Demonic Magician

Amongst aches and groans, Ren and I got dressed, finally leaving the warm comfort of the bed. Despite the conflict banging at the door today, I didn’t feel apprehensive. Some manner of calm acceptance that we could die, or at least would earn ourselves a bloody nose or two, was all that filled my stomach. Which was probably why I felt hungry.

“You fall asleep immediately?” I asked, while tying up the laces of my boots. Felt right to do things the proper, manual way. Added weight to our situation.

“No. Had some minor emotional turmoil I had to decompress. Yesterday was a lot of different feelings jumping up and down. Fine now, though.”

“As long as you’re sure.” No wonder she was back to her grumpy expression if she missed out on even more sleep than I had.

A couple of moments of silence, and then she was behind me. Her arms found their way into drawing me back into a hug from behind, her chin leaning against my shoulder. “Dickbaaag. Accept the trade request.”

My eyes went up to view it. “No. Why are you giving me Tokens again?”

“If you loved me, you’d accept.”

“That’s just manipulative.”

“If you don’t accept, I won’t let go of you.”

“You think you can threaten me with what I desire most?”

Warm air buffeted my face as she exhaled through her nose. “Okay. We both know the System loves kissing your ass, and for an important fight, we need that bullshit.”

I hated that I partly agreed with her. Out of all those in the Party, I had the potential to stand head and shoulders above the others. By now I had come to the conclusion that the System originally saw both of my souls as two individual Players. A Demon Summoner and a Combat Magician. Merged together, I had also doubled in effectiveness. Plus, with the Guardian boon…

“It’s not entirely selfless,” she continued, “as I have something I want you to get.”

Her intention clear as day, I knew which ability was at the forefront of her mind. “Fine, but if we survive the day, then I will pay you them back, okay?”

“Acceptable.” She gave the side of my head a brief kiss before moving away. Didn’t even tell me her choice - that’s how much she trusted that I knew her.

I received the six Power Tokens from last night, giving me a total of twelve to spend. First ten went to what she wanted. What we both deserved.

[ is now Expert - You may now have two active summoned demons.]

My eyes went over to Ren, to see that she was waiting eagerly - more life now in her bright blue eyes.

“You wanted me to upgrade my cannon, right?” I asked, unable to keep a poker face steady as her brow darkened her expression.

Before she had the chance to threaten violence upon me, two of my demonic canines yipped and jumped up at her from behind, wagging their tails eager for her attention. The elf immediately melted, dropping to her knees to snuggle and rub their flaming fur. A bright smile illuminated her face, erasing whatever lingering weight she carried forward from our previous day.

“We’d best get downstairs before they decide to save the world without us.” As much as it pained me to take her away from something that made her so clearly happy, we couldn’t put too much of a heavy cart before the horses, lest we go nowhere.

With a pout, she agreed. Hellhounds++ went into their magic portals back to Hell, and we left the room to find where the rest of the Party was. Roger had vanished at some point in the early evening, but with his card now back to normal, the most likely explanation was that the System corrected the error we had enacted. Seemingly without punishment - which was nice.

Out of the quaint house, the others were grouped around a grill on a patch of gravel. Unsurprisingly, they leveled some valid glares toward the pair of us. Half of me wanted to use my fake death ability to trip down the short steps, burst into pieces for the humor of it… but accidentally giving them Trauma right before our battle would probably earn me more than some pointed ire.

“I was half expecting you to use your fake death ability to break the ice,” Tanya said, lifting a plate with my cooked breakfast piled upon.

“I’d never do that,” I managed to say with a straight face. With a sweep of my arm, I dropped my chair out. A wry grin went up at the side of my mouth as I watched Ren mirror the action, adding her own flare to the process.

Quinn had all but forgotten why he was mad at us, but Wolf was statuesque in his admonishment. I knew why, and it wasn’t because we had slept in. Back before we fought Hadrian I had made the bear a promise that I’d never leave him behind. He hadn’t been party to our late night adventure, and out of all of them, he was most likely to know that we had run off.

Something to make up to him when I could without letting the other two know what I had been doing instead of sleeping.

“Glazing over whatever reason you look like shit this morning,” Tanya began, her fork pointed toward us in silent accusation. “We’re definitely doing this in the daytime, right?”

I wrinkled my face and looked up at the sky. It was becoming overcast, with the threat of gloomier clouds that were… yes, the wind was bringing them our way. Couldn’t argue with narrative ambience. “Likelihood of leveling up today?”

Attacking at night had its pros and cons. Trouble was, I figured that the undead could probably see well enough in the darkness. No point jumping into the cauldron.

“Getting to fourteen…” she sighed and rubbed at the bridge of her nose, as if she hadn’t already thought about the answer a dozen times. “Thing is, most of the decent Quests are in Crimson territory now. We’re talking… two days at a brisk pace, a week to get to fifteen.”

I shook my head. No time, then. We might be able to spare a day or two before going for the Lady, but we had to strike while the iron was hot and her groups were retreating or without blood. Fourteen might only grant me something marginally useful, and the time wasted would be a detriment to our efforts. It had to be now. I could feel it in my bones.

Mostly my right forearm bone, which was slightly concerning.

We fell into a silence as we ate our scrambled eggs and ham. Drank coffee, which seemed to work wonders on both mine and Ren’s spirit. I still had two Power Tokens burning a hole in my pocket. Too many options to choose from - even saving them might be sensible… but no, I would spend them and claw at any possible bonus for what lay ahead.

First one went into . Now, instead of it being a simple cast, I could affix it like a curse to a single target. Every five seconds, it would change one random debuff to another random one. This made it much more useful in combat, I felt. The previous downside was the per-target cooldown, now I could at least labor one enemy with potential death on a consistent basis.

Next went into… . Not just because of how amusing the ability was - although, that did play a part I my decision. Instead of having an hour’s cooldown per use, it now regenerated a charge every time I lost 20% of my max health. My Max Health. Not that I was keen to inflict injury on myself just to feign my death, but with and the other bullshit I got up to, it made it a handy defensive skill.

My eyes left my menus to see that Tanya was watching me. Wondering if I had perhaps missed a conversation, her expression sunk and she revealed the reason for the look.

“I keep expecting you to use the skill.”

“Oh.” I tilted my head to the side. “We’ve just eaten, so it would be unfair. Plus, I’m sure you’ll get the chance to see me beaten up against the Crimson Shadow.” I caught the glare of Ren in my peripheral - not appreciating my pessimism. “Ren will get beaten up, too.” Oddly, this seemed to calm the elf.

Less so for our fateweaver, who rolled her eyes. “I’d prefer it if this wasn’t a proverbial book end on the bloodied shelf of our exploits.”

“You’ll have to give us more incentive than poetic grumblings,” Ren complained, sinking into her chair as the coffee seemed to be wearing off already.

“If you all live, then I know of a vendor that sells Sweet Cakes.”

We both sat up to the edge of our chairs, a pavlovian response. “You’ve been holding out on us?” Ren questioned.

The fateweaver shrugged, a smile on her face. “It’s nowhere safe, and you’re not the only ones with cards up your sleeves.”

As the elf stood—as if she was about to go wring the information from the woman—and a waterfall of cards dropped from both of her sleeves onto the loose gravel.

My eyebrows raised as I saw the Dazzle icons pop up on the rest of the Party. Perhaps the best part of the trick was that I had absolutely no hand in it. They weren’t my mundane cards fastened to my belt, and I did not place inside or summon them from her sleeves. Entirely her own efforts.

“Shit,” she said. “Can you pick those up for me, Max? I clearly didn’t think that through.”

With a nod, I smiled and leaned forward to get them within my reach. Before I could start to vacuum them up, she leaned her face down beside my ear - her wide smile visible only to me.

“I can see Dazzle icons,” she whispered, before turning and sitting back down.

I raised an eyebrow at her now stoic poker face. Well, as best as she was able to put on - probably good enough to give none of the others a second glance. I knew her better, however. Her eyes were practically on fire with excitement. She could see the Dazzle icons. Was that just because she had performed the trick, or would she be able to see mine too?

While my brain ticked around, my eyes met Wolf again, who had still maintained his death-stare.

He had a point.

I stood with a sigh, the cards already now sucked up into my Inventory. “Before we proceed with the plan, there is something I need to tell you all. Last night, Ren and-”

“We know.” Tanya rolled her eyes. “My proximity idol.”

Quinn shook his head. “Your outfits stand out under the moonlight almost as much as in the day.”

“Oh,” I replied.

“The assumption was that you both just went off to screw somewhere romantic,” the fateweaver continued. “Given we might die today. Fell asleep before you got back, but I’m hoping it wasn’t actually something dangerous?”

My eyes went back to Ren, who looked like she didn’t want to weigh in on this conversation at all. Dangerous was a rather subjective label to apply to any of what we got up to.

“I’m afraid it was something even more selfish,” I eventually said. Mostly because Wolf wasn’t convinced in the slightest. “We went to kill a bunch of smugglers.”

The fixer rubbed at his eye-patch. “Doesn’t sound especially romantic…”

Ren exhaled through her nose. “I’m sorry we didn’t involve you all. With how much pressure we’ve been under lately, we needed a break to blow off some steam and catch up with some ghosts.” She looked over at Quinn, who was readying up a question. “Not literally.” He settled back down.

Tanya shrugged. “You’re both adults. It’s reckless and goes against what we’re trying to keep together… but things are kinda fucked and I don’t hold a grudge against you for going up for air. Next time, tell us though.”

“You did a show without us, didn’t you?” The pointed question from Wolf made us both tense. “Familiar smells on you both.”

The less I thought about that, the better. A quick bath before we went and died sounded all the more needed now. “Correct. I used my Domain and Ren took part in the show.”

“It was amazing,” the elf blurted out, before standing. “You’ll love it when you all get to join in as well. Now I’m going to go wash.”

I watched her leave and sat back down. Best keep a cool head and not share the event with her. Instead, I turned my thoughts to the day ahead, and what it would be like when the full Party became entwined in my demonic Domain. Seemed inevitable, but unthinkable. My musings were jostled away as the bear had come around to my chair.

“Forgiven, brother, but I am still sad about it. Do you not think I am worthy?”

“Wolf.” I gave him an exasperated grin. “It’s nothing like that. After the teleport scroll thing… I needed to show Ren that there was room for her on the stage, that I could accept her sharing the danger that I put myself through.”

The bear grunted, but gave a slow nod. “And the result?”

I removed my hat to rub at my hair in thought. Getting messy, still needed that cut. Even though Ren had agreed to be my protégé previously, she’d still mostly stuck to the script of her actual Class. The occasional bit of trickery here and there to whet my appetite, but nothing too wild. Last night she not only partook in the show, but her fighting style was a lot more involved.

“It went well.” I smiled. “Some new strength for the hardships ahead.”

“Speaking of,” Tanya interjected. “I had a question for you.”

I gestured for her to continue, as the bear gave up on being annoyed at me and laid down beside my chair.

“Can you summon Roger into the body left behind when you fake your death?”

An interesting question. In some ways, it was a ‘corpse’ as far as the System saw it, albeit only a temporary one. Having a Roger that looked like me would be… exceptionally creepy, yet I couldn’t deny there might be practical applications of such deception.

With a wide grin, I stood from my chair and rolled out my shoulders.

“Think of an amusing way to kill me, and let’s try it out.”