Stahlia, Ten Years Old, Eleventh Month of 947

“-With your chilling wind, turn to ice those that stand in my land.” I finished the chant I had written shortly after the planning for our defense. It was a real challenge since I was trying to mimic an existing spell without knowing how its chant was structured. That, combined with my limited vocabulary meant that the spell I had come up with was very messy. Still, nobody but me would actually know that.

I took a deep breath, all I had to do now was say the key phrase, and my spell would activate; I could already feel the absolutely massive amount of mana welling up within me, raging to escape. I should at least give them some final warning.

“That’s it! I’m about to cast! [Exterminate Ice Field]” I had said this was the Anti-Army magic “Frozen Garden, Niflheim”, but I didn’t actually know the name of that spell in the magic language, so I was forced to improvise. I felt the mana that had welled up within me leave all at once and collapsed to my knees. A quick glance at my status revealed that I had bottomed out my mana to five points. Considering the scale of this spell, the fact that it cost only a hundred and one mana is a bit silly. Good thing I had so many discounts and boosts.

Jacqueline passed me a mana potion which I promptly drank. It wouldn’t instantly recover my mana; going from empty to full in one go was a great way to enter mana shock, but it would drastically increase my natural recovery rate. Besides me, I heard Giogi gasp. He was staring over the barrier of our tower at the effect of the spell. I couldn’t see it, but based on the instructions I had stipulated, I could imagine what he was seeing.

The spell effectively worked in three stages. First, it created a barrier of ice that encompassed an area I specified. Then, the barrier was reinforced to repair itself when damaged. Second, the spell would super chill the air near the top of the barrier. I had specified to do it this way to save mana; we were at a high elevation already, so the higher air was already naturally a few degrees cooler.

While it complicated the chant, doing it this way saved a bit of mana. The third and final instruction was actually to Air instead of Ice and was simply to blow the super-chilled air down from the top of the barrier to the bottom. This would freeze whatever it came into contact with, completing the spell. I had also installed a few safeties, such as specifying that the cold air was not allowed out of the barrier, but those were relatively minor compared to the parts that described the three main actions.

Suddenly, I was wracked with pain. I clutched at my head, which felt like my brain was turning to mush. My various muscle groups additionally felt like they were on fire. Giogi was freaking out as I began to thrash spontaneously as if I was having a seizure. As if from a great distance, I heard Jacqueline saying something about “level sickness”, but I was completely unable to catch any specifics.

After a few moments, the pain died down and was replaced with dull aching. My mouth was dry, similar to a hangover, and my head was still throbbing, but otherwise, I had recovered. That’s the first time I’ve felt like that after leveling up… How many times did I…? I opened my status window and promptly shut it again when I saw how many notifications I had. Yea, I’ll deal with that later.

“Giogi, help me down from here.” Giogi roused himself and offered his hand, I took it, and he assisted me in climbing down the ladder. Once on the ground, Jacqueline offered me her arm, and I gratefully accepted as my legs were still a bit shaky, “Jacqueline, help me to the barrier, I want to see the aftermath.”

Jacqueline nodded, and we began walking to the barrier. Now that the spell was ended, the ice should melt quickly as it expended the mana it was made from. On the far side of the barrier, I was presented with a field of ice sculptures, all posed in various action shots. It looked a bit like the wargaming miniatures I had very briefly been interested in during my previous life’s high school years.

As I was studying a particularly large Goblin sculpture, I heard a throat clear behind me, “Ahem, Lady Stahlia… are you alright?”

Turning, I saw Lindell the guard captain looking at me concernedly. Am I alright? What does he mean, clearly I’m… oh, right. I re-enabled my various emotions, except for remorse. It wouldn’t do to have a breakdown in front of everyone. Now that I was feeling again, as I looked at the ice sculptures, I felt a brief pang of sympathy. It wasn’t much of a battle from my perspective…

I was a bit curious now if I would face regret for killing the goblins the way that I had. Lindell interpreted my silence as me being troubled, as he spoke up, “Lady Stahlia… it might not have been very fair… but this was technically war. Think about what would have happened if you hadn’t acted. My men and I would all be dead, and the goblins would be laying waste to Ris as we speak. You did what was necessary. I know it’s small comfort… but you should let yourself forgive your actions today.” Having said his piece, Lindell scratched at his chin awkwardly.

He has a point. I’ll have to see how tonight goes before I can decide if I need to “forgive myself” or not. “Captain Lindell, thank you for your concern, but we have more pressing matters to attend to; the clean up of any remaining goblins. We also need to see if their leader is still around.” I moved the conversation along a few steps, as I could see cracks starting to form in the barrier.

Lindell noticed the cracks as well and signaled his men, “Lady Stahlia, how’s your mana?”

I shook my head, “I’ll need a while longer to recover. I drank a potion, but the spell consumed nearly all of my mana to cast so it will take some time to recover.”

Lindell nodded, “Then, leave the cleanup to us. We can handle a few hundred Goblins on our own, as long as they’re not grouped up like that.” Lindell turned and lead his men through a newly formed hole in the barrier. Thankfully, the air had raised in temperature rapidly once it was no longer being artificially cooled.

I selected a nearby tree stump and sat down. My mana would recover a bit faster if I was still. In order to pass the time, I began looking through my new status menu.

Life Summary Screen:

Life Point Balance: 1,257 (+1,257)

Name/Age: Stahlia von Ris, 10

Gender: Female

Class/Level: Custom Class, 20 (+11) [MAX]* Experience: 31000/31000

Species: Human (Pureblood)

Social Strata: Nobility (Baron Ris, Drakas Kingdom)

Starting Gift: Small Seed [LOCKED]

(NEW) Title: Goblin Calamity*[Swap Title]

Ability Values:

* Strength D: 129 (+33)

* Endurance B: 203 (+77)

* Dexterity S: 355 (+165)

* Intelligence S: 435 (+165)

* Charisma B: 203 (+77)

* Mana A: 19/248 (+110)

Fighting Style: Drakan Style* [Swap Style]

Talents 3/5: [Browse Talents] Prodigy III*, Eidetic Memory II*, Stealth V, [], [] || Monster Handling III*, Dagger Fighting V*, Sword Fighting I*, Unarmed Fighting IV*, Alchemy Correction IV*, Teaching II*, Mana Efficiency III*, Fire Magic III*, Water Magic II*, Earth Magic II*, Wind Magic II*, (NEW)Ice Magic V(+5)

Skills 3/5: [Browse Skills] Divine Authority[Class Features]*, Finesse Fighting*, Blue Blooded*, [], [], || Language Proficiency[Central Human]*, Fighting Style[Shadow Blade]*, Fighting Style[Drakan Style]*, Blessing of Winter*

The first thing that caught my eye was, of course, my level, which had gone up to twenty and was now labeled as “MAX”. There was a little symbol that indicated I could get more information, so I focused on it, and an info box popped up for me.

“[Custom Class] Max Level reached. To Derive the next Class, please assign remaining ability value improvements: 2/2 remaining and select remaining Talents: 2/5 and Skills: 2/5.”

So, I’ll get a new tier of Custom Class once I apply the ability value improvements. Those will be good, I got one back when first leveled up Prodigy. It looks like I’ll also need to select enough talents and skills to fully occupy all my slots… That’s a bit irritating, but I can see the logic in requiring me to “complete” the custom class before acquiring the next one.

Thankfully, unlike the time with Prodigy, I wasn’t being forced to immediately apply the ability value bonuses, so I put it off and continued my inspection. Life points are… yea. That’s a lot. Then again, I did level up eleven times. I imagine there was something like a bonus for getting to the “MAX” class level. Also, holy shit, 31,000 experience for the next level!? How many goblins did I kill!?

A quick check of the log showed that I had killed 5,139 Goblins, 2,560 Goblin Archers, 1,310 Goblin Warriors, and 999 Hobgoblins of various types. This was helpfully marked down in a new section labeled “kill totals”. I also noted, that after the first 100k experience, it looked like I had started to be massively throttled, earning less than ten percent of the full value.

Then there’s my new magic talent… Ice Magic V. I cast one spell, acquired the talent, and then got enough experience to raise it straight to level five. It overtook Fire Magic instantly… Honestly, that was just fine by me. Due to boosts from my blessing, Ice Magic was likely my strongest offensive magic. Finally, I turned my attention to the new section.

Titles huh… “Goblin Calamity”. Well, the name is self-explanatory. Let’s see the effects then.

I focused on Goblin Calamity and was met with its infobox. “[Goblin Calamity] Awarded to those who have slain a ludicrous number of goblins. Effects: Goblins inflicted with Terror* upon detecting someone with this title.”

I saw I could further inspect the details of “Terror”, and since I hadn’t encountered that term before, I did so, “Terror: An advanced state of fear. Upon being inflicted with Terror, the victim has a small chance of also being inflicted with Heart Attack* status ailment.”

Inspecting “Heart Attack” revealed it was an instant death effect. So, by equipping this title, I’m so frightening to goblins, there’s a chance that they will literally drop dead at the sight of me… I glanced at the thousands of ice sculptures that sat a little distance away from my seat. Ok yea, that makes sense. Just to be sure, I checked the “Swap Title” option and found three choices; “None”, “Goblin Exterminator”, and “Goblin Slayer”. “None” was self-explanatory, while the other two were weaker versions of Goblin Calamity, having a chance to inflict fear, and inflicting fear respectively.

I decided to leave the title equipped, as far as I could tell there were no negatives, and having it would be helpful for what would happen next; the counter offensive to clear out the remainder of the goblins. Of course, we would be waiting for reinforcements from the kingdom for that, but given that I was a Special Student, had local geographical knowledge, and had just demonstrated an Anti-Army spell, I had every reason to believe I was going to be “invited” to join in the operation.

My limbs had finally stopped shaking, but as my mana was still recovering, I decided to spend a bit of time looking through the talent and skill lists for something that could potentially help with my Dominic problem. First, I opened the Skills list, and searched the word “Appraise”. To my mild surprise, there was only one result, and it wasn’t any form of “appraise”. Displayed by its lonesome was “Appraisal Immunity”.

So there aren’t any skills that grant an appraise ability huh? What about talents then? I hoped over to the talents list and repeated my search. This yielded only the talent [Appraisal Resistance I], which would eventually evolve into appraisal immunity. Fortunately, the description of this talent shed some light on this mystery, “Appraisal Resistance I (100LP): Grants the user resistance to appraisal spell effects. The degree of resistance is directly proportional to the talent’s level. Having a lower level than the tier of the spell will downgrade the information discerned by the spell by the number of skill levels.”

So if that description is anything to go by, then Appraisal type effects can only be acquired using a spell. That’s not an option, since if I arrange to learn those spells, I’ll have to go on a registry. I wonder how this interacts with my blood magic though? I put aside my new question for later and jumped back to the skills list. searching for the word “charm”, since that seemed to be what Dominic’s ability was doing, I was a bit irritated to see that there were a few hundred results to such a basic search.

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In order to narrow it down, I added the word “eye”, since the mana waves seemed to emanate out of his eyes. This shrunk the list to a few dozen entries, but that was still too many for me to be able to determine exactly what he was doing. I thought about it for a minute, then added the word “women”, since his ability only seemed to work on members of my sex.

This new set of criteria left me with only three options. [Charming Eye(Women)], [Lady Killer], and [Incubus Eye]. Only the first one was available for me to purchase, while [Lady Killer] was greyed out with a blurb stating it was only available for males, and suggesting I should look for [Cherez La Femme] instead. Apparently, whoever had implemented the skills was a fan of a certain post-nuclear apocalypse RPG.

[Incubus Eye], however, stated that it was “incompatible with users who possessed the Divine Element”. Since I couldn’t select them due to not having the prerequisites, I couldn’t read their descriptions. However, the bit about the Divine Element being incompatible with [Incubus Eye] stood out to me. Somehow, I knew that this was what Dominic had. As I thought back when Claire first mentioned that I occasionally smelled like him, my Blessing of Winter is probably shielding me now, but whatever he did back when he visited Ris, is still having an effect.

This left me in the position where I knew what skill was being used but didn’t know how to combat it. It would have been so helpful if I could simply read the description… Still, it was at least something; now that I was reasonably certain of what he was using, I could advance around that idea. Incubi are the male version of Sucubi, so like Sitri… Dominic is human, as far as I know… though his mana is totally different in appearance, and according to Claire, in smell. Is Dominic actually a demon?

If he is… he’d have to be a fairly young one… I was able to beat him really easily after all. I decided to advance under the assumption that Dominic was possibly a demon, but most likely a human who had demonic abilities. The easiest way to tell for sure would be to look at the rest of his family with my divine eyes.

I removed “eye” and “women” from my search, replacing them with “resistance”. My hope was that it would be as simple as being able to acquire a skill that would offer me resistance to Dominic’s ability. Though the question remained as to whether it would apply retroactively. Surprisingly, my search criteria produced only a single result, [Charm Immunity] which cost a whopping 500 Life Points. I also met the prerequisites, whatever those were, as it was not greyed out.

Reading the description, the skill explained that it provided total resistance to the charm status ailment. Still, 500 LP was a huge investment, I had to keep in mind that I wouldn’t be able to level up any further if I didn’t buy two skills and two talents. While I could earn Life Points through actions other than leveling up, leveling up was the fastest way. Making a mistake here could massively gimp my future prospects.

I may as well check talents before buying this, there’s probably “charm resistance I” or something over there. I backed out of the menu and navigated into the browse talents section. Inputting the same search terms, I discovered the expected [Charm Resistance I], for “only” 300 LP. Reading its description, it appeared that it offered resistance to the Charm status ailment, based on the talent level. At level six, it would evolve into the Charm Immunity skill. This begged the question of what would happen to the slot when it evolved, however, given the prospect that it would eventually lead to gaining total immunity, I went ahead and purchased the talent. I would have liked something that also applied to allies so that I could extend protection to Jacqueline, however, I understood that would be asking for a bit much.

I confirmed that it was present in my status menu and made a heartening discovery; The talent experience had already gone from zero to five. I watched it for a few minutes and observed it ticking up to six. At that rate, it would probably level up after a few days, maybe a week. So that confirms it, I’m actively being charmed by whatever he did to me. At least it looks like the talent is working on an already existing effect. As for why it started out with five talent experience… probably the passive experience I had already gained…? No idea. The fact that Dominic had now essentially forced me to make a decision regarding my build was irksome, but it wasn’t like the talent wouldn’t be useful even after I bear the current dilemma. As I had recently demonstrated with my Ice immunity, status immunities were incredibly strong.

I have just over 900LP left, and I need to buy one more talent and two skills. Getting three tier threes is probably the best option… Or I could get a [Cold Hearted] tier skill, and some tier twos… Given the general power level I had noticed with the 500LP skills that option was a bit tempting. I also need to search for the seven sin skills.

I flipped back over to the skills menu and input the word “Envious” into the search. Thankfully, only two skills showed up, so I didn’t have to scroll at all. The first skill was Felicity’s [Envious], which I apparently was perfectly capable of buying, not that I was going to. Still, it’s surprising that this demon skill is compatible with Divine Element, but [Incubus Eye] wasn’t… I wonder what the criteria behind that is…? The other skill was [Envy], which I could also buy for some reason, for a whopping 700LP, making it the most expensive skill I had encountered. I briefly checked its description.

“Envy(700LP): The final evolution of the Envious skill line. Acquisition of this skill completes Demonization[Demon of Envy]. User is granted the effects of Envious. Additionally, the effects of Envious are extended to include Skills.”

So, it’s Envious, but also works on skills instead of just talents, and getting this skill is what turns you into a demon. That confirms that at least certain skills can evolve further, not just talents evolving into skills. But holy shit, that’s a strong effect, though I imagine it would kill you pretty quickly, assuming I’m correct about how getting skills and talents to quickly strains the soul.

In any case, I wasn’t planning on taking a skill that would eventually turn me into a demon, so I backed out of the menu, content with the information I had gained. I’ll need to share this with Claire later, so she can more easily keep an eye on Felicity.

Next, I searched for the other sins from the seven deadly sins. Without fail, each of them had a skill named after them. They also all had a weaker version, and all of them had the line about turning their users into demons. The effects were incredibly strong though, to the point where I was sorely tempted to take one. But I resisted the urge; even a minor risk of turning into a demon wasn’t something I was willing to take.

The strongest, and the one I was most tempted by, was [Pride]. Specifically, its lesser version [Prideful]. [Prideful] had the effect of stealing half your opponent’s stats. Basically, for the duration of the fight, they would be weakened by half, and you would gain that strength. Since it was added to your own stats, you could take pride in the fact that you were always stronger than your opponent.

Since it sounded like an activated effect, rather than Envious’ automatic one, I considered the risk of demonization to be much lower. But at the end of the day, it was still a risk. There was also the concern that you wouldn’t be able to fight properly; if you suddenly gained a couple of hundred points of strength, then you wouldn’t know your own limits anymore. This was a running theme with all of the sin skills, they were strong, but in a way that was easily able to backfire.

Clearing wrath out of my search, I instead entered “500 Life Points” as the only search term. This filtered out the skills and only showed me the ones that cost five hundred points. Specifically, I was looking for one that would help even the playing field between me and the demons. The fact that Sitri had said that she “wasn’t allowed to kill or defile me” was, in hindsight, incredibly frightening.

It meant that someone strong enough to boss that bitch around was making plans that involved me being both alive and “pure”. I could think of a way to foil those plans immediately, but I didn’t want to go down that road. As such, I would need to develop a way of fighting someone who was practically in another plane of existence than myself. It was a challenge that tickled my gamer spirit. There was one idea I had during the past few months, but I wasn’t willing to test it to see if it was viable; the repercussions for doing it wrong would be devastating. It would have to sit reserved as a final Hail Mary in the event that all else failed.

Most of the skills didn’t seem like they would be particularly useful for the stated purpose. Of course, there were a lot of useful sounding skills. Things like [Soul Weapon], which manifested your soul in the form of a weapon. Or [Pocket Space], which was basically an item box. There were amyriad of boost skills as well, like [Herecles Strength] that provided a massive boost to the strength stat.

But none of these jumped out at me as being particularly able to narrow the gap between me and an Original Sin. What use would +500 points of strength be, when my opponent had two thousand? Especially if I was fighting a Demon of Pride, where half my stats would be going to them anyway. No, I needed something more concrete.

Finally, I found something promising. [Kinetic Perception(500LP)]. According to the skill description, it enhanced the user’s kinetic vision and had an activated effect that consumed mana to improve a user’s reflexes. Memories of Sitri prancing around the battlefield while I was completely incapable of keeping up with her surfaced. It wasn’t a guarantee, but it was also possible that my Blood Magic might stack with this skill, making the effect even more pronounced. Even if they didn’t stack, having this skill would free up mana for other Blood Magic enhancements.

A plan began to form in my head, and I confirmed the purchase of [Kinetic Perception]. I flipped over to talents and searched the term “Dexterity Improvement”. A few options popped up, with varying prices. A quick inspection revealed that they were a line of talents; the lower-cost ones would evolve into the higher-cost ones. I settled for the 200LP “[Flexible I]”. The description stated that it improved the range of movement of joints, as well as adding my level times the talent level to my dexterity stat.

I switched back over to my skills catalog, and searched for “mana” there was a specific effect I wanted, which I was sure existed, but I had no way of predicting its name with enough accuracy to narrow down the results in any reasonable time frame. Speaking of the results page, it had well over a thousand entries with the term “mana”. I groaned internally and began scrolling.

I passed a lot of interesting and useful sounding skills. Things like [Mana Perception] and [Mana Sense], the difference between the two I couldn’t determine; their descriptions were practically identical. As a guess, I figured that the former might be similar to divine sight, and let you actually see mana, while the latter simply allowed you to sense it as a sort of feeling. Still, neither of those was what I was looking for.

I kept scrolling, and eventually found a promising skill; [Mana Crystallization (300LP)]. According to its description, it allowed its user to exceed their maximum mana capacity by storing excess mana in a solidified crystal that would form near their heart. The thought crossed my mind that this was very similar to the mana crystals that could be found in the monsters of this world, however, unlike the sins skills, there was no disclaimer about “monsterfication”.

Still, I don’t have enough Life Points… And it isn’t exactly perfect, since it also says that it takes some time to extract mana from the crystal… I made a mental note about the existence of this skill, and continued scrolling. I found another skill that could possibly fulfill my purposes, in the form of [Mana Storage Expansion]. But this one was 500LP and came with the downside of a twenty-five percent reduction to mana regeneration speed. If there were other skills that expanded mana capacity, I wasn’t seeing them.

I could probably get the 43 LP for [Mana Crystallization] easily enough, but getting 243 for [Mana Storage Expansion] would be a tall order without being able to level up. I’ll plan on getting [Mana Crystallization for now. My plan, was to greatly enhance my speed, and then expand my mana capacity in order to increase the time limit on my buffs. After that, I would train extensively with magic, and work on further translating the magic language. There were a few words I was really hoping to learn. Words like “Stroke”, “Hemorrhage”, and “Aneurism”. Straight up “Die” would be nice as well, provided it worked properly, but something told me that not specifying the cause of death would end up costing a lot of mana.

To this same end, I accessed the “MAX” level indicator again, and focused on the ability improvement line, which still read 2/2 remaining. A small window depicting my ability improvement values opened, with arrows I could use to increase them. Without hesitating, I applied one point to mana, and one point to Dexterity, raising them to S and SS respectively. I confirmed my selection and felt an odd tingling sensation. Well, that does it. I’ve committed fully now.

I checked my mana and saw that I was nearly at full capacity. I carefully stood up; my stats had increased a large amount, and it would take me some time to get used to my new strength now that my limbs had stopped shaking and the soreness was gone. Stretching, I tested the range of my motion with the newly acquired [Flexibility I]. I was able to contort my body a fair amount more than previously, but it was nothing inhuman. Checking the sun, it appeared I had been busy for quite some time; it had gone down a considerable distance since I had first opened my menu after sitting down.

Jacqueline was still nearby, as was Giogi. The guards were in the distance, moving towards us. Thankfully, all of them seemed present, though they were sporting a few minor injuries. I stood to greet Lindell as he ascended up from the valley, “Captain Lindell, how did it go?”

Lindell started when he heard me address him; apparently, he was quite tired, “Ah… I see you’ve recovered… that’s good. Things went well for us. As you said, there were no survivors inside the valley…” He had a distant look in his eyes; I could sympathize, in my previous life I had found mannequins a bit disconcerting. Walking around surrounded by frozen goblins must have been somewhat uncomfortable.

“And outside the barrier?” Lindell shook his head and answered.

“There were small pockets of goblins led by hobgoblins; they largely retreated at the sight of us, heading back into the mountains. I fear it will take some time before we can properly clear the area.”

I pursed my lips; that wasn’t good news for the village. We had been keeping people inside for the past few days, and of course, it was winter so outdoor activity would be limited anyways, but it wasn’t like there was nothing that needed doing outside.

“And what about the magic stones?” I had included a line about “shattering stones” in my spell chant, but since I didn’t know the word for “magic”, I had to rely on my mental image of a magic stone getting my meaning through to the shape of the spell.

Lindell shook his head again, “There weren’t any that we could find. We dug through around about three hundred goblins before we decided to assume your spell worked how you said it would.”

Good, it looks like it worked then. So we won’t have to deal with thousands of zombie goblins now. When the knights arrive, we can get them to help round up the remaining goblins. Tomorrow, I’ll slip away and go confirm the camp is empty. It would be a disaster if it turned out they had only sent a portion of their force after all.

But before that, it was nearly night. I had been refraining from doing so for the past few days, telling myself I needed to be ready to fight at a moment’s notice, but I didn’t have that excuse anymore. It was time to confront my remorse once again. Forgiveness huh… maybe it really is that simple… one can hope at least. As I fretted over what I was about to experience, I recalled Lindell’s words from earlier. They had been directed a misconception on his part, but that didn’t mean they weren’t useful.

It’s worth a shot, better than just torturing myself night after night.