After a while, we end our reconciliation make-out session when we notice that Eclaire also shows signs of onsetting stage three infection.

She sighs and then rolls her eyes, "Guess it is my time now, huh? Jared, you know what to do."

"Yeah, I do. Don't worry, dear."

I quickly look over her new skills to look for something that we can sacrifice without it negatively affecting her.

Not too shabby. The weird source of light may come in handy sometimes; despite being creatures that prefer the night, vampires don't come with night vision in this stupid system.

Gentle my ass. Brutalizing someone with fractures and broken bones isn't peaceful in the slightest. Maybe I should be worried about a deep darkness hiding behind her angelic smile?

I guess this is the class she complained about breaking. I can't even guess from this what she originally wanted. I assume it is similar to what I experienced with Survivor, the overlap between the current version and the original may as well not exist.

I assume this happened because as a spirit she is a part of me, of my soul, and her new class was written to a section of my soul that was thoroughly infected with glitches...

I'm sorry, Eclaire...

So deadbrain friendship, braindead friendship, and eventually scam money? Eh, why not, I've heard worse.

I don't really see what's so "war" about this cleric; it looks like a fancy field medic to me. And the third skill looks nearly unusable; aren't you yourself always within five meters of a target you strike with a melee weapon? Well, it is a glitched skill so what do you expect - certainly nothing sane.

Called a witch, but provides boons instead of curses, something is wrong here. And aside from the one messed up skill I can't even blame it on glitches this time. Whoever designed this class has a very abnormal idea of what a witch is...

But overall it seems Eclaire is heavily leaning into her image of the Holy Maiden. Healing, boons, the works. She even skipped on any hints of her blacksmithing hobby, I thought that was more important to her than that. But that may have just been a frustrated Lucia's rebellious phase, what do I know?

"I'm a bit surprised, Eclaire. You've completely eschewed any hint of your smithing past. Considering how much Lucia hangs unto it, I thought..."

Eclaire cuts me off, "No, you're right, I will miss working on my crafts, but I feel this is more important. I'll have a lot of work to do with the church and everything, which is something I also enjoy, mostly. And let's be real, once all of this is over and things have settled down to an acceptable state of normal I've all the time in the world to take this hobby back up; thanks to you, we're immortal now, right? Or... maybe..."

She never finished her sentence, so I have to ask, "What?"

While discussing this, I continue to search through her skill list, looking for skills that are a suitable sacrifice for her Hybrid class.

Lucia buts in, "What Ms. goody-two-shoes over there is worried about is the faint possibility that we two may become one again. We were one person before after all."

They could fuse again? Why would they? At least as far as I can see both are their own person now and not a pair of emotionally half-empty human shells. Rather, they've become quite distinctively different from both each other and the original Lucia, and not only because the human was changed into a vampire or a spirit...

Ah, better watch which buttons I push, I'm still in that menu.

"Do you have more than a gut feeling about that? Because I don't see how or why that should happen. From my view, both of you have already grown so different from one another that such a reunion is simply out of the question."

Eclaire explains, "That's just something Lucy came up with, I don't believe in it either. But I can't deny that the possibility nags at my mind ever since she told me about it."

"Yeah, that's not happening", not on my watch. I like them separated as they are.

Or is that just the title making me feel that way again? Argh, who knows, we have a different problem right now that needs addressing.

"I don't think this worry should influence what choices you make. You'll have lots of time later to make up for what you're missing out now."

Eclaire pats Lucia on the back, "Yeah, and when I'm totally rusty, Lucy can coach me back into shape."

"Good, that sounds like a plan", a bit distracted, I finally close the menu.

...?

Shit, I already clicked on the confirmation button, I thought it was the leave menu button!! Damn, I forgot to add some skill sacrifices to the Hybrid class. Undo, undo!!

Damn, too late to change it now, I screwed up.

Before I can admit my mistake, the signs of infection have already disappeared from her. Out of us three, she had the fastest recovery from it, and she doesn't show any monstrous changes either. She looks exactly the same as before.

Eclaire looks confused, "Uh, I just got a Hybrid class and... that's it? I expected... something different."

"Seems like it is only a big deal if the infection has already progressed a lot. Say, can you still see Lucia's shadow?"

She mocks me, "What, no weird questionnaire to get back at me? Check if I'm still the same person?"

"No, don't need to. I feel I can trust you on this, Eclaire."

She pats my head, "Whatever, thanks. So as far as I can see now, Lucy's shadow is gone. What do you suppose this means?"

Lucia teases her blonde counterpart, "That you're no longer hallucinating."

Eclaire scratches her head, "Was I? I... no idea, it didn't feel like it. Uh... But maybe I was, the glitches get to you in the sneakiest ways it seems..."

Just like I did with the block dots. Yeah, I can relate. It doesn't feel fake but it undoubtedly is.

"So... any idea what happened to my weapon?", Eclaire takes out a can.

"No, sorry, no clue."

Eclaire waves it around, trying to figure out how to operate it. And fails by getting it to let out some spray right into her face, "Bwah!!"

She coughs, "Gah, it still burns!"

Oh, so it was functional pepper spray. Whoops.

She throws it away in a fit of anger, "Useless thing!"

After calming down, she creates again a regular mace, "I'll stick with this. Goddamn pranksters..."

"Maybe you should hand it to Karen and let her figure it out."

She still coughs, "Yeah... will do."

So what exactly is her new Hybrid class like?

Completely glitched out but could've still been worse. More once-per-day stuff for our little one-hit-wonder and nothing actively detrimental to us.

Her first skill strongly reminds me a lot of my [Undead] skill, a corrupted version of it.

Yeah, quite similar, but hers seems less detrimental.

I confirm her for now final status and notice that the weird wannabe-divine class did not level up again. Does it only level up when I make some sacrifices? The description didn't hint at that restriction.

Her stats went up by a lot, but that is to be expected when she gains a total of six classes with several levels alongside them.

Well, what's done is done, and we go back to doing couple things for a while.

3QGN73

I have to admit, I cheated with Eclaire's Hybrid class. Normally, if no sacrifice is selected I just pick a ("random") monster class, cut its stat rates in half and call it a day. For Hybrids created with skill sacrifices, the result is loosely based on the input. Here though, the process was more the latter when it should've been the former. I mostly wanted to get Eclaire out of the "vampire food" category, and there was no skill combination in my mind that would've achieved that, so I cheated with the random draw.

Eventually, I'd like to reach a point where our trio is on mostly equal footing, but for Eclaire that takes quite a lot of rules-bending. She's a spirit, so technically subject to the whims of her summoner, who is now also her husband; not equal. Her not-quite spirit state lets me handwave most of these issues.

She's a human, so technically "food" for the two vampires; not equal. That's what the [Holy Undead] skill is supposed to mitigate.

And let's better ignore the grey area that is titles; she's a spirit, so doesn't have the shared titles, which include among other "fun" things nobility - so she's a commoner getting engaged to nobles; it really is a good thing that we don't have to deal with regular nobility in this story.

As for my scheduling issues, well, as stupid as it may sound, the truth is I needed to know exactly what happens in C5 and there was a lot of back and forth with the chapters until then.