The wind buffets me as the two of us fall as one, and I press myself close against the dying man’s body.
Despite that, I hear the sound of bullets screaming past us. Even over the deafening din of air resistance, the thunderstrike gunshots are still easily audible.
Kellen and I tumble end over end, though implying that he plays any role in it is a little misleading. He’s still alive, but only barely. Blood streams from his wound, and I take the liberty of creating a couple new injuries as we fall. Right now, he’s little more than a human shield for me.
That moniker proves itself to be true when our cycle of tumbling leads to him facing the sky anda an arrow sprouts in his abdomen, a three-foot long shaft appearing that smashes straight through his black steel armor, his flesh, and the armor on the other side of the body. I barely avoid the tip of the arrow cresting through his back.
After the arrow, though, nothing else attacks us, which is probably because of the rapidly-approaching river along with the train curving away from us.
Features come into closer detail as we fall, glistening water and green shrubs and caves in the cliff. I prepare myself for impact. The two of us are moving fast.
When the face of the water is less than twenty feet from us, a split second remaining between both of us and a watery grave, I push off from Kellen’s body and activate Bloodstep.
As the world turns red, my skill arrests my momentum and I move laterally, dashing sideways. The river is larger than I thought it was—a hundred feet across, maybe—so my skill doesn’t get me all the way out. It doesn’t even get me halfway to the shore.
Targets killed: [1/8]
+100 XP awarded.
After using my skill, I’m still twenty feet in the air, but my momentum’s been arrested enough that the impact is merely painful, not lethal. I drop into cold water, the full-body impact stealing the air from my lungs, and I survive.
The river isn’t moving very fast, thankfully. I don’t know if swimming is a skill, but whether or not the system thinks it is, I do know how to do it thanks to my pre-built knowledge.
Kellen’s body floats face down in the water not thirty feet from me, and I make my way there with a few decisive strokes, using Shape Blood to keep my blood from spreading out too far. I do the same for Kellen, preventing him from painting too large of a target in case there’s still someone targeting me.
I’m surprised that his body hasn’t sunk, but when I start pushing him through the current, I realize how light the armor is. I wonder what it’s made of. Maybe I’ll be able to find out when I level up Appraise further. That skill is taking much longer to progress than any of my other ones—is it the rarity?
The shore is fifty feet from where we are. I don’t waste any time in pushing my late foe’s corpse towards it, kicking through the water with muscle memory honed in through… some process that I don’t actually know about. Probably something to do with my creation.
No more attacks fall onto me while I move, which could potentially mean that the other guards have left me, but I highly doubt that that’s the case. The train is long gone now, yes, but I’m sure they’re not going to be so quick in abandoning an escaped experiment that’s now killed two of their number.
Objective: Find Sapphire in Ravendale
Arrive in Ravendale free and alive.
Distance to target: 43 miles
Reward: Bronze-tier skill
That objective is going to be a lot more difficult to achieve now that I’m stuck in the middle of nowhere. I have some ideas as to how I’ll accomplish it, of course. The day I run out of fresh ideas to try is likely to be the day I die. Improvising on the fly has been one of the few things keeping me alive so far.
For now, I pay attention to my immediate concerns. I lug the armored body closer and closer to shore, not fighting the current. By the time my feet start to brush against rocky sand, the river’s taken us a solid hundred and fifty feet downstream.
I drag Kellen’s corpse onto soft white sand, noting how much heavier he feels when the water isn’t aiding me in pulling him. Still, with my newly boosted Body (Strength) stat, it’s not an impossible task.
As soon as I’m sure that the river isn’t going to sweep either of us away, I collapse onto the sand. I’m confident that the other guards are going to come down and join us in an effort to locate and destroy me, but I can give myself a few minutes to rest and let Demonic Heritage heal my wounds.
I excise the bullets out of my flesh with Shape Blood before allowing myself to heal, lifting my shift to let the blood out without staining it.
Once that’s done, I lie down in the sand, letting the mid-morning sun wash over me. The green dress that Alder lent me is torn and soaking wet, and my vest isn’t doing much better, but I’m alive and a foe that’s a much higher level than me isn’t.
I give myself five minutes to relax, allowing my wounds to begin healing and my soaked clothes to dry to simply damp. I want to close my eyes and bask in the pleasant warmth of the sand and sun for a while, but I need to get moving before the other guards come for their fallen ally.
I’m surprised they haven’t already, to be honest, but the train was moving pretty fast and I doubt any of them located exactly where I hit the water.
Time to get to work.
Devour granted +177 XP!
Despite the massive gain in XP, I find myself disappointed by the gain. Kellen was two levels higher than the last guard I killed—why is his XP reward lower?
Once again, I’m forced to conclude that the system likely functions differently for different people. It might’ve taken him less XP to level up, or maybe there’s some other confounding factor that I can’t control.
As soon as I’ve Devoured what I can of his body, I proceed to my second noble duty: looting his corpse.
It takes me a bit to figure out how to get the armor off. As it turns out, each individual piece has a hidden catch-release mechanism buried on the inside of the armor. I spend the better part of ten minutes fiddling with it, trying and failing to pull it off with raw strength. It takes hooking my finger into the space between dead flesh and dead metal to hit the latch on the inside before I’m able to free the first arm vambrace.
After I figure out how to get the first piece of armor off, the second and third come much easier.
Before I jumped off the train earlier, he used this armor to create a crackling green shield. Whether that amplified his magic power or created the shield effect on its own, it’s powerful, and I’d like to take possession of that.
Unfortunately, I don’t think the armor is entirely intact. The entire torso-covering segment is dull and lifeless, the center of it cracked where the arrow impacted it, and the presence of the sharp shaft in his body makes it even harder to remove it. I don’t bother.
The greaves on his legs are still usable, though, so I unhook those too.
There is, of course, the possibility that these are imbued with some magic that lets the other guards track them. There’s also the risk that there’s an authentication measure built into them that’ll turn them useless or actively harm me.
I consider myself a cautious person—a cautious demon? No, that word still feels wrong. Everything I have done up to this point has been measured. I haven’t survived this long by taking every stupid risk, but I also definitely would’ve died by now if I hadn’t chosen to face danger. Fighting and Devouring the other demon-babies, especially the last one, choosing to hide amongst people rather than stay in the woods… a fair deal of my progress has been because I’ve weighed the risk against the reward and decided it was worth it.
Still on the sandy shore of the river, I slip the arm braces on.
They’re two sizes too large for me, but they send a tingling sensation up my bared arms that makes me think there’s something else to them.
On instinct, I pass magic power into the steel armor. It’s a little weird passing power out from my body without using a skill, but I have the knowledge to do so.
The tingling intensifies, changing from a moderately odd sensation crawling up my arms into a dozen pinpricks of pain, and the vambrace tightens. The pain intensifies to the point where I consider using Bloodstep to escape the confines or Temporary Shape Self to eliminate my arm entirely, but then, all at once, it stops.
Cold steel presses against my arms, and fresh magical power surges into me, revitalizing my magic storage.
Text runs across my vision, accompanied by the soft voice of the system. It doesn’t surprise me, somehow. Some part of me whispers that most magical items act like this, and I choose to trust it.
UCC ARMOR INITIALIZED
Previous user: Kellen Irisu
AUTHENTICATING USER…
ERROR: Current user unidentifiable.
State your name.
I cock my head, considering.
It’s triggered an error, but it hasn’t taken any action against me.
“Evelyn Carnelian,” I enunciate. It’s the name I gave to Sapphire, and it’s a name I’m willing to take on as my own.
If it doesn’t work out, I can always just change it again.
UCC ARMOR 2T
Current user: Evelyn Carnelian
Armor Integrity
Left Arm: [8/10]
Right Arm: [7/10]
Torso: [0/10]
Left Leg: [0/10]
Right Leg: [0/10]
Mask: [0/10]
Armor Skills
WARNING: Due to failed authentication, armor skills are limited.
The torso piece isn’t usable thanks to the massive arrow stuck straight through it, and the mask blocks off the mouth. Biting people is a large part of my offensive capabilities, so I can’t take that.
I do, however, take the greaves. Those haven’t really taken much damage, thankfully, even after impacting the water at what had to be nearly a hundred miles per hour.
Now that I’m expecting the process of the attachment, the sensation is easy to ignore. The greaves come on easily. No authentication screen appears this time.
Left Leg: [9/10]
Right Leg: [8/10]
Well, it’s not nothing. I hoped for a more complete set of the armor to unlock some skills, but I’ll have to make do. Kellen’s energy shield would’ve been nice to have, but I guess all I get from this set of armor is some admittedly welcome protection for my legs and arms.
I take the shortsword as well. I can’t exactly use it with Knifefighting, but a few practice swings are enough to tell me that some of the techniques carry over.
After I’ve thoroughly looted the body, I start dragging it with me.
When the guards come calling, I want bait.
While the shores of the river are empty, there’s ample cover to be found in the surrounding area. I wade through knee-high shrubs, my new armor preventing the spike plants from cutting into my flesh, and I make my way to the base of the cliff that I know leads to the train tracks after about a minute. It’s imposing from here, the sheer face of it angled outwards in a way that keeps me from seeing the tip of it.
There are caves at irregular intervals, natural holes carved into the rock. There’s a scant few at the bottom, but I have my eyes set on one about twenty feet up.
I deposit Kellen’s looted body at the base of the cliff and start climbing.
The rock face is almost flat, devoid of easy handholds, but scaling it feels entirely natural to me, ingrained into my being.
Reaching the alcove is a cinch. It’s large enough to fit my entire body into if I crouch, so I do, waiting in relative safety with my Stealth skill active.
Less than five minutes later, the first guards arrive.
There are only two of them, both of them clad in the same style armor that I’m wearing. The primary difference is apparent as soon as they break out of a copse of trees to my right—they have wings on their back. I squint, taking a closer look, since neither of them look like skyfolk, and I realize that the dragonfly-style wings are projections from their armor, just like Kellen’s shield. They must have a different model of armor, I realize.
As the first one of them cries out in dismay at the sight of Kellen’s body, I prepare myself. If I want to get away with this, a number of things are going to have to go right.
“She’s around here somewhere,” I hear one of the flying guards say. “Send up a flare.”
The other guard picks a gleaming metal capsule out of a container attached to one of their arms.
The two of them are almost directly under me now. They approach the body with caution, both of them looking around in case I’m lying in wait in the surrounding shrubbery.
Neither of them look up.
As the guard opens the capsule, I move, hopping out of my alcove without making a sound thanks to Stealth.
They’re both close to each other, so I try to attack both of them at once, a knife in each hand.
And then one of them turns, somehow alerted to me despite my complete silence.
Name: Regulus Freyas
Age: 19
Race: Human
Class: Fog Hunter
Level: 11
Last Used Skill: Glide
I can read all of his stats, which is why it surprises me all the more when he slams his hands together and the world around me shifts.
My momentum carries me into the ground, my knees slamming into rocky dirt as my knives bite down on nothing.
After a brief heartbeat of disorientation, my Mind (Speed) stat proves its use once again.
Regulus has swapped places with me. He looks equally as disoriented, in the air as he now is, and it doesn’t help when capsule he’s holding pops open, a storm of bright red smoke streaming out of it. It’s enough to distract both him and his partner, and I take advantage of that.
The other armored man is facing the wrong way, and I locate the weak points immediately. Unlike Kellen, his throat is actually armored, so I slash at the back of his knees with both knives.
Even as Regulus shouts out a warning, my knives connect, and I use Enhance Bleed in conjunction with Woundshape, mirroring the wound onto his other leg. My attack bites, stabbing deep into flesh and tendons, and an identical wound explodes open on his other unarmored joint.
Woundshape advanced to level 2!
You can now use Woundshape twice per hour. Mirrored damage is now 5% more effective than the original attack.
Before my victim can properly react, I back up a step, careful to dodge his still-manifested wings in case they can damage me, and I sweep a leg out, knocking him off his balance.
As he falls, I catch the armored back of his head, gingerly avoiding the dragonfly-wings that extend out three feet to either side of his body. I tilt his head back to reveal that he, too, lacks armor for the upper part of his face.
I bite an eyeball out, injecting a Venomous Bite into him as I do.
Venomous Bite advanced to level 3!
The potency of venom increases, and you can now use this skill up to 4 times per hour.
From start to finish, the entire sequence takes me less than a single second.
At the end of that second, though, my victim screams something incoherent, slapping his hands to his face and an invisible force blasts me away from him, a full body slam not unlike the Gust Strike I’ve suffered before. The attack sends me flying, but I catch myself midair with a Bloodstep. It’s a waste of magic power, but I do still have another enemy standing.
“Ardalan!” Regulus shouts, a desperate tint to his voice. His wings flicker out, and he drops to the ground in a messy heap.
The man in question doesn’t get up. Instead, he blubbers something incoherent before falling to the ground. Another wave of force pulses out from his body, blowing rocks and sticks and sand away from the spot where he falls. Regulus grunts, slamming his hands together again, and I see his leg bracers glow bright green. He stays in place.
The downed man—Ardalan, apparently—jerks in place.
It’s too late for him now, and my remaining enemy seems to realize that. Ardalan’s not dead yet, but a grisly demise is all that’s left for him.
The Fog Hunter turns towards me, murder in his eyes.
“You will pay for that,” he snarls.
I stare him dead in the eyes and swallow, tilting my head quizzically.
I open my mouth as if to say something and rush forward instead, trying to catch him off guard.
Regulus activates his swapping skill again, and my momentum nearly sends me tumbling over a rock, but I’m prepared for it this time. I activate Bloodstep, sending myself backwards and over him, just like I did to Kellen. I blindsided the Paladin of Vengeance this way, and maybe I’ll be able to—
The Fog Hunter punches upward, and I can see the air ripple as white mist explodes out from his fist, expanding faster than I can move.
His fog envelops me, and suddenly I lose control over my skill, my magic power going haywire within me, and my body remanifests itself midair.
With a furious shout, Regulus flits upward, the wings on his armor buzzing furiously. For a brief second, I wonder what he’s about to do, and then it hits me.
Literally.
His arm turns immaterial, another gout of fog spilling forth, and it reaches me in a second. With Bloodstep draining too much of my power, I can’t use another one before the fog turns solid, squeezing and stabbing me. It’s a different sort of pain from the Gust Strike, crushing rather than piercing, yet I bear it the same. I sense some of the more fragile bones in my extremities crack under the pressure, but they’re not crushed to the point of unusability.
The cloud fades away and I tumble into the ground yet again. As I start to get up, ignoring my damaged muscles complaining as I do, a feathered dart sprouts in the center of my chest.
I look down, irritated at the new injury. In any human, this would be fatal, but for me it’s only debilitating. My demonic physiology means that the dart hasn’t actually pierced my heart, but…
As I look up, I see Regulus preparing another shot in the crossbow he’s procured, using his wings to flit around in the air above me.
This is bad. I can only reach him with Bloodstep, which I know he has a counter for, and I only have a few uses of that before my magic is totally exhausted. It’s getting to the point where I fear I might have to run instead of fight.
At heart, I’m an ambush fighter. I demolished Ardalan and killed Kellen because I was in close quarters and neither of them saw me coming. In a straight fight at a distance, especially against someone with actual equipment? That’s a different story. At level 11, Regulus significantly outstrips me in raw power, and hes evidently competent magic.
But I have one last trump card. Over the course of the last few seconds, he’s crushed my bones and shot me in the chest once—twice now, I correct as he shoots another one straight into my gut. That one hurts more.
With five broken fingers, I pull the crossbow bolt out of my chest.
He’s done a lot of damage to me, but he’s neglected that I struck the first blow in the fight.
Regulus steps back in unease as my limp fingers bend the wrong way, extracting the second bolt from my body. Blood flows freely from both wounds, and I make use of it, sending it into a spiral around me.
My expression is carefully neutral. I can’t win this, but at any second…
Behind him, Ardalan’s death throes come to an end.
I smile mercilessly.
“Let’s see who pays for what,” I enunciate, relishing the fear my words strike into him.
Targets killed: [2/8]
+100 XP rewarded.
You have advanced to level 5!
You have gained 3 stat points.
Triggering class evolution.
Evelyn's stats:
SpoilerName: Evelyn Carnelian
Age: 0
Race: ???
Class: Bloodspawn
Level: 5
XP: 80/475
Kill Count: 15
Available Stat Points: 0
Traits:
Demonic Heritage
Enhanced Blood Affinity
Kinslayer II
Killer
Free Bird
Magic Affinities:
General - 1
Blood - 2
Skills:
Appraise (Bronze) - lvl 2
Devour (Bronze) - lvl 4
Pain Resistance (Silver) - lvl 15
Poison Resistance (Silver) - lvl 1
Shape Self (Bronze) - lvl 3
Shape Blood (Bronze) - lvl 7
Knifefighting (Silver) - lvl 1
Stealth (Bronze) - lvl 6
Enhance Bleed (Bronze) - lvl 2
Temporary Shape Self (Bronze) - lvl 2
Venomous Bite (Bronze) - lvl 2
Venom Resistance (Bronze) - lvl 3
Acting (Bronze) - lvl 8
Woundshape (Bronze) - lvl 1
Bloodstep (Bronze) - lvl 6
Blood Surge (Bronze) - lvl 1
Disguise Self (Bronze) - lvl 1
Attributes:
Magic (Power) - 5
Magic (Regen) - 2
Magic (Meta) - 1
Body (Speed) - 12
Body (Strength) - 7
Body (Durability) - 5
Mind (Speed) - 9
Mind (Resistance) - 5
[collapse]Slifer274 Got a guess for the class Evelyn will evolve into? Share it in the comments!
The wind buffets me as the two of us fall as one, and I press myself close against the dying man’s body.
Despite that, I hear the sound of bullets screaming past us. Even over the deafening din of air resistance, the thunderstrike gunshots are still easily audible.
Kellen and I tumble end over end, though implying that he plays any role in it is a little misleading. He’s still alive, but only barely. Blood streams from his wound, and I take the liberty of creating a couple new injuries as we fall. Right now, he’s little more than a human shield for me.
That moniker proves itself to be true when our cycle of tumbling leads to him facing the sky anda an arrow sprouts in his abdomen, a three-foot long shaft appearing that smashes straight through his black steel armor, his flesh, and the armor on the other side of the body. I barely avoid the tip of the arrow cresting through his back.
After the arrow, though, nothing else attacks us, which is probably because of the rapidly-approaching river along with the train curving away from us.
Features come into closer detail as we fall, glistening water and green shrubs and caves in the cliff. I prepare myself for impact. The two of us are moving fast.
When the face of the water is less than twenty feet from us, a split second remaining between both of us and a watery grave, I push off from Kellen’s body and activate Bloodstep.
As the world turns red, my skill arrests my momentum and I move laterally, dashing sideways. The river is larger than I thought it was—a hundred feet across, maybe—so my skill doesn’t get me all the way out. It doesn’t even get me halfway to the shore.
Targets killed: [1/8]
+100 XP awarded.
After using my skill, I’m still twenty feet in the air, but my momentum’s been arrested enough that the impact is merely painful, not lethal. I drop into cold water, the full-body impact stealing the air from my lungs, and I survive.
The river isn’t moving very fast, thankfully. I don’t know if swimming is a skill, but whether or not the system thinks it is, I do know how to do it thanks to my pre-built knowledge.
Kellen’s body floats face down in the water not thirty feet from me, and I make my way there with a few decisive strokes, using Shape Blood to keep my blood from spreading out too far. I do the same for Kellen, preventing him from painting too large of a target in case there’s still someone targeting me.
I’m surprised that his body hasn’t sunk, but when I start pushing him through the current, I realize how light the armor is. I wonder what it’s made of. Maybe I’ll be able to find out when I level up Appraise further. That skill is taking much longer to progress than any of my other ones—is it the rarity?
The shore is fifty feet from where we are. I don’t waste any time in pushing my late foe’s corpse towards it, kicking through the water with muscle memory honed in through… some process that I don’t actually know about. Probably something to do with my creation.
No more attacks fall onto me while I move, which could potentially mean that the other guards have left me, but I highly doubt that that’s the case. The train is long gone now, yes, but I’m sure they’re not going to be so quick in abandoning an escaped experiment that’s now killed two of their number.
Objective: Find Sapphire in Ravendale
Arrive in Ravendale free and alive.
Distance to target: 43 miles
Reward: Bronze-tier skill
That objective is going to be a lot more difficult to achieve now that I’m stuck in the middle of nowhere. I have some ideas as to how I’ll accomplish it, of course. The day I run out of fresh ideas to try is likely to be the day I die. Improvising on the fly has been one of the few things keeping me alive so far.
For now, I pay attention to my immediate concerns. I lug the armored body closer and closer to shore, not fighting the current. By the time my feet start to brush against rocky sand, the river’s taken us a solid hundred and fifty feet downstream.
I drag Kellen’s corpse onto soft white sand, noting how much heavier he feels when the water isn’t aiding me in pulling him. Still, with my newly boosted Body (Strength) stat, it’s not an impossible task.
As soon as I’m sure that the river isn’t going to sweep either of us away, I collapse onto the sand. I’m confident that the other guards are going to come down and join us in an effort to locate and destroy me, but I can give myself a few minutes to rest and let Demonic Heritage heal my wounds.
I excise the bullets out of my flesh with Shape Blood before allowing myself to heal, lifting my shift to let the blood out without staining it.
Once that’s done, I lie down in the sand, letting the mid-morning sun wash over me. The green dress that Alder lent me is torn and soaking wet, and my vest isn’t doing much better, but I’m alive and a foe that’s a much higher level than me isn’t.
I give myself five minutes to relax, allowing my wounds to begin healing and my soaked clothes to dry to simply damp. I want to close my eyes and bask in the pleasant warmth of the sand and sun for a while, but I need to get moving before the other guards come for their fallen ally.
I’m surprised they haven’t already, to be honest, but the train was moving pretty fast and I doubt any of them located exactly where I hit the water.
Time to get to work.
Devour granted +177 XP!
Despite the massive gain in XP, I find myself disappointed by the gain. Kellen was two levels higher than the last guard I killed—why is his XP reward lower?
Once again, I’m forced to conclude that the system likely functions differently for different people. It might’ve taken him less XP to level up, or maybe there’s some other confounding factor that I can’t control.
As soon as I’ve Devoured what I can of his body, I proceed to my second noble duty: looting his corpse.
It takes me a bit to figure out how to get the armor off. As it turns out, each individual piece has a hidden catch-release mechanism buried on the inside of the armor. I spend the better part of ten minutes fiddling with it, trying and failing to pull it off with raw strength. It takes hooking my finger into the space between dead flesh and dead metal to hit the latch on the inside before I’m able to free the first arm vambrace.
After I figure out how to get the first piece of armor off, the second and third come much easier.
Before I jumped off the train earlier, he used this armor to create a crackling green shield. Whether that amplified his magic power or created the shield effect on its own, it’s powerful, and I’d like to take possession of that.
Unfortunately, I don’t think the armor is entirely intact. The entire torso-covering segment is dull and lifeless, the center of it cracked where the arrow impacted it, and the presence of the sharp shaft in his body makes it even harder to remove it. I don’t bother.
The greaves on his legs are still usable, though, so I unhook those too.
There is, of course, the possibility that these are imbued with some magic that lets the other guards track them. There’s also the risk that there’s an authentication measure built into them that’ll turn them useless or actively harm me.
I consider myself a cautious person—a cautious demon? No, that word still feels wrong. Everything I have done up to this point has been measured. I haven’t survived this long by taking every stupid risk, but I also definitely would’ve died by now if I hadn’t chosen to face danger. Fighting and Devouring the other demon-babies, especially the last one, choosing to hide amongst people rather than stay in the woods… a fair deal of my progress has been because I’ve weighed the risk against the reward and decided it was worth it.
Still on the sandy shore of the river, I slip the arm braces on.
They’re two sizes too large for me, but they send a tingling sensation up my bared arms that makes me think there’s something else to them.
On instinct, I pass magic power into the steel armor. It’s a little weird passing power out from my body without using a skill, but I have the knowledge to do so.
The tingling intensifies, changing from a moderately odd sensation crawling up my arms into a dozen pinpricks of pain, and the vambrace tightens. The pain intensifies to the point where I consider using Bloodstep to escape the confines or Temporary Shape Self to eliminate my arm entirely, but then, all at once, it stops.
Cold steel presses against my arms, and fresh magical power surges into me, revitalizing my magic storage.
Text runs across my vision, accompanied by the soft voice of the system. It doesn’t surprise me, somehow. Some part of me whispers that most magical items act like this, and I choose to trust it.
UCC ARMOR INITIALIZED
Previous user: Kellen Irisu
AUTHENTICATING USER…
ERROR: Current user unidentifiable.
State your name.
I cock my head, considering.
It’s triggered an error, but it hasn’t taken any action against me.
“Evelyn Carnelian,” I enunciate. It’s the name I gave to Sapphire, and it’s a name I’m willing to take on as my own.
If it doesn’t work out, I can always just change it again.
UCC ARMOR 2T
Current user: Evelyn Carnelian
Armor Integrity
Left Arm: [8/10]
Right Arm: [7/10]
Torso: [0/10]
Left Leg: [0/10]
Right Leg: [0/10]
Mask: [0/10]
Armor Skills
WARNING: Due to failed authentication, armor skills are limited.
The torso piece isn’t usable thanks to the massive arrow stuck straight through it, and the mask blocks off the mouth. Biting people is a large part of my offensive capabilities, so I can’t take that.
I do, however, take the greaves. Those haven’t really taken much damage, thankfully, even after impacting the water at what had to be nearly a hundred miles per hour.
Now that I’m expecting the process of the attachment, the sensation is easy to ignore. The greaves come on easily. No authentication screen appears this time.
Left Leg: [9/10]
Right Leg: [8/10]
Well, it’s not nothing. I hoped for a more complete set of the armor to unlock some skills, but I’ll have to make do. Kellen’s energy shield would’ve been nice to have, but I guess all I get from this set of armor is some admittedly welcome protection for my legs and arms.
I take the shortsword as well. I can’t exactly use it with Knifefighting, but a few practice swings are enough to tell me that some of the techniques carry over.
After I’ve thoroughly looted the body, I start dragging it with me.
When the guards come calling, I want bait.
While the shores of the river are empty, there’s ample cover to be found in the surrounding area. I wade through knee-high shrubs, my new armor preventing the spike plants from cutting into my flesh, and I make my way to the base of the cliff that I know leads to the train tracks after about a minute. It’s imposing from here, the sheer face of it angled outwards in a way that keeps me from seeing the tip of it.
There are caves at irregular intervals, natural holes carved into the rock. There’s a scant few at the bottom, but I have my eyes set on one about twenty feet up.
I deposit Kellen’s looted body at the base of the cliff and start climbing.
The rock face is almost flat, devoid of easy handholds, but scaling it feels entirely natural to me, ingrained into my being.
Reaching the alcove is a cinch. It’s large enough to fit my entire body into if I crouch, so I do, waiting in relative safety with my Stealth skill active.
Less than five minutes later, the first guards arrive.
There are only two of them, both of them clad in the same style armor that I’m wearing. The primary difference is apparent as soon as they break out of a copse of trees to my right—they have wings on their back. I squint, taking a closer look, since neither of them look like skyfolk, and I realize that the dragonfly-style wings are projections from their armor, just like Kellen’s shield. They must have a different model of armor, I realize.
As the first one of them cries out in dismay at the sight of Kellen’s body, I prepare myself. If I want to get away with this, a number of things are going to have to go right.
“She’s around here somewhere,” I hear one of the flying guards say. “Send up a flare.”
The other guard picks a gleaming metal capsule out of a container attached to one of their arms.
The two of them are almost directly under me now. They approach the body with caution, both of them looking around in case I’m lying in wait in the surrounding shrubbery.
Neither of them look up.
As the guard opens the capsule, I move, hopping out of my alcove without making a sound thanks to Stealth.
They’re both close to each other, so I try to attack both of them at once, a knife in each hand.
And then one of them turns, somehow alerted to me despite my complete silence.
Name: Regulus Freyas
Age: 19
Race: Human
Class: Fog Hunter
Level: 11
Last Used Skill: Glide
I can read all of his stats, which is why it surprises me all the more when he slams his hands together and the world around me shifts.
My momentum carries me into the ground, my knees slamming into rocky dirt as my knives bite down on nothing.
After a brief heartbeat of disorientation, my Mind (Speed) stat proves its use once again.
Regulus has swapped places with me. He looks equally as disoriented, in the air as he now is, and it doesn’t help when capsule he’s holding pops open, a storm of bright red smoke streaming out of it. It’s enough to distract both him and his partner, and I take advantage of that.
The other armored man is facing the wrong way, and I locate the weak points immediately. Unlike Kellen, his throat is actually armored, so I slash at the back of his knees with both knives.
Even as Regulus shouts out a warning, my knives connect, and I use Enhance Bleed in conjunction with Woundshape, mirroring the wound onto his other leg. My attack bites, stabbing deep into flesh and tendons, and an identical wound explodes open on his other unarmored joint.
Woundshape advanced to level 2!
You can now use Woundshape twice per hour. Mirrored damage is now 5% more effective than the original attack.
Before my victim can properly react, I back up a step, careful to dodge his still-manifested wings in case they can damage me, and I sweep a leg out, knocking him off his balance.
As he falls, I catch the armored back of his head, gingerly avoiding the dragonfly-wings that extend out three feet to either side of his body. I tilt his head back to reveal that he, too, lacks armor for the upper part of his face.
I bite an eyeball out, injecting a Venomous Bite into him as I do.
Venomous Bite advanced to level 3!
The potency of venom increases, and you can now use this skill up to 4 times per hour.
From start to finish, the entire sequence takes me less than a single second.
At the end of that second, though, my victim screams something incoherent, slapping his hands to his face and an invisible force blasts me away from him, a full body slam not unlike the Gust Strike I’ve suffered before. The attack sends me flying, but I catch myself midair with a Bloodstep. It’s a waste of magic power, but I do still have another enemy standing.
“Ardalan!” Regulus shouts, a desperate tint to his voice. His wings flicker out, and he drops to the ground in a messy heap.
The man in question doesn’t get up. Instead, he blubbers something incoherent before falling to the ground. Another wave of force pulses out from his body, blowing rocks and sticks and sand away from the spot where he falls. Regulus grunts, slamming his hands together again, and I see his leg bracers glow bright green. He stays in place.
The downed man—Ardalan, apparently—jerks in place.
It’s too late for him now, and my remaining enemy seems to realize that. Ardalan’s not dead yet, but a grisly demise is all that’s left for him.
The Fog Hunter turns towards me, murder in his eyes.
“You will pay for that,” he snarls.
I stare him dead in the eyes and swallow, tilting my head quizzically.
I open my mouth as if to say something and rush forward instead, trying to catch him off guard.
Regulus activates his swapping skill again, and my momentum nearly sends me tumbling over a rock, but I’m prepared for it this time. I activate Bloodstep, sending myself backwards and over him, just like I did to Kellen. I blindsided the Paladin of Vengeance this way, and maybe I’ll be able to—
The Fog Hunter punches upward, and I can see the air ripple as white mist explodes out from his fist, expanding faster than I can move.
His fog envelops me, and suddenly I lose control over my skill, my magic power going haywire within me, and my body remanifests itself midair.
With a furious shout, Regulus flits upward, the wings on his armor buzzing furiously. For a brief second, I wonder what he’s about to do, and then it hits me.
Literally.
His arm turns immaterial, another gout of fog spilling forth, and it reaches me in a second. With Bloodstep draining too much of my power, I can’t use another one before the fog turns solid, squeezing and stabbing me. It’s a different sort of pain from the Gust Strike, crushing rather than piercing, yet I bear it the same. I sense some of the more fragile bones in my extremities crack under the pressure, but they’re not crushed to the point of unusability.
The cloud fades away and I tumble into the ground yet again. As I start to get up, ignoring my damaged muscles complaining as I do, a feathered dart sprouts in the center of my chest.
I look down, irritated at the new injury. In any human, this would be fatal, but for me it’s only debilitating. My demonic physiology means that the dart hasn’t actually pierced my heart, but…
As I look up, I see Regulus preparing another shot in the crossbow he’s procured, using his wings to flit around in the air above me.
This is bad. I can only reach him with Bloodstep, which I know he has a counter for, and I only have a few uses of that before my magic is totally exhausted. It’s getting to the point where I fear I might have to run instead of fight.
At heart, I’m an ambush fighter. I demolished Ardalan and killed Kellen because I was in close quarters and neither of them saw me coming. In a straight fight at a distance, especially against someone with actual equipment? That’s a different story. At level 11, Regulus significantly outstrips me in raw power, and hes evidently competent magic.
But I have one last trump card. Over the course of the last few seconds, he’s crushed my bones and shot me in the chest once—twice now, I correct as he shoots another one straight into my gut. That one hurts more.
With five broken fingers, I pull the crossbow bolt out of my chest.
He’s done a lot of damage to me, but he’s neglected that I struck the first blow in the fight.
Regulus steps back in unease as my limp fingers bend the wrong way, extracting the second bolt from my body. Blood flows freely from both wounds, and I make use of it, sending it into a spiral around me.
My expression is carefully neutral. I can’t win this, but at any second…
Behind him, Ardalan’s death throes come to an end.
I smile mercilessly.
“Let’s see who pays for what,” I enunciate, relishing the fear my words strike into him.
Targets killed: [2/8]
+100 XP rewarded.
You have advanced to level 5!
You have gained 3 stat points.
Triggering class evolution.
Evelyn's stats:
SpoilerName: Evelyn Carnelian
Age: 0
Race: ???
Class: Bloodspawn
Level: 5
XP: 80/475
Kill Count: 15
Available Stat Points: 0
Traits:
Demonic Heritage
Enhanced Blood Affinity
Kinslayer II
Killer
Free Bird
Magic Affinities:
General - 1
Blood - 2
Skills:
Appraise (Bronze) - lvl 2
Devour (Bronze) - lvl 4
Pain Resistance (Silver) - lvl 15
Poison Resistance (Silver) - lvl 1
Shape Self (Bronze) - lvl 3
Shape Blood (Bronze) - lvl 7
Knifefighting (Silver) - lvl 1
Stealth (Bronze) - lvl 6
Enhance Bleed (Bronze) - lvl 2
Temporary Shape Self (Bronze) - lvl 2
Venomous Bite (Bronze) - lvl 2
Venom Resistance (Bronze) - lvl 3
Acting (Bronze) - lvl 8
Woundshape (Bronze) - lvl 1
Bloodstep (Bronze) - lvl 6
Blood Surge (Bronze) - lvl 1
Disguise Self (Bronze) - lvl 1
Attributes:
Magic (Power) - 5
Magic (Regen) - 2
Magic (Meta) - 1
Body (Speed) - 12
Body (Strength) - 7
Body (Durability) - 5
Mind (Speed) - 9
Mind (Resistance) - 5
[collapse]Slifer274 Got a guess for the class Evelyn will evolve into? Share it in the comments!
