Zoe was not able to catch up to Lily with speed alone. The other girl was simply much faster than her. However, the girl might have had less stamina, or maybe she was less determined. The latter seemed a less likely explanation though, considering she was probably running for her life.
Not that Zoe was going to judge.
But regardless of the reason, the result was that the ice mage slowed down at some point, clearly assuming Zoe had lost her. That was an incorrect assumption, because Zoe did have a perception high enough to handle the job. Catching up to the elemental summoner in the near total darkness was surprisingly easy—especially once Zoe learned how to better rely on her antennae.
Yeah, antennae. Lilith may have won that particular battle after all. Zoe still thought they looked like horns though. She also thought they could end up being a bit of a nuisance anywhere that had low doorways.
All in all, it only took about three minutes for her to catch up. Also, Zoe approached things a little more intelligently this time—namely, she made sure to activate both cloak of scorn and mirage. She still wasn’t too sure about what all the former of those did, but she felt like it might have been vaguely helpful for stealth the times she’d used it before. Also, it made her feel less chill. Which is a little odd, because it literally makes everything around it cold. Not that Zoe was one to complain.
The one thing she left out was lesser disguise. Even with her stupid Humanitizer title, the skill still came with a significant strain on her magic. Lily already knew she was a Demon, so there was no point in wasting effort that could be better directed elsewhere.
Alright. Found the noble. Now what? Zoe may have caught up to the girl, but she still didn’t have a good idea how to approach things. No one had ever told her she was great at dealing with people.
“Just use our demagogue class, silly. It literally comes with a Rank B skill called persuasion.”
Oh. That was a pretty good point. Zoe’s highest-tier skill was literally called persuasion. She’d also barely used it, even when dealing with the cultists. She’d used acting a lot more—oh right, I have that too. She kind of forgot that her entire primary class was about manipulating people to get what she wanted.
Even though Lilith wasn’t even physically present—if you could call an imaginary phantom present—Zoe somehow got the distinct feeling of a face-palm. The intent behind Lilith’s reaction was crystal clear.
Yeah, yeah, I know I know. Give me a break, yeah? Literally my second night here and there’s been a lot of insane shit going on.
Zoe was still nervous, but she did what she usually did with unwelcome feelings—she convinced herself feeling it was lame, followed by pretending it didn’t exist. Then she stepped right in front of Lily and dropped all of her active skills.
Lily screamed.
Well this isn’t going well. Zoe had hoped for a marginally better reaction, but she wasn’t completely unprepared. In fact, she had enough foresight to have a few skills ready to go.
Acting!
Persuasion!
Surgeon’s Eye!
The last one had been a last-minute afterthought. Zoe wanted to see if she could get better at reading people by detecting changes in how their body was, well, doing normal body stuff. Kind of like a polygraph or whatever those lie-detector things were called.
It was a bit of a long-shot though. Zoe recalled that lie detectors were hardly reliable—and that was assuming she could even pick up on the same cues. Anyway—Lily was still freaking out.
“Holy hell, can you please shut up? Just calm the fuck down.” Zoe’s eyes widened a bit as she said that, and Lilith made a choking noise—mentally, of course. Zoe didn’t have any idea why she shouted at her, or why she shouted that specifically. Her intention had been to lean on the persuasion skill and then just do whatever felt right.
“Actually, it looks like it worked.”
Lilith was right. Lily had stopped being so loud and was now facing Zoe eye to eye with a much calmer expression. Maybe not calmer—more collected was more accurate. The ice mage did take a few cautious steps back, though. Well, if channeling persuasion and blurting things out works…
If it wasn’t broke, why fix it? Unconventional was fine if it got the right results. “I know that you know that I could kill you if I wanted to.” What? Zoe definitely couldn’t actually kill her—but realizing that Lily’s behavior implied the other girl believed that was interesting. “Also, I could have killed you earlier, which would be a lot more convenient. Like, convenient if I wanted to kill you. Which for the most part I don’t.”
Seeing the ice-mage’s eyes going wider, Zoe hesitated for a moment. Am I making this worse? It did seem like a pretty intimidating thing to say, and not something that was good for calming people down. But Zoe didn’t have any better ideas, so she decided to just go along for the ride.
“Also, I’d be really annoyed if I saved you and then you just ran away to get killed or something.”
Lily blinked. And that was it. Zoe narrowed her eyes. Is she still not going to say anything? But what could Zoe say next? This was getting even more awkward. Speaking didn’t feel right though—but was that feedback from her skills, or was that just anxiety getting to her?
Then the other girl relaxed a bit—mostly her shoulders slumped. The rest of her posture shifted too, giving an overall impression that she was no longer planning to fight or run. It looked like Zoe made the right choice by listening to her gut there.
Lily tilted her head as she met Zoe’s eyes. “Why?”
Zoe frowned. Why what, she thought. The obvious interpretation was ‘why would you help me’—but instead of clarifying that or simply answering, Zoe tilted her own head to match.
Clearing her throat, Lily gestured around helplessly for a moment—“I mean, why would you help me?” Then she interrupted herself before Zoe could give an answer. “Like okay, I don’t trust you, but I do believe that you aren’t going to kill me. But I want to know why you’re helping me.”
Oh, that’s simple. Zoe wouldn’t have needed any of her demagogue skills for that. “Easy, I’m new here, and you’re a rebellious young noble. I doubt it would be controversial to say making friends with you is a good idea.”
Lily pursed her lips at that. “I see.” Then she sighed. “So you want to use me for my influence and status.”
“Uh, yes.” Zoe thought that exceedingly obvious. “It seems you’ve figured me out.”
She hadn’t, actually, but Zoe wasn’t going to let the ice-mage know that. “I mean, I’m pretty sure that’s literally our reason for doing this,” Lilith remarked, “I’d say that she’s figured us out.”
That was true, yes, but not the full picture. Not that Zoe bothered to explain as such. But, to her surprise, Lily deflated even further at that. Rather than scared, the noble girl looked depressed. It was kind of pathetic. “Well that’s great,” she mumbled. “I’m sure any other noble would be just thrilled to make your acquaintance.”
Would they? Zoe didn’t think so. “Actually, I don’t think so. In fact, I think you’re being rather sarcastic.”
An arched eyebrow—and was that a smile she had to restrain. “Really?” No, it wasn’t a smile—Lily’s mouth twitched with the barest hint of a smirk. “Really? What gave it away?”
“It was mostly the tone of voice,” Zoe admitted. “That being said, you are not most nobles. Well, probably. I don’t think most of them have infernal and blood alignments.”
Lily’s eyes widened—and Zoe smirked. Got you with that one! While identify didn’t say that Lily had an infernal alignment—just a blood one—Andric did. It wasn’t much of a stretch to guess that Lily had at least some familiarity with the infernal as well. Also, persuasion and acting were still helping her. Those skills were also part of how Zoe realized Lily was looking past her. Wait, was it something else that surprised her?
Zoe turned around. “Huh.” There were a whole lot of ghouls coming towards them. Not nearly as thick as they had been surrounding the building earlier—but calling it a stampede might be underselling it. “That doesn’t look good.”Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.
Lily nodded once, sharply. “Yes, it’s probably not good.” She glanced back at Zoe as a trickle of magic flowed out of her—Zoe could feel it with her horns. Antennae. “Uh, what do we do now?” Lily asked.
That was a good question. The ghouls had closed the distance faster than Zoe expected—the tide of undead was quite nearly upon them. She rubbed the back of her neck. “We should probably run.”
_____
“So just making sure I’m understanding this correctly,” Zoe started, “you have a skill that applies a curse on a single target to make infernal-aligned monsters target them?”
“Yep,” Lily confirmed. The two of them were still running down the main boulevard of the dead city in no particular direction. Well, that wasn’t quite accurate—they’d been running straight in the exact same direction for several minutes now. The expansive, two-sided through-way made doing so relatively easy. It was also a decent strategy, because they were both faster than most of the ghouls. Trying to lose the still-growing horde in the side streets wouldn’t work, and it would make something ambushing or cutting them off a whole lot easier.
“Okay, so then you went and applied that curse to yourself, because you were tired of having to run around all over the place to fight them?” Zoe wouldn’t say it aloud, but she did have to admit to herself that it would have been clever—had the ice-mage understood the true scope of the monster population. Although, it only worked in the first place because these specific undead happened to have some infernal influence on top of the blight.
“It would have also worked better if she didn’t get herself trapped in a building that they could surround,” Lilith chipped in. “If you’re going to actively farm for levels like that, you should be prepared enough to hold out on your own.”
Yeah, that sounded like a good point too. Zoe relayed it back to Lily, who then had the nerve to glare at her. “That was literally the entire point of staying in the building,” the elemental summoner explained. “I knew that there were going to be a lot of them, so I thought I could use the right kind of building as a kind of fort. It made a pretty good framework for conjuring extra fortifications from ice.”
Oh—was that something the other girl could do? It made a decent amount of sense. Zoe had already seen the ice-sword, and she’d also already thought about how ice could be a good element for quickly creating solid stuff.
The name of Lily’s primary class continued to throw her off, though. With a name like ‘elemental summoner,’ Zoe expected, well, summons. Creatures made out of ice with ice powers. Instead, the noble had been using a lot of ice powers, but Zoe hadn’t seen her actually summon anything.
“You’re confusing the concept with the elementalist class,” Lilith chimed in. “An elemental summoner isn’t a proper summoner like you’d imagine. Although those do exist by the way. Elemental summoner is more like a middle area between the two. Compared to elementalists, elemental summoners typically focus more on persistent constructs and more complex effects.”
That did actually explain things. Zoe pondered it for a moment, thinking back to everything she’d seen Lily do so far. Constructs… so would that be things like that sword she makes?
The answer, according to Lilith, was a definitive yes.
But with that out of the way—“Okay, so let me just ask this one more time, just to be clear.” Zoe knew the answer, but it was always good to double-check—and she might also want to rub things in a little. “You applied the curse to yourself, but you can’t remove it yourself?”
“I mean, I can’t remove it from other targets either,” Lily said. “We’re just going to have to wait it out.” Zoe opened her mouth, but Lily must have predicted her next question. “Probably about another half-hour now.”
Damnit. That was way too long. Sure, Zoe was confident they could survive for another half hour—but she didn’t want to keep running for that long. Maybe I could just ditch her.
A gleeful cackle resonated within her mind in response to that thought. “I love the way we think,” Lilith crooned, “but that sounds like a waste of some easy levels.”
Easy levels? Zoe glanced back at the swarm of ghouls ever on their heels. They couldn’t stop, because then they’d get overrun. But since they were being chased, it was hard to actually kill any of them. Only a few of the undead monsters were fast enough to catch up to them. Then one of them would splatter it, and it was back to impromptu cardio.
“We could try running backwards.”
Zoe blinked. That’s—actually a good suggestion. They were already faster than the ghouls, and the boulevard was long and straight. What was the worst that could happen? It would certainly make things more interesting.
Also, the ghouls weren’t after her specifically. They just tried to kill her every now and then because she was there—a would-be victim of convenience. I guess I’ll go ahead and try it. Pulling ahead of Lily a little bit—just to have some room in case she fucked up and fell or something—Zoe twisted around and started running backwards. It actually worked, to her moderate surprise.
“What are you doing?” Lily called out to her. Glancing over her own shoulder, the ice-mage checked to make sure Zoe wasn’t reacting to something new happening. Evidently seeing nothing, she then just looked confused.
Zoe, meanwhile, was feeling quite pleased with herself. Running backwards was a whole lot easier than she’d expected. It was only a bit slower and took more focus. A small price to pay, when the upside was getting to actually look at the things she was trying to fight. Oh wait, Lily asked something, didn’t she?
“Yeah,” Lilith confirmed, “she wanted to know what we were doing. You know, by running backwards like this.”
Oh, that was easy. Zoe grinned. “It’s called kiting!”
That really was the best word for it. Sure, it was mostly a videogame thing, not something that happened in real-life—except Zoe was literally doing it now. Sort of. She had yet to find out if it would ultimately work out like she hoped—she needed to start using some of her more offensive skills for that.
“Kiting?” Lily scrunched up her forehead in confusion. “What are you talking about?”
“Kiting! You know, you have a whole bunch of shit chasing you, but if you run normally it’s hard to attack anything. But if you stop then you’ll get overwhelmed!”
Lily did not look any less confused. “Yes, that’s literally what’s happening right now. What do you propose we do about it?”
Grinning, Zoe called on a skill which was quickly becoming a trusty standby.
Blood Whip!
The sanguine coil materialized in her hand instantly—but she didn’t unleash it just yet. She wanted to be just a bit more dramatic about this. After all—she was still trying to make a certain kind of impression on the other girl. With that in mind, she also activated acting again.
Acting!
Then she flashed her signature grin—the cocky, self-assured badass variation, to be exact. “Yep! We can’t not run, but that also makes it hard to fight. So I’m gonna try kiting!”
It looked like Lily was trying to do a cold, skeptical raised-eyebrow thing—but running for her life while sweaty and out-of-breath mostly ruined it. “Which is?”
Zoe smirked. “You run backwards.”
Lily just stared. She was probably going to say something, but that wasn’t what came next in Zoe’s script. No—that would be obliterating ghouls. Zoe unleashed the whip.
So far, Lily had only seen her use the whip on its own—and only ever on one ghoul at a time. But that wouldn’t do here—Zoe needed to make a statement. She might still only be Rank F—but she also had the perfect skill for that.
Rending Touch!
Acting entirely on impulse, she also attempted to overload the skill combination with the help of her bloodshaper trait. It might have worked, because she suddenly stumbled. It felt like the combination of skills had taken nearly half her blood for that single activation. Regaining her footing was easy, but she feared it made her look a whole lot less cool in the process.
That fear turned out to be ill-founded. Upon connecting with the first rank of ghouls, the whip—didn’t exactly stop. Stretching out dozens of meters more, the lashing, sanguine magic continued carving deeper into the horde. It was less like a whip at that point and more like a bloody scythe.
By the time the attack reached its limit and snapped back to Zoe’s waiting hands, Zoe had reaped a full five-or-so ranks of undead. Those that weren’t immediately bisected found themselves irrecoverably lacerated inside and out. That was mostly due to the combination with rending touch—but blood whip still did more than enough damage on its own. Even with glancing hits.
Then the notifications came.
Blood Whip has reached level 7!
Blood Whip has reached level 8!
Blood Whip has reached level 9!
Rending Touch has reached level 5!
Rending Touch has reached level 6!
You have leveled up! You are now level 16.
+15 stat points.
+10% core progression.
New Quest!
[LET’S GO FLY A KITE]
You know what kiting is, but knowing isn’t the same as doing. And they say you know something if you can teach it—let’s see if you can teach Lily to fly a kite.
-Rewards-
1 Magic Kite (Rank E) (Upgradeable)
-Progress-
> Successfully kite: <completed>
> Convince Lily to try kiting: <completed>
> Successfully kite the ghouls with Lily <incomplete>
Quest Update!
[THE FIRST HARVEST]
As a newly minted Higher Demon, you now have the power to accelerate your own advancement with the blood of others. Ordinary Humans can actually do that too, but having thrown away your mortal shell first makes it feel significantly more dramatic.
A humble suggestion—slaughtering 250 monsters of the same core type might be a good start.
-Rewards-
1 Elemental Awakening Core (Rank E)
-Progress-
151 / 250
That’s a lot of stuff. Zoe didn’t think she could complain about running from the ghouls anymore. Well—she could, but it would be bad form—or something like that. These were some pretty good rewards. She’d walk away from this happy, even if she didn’t end up succeeding the quest. If only cardio routines back on Earth had been this engaging.
Of course, there were a whole lot more ghouls that Zoe hadn’t killed. While impressive, her little stunt had only made a small dent in their numbers—and it had cost her close to half her own blood. Not exactly sustainable—probably.
Lily, though? She looked impressed. That was good, because it meant she was more likely to keep taking Zoe seriously—and more importantly, she was also more likely to let Zoe complete the new quest.
She clearly hadn’t committed to the running backwards thing, though, only taking increasingly bold potshots over her shoulder. That’s not going to do. Zoe wasn’t going to get her quest reward if things continued like that.
And while Zoe had no idea what a magic kite was or what it was used for…
I know I really fucking want one.