and everyone else could see an elderly elf with white hair, the only thing strange was that he had three eyes like the skyrres did.
"Nice helm"
Domina said while trying to crash it in his arm, he wanted to turn it into dust but found out that it was something inconceivably hard to do, so he just thre it behind him as if it was junk.
"You fiends will never leave this place, this ruined planet will become your prison for all eternity"
The guardian begun laughing as the Doom knights had already swarmed him.
They didn't attack him but they were stealing his equipments and holding him on the ground, in the end leaving him only with is underwear, bound by ropes.
"So how do I generate those soul orbs you talked about?"
Domina asked disdainfully.
"Master, I have good and bad news for you"
The devil said.
"Tell me the good first"
Domina said not wanting to ruin his mood.
"The good news are that your legions are now completely immortal as are you, master"
The Devil said with a large smile on his face.
"And what are the bad news?"
Domina asked somewhat nervous.
"Well, it's now impossible for you to produce a soul orb, but there is still a way to open the portal but we will have to use a sacrifice, if your mistress agrees to help of course"
Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.
The Devil said with a rather concerned face.
"Never, I won't sacrifice Jak for a stupid portal"
Domina shouted, Jak felt warm inside, it was a rather good emotion.
"Master, I told nothing about sacrificing her, all we need is for her to birth a child, one demon-human child hibrid will be enough to open the portal"
The Devils said but Domina was even more mad at his suggestion.
Only silence flooded the Dome as the discussion was cut short, the dome would now become their base for the days to follow.
====================================================
Galie's POV
Galie was rather tired of all the training and was now exploring the city by herself, the friends they had made with Red were only interested in shopping and refused to go anywhere else than the shopping centers, while Galie wanted to explore the city.
She passed the Dojo where Max now trained, the smithy where Lidie worked and even the Mage guild where Red was training to become a mage.
Red had learned that to be a succesful synthesizer you first had to become a mastar mage,smith and artificier, which made her rather angry, of course Synthesizer was a hidden profession that could only be unlocked later in the game, while she had cheated her way into having the profession from the start.
"Red, how come you are already so good at magic?"
Asked Galie surprised, it took her much to get enough skill to cast complex spells yet here she saw Red who a weak ago didn't even know magic now casting a complex spell with ease.
You have to know that spells are divided into...
Simple Spells
Spells that don't need any chant or medium to cast, no channeling time needed and no cooldown for priest spells.
Complex Spells
Spells that need either a chant or a medium to cast or need time of chanelling before casting, priest spells require cooldown.
Difficult Spells
Slepps that have high failure rate, no greater diference than complex spells, but greater cooldown for priests.
Component spells
Spells that require rituals or special preperations to be made before casting and have long channeling time, cannot be cast by priests.
Now imagine the surprise on Galie's face when she saw that Red could already cast Complex spells, you have to know that you have to reach Qualified rank which is the fifth rank of mage to be able to cast a complex spell since each rank unlocks a new bunch of skills to be used.
Reaching the fifth rank without a teacher is probably the limit of what one person can do, since he will need 100.000 skillpoints to reach the next rank.
Novice needs 1,000sp to reach apprentice
Apprentice needs 9,000sp to reach trainee
Trainee needs 90,000sp to reach graduate
Graduate needs 100,000sp to reach qualified
Qualified needs 300,000sp to reach journeyman
Journeyman needs 500,000sp to reach professional
Professional needs 4,000,000sp to reach specialist
Specialist needs 10,000,000sp to reach master
Master needs 45,000,000sp to reach archon
Archon, must have mastered all basic skills.
In other words 60millions are the total skillpoints you can have after mastering all 60basic skills.
The hadest of course to master were passive skills, since some are outside your ability to master, while to reach master you only need to reach 10million skillpoints.
Red was probably at 100,000sp with no more than a week's worth of training, how could Galie not be angry if there was some shortcut no one had told her about.
"Galie don't be angry with me, if you like I can pay for you as well, it's not like we are strangers"
Red said, somewhat lost, it wasn't that she couldn't pay for Galie as well, it was just that at that moment a week ago she was too stressed out to think about others.
Galie had a strange expression on her face, in truth she didn't know that what Red did cost money and she had already spent most of her allowance and if that wasn't everything, she had also seen how much gold Red spent on their shopping spree, now she could somewhat understand how Lidie felt all this time, after all Lidie had to trade loot and items to gain even a silver more, not to speak about gold.
In allastar 100copper are 1silver, and 100silver equal 1gold, 100gold equal one valuable gemestone, while 10gold equaled 1 semivaluable gemstone.
Lastly there were bank notes, which recorded the number of gold you had in the bank but could not really be used to pay unless in large transactions, in truth bank notes were only given by npcs when the amount of gold you earned was more than 100valuable gemstones, in other words anything more than 100valuable gemstones is a banknote, which can be taken to the bank for cash later or used as it is and be given the change, however bank notes were useless in player trading unless it was between millionaires.
"No need, thank you for the offer"
Said Galie somewhat degected, she had already received too many gifts from Red and after having thought so many bad things about Red she didn't feel right to accept another gift.
"Don't go, lets train together, aren't you also a mage, you don't know how boring it is when you train alone and these guys are no fun to talk to"
Red said, near to her were three people with long beards and seeing as they had no name tags they were probably npcs.
One of the old men was about to speak in against that idea but the two next to him quickly shoved his mouth closed. It was somewhat funny to tell the truth, but the most probable reason for that was that Red was probably the only person who would pay npcs to be her teachers, the main reason was that players were far cheaper after all they gained experience as the player advanced so they weren't too greedy. Npcs on the other side were either after a talented disciple or in Red's case after her gold.
If Red had known that she had being already cheated to pay an extavagant price for these three master mages, she might even ask for a refund, but the two of them understood that Galie was as clueless as Red so they accepted to oversee her training without asking for more, trying to gain Red's favor.
The next few days Galie's training had taken a qualitive rise in speed and Red was happy to have someone to talk with when her Mp were depleted, which happened almost every minute for her.
In contrast Galie had too much Mp but she didn't really care to spare some time to loiter about.
Their three teachers were even more happy for them spending more time speaking rather than training since that meant even more gold for them.
Of course the two girls didn't know just how shameless the three elders really were, normaly the teacher could at least once refill the disciple's magic points by draining some of his own and those three elders who were master mages could probably do that multiple times a day, in truth with the three of them it was probably impossible for her to have time to spare.
A week passed and Galie and Red had both reached the Professional mage rank, just two ranks short of mastering the mage profession.
"So how are you two doing?"
Asked Lidie as they were all sitting at the Inn's table downstairs to eat something, today it was Lidie's treat, Lidie from her blacksmith job was making a few coins and was really happy about it.
Galie and Red could see their favorite plates on the table and a rather expensive wine. The two were somewhat astonished, was this really the Lidie they knew.
But their festive mood didn't last long, a Max that seemed rather angry came with a child at his side approaching the round table and sat right across from Lidie.
Galie and Red didn't know what was going with him, or if they had lost something while they were training but they were both surprised when they saw the small girl next to Max, she was around 5years old and had no name tag but her hair color was similar to Max's and her facial features were like a small Lidie/Galie copy.
"Who is she?"
Galie asked Max, after all she was standing next to him earlier, if they couldn't tell before, after Max put her to sit on his knees, they could see that the child looked malnourished and weak, but the features were there a split image of a younger Galie came to Galie's mind, after all she had seen photos of herself when she was younger.
"She's our daughter Program"
Max said with an anger evident in his voice and his eyes glaring at Lidie. Galie and Red could only gulp as their breath became somewhat chaotic because of the suddenly electrified situation.
"Why do you even care for her, she's just a program that appeared out of thin air, she can't even be called your flesh and blood, after all she's nothing but numbers!"
Lidie shouted, her mood evidently ruined and her mind was rather set that the npc child wasn't real.
"She's as real as the night we spent together, she's the fruit of our love!"
Shouted Max reproving her words.
Lidie simply stood up turned and left, she had already payed for the table but after all this she was in no mood for festivities. For her the child in Max's hands was but a series of numbers, but even so she still felt bad about what she had done.
Initially when the npc baby was to be born she was furious because she had not wanted this baby at all, so she named it "Program" but after a day she couldn't just let it die of hunger so she begun feeding it when she returned.
The child was of course kept as a cecret from everyone. You have to understand that children in Allastar only needed one week to be born and each week you will be asked if the child will grow or not. She had been keeping the child secret for five weeks now, her innitial plan was to make the child grow teach her a job and let her live her life in this fake world. Her plan however had a flaw, at the age of four the child was too playful and begun exploring the inn on its own, it was but a matter of time for Max to find out and she wasn't as cruel as to give Program away or even worse kill her.
Each time a thought like that rose in her mind she would just begin training again to take it out of her head, she was really talented at smithing, with her strength and the bonus from all her numerous warrior professions she could craft really good beginner weapons and armors, something that made the smith rather apreciative of her, after all good equipment was something he could sell and if not in the imperial town, merchants would probably buy them to take them to the towns and noob villages down the mountain.
After making a good haul, she wanted to celebrate but everyone was too busy, it was then that Max found about Program, they begun quarelling about Program and in the end she game Program to Max to take care of her, after all Max seemed more attached to the small virtual child but every now and then she could see program coming to her room to sleep.
Of course she only found that in the morning when she woke up.
'What a well made program'
She thought back then.
But at the end of the week Max came to her and begun shouting like crazy, something about the child stealing one of her weapons or something and then the real problem occured, at the same moment of anger they were given the choice, if the child will grow or not, before the system only asked her but this time it asked both of them. The reason was probably because they had already been divorced after the quarel about the child, it was rather fast too do almost as fast as their virtual marriage.
In her fury she pressed yes while he pressed no, in the end the child still grew up, becoming 5years old and with it's now meager intelligence it could begin to understand some things and the child was now entirely under Max guardianship.
Of course because of four years of malnourishment, the child was rather weak and very shy, Program or Progie as Max called her was rather obedient but didn't talk at all, Max even thought that it was mute. The thing however stopped right there but she had fully earned Max's enmity.
Red stayed to talk with Max while Galie went to talk with Lidie, the reason wasn't that they had decided on it, but it was because they had chosen their sides.
For Red and Max this world was as real as the world outside the game, after all they didn't really like the outside world.
For Lidie and Galie however, this was but a game, it wasn't real, who in his right mind would chose a fake although rather cute child to a real person.
(Well Max and Red for once did)
"Lidie, you don't have to be like this, it's just a program, if you want I can just delete it for you"
Galie said trying to soothe Lidie's pain but the effect was rather unexpected. Lidie shoved her arm to her throat and threated her in a cold voice, her eyes were still leaking tears like water and her face was ghastly pale, if now someone had seen them then they wouldn't even think that the two looked anything alike.
"Don't you even dare touch that child, it might be a program...but...but"
Lidie was trying to find a reason why she had been angry right now but all she could do in the end was ending up crying on Galie's shoulder.
Red and Max however had another type of conversation at the moment.
"Max why don't we marry, if you like children so much I could give you one or two more"
No more comment are needed to understand how short their conversation was.