Chapter 36.1 - Titan

 

He woke up to the sound of Rivia reverently muttering prayers. The priestess was kneeling beside him with her ‘Pestilence’ miracle book and finishing up the final hours she needed to devote to the Dark Origin. Her stomach rumbled, having not eaten over two days of fasting, and furs were wrapped around her naked body to keep her warm.

He yawned, stretched and dragged himself over to the window slats. Hearing the sounds of the others chopping wood and laughing outside, he opened the window up. Two inches of glistening white snow had covered the ground overnight, and the sky was still adding more on with little snowflakes continuously drifting downwards all across the village. The cloudy sky overhead had intermittent rays of light streaking downwards towards land, and the gray blanket above him stretched out as far as he could see. He was surprised the weather had changed so fast, but was kind of glad to see a winter wonderland. It had been a while.

Jason and Borthome were the ones chopping wood, adding it to another fire that Atharost was tending to with his magic. Napoleon was being chased around by Nommen as Estella while her two daughters, Elise and Amaia, were preparing a stew. Various ingredients including herbs, meat, salt and water were being thrown into a large pot hung over the flames.  Meanwhile, Willow was sitting cross-legged atop a large stump while meditating - creating crystals of floating gray ice that swirled about her in a mesmerizing fashion.  The woman's black wings were folded behind her, she had a content smile on her lips with her eyes closed, and she looked very much at peace with her life.

Abruptly to his right where she knelt on the floor, Rivia began to gasp. Trey’s eyebrows raised as dark power surged through her, encompassing her figure entirely for a brief moment. It ended as quickly as it happened, with a spark of black and green energy leaving her and dissipating into the air.

“Your “minion Rivia is attempting to learn the miracle ‘Pestilence.’ The dark origin requires a sacrifice for this miracle to be learned. The dark origin demands a sacrifice from her master. Do you wish to sacrifice a minor amount of your own experience gained to enhance your minion? You have 60 second to decide.”

Trey frowned, then glanced back to Rivia when she started sparking again. She was in obvious pain and the black-green energies continued to shock her while she repeatedly gasped, and it appeared that he needed to make a decision quickly. He also didn’t have much to go on, ‘minor amount’ wasn’t very descriptive, but the prize was probably acceptable. That miracle she was trying to learn was quite good, and she was essentially an extension of him now. Rather than looking at it like he was trading some of his experience to better someone else, he would look at it like trading some gained experience for a new ability he could use himself.

“You have accepted the terms. You have lost 2 combat levels: 5 stats from Wisdom and their correlating 10 points of MP have been lost. 5 stats from Speed have been removed. 2 skill points level from Chains of Chaos have been removed. Your minion Rivia has learned the miracle ‘Pestilence.’ Please check its status page for more information.”

Huh. Not terrible, he’d do it again if he’d known the exact numbers.

She quickly dropped the book she’d been grasping, with her hands slamming the floor, and she was sweating profusely. Her breathing was labored and staggered, but she was slowly regaining her composure.

“Congratulations.” Trey muttered with a small smile, appreciating that his minions were indeed growing in strength and ability. He also refrained from telling her what he’d sacrificed in order to not take away from her own accomplishment. “Maybe you’ll be a little more useful from now on.”

Rivia nodded slowly, keeping her eyes on the floor and picking up the small brown book of miracles to clutch it to her chest. Then she pulled out her other tiny black book, Alkir’s First Writ, with a soft smile. “I have been studying the scriptures of Alkir during my time with you. Do you remember the ritual I spoke to you about back in Oblivion?”

Usually she wasn’t this talkative, but whenever she was - it was because she was speaking of her faith. Alkir in particular was a rather hot topic for the priestess. Even though Rivia hated Trey, if he spent the time to talk to her about her religious ideals - it without fail made her outwardly enthusiastic and happy.

“Yeah. Didn’t you say it was the ritual where you’d sacrifice someone to Alkir for permanent stat points?” He crossed his arms and watched her in amazement as a brilliant smile replaced her normally downcast features.

“Yes!” she exclaimed excitedly. “I think I finally understand where I went wrong! I was going to wait to tell you until after I acquired the Pestilence miracle, but now that it’s done… I was hoping we could try undertaking this ritual sometime? If I complete it correctly, I would acquire it as a new skill and would be able to improve it. I could use it to make all of us stronger, and I would grow closer to Alkir while doing it!”

Trey snorted. He’d need to find someone to sacrifice first. “You do realize that I’m not going to go around sacrificing people for the sake of… well, whatever this is. Right?”

Rivia nodded vigorously, getting up from the ground to join him at the window. She opened up the black book, flipped a couple pages and began scrolling over the words so he could see for himself. “We wouldn’t need any innocents! It could be anyone that you were going to kill! Such as the cultists we fought, if we’d just taken one of them or even a couple of them and held them as captives so that we could sacrifice them to the dark goddess… even that would be acceptable!”

Trey blankly stared at the stunning yet sadistic-as-fuck demoness, then he flinched as pain from the curse Eleknar had given him flared to life.  Ugh... he'd probably have to give in and explore that afterlife sometime soon.  He was still hesitant to do so considering his misgivings on the matter, but at some point he just couldn't keep taking this pain.  It was building by the day, getting worse, and he could only imagine what the tier 2 version of that curse would do to him if Eleknar kept its word and pushed Trey to the next level.

Her excited features began to falter as he continued to stare at her without saying anything, thinking he wasn’t interested in attempting the ritual she was trying to learn... not realizing his mind was elsewhere.

“Jesus you’re fucked up.” Trey eventually said with a shake of his head. “But yes, we can eventually try it out. But only with people who deserve to die, understand?”

“REALLY?!” Her falling features took a sharp rise and her smile illuminated the room again. “Thank you, master! You will not regret this!”

“Your minion Rivia has improved its opinion of you from ‘Resentful’ to ‘Wary’. Your minion still suffers a 15% experience decrease due to it remaining in the negative category.”

God damn. That was all it took for an opinion boost?

“No problem. Now put on some clothes and go get some food, you haven’t eaten in forever.”

The demoness was quick to oblige him. She donned her black silk robes and was out of there in a flash, stomach still growling even as she walked out the door.

Trey’d been neglecting his unused points for too long. The same could be said for his minions. He’d had ample opportunity to apply the unused points but had been adapting to his new life and it hadn’t taken priority. Now though, as he put off going outside into the cold snow, he figured it was as good a time as any to do it.

He pulled up the familiar teal screen of his status page and then selected his minion’s status pages as well. Napoleon was the only one who didn’t have any points to assign after his recent death and his screen was therefore promptly closed.

He didn’t want to spend too much time on this so he went fast. Even after his recent loss concerning the payment for Rivia’s miracle: Trey had 1 skill point available for himself, which he put into his Chaos Ball spell. He used it frequently and it did a shit ton of damage, if he could get it to level 10 soon for an upgrade it may help even more. The 5 unused stat points he had were put directly into intelligence.

He also had 1 open control slot for another potential minion, and he was intending to use it soon… That being said, he STILL hadn’t used the ‘Least Summoning Circle’ ability he had. He didn’t even know what to expect and had a vague idea of what would happen when he did apply the innate knowledge he’d received. Linking with one of the outer realms for the possibility of finding another creature to minionize seemed simple enough, but he’d have to do it away from Vork in case it wasn’t something he could control. He didn’t want people to die for his stupid mistakes, and had already learned his lesson after he’d been smashed the first time while trying to summon demons from Talsh’Noc’Un’s soulstone storage.

Moving on he saw that Rivia still had 5 remaining stat points. After having spoken with her about how the Faith stat gave her a divinity point for every 2 Faith stat points, he assigned 4 of the stat points to Faith and subsequently saw her DP maximum rise from 15 to 17. Then he applied the last stat point to Vitality, increasing her maximum HP from 102 to 104.

Atharost was next. He had 2 skill points available to spend and 10 unused stat points. Trey wasn’t sure why the ifrit still had these points as he’d told Atharost that he could apply them himself, but shrugging it off as likely laziness Trey placed 2 of the skill points into Firebolt. He’d have applied them to the Fire Wall spell for an upgrade at level 10, but he’d only seen the ifrit use this spell once and he’d seen Atharost use firebolt about a billion times by now. He’d get more use out of the points going into the Firebolt spell. Of the stat points, he placed all 10 of them straight into Vitality to increase the ifrit’s HP by 20.

 

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Name: Trey Bon

HP 220/220, MP 134/134, SP 120/120, DP 1/1

Race: Human

Guild: None

Class: Infernal Summoner

Level 8

Status Alerts:

• Remaining Skill Points: 0
• Remaining Stat Points: 0
• Current Permanence cycle: ON
• Current Bound Point: Mehre Forest Runestone

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Simplified Status Page for Napoleon

Name: Napoleon

Race: Oblivion Imp, Lesser Demon

Class: N/A

Level: 5

HP: 94/94, MP: 150/150, SP: 66/66, DP: 1/1

Skills: Firebolt (lvl. 8)(Fire), Sneak (lvl. 4) Fear (lvl. 1)(Curse), Small Blades (lvl. 1)

Traits: Fragile, Intelligent, Trey Bon’s Minion

Magical Attributes: Curse, Fire

Opinion of you: Admired

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Simplified Status Page for Rivia Ahst

Name: Rivia Ahst

Race: Culn, Lesser Demon

Class: Priestess

Level: 3

HP: 104/104, MP: 100/100, SP: 100/100, DP: 17/17

Skills: Rejuvenation (lvl. 4)(Dark Miracle), Immortal’s Infernal Blessing (lvl. 2) (Alkir’s

Miracle), Pestilence (lvl. 1)(Dark Miracle), Small Blades (lvl. 1),

Assassination (lvl. 1)

Traits: Curious, Faith Driven, Trey Bon’s Minion

Magical Attributes: Dark

Opinion of you: Wary

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Simplified Status Page for Atharost

Name: Atharost

Race: Ifrit, Greater Demon

Class: N/A

Level: 23

HP: 298/298,MP: 402/402, SP: 100/100, DP: 1/1

Skills: Firebolt (lvl. 26^^) (Fire), Fireblast (lvl. 20^^) (Fire), Wall of Flames (lvl. 8)(Fire)

Firestorm (lvl. 2) (Tier 2 Fire), Demon Tail (lvl. 11^), Hand to Hand Combat (lvl. 7)

Traits: Flying, Life of Phoenix, Fireform, Trey Bon’s Minion

Magical Attributes: Fire

Opinion of you: Very Friendly

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A quick knock at Trey’s door brought him back to his senses. He closed the status screens, called out that he was changing, and put on his clothes. He was cold even with the clothes on and was eager to get to the bonfire, and as he opened the door he saw Jason standing there waiting for him.

[English] “What’s up man?” Trey asked, closing the door behind him.

Jason glanced behind them and out the main room’s door leading outside. He gave a head bob so that Trey would look, and out there in the snow was a young hooded man that looked to be about 18 years old. He was of an average build and height, and had a thick fur coat with leather leggings. He was standing anxiously waiting for something or someone next to the big ifrit who was looking him over.

[English] “That guy over there wants to talk to you.” Jason remarked, blinking as a piece of dust flew into his eye and trying to get it out. “He’s one of the locals. Says he saw you fighting when the village was attacked and wants some training… He’s willing to pay you.”

Trey’s surprise was evident and he folded his arms while thinking. “Uhm… well I could always train him in hand to hand combat. I’m kinda garbage with a sword… I just started using Talsh’Noc’Un and need training in that myself.”

Now it was Jason’s turn to be surprised. “You haven’t used a sword before now? It looked like you were pretty decent from what I saw.”

Trey shook his head. “Nope. Thanks for the compliment, but I really don’t have much experience at all. I have some improved reflexes thanks to my symbiote Sithis, so that’s probably why I’m not a complete flop wielding that thing.”

‘Your assessment is correct.’ Sithis said, materializing the infernal mask and jaws for that brief moment before they disappeared again to leave Trey’s human features behind.

A chill went down Jason’s spine. “Damn dude, that’s creepy. Sithis lives in your head then?”

Trey chuckled, shrugging as he did and tightening his cultist battle robe with a strap on the waist to keep the warmth in after materializing it from shadowform. “Pretty much. Sithis is a part of me now, we talk every day. He’s been pretty quiet lately but that’s because he’s rummaging through my memories to better understand my past life. It takes a lot of effort and time, or at least that’s what he claims. Oh! Question: What do you think about all this Jason? I’m curious.”

“All this?” repeated Jason.

“Being stuck in a virtual reality, or a game world, or whatever the fuck this place is.” Trey motioned around them. “It all seems way too real, and I’m seriously wondering if I’m going insane or if all of this is actually happening. What about the message about the nuclear apocalypse we got? Was that real too? What the actual fuck man?”

He sighed, letting Jason ponder the words.

“I don’t really know.” Jason eventually said, trying to wrap his head around it all. “My life back on Earth wasn’t the best. I’m enjoying it here, and I choose to believe that these people are all real until proven otherwise. As for the apocalypse… Well, it was going to happen eventually.”

The two men laughed and Trey patted Jason on the back.

“Alright. Well let’s go see this new guy. What’s his name? Maybe I can teach him a thing or two about martial arts. Otherwise he’ll have to go learn from someone who knows what the fuck they’re doing!”

Jason laughed again and nodded, leading the way and exiting the cabin with Trey close behind. “His name is Vertz. Go easy on him, he’s just a farmer after all.”