Zoe had transferred all the items from the ring to her own inventory before rejoining the others outside because she wasn’t an idiot. There was close to zero chance that none of them would notice she suddenly had the ring when she didn’t before. While not at all uncommon, it was also expensive—the sort of thing every rich person had, and that someone like who she was pretending to be wouldn’t.
She did keep the now-empty ring as well, though. It would no doubt prove useful later, because she also didn’t want anyone to know about her inventory. She already planned to always wear the ring later, when she was more established in this world.
Conveniently, it turned out Zoe could store other storage devices in her inventory, so long as they were completely empty. As for what had previously been inside—well, Zoe might have overreacted a bit.
There was way more stuff than she’d expected, and a lot of it was weapons. That being said, it was probably enough to equip a small, unusually well-armed mob, not a whole revolution. Also, I thought this was a typical sword and sorcery world, not whatever the hell this kitchen-sink is.
[MANA-PULSE RIFLE (Corrupted)]
Rank C | Level 50+ (Required)
CORRUPTED
A complex weapon intended for a swift and precise delivery of arcane destruction at range. Usually suffers from a severe lack of said range and a steep mana cost.
This model overcomes these limitations at the cost of inflicting high levels of Corruption on the target, wielder, and surrounding environment.
-Attributes-
> 12-Shot Capacity (Max Power)
> 150% Efficacy At Rank C
> 85% Quality
> 100% Corruption
It’s Corrupted. You probably shouldn’t touch it.
Honestly, Zoe wanted to try touching it. Lilith really didn’t want her to, which actually made her want to touch it even more. However, Zoe was an intelligent and mature woman who was capable of heeding the warnings of the system. She wasn’t going to touch it.
In fact, seeing it in her own inventory was even a little unnerving. Lilith said it would be fine though, and Zoe didn’t feel anything weird or get any system notifications, so it was probably fine. Still annoying though, because more than half of the other weapons were corrupted as well, and that included nearly all of the good ones.
It looked like Zoe would have to settle for the simple and trusty pointed stick.
[DEMONIC ICE SICKLE]
Rank E
Is it a spear? Is it a war-scythe? Who knows, but it’s obviously made of ice! Also, it’s an infernal weapon, so the ice probably has something to do with the frozen essence of cold, unrelenting Hate.
But, with zero mana-cost and a high likelihood to inflict stacking levels of both Chill and Despair—what’s not to love instead?
-Attributes-
> 85% Efficacy at Rank E
> 115% Affliction Efficacy at Rank E
> 51% Quality
Ignoring the stupid name, Zoe was pretty happy with this one—which was good, because it turned out to be the only weapon she could use. All of the other spears required at least level twenty-five, and everything else was massively corrupted.
And while Zoe wanted to spend more time inspecting the others, everyone else was waiting and ready to go. Sean led them away from the cabin with barely a word, leaving Zoe to drool over her future weapon upgrades on the go.
Several hours passed trudging through thick snow in near silence. It wasn’t much different from the day before, except that she had something approaching clothes and had actually gotten to sleep. Wait, does being dead count for sleep-purposes? It could probably go either way. Also, Zoe wasn’t being attacked nearly as much. She was still cold though, and concerned about her near-future survival prospects.
The difference there was that she was more concerned with keeping her Demonic nature secret, both short and long-term. It was, all things considered, a big improvement.
Zoe returned to sorting through the heap of new items in her inventory.
[EARTH-SHATTERING CHARGE] x3
Rank D
Consumable
Creates a rapid blast of powerful Stone magic, rupturing ground in a wide area. Good for blasting rocks everywhere, less good if you’re inside.
Zoe didn’t know whether there were only three of those charges because they were expensive, or because they weren’t actually all that useful. There was also a stack of ten flame charges, which were basically the same thing. But with fire instead of stone, obviously.
Aside from the weapons and bombs, it was mostly boring but useful things like various kinds of rope, a few tarps, an empty waterskin, and money. The last came in the form of a little pouch of tiny coins made of various metals. Gold, silver, copper, yes—but also tin, lead, nickel, and what Zoe was pretty sure was actually aluminum. She could tell because the system called it ‘Luminium.’ Close enough.
Lilith acted like it was plenty of money to get by on for a little while, but she was far from loaded. Though to be fair, the specter still didn’t know much about how things went in their specific location. Her knowledge still seemed to be extremely generalized.
Finally, there were a couple thin books—pamphlets, really—and small crystals. The former were for rituals, skills, and finally something called ‘advancement techniques.’ The latter were mostly mid-grade mana crystals of different varieties, with a few ‘elemental awakening gems’ as well.
Most of those were empty—but Zoe did figure out something awesome while she was trying to keep track of all of them. She could subdivide her inventory into nested ‘containers’ in a manner similar to a computer file system.
/Misc Valuables/Magic Crystals/Mana Crystals
> Cold
> Fire
> Ice
> Light
> Metal
> ShadowRoyal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.
> Stone
> Water
> Wind
> Wood
> Empty x6
It seemed like a pretty decent basic spread, though none of them turned out to be very potent. Not nearly as much as the ‘awakening gems,’ at least the few that were filled with anything at all.
/Misc Valuables/Magic Crystals/Awakening Gems
> Cold
> Ice
> Shadow
> Empty x4
Zoe didn’t actually know what to—do with any of them. That went for the pamphlets as well, because the system wouldn’t let her use the skill tomes, she wasn’t planning on doing a ritual, and she couldn’t even read the so-called advancement techniques.
Lilith very emphatically told her all of it would be important later, but was pretty much useless right now. Zoe was fine with that, even if she was a little bit curious too.
So aside from all of that? No one seemed like they wanted to talk, so the only other thing was killing ghouls.
_____
It was that Arthur guy’s turn to kill the ghoul again, even though they’d very obviously skipped over Zoe multiple times. It’s not fair. Sure, they thought she was just a weak healer still recovering from cult-violence, and at least two thirds of that was even true, but it still wasn’t fair. Zoe was reconsidering her strategy of ‘infiltrating the Humans’ if it meant she wouldn’t get to fight and kill things.
“Spoken like a true Demon, ha.”
Zoe wasn’t going to give her unwanted passenger any satisfaction by reacting to that. Zoe wanted to kill things because she was ambitious and bored, not because she was some kind of monster.
“Those things aren’t mutually exclusive, you know.”
Zoe wasn’t going to react to that either.
The ghouls were simultaneously far more dangerous than the rabbits and considerably less of a real threat. They were undead, sort of, and packed far more of a punch on average. It was largely a result of being afflicted by something called the Blight—at least, that was as far as Zoe could figure. Unlike the bunnies, they were typically fairly slow. So slow in fact, that Zoe had never had a chance to see what taking a hit from one of them would even do.
Not that anyone looked particularly keen to find out.
Drawing the tip of his thin metal staff through the air, Arthur stood his ground against the approaching ghoul. The motion left a shimmering silver trail that stayed attached to the staff at one end. It looked like a floating magic string.
Then he walked forward, sidestepped a clumsy swipe from the ghoul, and yanked the monster off its feet. Well, more accurately he yanked its feet off. His floaty magic string cut right through both legs.
Not that the loss of its lower half stopped the ghoul from trying to bite him. Zoe might have said that the ghouls weren’t very fast, but that was compared to the killer rabbits. She’d already seen a few get up to a decent jog—they were clumsy more than anything.
But now lacking its primary means of locomotion, the ghoul had a hard time retaliating against the archmage’s first strike. All he had to do was take a step back. The ghoul made a disturbing noise something like a cross between a moan and a whistle. Zoe and Millie both shivered.
“That is far too creepy, so please shut up.” Arthur’s words were followed by a graceful golf-swing, sending a chunk of the ghoul’s face spraying off into the nearby trees. Zoe was glad they hadn’t been standing on that side.
It did shut up the ghoul, though.
For his part, the archmage did something Zoe couldn’t see to clean off the top of his staff. Yanking his still-shimmering string back into the tip, he looked between the five of them. “What are you all staring at?”
It should have been fairly obvious, but Millie went ahead to clarify things. “So it’s not okay for me to touch your precious staff, but it’s no problem at all to go around whacking blighted ghouls with it?”
A restrained snort was Lily’s contribution, and Zoe couldn’t resist finally getting in on the fun. “I thought the staff was for spells… wait, is there a bludgeoning skill with a mana cost?”
“Ha ha, very funny.” Something told Zoe that the archmage didn’t find it funny. “Saving mana is the point, I’ll have you know. Besides, rogue types are always talking about ‘casting knife’ or something equally idiotic, which never works out. Like what are they expecting, that using close range melee tactics against a mage is going to be some sort of surprise? That makes absolutely no sense, because obviously any mage with any combat already has more experience countering that than defending against enemy spells.”
Uh oh. Zoe sensed a rant was incoming. Actually, I’m pretty sure we’re already well into the rant by now.
Arthur wasn’t stopping, obviously. “So which is actually more likely? The mage is caught off guard by normal enemies doing normal enemy things, or someone else screws up by forgetting that we don’t actually need spells? We can still just cast a punch too.” The mage finally took a breath. It was almost impressive that he went this long. “So yes, I practice bludgeoning monsters to death because one, it saves me from pointless mana expenditure, and two, it’s good practice.”
Is he done? It looked like he was done, because now the whole clearing was dead silent. It was a little uncomfortable, so Zoe had the brilliant idea to check if the ghoul was actually dead.
[FRIGID GHOUL]
Rank F | Level 11
It could have been a Human, once, but now it’s cold, Blight-infected, and positively nasty. It’s also very, very hungry.
-Alignment-
> Infernal (Revulsion)
> Blight
-Strengths-
> Endurance
> Infectious Wounds
-Weaknesses-
> Fire
> Hallow
It wasn’t, for some reason. It also didn’t look like anyone else had noticed—they were all moving on. Zoe waited a bit, then went over to the ghoul to finish it off. It wasn’t very hard—all it took was a good stomp.
You have leveled up! You are now level 8.
+15 stat points.
+47% core progression.
You have earned a new title!
[NO LOVE AMONG FIENDS]
Kill another infernal-aligned monster as a Demon. This isn’t a very special title because it happens a lot.
But you didn’t need to be told that, did you?
-Effects-
> Infernal effects from your skills overcome 10% of Infernal resistances.
Well that was nice. Zoe couldn’t say she was displeased with this development, no matter how anticlimactic it might feel. There was one particularly notable thing, however—just what was up with that colossal amount of core progression?
“It’s because you’ve been sustaining us on all those monster cores we collected.”
That made sense. It also would have been helpful to know quite some time ago. Zoe had been consuming all of the uneaten rabbit-cores ever since regaining consciousness back in the cabin. Even with the effects of her stupid-sounding Humanitizer title, she would have run out of energy for her disguise long ago otherwise. This was mildly concerning because so far she hadn’t found a single chance to restock.
And now that she thought about it, Zoe did remember meaning to ask Lilith about how core progression worked early on. She’d probably gotten distracted by something, and then it never came up again. Oh well.
That massive increase was several times larger than her entire gains up to that point. If Zoe remembered correctly…
[NASCENT FIEND CORE]
59% Developed | Rank A
Over half now, and closing in on two-thirds. What would happen when it hit one-hundred?
“You’ll go through your next core evolution. It’s a big deal, comparable to advancing to the next letter tier, and also essentially the monster equivalent of class upgrades. Though as a higher Demon, we get to do both.”
Well that was cool and all, but there were just a couple very important questions. Zoe swallowed. How long does it take when I start it, and will I get to choose how I evolve? Zoe really needed the answers to be ‘instantly’ and ‘yes.’
Lilith laughed. That couldn’t be good. “First, you don’t get to start it, it just happens when it happens. And I know what you’re thinking, so trust me when I say you shouldn’t try to ‘hold it.’ And anywhere from a few minutes to decades, but I think it’s safe to say we’ll be on the hours-to-minutes end of the spectrum.”
That—was really not good, actually. In fact, it was close to the worst possible case in Zoe’s mind. But Lilith didn’t answer the entire question. Zoe had a sinking feeling—but she had to know. Would she get to choose?
It was a relief that Lilith didn’t laugh, but the way she considered it wasn’t exactly comforting either. It looked like she had come to a conclusion just as Zoe finished taking the dead ghoul’s core and catching up to the others. Once Lilith finished explaining, she’d have to take a good look at her new title as well.
“That’s a really good question, and also a bit complicated. I guess the best answer would be… sort of.”