I won’t let this opportunity go to waste.
As branches crumble away under the force of her magic, I carry myself forward, lifting my broken body on a platform of blood. Demonic Heritage does what it can to keep me together, but it’s not strong enough to immediately heal my fractured spine.
I remind myself to pick up a healing skill if I can get it. For that to happen, I’m going to have to fix my soul so that my level-ups actually get me something, though.
Sierra is easily keeping pace with me, though her platform’s vanished. She’s still using the telekinesis skill that her Blue Mage class gives her. I give her a thankful nod as I cast my Bloodpath, taking in her glowing figure.
Her eyes burn unnaturally bright, twin stars against the darkness of the night.
Dual classes. Blue Mage and Red Mage are both names that I recognize, though the details aren’t as readily available in my soul-amalgam.
She’s wielding them both at the same time, which is rare but not unheard of.
There’s a lot to be doing right now, most of which involves surviving long enough to spread the wraithfire on my dozen extraneous arms, but I have time to cast an Appraise.
Name: Sierra Jade
Age: 19
Race: Human
Class: Blue Mage/Red Mage
Level: 19/[APPRAISE FAILED]
Last Used Skill: Personal Telekinesis/Eclipse Devastator
Skills:
[APPRAISE FAILED]
Resistances:
[APPRAISE FAILED]
Attributes:
[APPRAISE FAILED]
I raise an eyebrow. With my Silver-tier Appraise, I can bypass some level of the “cloak” that she’s been using, but evidently it’s not enough to even determine the level of her Red Mage class.
Also, it looks like I’ll have to advance the skill further before I can determine more details about her.
“Your Appraise has advanced,” Sierra says, the serene happiness in her voice belying the sheer destructive power of her own skill. “Congratulations. You truly are a prodigy.”
Talking doesn’t seem to slow her down at all. She keeps two skills activated at the same time, apparently totally unworried about her ability to keep either of them going despite the complexity of her attack.
Her spell consumes everything it touches. Darkness devours branches, degrading them into nothingness, while radiant white light scorches wood wherever it makes contact, burning it to dust.
The skill is impressive on its own, but it’s the sheer volume of it that really floors me. My most magical attacking skill is probably Misty Mirage, both of which can triple or even quadruple my body mass in terms of magic.
Sierra’s Eclipse Devastator, on the other hand, saturates the sky around us, pouring out from her body until her twisting magic covers half of the entire city center. As I watch, an entire neighborhood of ruins crumbles under the force of her attack, sinking straight into the sludge.
She isn’t even breathing hard.
With the breathtaking power this single skill alone holds, I almost wonder if Sierra can take the tree on herself.
“Let me clarify,” the Red Mage says, pausing her skill for a second. “Do you need the tree dead, or do you need to kill it?”
“The latter,” I reply, checking my objective to be sure.
I could ask her to eliminate it here, but I won’t. I need to advance, and letting someone else kill the tree would be a waste when I’ve already spent so much to get this far.
On top of that, I doubt Marie would be happy if her charge ended up taking it. From what she’s said, I think that Sierra’s had to give something up in order to accompany me. Marie herself is clearly capable of devastating the tree, but she’s chosen to leave. With Marie being one of the researchers that led me… I’m not sure if my conclusion is correct, but I’m confident in it.
She’s forcing me to grow. It’s the same damn thing that Sapphire’s been doing—that whole “adversity sculpts excellence” thing.
And I really don’t want to deal with the consequences of pissing off/disappointing the woman who was able to utterly annihilate me with barely a thought.
Everything points towards the same direction, so I’ll take it. I can think more on it later, but for now, I need to act.
Sierra clears the path for me. Shambling branches pierce the mud, soaring up towards me, but the Eclipse Devastator turns them to ashes as they rise towards us.
Two hundred feet is less distance than it sounds like when our skills take us at the speeds they do. Within moments, we’re within spitting range of the tree—and then suddenly, we aren’t.
A pulse of black-and-red magic the same color as my Devour explodes outwards from the center of the tree. It washes over us, and the slowly-increasing sense of malice that Sierra’s skill all but cleared away redoubles, overwhelming me.
The raw killing intent of it briefly stuns me, overwhelming on a level that only the twisted mirror of myself can match. It’s not too difficult to recover, but the sensation doesn’t let up. If anything, it increases.
My Bloodpath slips out of my grasp as the tree’s skill worms its way into my skin, tendrils of pure demonic hatred reaching for my thoughts, and I fall in humanoid form.
Sierra’s skills wink out one after another, and she tumbles down with me.
I hit the ground hard, and the lower part of my spine finishes breaking, messily breaking from the rest of my body. The awkward angle that I land at means the break is even less clean than it could’ve been, and I feel the wound that forms in my back where the shattered bone punctures through it.
Annoying.
Sierra reactivates her skill immediately after she hits the ground, bouncing once before rising into the air once more. I don’t.
“I need a second,” I grunt.
Underneath me, roots as wide as my torso spring up, trying to pull me underground as soon as I’m close enough to trigger the tree’s instincts.
I dissuade them by splaying my still-burning limbs, spreading the flame from me to them with a mere touch. As it turns out, even demon tree roots will pull away if you set them on fire that burns the soul.
Do they not have resistance? While my extra limbs are a mess of exposed burning muscle, the tree’s roots catch instantly. The tree lets its parts burn, separating them from the main body. Writhing roots turn into lifeless driftwood as I pass my wraithfire over it.
Still, a few of them manage to latch onto me, slicing into my torso. I sink partway into the ground. It’s so muddy that even without something dragging me down, I’m falling in on my own.
I can’t move my legs. The requisite nerve connections have been broken, and the movement of the roots has finalized the break.
“Evelyn!” Sierra calls to me. “I have no healing spell, but I can… I can help you.”
I shake my head, though I don’t know how well she can see it given that half of my face is submerged in watery earth.
This is inconvenient, but it’s manageable.
Despite the fall, I haven’t let go of my knives.
Reaching my back is awkward, but my physiology means I’m more flexible than the average human is. It’s not too hard to avoid my burning limbs.
My body’s ruined enough that it’s not hard to saw half of it off. Knifefighting guides me as I cut through flesh, muscle, and bone.
Suddenly, my body weighs several dozen pounds less.
The initial shock of the skill-disrupting field has worn off, and with some focus, I’m able to put together a shaky Shape Blood and keep my guts in. It’s not perfect, and the oppressive spell that the tree’s laid down decreases its integrity, but I’m able to manage it.
Immediately afterwards, I use Shape Self. I’m not able to guide it extremely well—normally, the skill requires a lot of mental focus in order to shape the complex parts of my body, and that definitely isn’t the case now.
I make a hasty fix. Rather than try to create a more useful set of limbs or tentacles like I’ve been doing—something that would require all too much focus, and something I can’t do while my skills are shaken by the heavy atmosphere—I create a single, sharp limb stemming from my waist. Flesh forms out of thin air, wrapping around the bloody stump where my organs are threatening to fall out.
It’s a hasty solution, and it kind of completely eliminates my ability to walk. Given the current shattered state of my base body and the imprecision of the disrupted Shape Self, I can’t create an accurate set of bones to link the sharp fin-like appendage to my spine.
It stops the bleeding, though.
Enough blood has escaped my body that when I Shape Blood again, I reach my limit of twenty gallons without coming close to removing all of the crimson liquid from the mud around me.
I manipulate myself back into the air, drawing on my enhanced magic reserves to keep me afloat when the entirety of my new weight is being supported by the blood under me.
Sierra reaches out to one side, and her hand vanishes for a brief instant. When it reappears, she’s holding her staff.
She casts Eclipse Devastator again, the scarlet glow in one of her eyes flaring back to lifewith the radiant white and midnight black of her skill.
My eyes are good enough to catch the instability of the skill, but it doesn’t look like she’s directing it anywhere near me, so I throw myself forward.
As I get closer and closer to the tree, Sierra manipulates her skill, annihilating grasping branches and freshly-born demons that spiral out from new spores. Few of the latter target me, though. Earlier, they chased after me despite my demonic status. Does Sierra just present a much tastier choice for them to attack now? Or is there something about my fresh soul damage that’s stopping them?
Maybe it’s the fact that I’m still on fire.
Whatever it is doesn’t matter. I continue forward. The white static sound of Sierra’s skill accompanies the wrathful wraithfire that’s still doing its best to devour me.
Wraithfire Resistance advanced to level 2!
That helps even more.
I slow my Shape Blood down as I get closer to the tree. I can feel its aura getting even more powerful. If left unchecked, I might not be able to use my skills at all.
Demons crawl out from cracks in the tree’s bark, teeming on its trunk like so many ants, but Eclipse Devastator wipes enough of them out to give me an opening.
I dive straight into a crack. Though they might be tiny in relation to the actual tree, each opening in the bark is large enough to fit a horse into. With a quick usage of Shape Self to reduce the size of the unwieldy fin that’s replaced my legs, I’m able to fit in just fine.
The inside of the tree is pitch black and surprisingly hollow. I thought I would have to dig my way in, but this place looks less like a true trunk and more like an anthill.
That comparison proves to be surprisingly apt when the still-burning wraithfire illuminates the area around me.
At first, I get the impression that the inside of the tree is just particularly bulbous, as if someone infected the bark with a pox of some kind, but then I realize what the lumps on the wood are.
Those are unfinished demon seeds. Hundreds of them.
There’s enough space for me to crawl around and climb in, so I start moving. Every movement I make sets seeds on fire. The dozen extra arms I gave myself have been burnt practically to cinders by the wraithfire, so I can’t really use them to climb. A couple of them have been reduced to bone and nothing else, the flesh and blood wholly consumed by the soul-devouring flame.
Still, even if I can’t move them, I can still manipulate my body in a way that puts them in contact with as much of the tree as possible.
Shape Blood assists me as I climb upwards end over end. The tree’s malicious aura grows in intensity as I climb, setting everything beneath me afire. I can only assume that that means I’m heading in the right direction.
A combination of instinct and existing knowledge from my amalgam tells me that there’s a main body to the tree, an equivalent to the brain or heart that’ll bring down the majority of the tree’s influence if I destroy it. A core of some kind.
As I continue to climb, the seeds above me start to hatch. The demons that emerge are unformed and slick with the tree’s oily sap. They’re unstable on their limbs, and some of them tumble and fall towards me as they lose their grip on the walls that they were born on, but there’s a lot of them.
Beneath me, the seeds I haven’t torched start to open as well.
They all seem reluctant to approach me, which the wraithfire probably contributes to.
Unfortunately for me, there’s enough of them that they’re going to overwhelm me if they attack me. I would use Bloodpath, but the destabilizing aura is increasing in intensity. I don’t want to take the chances on it breaking the skill so badly that I reform into broken parts of myself, unable to take action.
Instead, I use Shape Blood to propel me forth, dodging the demons as well as I can.
Less than a minute later, as the aura continues to grow stronger, my precautions are proven to be useful when another pulse of energy explodes out from above me and my Shape Blood fails. I’m close enough to a wall that I’m able to throw my arms out and catch myself before I fall, but the demons around me remain largely unaffected.
I reorient myself—and then I hear white static. A beam of light smashes through the tree above me as a stream of darkness so black that it makes the night around us seem bright passes under me.
How? Locate Person? Did Sierra just assume I needed help?
Whatever the case, I give her my thanks silently and continue to climb.
Soon enough, though, I realize my problem.
My wraithfire isn’t spreading enough.
The tree is catching, and I’ve left a trail of fiery destruction behind me, but it’s not spreading. It’s not devastating it like I wanted it to.
Wraithfire feeds on souls, and the demon tree doesn’t have enough of a soul to further fuel the flames.
I grimace as I slowly drag myself up. When I use Shape Blood again, it only lasts a second before the oppressive darkness tears the skill apart.
Around me, the demons continue to close.
I have to be getting close. For the aura to be this strong, I have to be.
Wraithfire Resistance advanced to level 3!
Now or never.
Relentless power bursts into my veins suddenly, accompanying my resolution to act. At the same time, I Siphon some of the wraithfire on my body. It barely reduces the intensity of the flame, but it gives me enough power to use a skill despite the dampening aura.
If the tree isn’t feeding the wraithfire the souls it needs, then I will.
I activate Soulknife, pouring as much magic power into it as I can, and I throw the dark red blade into my own flame.
One second after the blade containing my soul in it makes contact with the flame, a deep, bitter cold suffuses my entire body.
Two seconds after contact, my wraithfire explodes.
Black flame detonates over my body and the demons’ bodies and the tree and the air and everything around me, and I fall.
A hundred burning demons fall with me, and none of them have the resistances that I do.
Wraithfire Resistance advanced to level 4!
I reach my hands out, clawing at the rough bark on the inside of the tree, but I find no purchase. I scrabble at the tree’s innards with skinless fingers, failing to catch on as my flesh sloughs off despite my resistances.
I hit something that’s definitely not the ground, and it bursts. The oily sap of the tree spills over me, sticking to every part of my body, but it doesn’t try to Devour me like it did last time.
And then that, too, lights on fire.
I continue falling, smashing my frail frame onto outcroppings of seeds and branches within the tree.
Eventually, I stop. The final drop from the tree into the muddy ground is surprisingly soft. The mud sucks me in up to my shoulders, nearly submerging me, but I remain alive. I don’t bother to count the number of bones I’ve broken.
I lay there in the mud as it too ignites, waiting for one of us to die.
Wraithfire Resistance advanced to level 5!
I close my eyes, fire and darkness licking at the edge of the vision even with my lids shut.
I shake myself, opening my eyes. I need to stay conscious. Succumbing to unconsciousness in a state like this is a bad idea. I have enough memories to know that that’s how many have lost their lives.
I need to stay awake. I need to stay alive. I just need to hold out long enough for Sierra to arrive. I need to… I need…
My eyes close again, and the darkness takes me.
Objective updated: Burn it all down
The Flowering Demon burns.
You may now advance any two skills to their next tier!
Skills have already been selected.
Wraithfire advanced from Gold to Diamond!
Wraithfire became Soulpyre!
For the price of your soul, you will have a pyre that burns the world itself. Your flames increase in intensity, spread without your influence, and bypass all defenses.
Uses refreshed.
Devour advanced from Gold to Diamond!
Consume your opponent and take everything they have. Activation time decreased. Devouring a foe now grants a temporary boost equal to 10% of their attributes. You temporarily gain their resistances. Devour can now be used as an offensive skill. Devour can now be used at range. Devouring a demon now grants you temporary access to a limited pool of its skills.
Bonus reward: 1000 XP gained!
XP: 1786/1200
Critical soul damage detected.
Soul not detected.
Would you like to level up?
I won’t let this opportunity go to waste.
As branches crumble away under the force of her magic, I carry myself forward, lifting my broken body on a platform of blood. Demonic Heritage does what it can to keep me together, but it’s not strong enough to immediately heal my fractured spine.
I remind myself to pick up a healing skill if I can get it. For that to happen, I’m going to have to fix my soul so that my level-ups actually get me something, though.
Sierra is easily keeping pace with me, though her platform’s vanished. She’s still using the telekinesis skill that her Blue Mage class gives her. I give her a thankful nod as I cast my Bloodpath, taking in her glowing figure.
Her eyes burn unnaturally bright, twin stars against the darkness of the night.
Dual classes. Blue Mage and Red Mage are both names that I recognize, though the details aren’t as readily available in my soul-amalgam.
She’s wielding them both at the same time, which is rare but not unheard of.
There’s a lot to be doing right now, most of which involves surviving long enough to spread the wraithfire on my dozen extraneous arms, but I have time to cast an Appraise.
Name: Sierra Jade
Age: 19
Race: Human
Class: Blue Mage/Red Mage
Level: 19/[APPRAISE FAILED]
Last Used Skill: Personal Telekinesis/Eclipse Devastator
Skills:
[APPRAISE FAILED]
Resistances:
[APPRAISE FAILED]
Attributes:
[APPRAISE FAILED]
I raise an eyebrow. With my Silver-tier Appraise, I can bypass some level of the “cloak” that she’s been using, but evidently it’s not enough to even determine the level of her Red Mage class.
Also, it looks like I’ll have to advance the skill further before I can determine more details about her.
“Your Appraise has advanced,” Sierra says, the serene happiness in her voice belying the sheer destructive power of her own skill. “Congratulations. You truly are a prodigy.”
Talking doesn’t seem to slow her down at all. She keeps two skills activated at the same time, apparently totally unworried about her ability to keep either of them going despite the complexity of her attack.
Her spell consumes everything it touches. Darkness devours branches, degrading them into nothingness, while radiant white light scorches wood wherever it makes contact, burning it to dust.
The skill is impressive on its own, but it’s the sheer volume of it that really floors me. My most magical attacking skill is probably Misty Mirage, both of which can triple or even quadruple my body mass in terms of magic.
Sierra’s Eclipse Devastator, on the other hand, saturates the sky around us, pouring out from her body until her twisting magic covers half of the entire city center. As I watch, an entire neighborhood of ruins crumbles under the force of her attack, sinking straight into the sludge.
She isn’t even breathing hard.
With the breathtaking power this single skill alone holds, I almost wonder if Sierra can take the tree on herself.
“Let me clarify,” the Red Mage says, pausing her skill for a second. “Do you need the tree dead, or do you need to kill it?”
“The latter,” I reply, checking my objective to be sure.
I could ask her to eliminate it here, but I won’t. I need to advance, and letting someone else kill the tree would be a waste when I’ve already spent so much to get this far.
On top of that, I doubt Marie would be happy if her charge ended up taking it. From what she’s said, I think that Sierra’s had to give something up in order to accompany me. Marie herself is clearly capable of devastating the tree, but she’s chosen to leave. With Marie being one of the researchers that led me… I’m not sure if my conclusion is correct, but I’m confident in it.
She’s forcing me to grow. It’s the same damn thing that Sapphire’s been doing—that whole “adversity sculpts excellence” thing.
And I really don’t want to deal with the consequences of pissing off/disappointing the woman who was able to utterly annihilate me with barely a thought.
Everything points towards the same direction, so I’ll take it. I can think more on it later, but for now, I need to act.
Sierra clears the path for me. Shambling branches pierce the mud, soaring up towards me, but the Eclipse Devastator turns them to ashes as they rise towards us.
Two hundred feet is less distance than it sounds like when our skills take us at the speeds they do. Within moments, we’re within spitting range of the tree—and then suddenly, we aren’t.
A pulse of black-and-red magic the same color as my Devour explodes outwards from the center of the tree. It washes over us, and the slowly-increasing sense of malice that Sierra’s skill all but cleared away redoubles, overwhelming me.
The raw killing intent of it briefly stuns me, overwhelming on a level that only the twisted mirror of myself can match. It’s not too difficult to recover, but the sensation doesn’t let up. If anything, it increases.
My Bloodpath slips out of my grasp as the tree’s skill worms its way into my skin, tendrils of pure demonic hatred reaching for my thoughts, and I fall in humanoid form.
Sierra’s skills wink out one after another, and she tumbles down with me.
I hit the ground hard, and the lower part of my spine finishes breaking, messily breaking from the rest of my body. The awkward angle that I land at means the break is even less clean than it could’ve been, and I feel the wound that forms in my back where the shattered bone punctures through it.
Annoying.
Sierra reactivates her skill immediately after she hits the ground, bouncing once before rising into the air once more. I don’t.
“I need a second,” I grunt.
Underneath me, roots as wide as my torso spring up, trying to pull me underground as soon as I’m close enough to trigger the tree’s instincts.
I dissuade them by splaying my still-burning limbs, spreading the flame from me to them with a mere touch. As it turns out, even demon tree roots will pull away if you set them on fire that burns the soul.
Do they not have resistance? While my extra limbs are a mess of exposed burning muscle, the tree’s roots catch instantly. The tree lets its parts burn, separating them from the main body. Writhing roots turn into lifeless driftwood as I pass my wraithfire over it.
Still, a few of them manage to latch onto me, slicing into my torso. I sink partway into the ground. It’s so muddy that even without something dragging me down, I’m falling in on my own.
I can’t move my legs. The requisite nerve connections have been broken, and the movement of the roots has finalized the break.
“Evelyn!” Sierra calls to me. “I have no healing spell, but I can… I can help you.”
I shake my head, though I don’t know how well she can see it given that half of my face is submerged in watery earth.
This is inconvenient, but it’s manageable.
Despite the fall, I haven’t let go of my knives.
Reaching my back is awkward, but my physiology means I’m more flexible than the average human is. It’s not too hard to avoid my burning limbs.
My body’s ruined enough that it’s not hard to saw half of it off. Knifefighting guides me as I cut through flesh, muscle, and bone.
Suddenly, my body weighs several dozen pounds less.
The initial shock of the skill-disrupting field has worn off, and with some focus, I’m able to put together a shaky Shape Blood and keep my guts in. It’s not perfect, and the oppressive spell that the tree’s laid down decreases its integrity, but I’m able to manage it.
Immediately afterwards, I use Shape Self. I’m not able to guide it extremely well—normally, the skill requires a lot of mental focus in order to shape the complex parts of my body, and that definitely isn’t the case now.
I make a hasty fix. Rather than try to create a more useful set of limbs or tentacles like I’ve been doing—something that would require all too much focus, and something I can’t do while my skills are shaken by the heavy atmosphere—I create a single, sharp limb stemming from my waist. Flesh forms out of thin air, wrapping around the bloody stump where my organs are threatening to fall out.
It’s a hasty solution, and it kind of completely eliminates my ability to walk. Given the current shattered state of my base body and the imprecision of the disrupted Shape Self, I can’t create an accurate set of bones to link the sharp fin-like appendage to my spine.
It stops the bleeding, though.
Enough blood has escaped my body that when I Shape Blood again, I reach my limit of twenty gallons without coming close to removing all of the crimson liquid from the mud around me.
I manipulate myself back into the air, drawing on my enhanced magic reserves to keep me afloat when the entirety of my new weight is being supported by the blood under me.
Sierra reaches out to one side, and her hand vanishes for a brief instant. When it reappears, she’s holding her staff.
She casts Eclipse Devastator again, the scarlet glow in one of her eyes flaring back to lifewith the radiant white and midnight black of her skill.
My eyes are good enough to catch the instability of the skill, but it doesn’t look like she’s directing it anywhere near me, so I throw myself forward.
As I get closer and closer to the tree, Sierra manipulates her skill, annihilating grasping branches and freshly-born demons that spiral out from new spores. Few of the latter target me, though. Earlier, they chased after me despite my demonic status. Does Sierra just present a much tastier choice for them to attack now? Or is there something about my fresh soul damage that’s stopping them?
Maybe it’s the fact that I’m still on fire.
Whatever it is doesn’t matter. I continue forward. The white static sound of Sierra’s skill accompanies the wrathful wraithfire that’s still doing its best to devour me.
Wraithfire Resistance advanced to level 2!
That helps even more.
I slow my Shape Blood down as I get closer to the tree. I can feel its aura getting even more powerful. If left unchecked, I might not be able to use my skills at all.
Demons crawl out from cracks in the tree’s bark, teeming on its trunk like so many ants, but Eclipse Devastator wipes enough of them out to give me an opening.
I dive straight into a crack. Though they might be tiny in relation to the actual tree, each opening in the bark is large enough to fit a horse into. With a quick usage of Shape Self to reduce the size of the unwieldy fin that’s replaced my legs, I’m able to fit in just fine.
The inside of the tree is pitch black and surprisingly hollow. I thought I would have to dig my way in, but this place looks less like a true trunk and more like an anthill.
That comparison proves to be surprisingly apt when the still-burning wraithfire illuminates the area around me.
At first, I get the impression that the inside of the tree is just particularly bulbous, as if someone infected the bark with a pox of some kind, but then I realize what the lumps on the wood are.
Those are unfinished demon seeds. Hundreds of them.
There’s enough space for me to crawl around and climb in, so I start moving. Every movement I make sets seeds on fire. The dozen extra arms I gave myself have been burnt practically to cinders by the wraithfire, so I can’t really use them to climb. A couple of them have been reduced to bone and nothing else, the flesh and blood wholly consumed by the soul-devouring flame.
Still, even if I can’t move them, I can still manipulate my body in a way that puts them in contact with as much of the tree as possible.
Shape Blood assists me as I climb upwards end over end. The tree’s malicious aura grows in intensity as I climb, setting everything beneath me afire. I can only assume that that means I’m heading in the right direction.
A combination of instinct and existing knowledge from my amalgam tells me that there’s a main body to the tree, an equivalent to the brain or heart that’ll bring down the majority of the tree’s influence if I destroy it. A core of some kind.
As I continue to climb, the seeds above me start to hatch. The demons that emerge are unformed and slick with the tree’s oily sap. They’re unstable on their limbs, and some of them tumble and fall towards me as they lose their grip on the walls that they were born on, but there’s a lot of them.
Beneath me, the seeds I haven’t torched start to open as well.
They all seem reluctant to approach me, which the wraithfire probably contributes to.
Unfortunately for me, there’s enough of them that they’re going to overwhelm me if they attack me. I would use Bloodpath, but the destabilizing aura is increasing in intensity. I don’t want to take the chances on it breaking the skill so badly that I reform into broken parts of myself, unable to take action.
Instead, I use Shape Blood to propel me forth, dodging the demons as well as I can.
Less than a minute later, as the aura continues to grow stronger, my precautions are proven to be useful when another pulse of energy explodes out from above me and my Shape Blood fails. I’m close enough to a wall that I’m able to throw my arms out and catch myself before I fall, but the demons around me remain largely unaffected.
I reorient myself—and then I hear white static. A beam of light smashes through the tree above me as a stream of darkness so black that it makes the night around us seem bright passes under me.
How? Locate Person? Did Sierra just assume I needed help?
Whatever the case, I give her my thanks silently and continue to climb.
Soon enough, though, I realize my problem.
My wraithfire isn’t spreading enough.
The tree is catching, and I’ve left a trail of fiery destruction behind me, but it’s not spreading. It’s not devastating it like I wanted it to.
Wraithfire feeds on souls, and the demon tree doesn’t have enough of a soul to further fuel the flames.
I grimace as I slowly drag myself up. When I use Shape Blood again, it only lasts a second before the oppressive darkness tears the skill apart.
Around me, the demons continue to close.
I have to be getting close. For the aura to be this strong, I have to be.
Wraithfire Resistance advanced to level 3!
Now or never.
Relentless power bursts into my veins suddenly, accompanying my resolution to act. At the same time, I Siphon some of the wraithfire on my body. It barely reduces the intensity of the flame, but it gives me enough power to use a skill despite the dampening aura.
If the tree isn’t feeding the wraithfire the souls it needs, then I will.
I activate Soulknife, pouring as much magic power into it as I can, and I throw the dark red blade into my own flame.
One second after the blade containing my soul in it makes contact with the flame, a deep, bitter cold suffuses my entire body.
Two seconds after contact, my wraithfire explodes.
Black flame detonates over my body and the demons’ bodies and the tree and the air and everything around me, and I fall.
A hundred burning demons fall with me, and none of them have the resistances that I do.
Wraithfire Resistance advanced to level 4!
I reach my hands out, clawing at the rough bark on the inside of the tree, but I find no purchase. I scrabble at the tree’s innards with skinless fingers, failing to catch on as my flesh sloughs off despite my resistances.
I hit something that’s definitely not the ground, and it bursts. The oily sap of the tree spills over me, sticking to every part of my body, but it doesn’t try to Devour me like it did last time.
And then that, too, lights on fire.
I continue falling, smashing my frail frame onto outcroppings of seeds and branches within the tree.
Eventually, I stop. The final drop from the tree into the muddy ground is surprisingly soft. The mud sucks me in up to my shoulders, nearly submerging me, but I remain alive. I don’t bother to count the number of bones I’ve broken.
I lay there in the mud as it too ignites, waiting for one of us to die.
Wraithfire Resistance advanced to level 5!
I close my eyes, fire and darkness licking at the edge of the vision even with my lids shut.
I shake myself, opening my eyes. I need to stay conscious. Succumbing to unconsciousness in a state like this is a bad idea. I have enough memories to know that that’s how many have lost their lives.
I need to stay awake. I need to stay alive. I just need to hold out long enough for Sierra to arrive. I need to… I need…
My eyes close again, and the darkness takes me.
Objective updated: Burn it all down
The Flowering Demon burns.
You may now advance any two skills to their next tier!
Skills have already been selected.
Wraithfire advanced from Gold to Diamond!
Wraithfire became Soulpyre!
For the price of your soul, you will have a pyre that burns the world itself. Your flames increase in intensity, spread without your influence, and bypass all defenses.
Uses refreshed.
Devour advanced from Gold to Diamond!
Consume your opponent and take everything they have. Activation time decreased. Devouring a foe now grants a temporary boost equal to 10% of their attributes. You temporarily gain their resistances. Devour can now be used as an offensive skill. Devour can now be used at range. Devouring a demon now grants you temporary access to a limited pool of its skills.
Bonus reward: 1000 XP gained!
XP: 1786/1200
Critical soul damage detected.
Soul not detected.
Would you like to level up?
