Chapter 12 - 1st, 3rd, 6th, 7th, 9th, 11th

 

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Lilith

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For now I revert my appearance back to what has become my ‘default,’ the body I started here with, plus the simple black skirt around knee length, not forgetting underwear this time I have a pair of black ‘boyshorts’ underneath, and shirt with sleeves halfway down my forearm, ending in basic frilly folds of cloth, having not decided on shoes my brain just sort of defaulted to a pair of simple black Moccasins with some black knee-high stockings. The final piece was the simple black hooded cloak.

I change my hair to black and my eyes to the same green I used with my previous transformation. I’ll refer to this as ‘Lilith Default #2’ for now, and #1 is the same but just with my natural white hair and red eyes. Hmm, I could call the other one ‘Lilith Tall Turquoise’ maybe? I know it’s silly but putting a name to it seems to help me keep it straight in my head.

Now that I think about it, I don’t really need to use the ‘tall woman’ appearance since the swords seemed to vanish inside me and don’t impede my movement like I had worried about. So maybe it makes more sense to separate bodies and clothes into ‘names,’ so I’ll have default Lilith #1 and #2, along with my ‘Default Black’ and the ‘Turquoise’ outfits.

And lastly, the ‘Tall Lilith’ body that looks like the picture I found. Her face is different from mine but I didn’t really try to copy it, keeping mine instead. Maybe I should consider doing so, though I really don’t like the idea without a mirror. Ugh, does this mean I need to make a separate ‘face’ category too? Hah, I feel like I’m going to need a full on character creation screen or something before long. Anyway… back to business.

I need to decide how I am going to make my way inside the building with the least chance of being seen or making noise. First off, using a ‘candle flame’ to see is out, I think for a moment and then I remember something! Years ago I used to watch some of those paranormal ghost investigation shows, at the time I didn’t realize just how manufactured they were but now, ah, I digress, the point is they often used infrared lights and cameras!

Let’s see, I do recall some bits of infrared can be very faintly seen by some people as a dim red glow, but I think it all depends on the frequency. Let’s ask Google-Sensei about Infrared and perhaps I can choose an entirely invisible spectrum. ...Oh boy, this is a bit more complicated than I thought.

So, let’s break this down, I need to try to create a spell that can emit some infrared at some wavelength I'm not sure of yet, and then convert any infrared that hits my eyes into a normal visible wavelength like the monitor on a camera would do. I guess my first choice is to decide what wavelengths to use. 

Near infrared seems to be what’s used for Night Vision as well as remote controls and the like. On the high end it approaches the red end of the visible light spectrum. It seems like you don’t necessarily need an infrared light source to use night vision if there is enough ambient light that can be amplified. 

However, in my case I would really prefer to have the option, maybe a toggle on that part of the spell… er Mana Circuit? What should I even really call these? Izanami said she’d refer to it as ‘Mana’ for now, making it sound like there is more to it, or maybe I’m overthinking things?

Interestingly, Long wave infrared can be used for thermal imaging, which could let me see the ambient heat given off by people’s bodies, and other warm objects. It would be cool to incorporate a toggle for that too. Although I think right now I just want something that works.

So I try my best to imagine a lens in front of my eyes, almost like contacts, that will take any near infrared entering them and convert it to white light, for now, I don’t do any amplification, I just map the amount of all infrared with a wavelength from 0.75–1.4 micron to the intensity of the white light, the more of any infrared that hits, the more white the ‘contacts’ emit.

I give it a shot and activate the ‘spell’ now, and take a look around. At first I’m not entirely sure it’s working as my color vision seems unchanged, and next to the window the majority of the light is still from the magic lamps, I do feel like their color temperature has changed a bit. That is when it hit me, I didn’t specify what ‘white’ is, so my brain just defaulted to the ~5000k color temp of the daylight bulbs, I preferred them for everything except reading, which I thought the standard ~2700K warm bulbs were nicer for.

I do a little mini jump for joy as I realize it has to be working as the dim warm reddish light now looks much closer to a colder white when I look outside at the lamps. Alright, that seems to be working, the next part is to emit my own light for when I need it. For this I go back to the ‘contact lenses’ and try to imagine the outer surface as being able to glow in infrared when I turn on an imaginary ‘switch’, I decide to pick a wavelength on the lower end of the spectrum, away from the visible, to let’s say, 1 to 1.4 micron?

Alright, time to test, I imagine flipping the ‘switch’ and letting my mana flow into them to make them glow, and I look around the floor I’m on in the dark parts, and I am sure I must have the most cheesy ear to ear grin right now as it looks almost like those night vision cameras I recalled from those TV shows. I’m also happy that the ‘light’ seems to be rather diffuse so it’s not creating any harsh shadows that might trick me briefly.

For some reason only the 4th and 5th floors seem to have windows on the back of the building, I don’t really want to try breaking down the front door. I peek out the side windows looking for options but it’s hard to really see from this angle. I get the idea to try something a little risky.

I turn my right hand into a small bird, and use the same ‘thread’ trick as with the spider, to essentially turn it into a kite, of sorts. I apply the same ‘night vision spell’ I made to its eyes as well. I make sure to give plenty of length for the room I’m in, and spend a few minutes practicing the basics with it. 

First, I set it down on the ground, before sitting down myself, closing my eyes and shifting perspectives to the bird, I flap my wings in an attempt to hover, and while I do at first I quickly tilt and fall back down when I stop trying to accelerate upward. This happens six or seven more times before I finally manage to shakily hover about a foot off the ground.

I practice landing and hovering in place five times, before I try to fly in a circle after hovering on the sixth try. While very wobbly and not at all anything close to a circle, I do manage to do it about two and a half times before I smack into the back of my own head, of my main body, and tumble to the ground.

I broke a wing, but it seems to quickly heal just like an injury normally does, so I am able to take off once again, this time I fly a bit higher, and manage to do five whole laps before I cut a bit too wide and slam into one of the partial walls making up the partitions on this floor. This time I’m pretty sure the bird’s neck got snapped as I was cut off for a moment and shifted back to my main body’s perspective.

After about a minute or so it seemed to heal and I was able to control the bird properly again. Interestingly I realized I wasn’t really feeling pain from the bird the same way I do with my ‘normal’ body. I am unsure why, I do have senses of touch and whatnot from it, and while there is an unpleasant sensation like pain, it feels considerably less effective, like the difference between pinprick and a broken bone, if I had to guess on intensity.

Which is probably why breaking a wing barely felt like a pinch, I was so focused on what I was doing I somehow completely failed to realize that it felt different than it rightfully should. Speaking of focus, I am spending a lot of time on this, I should probably just go ahead and try to scout the area. It seems like I’ve gotten decent enough that I can at least do that if I’m careful.

‘Since when were you careful since you got here?’ my brain retorts to me immediately. Ok, sure, you got me brain, you’re right, I’m a bumbling idiot, but you’re the one controlling me so it’s your job to not be dumb! Are you happy now? That’s what I thought. Now we both just feel bad. Meanie.

As for you, yes you, reader! Don’t say a word. I know I’m dumb, and I’m not talking to myself, you are. Pffffft~~! K.O. 4th Wall In my imagination a chibi version of myself punches through a small brick wall, collapsing it. ‘Ok, Lilith,’ I think to myself, ‘enough talking to your imaginary audience ok? FOCUS!’ 

I walk up to the side window on the darker side of the building, holding my little bird, along with a generous winding of thread, sit down beside it and place the bird on the window sill. I stretch my arm out and hold the thread in my hand in a way that it should hopefully be able to unspool easily from.

Switching back to the bird, I hover in place within the window until I reach about two thirds of its height, then I slowly move forward, so far so good, after several moments I’m hovering about 3 feet away from the window, I take a look around, and am amazed at being able to see so much more with my night vision now.

I can see some alleyways with a few people sleeping in them. The alley near this building is vacant of people it seems, though I’ll need to fly around back to be sure. As such, I begin to hover towards the back of the building, taking care to not lose too much altitude as I go, I also go out wide and let loose some extra thread from my hand.

I’ve not really thought much about it, but it really is a weird sensation trying to do something with my main body while focusing on another, like this bird. Not nearly as disorienting as having vision from both. There is little I can do about the sensations of hearing and touch, but the human brain is pretty good at tuning out continuous stimuli like that, as long as it isn’t too disruptive.

I lost my focus and with it some altitude, I realize as I come out of my mini session of deep thoughts. Oh well, I haven’t crashed or anything, and I can see both the side and back of the building now, it looks clear, actually a little out of place, given how people were scattered elsewhere. I’m a little worried about just what that could imply.

It also pains my heart a little, when I think about how many people must be homeless if the whole area is like this, but I am not certain of conditions elsewhere, I can only hope it’s not as bad as I fear. Returning from my thoughts again, I am making my way along the back wall, to get a peek at the far side of the building.

As I near the corner I can confirm that it seems all three sides of this building away from the street and its light seem empty. I survey for windows and doors and any possible entry points along the far side, followed by the back and my side, as I return to my window.

There is a door at the back but it appeared to be blocked by two flat rectangular metal beams bolted to the stone somehow. The windows I could see appeared blocked from the inside, possibly wood but it was hard to tell. I did see some gaps in most of them though, a few large enough I could even stick in an arm or a leg. Which gives me an idea.

Switching back to my main body's perspective, I ‘suck up’ the thread and reintegrate my bird hand, while also realizing that is in the top ten of things I never would have imagined saying. Leaning out of the window I ponder how I should go about getting down, while taking another look around my surroundings to make sure no one could easily see me going down from this side.

The question on my mind now is, take more time to try to create a spell to float down, or just climb down as ‘discount spider girl’? Actually I’m not even a discount, I’m more like something in a box that says, ‘free, take one’ but it’s all stuff no one wants.

Right, focus Lilith, ok so, magic or climb? Ugh, all my coins are upstairs. “Urrrgggh,” I grumble quietly before whispering to myself, “Fine, I’ll climb… hey that rhymed. Damnit I’m wasting more time! Lilith if you could just go that’d be sublime!” I laugh out loud… softly, at my nonsense.

Alright, step aside jazz hands, it’s fuzzy tarantula hands time, and feet, can’t leave them out, they’ll feel sad, and I’ll fall, probably. And thus, I begin my slow climb down, while making my way toward one of the larger openings that are on this side.

Nearing the ground I do another once over to make sure no one is in sight, before touching down, and reverting my hands and feet. Next, I examine the window a bit more, it seems to be boarded up but not very neatly and there is a large gap easily big enough to fit an arm, leg or head through. I think for a moment, recalling how one of the men locked the front door, and imagine I could just walk inside with no fuss if I can unlock it.

I imagine in my head, that I probably look dressed similarly enough to the two men, one who had a longcoat and the other a hooded cloak, that no one would be too suspicious, I hope. With a plan of action in mind I begin my execution, I’m going to need some more strength and leverage, so, this time I do something a bit different.

I turn my arm into a tentacle again, except with eyes this time, a modified version of the snail eyes, that are more like a human’s, including my night vision spell, and using the thread trick, separate it from my body, and with my other hand hold it up to the opening, and let it crawl in. I feel a distinct plop as I hear it fall to the ground. Oops, guess I didn’t include a way to stick to walls.

Switching viewpoints to inside the building, with my tentacle snake... thing, I look around and all seems quiet, and I landed on a mostly empty floor, there is a little debris but this area seems somewhat maintained, though empty. To solve the sticking to walls issue, I somewhat quickly abandon the snake like movement idea, and instead, line the tentacle with centipede feet, using Google-Sensei as a reference.

Now my tentacle abomination crawls on its dozens and dozens of feet toward the door, I make sure to include plenty of slack in the thread. As I reach the door, I climb up the door to the lock, and with the tail that I left free of legs, I attempt to unlock the door, however my positioning is awkward and a tentacle end doesn’t have much dexterity to fiddle with the lock’s mechanism.

Giving up on that, I come up with a new idea, I reduce the number of legs on the front and back, allowing my ‘head’ to see the area less awkwardly as it has more freedom of movement now, and on the ‘tail’ I simply remake my normal human hand, then I am able to unlock the door after a few moments of fiddling with the lever on the locking mechanism.

My job complete, I scurry back toward my main body quickly, while sucking up the excess thread. Climbing the wall I poke out of the opening and wait there as I switch perspectives back to my main body, grab my tentacle arm, and reattach it, returning its shape to normal. Satisfied with myself, I confidently strut out of the side alley and toward the front door, putting on my best ‘bad girl’ stride.

Too bad for me holding your head up to appear confident meant I failed to notice the rock that tripped me flat on my face, as I land on the dirt with a heavy thud. I broke my nose, and my face has some blood on it, my nose quickly heals, before I even manage to sit up all the way. Seriously, I wonder what the limits are on that, and if I need to feed soon to keep it up?

I can feel the warm blood on my face, I concentrate on trying to suck it back up quickly, as I can’t wait for any passive effects to take place. As I finish doing that and sit up, I can hear some indistinct distant laughter, frightened and panicking a bit, I quickly get up, brush myself off, trying to keep up the facade, as I waltz up to the door, and open it, walking into the dark interior and away from the street.

As I shut the door, I lock it back, can’t have any random person come in and mess with my plan, what little of it exists. I stand up straight, face the big locked doorway at the other end of the hallway and take a slow deep breath in, then out. I debate for a moment on whether to use the ‘Tall Lilith body’ or not, deciding after a minute to do it to look ‘cooler’ for the party. I close my eyes and recall my ‘Tall Lilith body’ as well as my ‘Turquoise’ outfit, transforming into both. 

As I open my eyes I take another deep breath, exhaling slowly, I look down at my arms, holding them outward in front of me, and verify that I can turn them into the tentacle arms with sword blades. As they quickly shift form and two blades sit before my eyes, I can’t help but cackle softly at the ridiculous creation I have become.

Shifting my arms back to normal, I calmly walk up to the door, continuing to take my slow deep breaths. Trying to reassure myself, I open my status briefly and stare at the words ‘Vampiric Succubus,’ before looking over my abilities once more, I haven’t investigated them all yet, but seeing all this cool sounding stuff feels reassuring. “You got this Lilith,” I whisper to myself as I exhale another deep breath slowly. I pretend not to notice that my age is now 5 days, 2 hours, and 44 minutes, not wanting to accept how much time I’ve likely wasted before reaching this point.

I step in front of the locking mechanism with the 11 switches that can be turned on and off to unlock the door. I try to squash a moment of panic as I wonder if I remember the combination correctly. With another deep breath, I try to recall the code I recited in my mind previously, with a whisper I begin, “6th, 7th, 9th, Eleve— fuck. What was it?”

I tap my foot as I try to remember, I can recall it seemed to rhyme a bit so it should be rather easy, but I already forgot, gah! Curse my shitty memory! How do spies do that whole, here are your instructions, oh, good luck, they’re self destructing, bye! I’m out! *YEET My imagination shows me a cartoon of an anthropomorphized tape recorder lighting itself on fire and jumping out of a window while yelling.

My deep breaths pick up in pace as I fight off the panic, “Ok, Ok, O! K! Lilith,” I say to myself in a loud whisper, “it’s fine, everything is fine, you got this, you CAN remember, one, two, three, go! Uh… erm… ah! 1st, 3rd, Fifth— no, 6th, 7th, 9th, 11th…? Let’s hope, 1st, 3rd, Fi— 6th! 7th, 9th, 11th!” I finish confidently.

With another deep breath, I reach out to the mechanism, and begin pulling the small levers for the switches, I grab the first, and begin to pull it to the right, I can hear some movement in the mechanism and a click. I grab and pull the third to the right, with the same noises as the first.

Next, I put my hand on the fifth… and curse myself, “Stupid!” before moving to the sixth lever, pulling it to the right, I follow up with the seventh, the ninth, each with the same noises as the first. Finally, I reach out slowly and put my hand on the eleventh lever, with another deep breath, I pull it to the right.

Just as before, the same low, deep series of clunks accompany the unlocking of the door, followed by the soft rumble as some mechanism unseen in the walls moves the door, making me anxious, hoping that no one will notice. Unfortunately, my hopes are dashed as I hear a voice call out up the stairwell once the door has finished opening. I have no idea what they asked, and I cannot see them so I am unable to do my telepathic listening trick.

Unsure if the telepathic talking will work without line of sight, I simply attempt to transmit, while focusing on the bottom of the stairs, the intention ‘I am here for the party,’ in the best impression I can do of a haughty noble tone. I take another deep breath as I descend down the steps, carefully watching my steps but attempting to look as confident as possible, like I am meant to be there, and I’m some big shot.

As I reach the halfway point, and the door behind me is making its various noises as it closes shut, trapping me in the hallway with no way to go back now, I can see the figure of the man in light armor that is a mix of leather and chainmail with the dirty tan cape and now pulled back hood. I take another deep breath as stealthy as I can and continue to walk down as confidently as I can manage, I also prepare myself mentally for two possible outcomes.

The first, and most preferred, is that I can charm him in some way, and the second, option, the one I fear, is that this will turn to combat. I ready my swords and fangs to appear at a moment’s notice, while I focus on the man and try to project my ‘charm.’ I’m not entirely sure how it works exactly, but I ‘feel’ like, if I fill my concentration with my intention to ‘woo’ this man, that I am using the ability. As I step close enough to make out the details in his face, I focus my telepathy on creating a link.

I’m greeted by a gruff voice speaking unintelligible words in my ears, with the telepathic voice questioning in a demanding tone, “Who are you?”

I take a stealthy deep breath to hide my panic and buy myself time to think before responding telepathically, trying to do my best haughty noble act, “Hmph, how quaint. Can’t even recognize the most important guest of the party. Stop gawking and escort me in immediately.” As I finish speaking and stare into his eyes, I hope and pray, that my projected charm attempt has some effect.

Several long excruciating moments pass, as we just stare at each other. If I was still a normal human on earth I imagine I’d be sweating by now. Eventually, he finally speaks, simply saying, “Yeah, fine.” before turning and walking toward the double wide door of iron bars.

I breathe a sigh of relief and nearly collapse as I feel like a heavy weight held by a string which was finally cut. In reality, I just stand there a moment exhaling before taking the longest most confident strides I can, being very careful to mind the floor to avoid an encore performance of my faceplant routine.

As we walk toward the door, I take another deep breath before asking with all the false confidence I can muster, “Tell me, what is up for auction tonight?”

The man sighs the same way the IT guy at work would when I would tell him that Janice locked herself out of her email again and was too proud to call for his help. I swear it seemed like she was doing it once a week by the time I… left. She had a fight with the IT guy over it and refused to ask for his help afterward. I needed her to do her job, so I was forced to mediate. ‘Heh, I bet she’s been locked out the whole week. ...know what? Who fucking cares, she was a bitch to me. Be happy Taylor— Lilith.’ I mused to myself.

Just as my internal dialog ended the man opened the door and responded to my question, “Don’t care how important ya are, no one knows till it starts, just make sure you can pay, it ain’t cheap!”

‘Fine,’ I think to myself, as I begin to muse over the fact he said “ain’t” in my thoughts, wondering if it was him or me that translated it that way. After a few moments of silence, I replied curtly, “Hmph, no wonder it was such a big secret, none of them knew, they only pretended.” I top it off with a haughty huff that I imagine would precede the words ‘Well, I never!’