Chapter 10: Rest And Allocation

Alexis was anxious. She couldn't stop blaming herself for what had happened, couldn't stop thinking that it had been her spell that had driven the Demi-Lich into that desperation move that had ended up hurting Evelyn and had caused Elaine to become so mad with anger that she'd collapsed after tearing the thing to scorched bits.

So she was sitting in the cafeteria next to Ophelia, waiting for Evelyn and Elaine to come out. Nurse Rachel had told them to wait there, though Alexis didn't really understand why they couldn't visit their teammates.

Ophelia knew why the nurse had sent them off the moment Evelyn and Elaine entered the cafeteria. She'd smelled the scent of Elaine's cum once before and now she smelled it again. Except instead of only coming from Elaine's crotch the smell was coming from Evelyn's mouth as well.

“I'm glad you're alright”, Elaine told them as Evelyn and her sat down across from Alexis and Ophelia.

The vampire could have made a dozen smart comments, but she didn't. “Likewise”, she said and Alexis nodded her head.

“As I understand it, I owe you my life, Ophelia”, Evelyn said and gave her a deep nod. “Thank you.”

Ophelia couldn't help but smile. She'd wanted to punish Evelyn for making her waste 20 EXP she had already planned to spend on something else, but saving Evelyn's life had given her more than twice that, so she let it slide.

“You're welcome.”

**

After catching up they decided to go over their stats together, starting with Evelyn, who was still stuck at Level 1. They explained to her how to get the most out of her leveling and she showed them her options before deciding what she should pick.

“Alright, so, that thingie you mentioned isn't even on here”, Evelyn said, “but I'm pretty sure I know what I want, so please tell me if I'm being stupid.”

Everyone nodded at her.

“Okay, so for my first level up I want a single level 1 ability and a single level 2 ability, so I get the stat boosts for both, right?”

Elaine shook her head. “We needed to do that for the others because they had so few points, but you won't need to game the system until your final level up for the day.”

“Oh, alright”, Evelyn said. “Then I'll do it in order.”

The four of them talked a bit more back and forth until Evelyn finally decided to level up for real.

While Ophelia and Alexis were cooing over Evelyn's stats, Elaine got her own notification. The stat gains were fairly large, assisted by the stat boosts from Evelyn's abilities.

“Oh crap”, Evelyn said as she looked at Elaine's stat sheet. “I'm so sorry, I totally forgot to go for skills that benefit you.”

Elaine placed her hand on Evelyn's. “You've already given me a lot. Relax. I want you to be competent. Besides, from here on out, pretty much anything you can buy will transfer to me.”

“O-okay...”

“So”, Ophelia interrupted the two of them. “How come you're already Bond Level 5, Evelyn? Alexis and I are both stuck at 4.”

Evelyn blushed furiously. Ophelia had initially decided she wouldn't tease the girl but she just couldn't resist.

“We just talked things out after we woke up”, Elaine told them, but there was hesitation in her voice.

Alexis was starting to realize what was going on and she didn't like where her thoughts were going. She decided she wouldn't give Elaine up without a fight.

“Alright, I think I'll go next”, she said.

“Please do”, Elaine told her.

First, Alexis showed off the notifications she'd gotten when they got back, then she opened her level up sheet for everyone to see.

“Alright, so Glory Seeker is a no-brainer. We've benefited from Glory Hound too much not to take the upgrade”, Alexis began. “I'll also take the Advanced Light Magic. I've been kind of getting used to having magic and more would be nice. The Charged Attack sounds a lot better than the base version but I'm still not convinced it's worth forty points to buy the whole thing. But other than that, I'm open to suggestions.”

“That Beacon of Hope thing sounds great”, Ophelia said. “It applies to all bonuses to regeneration so if I wrap you up in Shadow's Embrace you would radiate some very strong healing. And if you buy Highlander then you could heal wounded allies by simply sniping enemies with light magic.”

“The upgraded horse summoning sounds good”, Elaine added. “Not right now, but if our party grows, having more transportation would be nice. And don't think I didn't notice Areadbhar cutting through that Demi-Lich's shield like it wasn't even there, so maybe you should upgrade that.”

When nobody else said anything Alexis thought for a moment, then said: “Alright, I got it.”

Right at the same time, Elaine got her own notification. To her surprise, she got yet another skill from Alexis, putting her at two skills she'd gotten from her without expecting it. And she was shocked by how powerful her version of Glory Seeker ended up being.

“So my Soul Shard apparently wants to turn me into a front-line fighter, so I thought I'd give myself a good amount of sustain”, Alexis explained. “Once I have enough EXP to buy both tiers of Charged Strike I think I'll buy that. Doubled damage from the shotgun sounds useful.”

“Honestly I think that charged attack thing would fit a sniper rifle really well”, Ophelia said. “Once you've got that we should try to have you start off fights with a charged sniper round into whatever annoys us the most.”

“Doubled damage on a supersonic sniper round? I think at some point that'd reach critical mass where the sonic boom does more damage than the projectile”, Elaine remarked. “Then again, if we could blow a Demi-Lich's shield apart in one shot that would be worth a lot of inconveniences.”

“I think this is really starting to come together, isn't it?”, Alexis asked. “Just a few days ago we were fresh-faced rookies and now we're thinking about how to kill eldritch abominations most efficiently.”

“True”, Elaine said. “So, Ophelia, do you want to do your leveling now?”

“Don't mind if I do”, she replied and began digging for her level up screen.

“Last time has demonstrated pretty conclusively that Darklight is bad, bad news, so I'm going to buy a few tricks that make that stuff less dangerous”, Ophelia said. “I'm also going to level my magic stats. I've barely even used shadow magic, but with all these abilities that stuff has got to be good for something.”

“Sounds good”, Elaine said. “I've noticed that the higher you girls buff my magic stats, the more I can do with my crystal swords, so if you're going to pump lots of points into your magic stat, I'd be grateful.”

“You should have said something”, Alexis said. “I could have bought some more magic.” Elaine shook her head.

“I'm not going to tell you to what to do with your growth. I want you to pick what works for you and then I'm going to mooch off what you're giving me. Besides, if you'd picked magic skills I wouldn't have gotten that Invigorate skill, and that one sounds really useful. It's pretty much your Beacon of Hope and Highlander rolled up into one skill. It's very much one of these 'I didn't know I wanted this until I had it' situations.”

“Yay, I'm as useful to have around as an iPad”, Alexis grumbled.

Elaine flicked her on the nose. “You know that's not what I meant. And my offer to hang out still stands. Things have been a bit hectic, but I want us to slow down a bit, let us get used to our new skill sets and spend time together.”

Alexis was still not convinced so Elaine grabbed her hand and sought eye contact.

Gosh, where does she get those steel gray eyes?

“Please?”, Elaine asked.

Alexis swallowed, then said: “O-okay.”

“Okay, I've got it”, Ophelia said and began poking buttons on her AR display.

  And once again Elaine's CARD notified her of her own increases but before she could open the notification Evelyn asked:

“You're a vampire?!”

The three of them stared at her, then Ophelia said: “Surprise?”

“I can't believe we forgot to tell her that”, Elaine said.

“Um, so, uh, do you, like, faint when they're cooking with garlic or something?”, Evelyn asked and Ophelia chuckled.

“The garlic thing is bullshit. If I couldn't eat garlic anymore I would have put a stake through my heart long ago”, she said. “And also”, she began and pulled down her uniform a little to show the silver cross she wore on a chain around her neck, showing off how it definitely didn't burn her.

Elaine smiled at their antics, but tuned them out to look over her notifications. Her stats were starting to get immense and if she'd understood the process for her own leveling correctly she was about halfway to level 5 herself.

“Are those shadow tricks contagious or something? Why do you have one, now?”, Ophelia asked as she saw the ability added to Elaine. Apparently their discussion of vampire oddities had ended while Elaine had looked over her stats.

“Probably because you bought several of them”, Elaine told her. “I think it's pretty neat, actually.”

“It'll be a lot neater once I've got Consuming Shadow and can spread puddles of shadow around so you can actually make use of it”, Ophelia said. “Me, I've got Shadow Cowl so I can make my own shadows, but you don't have that luxury.”

Elaine shook her head. “No. No more pining for abilities we want. I want us to train the ones we've got right now. You all ready to do some training?”

The three of them nodded at her.

**

Base 15 had a rather extensive training hall. The walls, ground and ceiling were specially reinforced to withstand the kinds of powers the test subjects were projected to develop over time.

The girls weren't the only ones training there that day but there were few enough people that they had a space for themselves.

They began by testing out their magic.

Ophelia's shadow magic was bizarre to use but she quickly got the hang of it. The first trick she figured out was something she called a shadow leap, turning her body into black smoke for half a second. In addition to making her all but invulnerable and able to move very quickly it also had a momentum canceling effect and allowed her to run full speed then shadow-leap to the side and come out running, turning corners that no human or superhuman would be able to. She was fairly sure she would be able to use this to run down buildings without crashing into the ground, too.

For offensive spells, the shadow magic seemed less than ideal until she mixed her paradox flames into it, which turned the shadow constructs into dangerous shadow flares that behaved not entirely unlike Darklight but without that same coiling wrongness about it. Its two main properties were impossible to test out though. Allegedly the paradox flames would cancel out Darklight but the only way to encounter Darklight was to fight Outsiders, which they obviously didn't have at the base and how much damage it could deal remained to be seen as well, since paradox flames couldn't hurt allies. The only offensive magic Ophelia was able to use that didn't involve the flames was shadow tendrils that acted as either thin sharp ribbons that cut or as claws that tore. Both of them were more about precision than brute force, though the Lampade Wand made up for that.

Alexis' light magic had been strong from the start but after a few hours of practice she'd gotten terrifying with it. It wasn't that her magic was that strong, it was that magic in large part required imagination to be truly dangerous and Alexis had imagination in spades. She'd mastered the invisibility trick pretty quickly, followed by a flash bang effect. The light speed movement had taken longer and she couldn't use it on anyone but herself yet but it was impressive and allowed her a lot of freedom to maneuver. She'd also learned how to create shapes out of solid light, which she'd immediately used to make a light copy of her Areadbhar. Dual-wielding spears was horribly impractical, but the light spear made an excellent projectile weapon. After a bit of fiddling she'd managed to create the spear in such a way that, after hurling it, she could make it erupt into a flash bang.

Evelyn had been worried about her lightning magic messing up her CARD but a quick consultation with Jeanne had revealed that the CARD was hardy enough to take a full blast from an actual lightning bolt without problem, so Evelyn began practicing in earnest. Evelyn had never been one for Star Wars, Western entertainment had never really been her thing, but she still tried out the 'lightning from the fingertips' thing. She found out that it was grossly inefficient though and had decided to instead focus on lightning blasts and ball lightning, which worked much better. She was confident that during a thunderstorm she would be able to call down real lightning from the sky, but of course she couldn't practice that in a controlled environment.

Elaine had grown strong enough that she could now control six swords simultaneously. She trained herself in how to use them most efficiently and had found out that letting them float behind her when not in use had become second nature pretty quickly.

With her newfound light and shadow magic she'd had more issues, though after a lot of tutoring from Ophelia she had finally managed to recreate the shadow leap trick and with Alexis' help she had figured out how to use thin laser beams in conjunction with her swords, carving through enemies with laser beams ricocheting from crystal sword to crystal sword.

Their other abilities came along similarly well and as Ophelia had suspected, combining Shadow's Embrace with Beacon of Hope created a healing aura so powerful that if Elaine cut her finger while inside it she had to pull the knife away immediately or the wound would heal closed around it. As an apology for driving Ophelia wild with the scent of blood she promised to let the vampire drink from her the next time they were alone.

Evelyn took very well to her spectral arms and could use them as well as a regular set of arms, letting the left hold a shield and casting spells with the right while her physical arms were busy with her assault rifle.

But the biggest shock came when they tested out their physical stats. All of them were now significantly faster and stronger than normal humans, each of them able to lift all of the others without issue and each of them faster than world record sprinters except able to sustain that speed for far longer than a sprint.

When they went back to the cafeteria they had to be careful not to bend the silverware until they had all gotten used to how strong they had become.

**

The door to Stollos' monitoring room opened and Rachel stepped in.

“What are you cackling about?”, she asked him. “It's a bit creepy.”

Stollos cleared his throat and calmed down. This really wasn't like him at all. “Have a look”, he said and waved a hand to the monitor in front of him, which showed the training hall of the compound.

On screen was a young woman with fluffy light brown hair, six translucent swords dancing around her.

“Oh my”, Rachel said, impressed. “Are those glass or crystal?”

“Crystal”, Stollos replied.

“So Typhon then, not Seth. Just like yours”, she commented.

“Precisely”, he said. “Except, the girl isn't a Shard Bearer, she's an Awakener. Her Soul Shard is just naturally that strong.”

“I admit, this is very impressive”, she said.

“And by sheer coincidence, she's also the one with the highest success rate for the Oath of Crystal Tears so far”, he said.

“So she's the first one you want to perform it on?”

Stollos hesitated. “Honestly, I'm not sure. If we push her through it she would be an incredibly valuable asset. Even more so than right now, I mean. But if she fails, that would be a terrible blow.”

“It doesn't really matter unless Jeanne is willing to help”, Rachel said.

“She is”, he said. “I've talked to her.”

“Oh?”

“She said if the success rate is at least ninety percent she'll consider it. If it's ninety-eight percent she's promised to do it.”

“Very good, I'm looking forward to it. Where is she”, Rachel pointed at the girl in the feed, “right now?”

“Ninety-two and climbing. I think I'll wait until I've reached Jeanne's arbitrary threshold of ninety-eight, though. That girl is too valuable to risk.”

“If she is that useful, why risk it at all?”, Rachel asked.

“Because she has a second Soul Shard”, Stollos said.

“Who?”, she asked.

“Tiamat”, Stollos said. His voice was casual, but a little smug.

Rachel's head snapped up. “Tiamat, the mother of dragons?!”

“The very same”, he said. “With that Soul Shard active, she could empower all of her squad mates, maybe even all of Project Divinity.”

“Well, I understand why you want to send her through the Oath now.”

“I never thought to ask this, but are you willing to help?”, he asked.

Rachel licked her lips. “Did you seriously just ask me if I'm down to fuck?”, Rachel asked, sounding slightly offended. “I like her and those side effects of yours are going to make it even more fun.”

Everything was coming together so well Stollos felt like cackling again but instead of creeping her out again he asked: “What did you come here for, anyway?”

Rachel's brow furrowed in confusion but then her face lit up in realization. “Oh, right. I wanted to tell you that I've finished with the files you asked me to look over. Most of them I had to weed out but there were a few hits and I've contacted the brass and told them who to send. We'll be getting six new recruits starting next week.”