Somewhere in the woods, a young elven girl was utterly lost and alone. The girl was short around 140 cm in height, with long sapphire blue hair and sapphire blue eyes. Her skin was fair and marked with a number of wounds, she was wearing a torn and bloody aquamarine dress that barely concealed her figure and her bra could be seen poking out on the left side. Her chest was about average for an elf with a B cup. She had lost her shoes earlier so she was barefoot. She had managed to escape the bandits that had attacked her caravan, but she had no idea where she was. She rounded another tree, leaning a bit on her staff since she was exhausted and came out in a clearing, dimly lit by the setting sun. In the center of the clearing a large stone structure, sat atop a small hill. She climbed the stairs on one side of the structure to get a better look. The structure was 4 pairs of pillars on either side of a staircase aligned with the compass points. The top of the hill was a flat stone plaza and in the center was a pool of water and rising out of the center of the pool was a naked statue of a horned woman with wings, and in her right hand, she held a coiled leash with a collar. When she passed the pillars she felt the familiar feel of magic wards and knew she was safe from the monsters and beasts of the forest.

Feeling safe for the moment, she sat down in front of the statue, set her pack down and removed her torn and bloody dress, so she could look at her wounds. Using some water magic, she started cleaning her wounds, so she could cast her only real healing spell. As she cleaned her wounds she checked her status.

{Note condition bleeding, health regen drops to zero and health starts draining at 5% per hour until bleeding is stopped.

Note condition exhausted: Mana recovery is halved

Note: the above stat table is the simplified version, with most of the base stats hidden}

Reiko studied her status briefly, before closing it. Then she made a quick prayer to the God of the Forest before draining another 10 MP from her nearly depleted mana pool to cast lesser heal. A few of her wounds closed, but not all she then cast it several more times and drained the little mana she had left, then she blacked out. When she woke up, she found herself laying in some grass, all around her she could see nothing but dark shadows. Looking around she still had her staff, but her pack and dress were nowhere to be seen. She quickly pulled up her status and was glad to see that she was for the most part at full strength. The only thing she had lost was the resist bonus of her dress.

Just as she closed her status, she sensed something and turned around. There standing just a couple feet behind her was, a beautiful woman. The woman was taller than Reiko, and had better proportions, too. Causing her to feel a brief surge of jealousy, pulling her vision away from the woman’s chest she looked at the her face, the first thing she noticed was the horns, then she noticed the girl’s face was remarkably similar to the statue she saw earlier, putting her on guard. Not knowing who she was dealing with, she decided to use the basic skill Analyze.

The moment she saw the woman’s status, pop up she knew she was in trouble. The status didn’t tell her much, but it revealed the woman to be a goddess and not just any goddess, but one of the major dark gods. She then clutched her staff tightly and placed it front of her while making a quick prayer to the god of the forest. However, instead of feeling the familiar warmth she always felt after praying to him, she felt a sharp cold ripple through her.

“Don’t try praying to him, again. He’s quite touchy when one of his own, pray to him at a Dark Shrine,”

“Dark Shrine?”

“The place you were at last night was a shrine to me. So after you prayed to him there, he got all touchy about it and gave you to me, but don’t worry I will give you test if you can pass I will let you go”

She started to ask a question when suddenly, a blue screen popped up with decidedly cheery writing which didn’t quite match the message it contained

Looking at the message, she saw downsides no matter what happened. While the hero title would be great since it would grant her the Hero Class, she didn’t want to be a Lust Mage. The free attribute points though almost made her drool, those were incredibly valuable, usually the only source of those was attribute crystals, which were only found in the larger dungeons but divine quests were known to grant them as well. Attribute crystals when they showed up on the market, the demand drove the price so high that buying one could bankrupt a small kingdom. However failing looked quite bad since it seemed to be saying she would be reduced to a sex pet, but she couldn’t be sure since the only item there she was familiar with was the Simple Minded trait, which was nothing but bad news. She tried appraising the listed traits, titles and subclass using analyze but found she could only appraise the one trait she was already familiar with.

Simple Minded: Complex thought is beyond you. -100% to learning spells, can’t make complex plans, Can’t use tactics, -100% to leadership, +30% to simple pleasures, 50% more likely to be tricked

“Can I refuse?” asked Reiko hoping to get out of this trial.

“Of course, I will just count it as an automatic failure. Want to quit?”

“In that case, can you tell me anything about this dungeon I am supposed to challenge?” asked Reiko hoping to learn something to help her pass, since she couldn’t get out of the trial.

“Yes, It is a single floor demonic dungeon of the lust circle. You will be challenging it alone,”

Hearing that her heart sank a bit, as she just went from in trouble, to basically screwed. Afterall demons were the worst enemy of mages, since they were practically immune to magic because of their inherent trait demon skin, which granted a decent amount of armor and resist, but also a massive 75% magic resistance to all but Celestial magic which is the advanced version of the Light element. 

Reiko’s Spell list:

Firebolt 25 mp

Fireball 200 mp

Aquabolt 25 mp

Ice Bolt 40 mp

Lesser Heal 10 mp

Basic Barrier (note: this is the spell that grants shields and because it is cheap to maintain most mages maintain it constantly, while in the field.)  costs half the users mana to cast, requires 10 mana a week to maintain. Uses 25 mana per minute to regenerate. Recovers at 50 points per minute. Regeneration starts ten minutes after taking a hit. Must be out of combat to recharge.

“What kind of demons can I expect?”

“These,” said Dewari then a Pair of stat windows appeared in her vision.

Her heart sank further, between their magic resistance and their resist stat of 80 her best spell was Ice bolt and doing the mental math she calculated an average damage of 60, but that was still better than just hitting them with her staff which would yield an average damage of 32. There was no way she was going to win via combat, she was going to have to evade the monsters as much as possible and hope she could beat the boss, if it had one. The only thing she was sure of was that this dungeon run was going to be terrible. She then closed the screens and looked up to ask Dewari if the dungeon had a boss, only to find she was already gone. Looking around she noticed the shadows receding, revealing the surrounding trees and to her left a forbidding pair of stone doors in front of a platform built into the side of a cliff. Stone stairs lead to the platform on either side rose pillars of foreboding black stone. With the shadows gone she looked around for her pack and dress, as she didn’t want to challenge a dungeon, half-naked. 

She spent over an hour searching. However she was unable to find them, but she did learn how far she could travel from the entrance of the dungeon, without failing the quest. The answer was about 50 meters. Now having given up on finding her pack, which contained her spare clothes or the dress she had been wearing, yesterday, she was standing in front of the dungeon’s entrance. “I really hate you Dewari, making me challenge of all things a demonic dungeon in my underwear,” thought Reiko as she hesitantly pushed the door open. The door opened on a rough stone tunnel. She cautiously moved down the tunnel, until she reached the first room. In the first room, she was greeted by two demons, a Lesser Demon Girl, and a Lesser Beastkin Demon. Both of them looked like cute young girls, and neither wore clothes. The Demon Girl cast a spell, Reiko dodged to the left and then twisted out of the way of a strike from the Beastkin Demon before dashing for the corridor on the other side of the room. Just a bit before she reached the door she stumbled slightly and cried out in pain.

She cursed about the fact that dark spells always inflict pain and continued on her way, while hoping she didn’t take too many hits. A few meters down the corridor she came across a fork in the path and turned right. After a while the corridor turned back towards the entrance, and she continued down the corridor and entered another room, this time with four demons, and as she stepped in the room, she triggered a trap that dropped rocks behind her blocking the tunnel, and only her quick reflexes prevented them from raining on her. Unfortunately, this meant she was trapped in a room with four Lust demons and no way out.

“Crap,” cried Reiko as she barely managed to dodge one bolt only to be hit by a beastkin’s skill, called triple claw a hard-hitting skill (Strike the foe with three powerful strikes).

She quickly activated her skill multicast and cast Ice bolt at the beastkin that had struck her. Draining 300 mana from her pool. Five bolts flew out and struck the demon staggering it. She ran forward while it was off balance and slammed it hard in the face with her staff.

The beastkin dropped to the ground stunned. She then jumped to the side avoiding a swipe from the other beastkin demon and then a spell zipped past where she was. She responded by casting a Fireball at the mages, while jumping to the side to dodge the latest strike from the Beastkin.

The demon girls cast a pair of stun bolt spells in response, as the one beastkin moved to strike her she managed to avoid the stun bolts, but was hit by the beastkin demon’s rapid strike skill (Hit the target rapidly at half power, up to two twelve hits)

She cursed slightly, then jumped to the left after managing to get away from the demon attacking her and used her multicast skill again, to cast the Ice bolt spell again, but she missed. She cursed since she just wasted 300 of her mana, the only good thing was it helped her put some distance from the Lesser Beastkin Demon. She noted the other beastkin was stirring. Then she cast a fireball spell at the mages.

Happy to see the mages’ shields were gone now, she checked her remaining mana, as she rushed the mages. She was down to 750 mana, she had to be more careful with it now. Barely managing to dodge another spell she cast an Ice bolt at the nearest mage, and then struck with her staff as hard as she could.

The hit staggered the mage, so Reiko followed up with two quick hits, to the head before taking a Demonic Drain Mana spell.

Jumping to the left she cursed, since she needed that mp and her shields were basically gone, especially since they won’t recharge until she was out of combat. She cast another Ice bolt spell at the first demon girl, and this time being more careful rushed in for a pair of quick swings before jumping away to avoid the beastkin who were in striking range again, but not without being grazed

Having jumped away, she took a quick look at her injured arm, then took some distance and cast a pair of Ice bolts.

She kept her distance now and fired seven more spells without getting hit.

After casting that last spell she was effectively out of mana with only 10 mana left, she had also used a fair amount of her stamina with all the dodging and running, but her only choice was to charge since mana doesn’t regenerate during combat. After charging she managed to dodge the wounded beastkin’s strike and hit it thrice hard in quick succession, with two of those striking the head before she was hit from the side by the other with its triple claw skill.

After being hit the pain was intense, and she barely registered the message before she blacked out.