by Naosu N R
Wow, this is great.
But then my cell phone just pinged, interrupting us.
"Hello?" Melanie picked it up to answer for me. (The family has been having her act as my secretary now that they trust her more.)
"Yes...?" she asked.
She handed it to me fast, looking like it was 'urgent'.
"Who is it?" I whispered to her while covering the mouth piece.
"Its your brother Ryan."
"Hello?" I picked up.
"Jay, hey listen. Don't come to the dungeon today and for a few days. There's trouble, big trouble. Someone was waiting for you here to take you out. I took care of him. He won't be bothering anyone ever again. But there might be more of them because he was the person hired, not the person wanting it done," Ryan told me. "Don't worry, dad already knows and he's taking steps for revenge to protect our clan's reputation. Looks like we're going to be hitting someone hard for this. Stay home for the time being. Dad is going to get some guards set around the house. As of now, we're at war."
He hung up.
That's not good.
Its never good to go to war. Especially with my family there are tons of morality issues when they do something on this level that I don't want to be part of.
I've never been dragged into the family business like this also. So its very weird.
...
A few hours later I got a call also.
"Jay, that guy that tried to kill you in the dungeon, was this him?" my brother Ryan asked by video mage chat (status screen plug in program) showing a picture up into the screen to download, holding it up close so I can see it. "Take a good look at it. Then tell me what you think."
He looks really pissed off. His eyes are angry but not at me.
I was surprised when he showed me a pic of four guys and two girls up going into the dungeon together as a team in full armor.
!!!
Wait...is that...Irina?!
She was supposed to be sort of a family introduced dating partner towards me with the hope of it becoming something more.
She's the girl on the right side but close to the middle, talking to some guy. The other woman I have never seen before. And...Ryan is pointing to one of the guys in the pic next to Irina, who is smiling and proud looking, very muscular also.
But the funny thing is the guy Ryan is pointing at, isn't the guy. But the assassin guy IS still in the pic, but rather is one of the guys on the very far left instead!
"Actually he is in the pic, but he's not that one. He's the on the far left," I replied.
"What? Really?" Ryan turned the pic to see it himself.
"Which one?" he added looking at it.
"The one with the fancy halberd, and the gray leather jacket with the shiny steel belt buckle," I told him.
"OK. That confirms it then. It looked like it might be one of them," he said with a 'hum...'.
"What do you think it means?"
"Very simply, Irina and her boyfriend, put a contract on your head to have you removed from being a threat to their relationship. They would both be in on it, and we'll know for sure once we look for a money trail paying the team member paid to be the assassin, or some other expensive item for trade; which is also common in adventurers. We also know that the guy that you picked is a long time core insider team member with these guys for a long time. This team they have has been together for dungeon hunts for awhile. So it would make sense that they asked him instead; they'd hoped he wouldn't be noticed, but they would have a lot of trust. We'll know for sure by the end of the day, but something like this is totally foreseeable," Ryan told me.
"Does Dad know?" I asked, flinching.
"Yeah, he was having me do this. He's paying me also. So you don't owe me anything on this. Right now Diego also is working to move against them, and mom isn't, but is sending some people in her place. We'll have crushed this rebellious clan before the end of the day," he said carefully.
"Thanks for watching out for me," I said.
"We're the demon lord clan. We have to. Its our duty. But your duty is to level up, get stronger, and don't make us look weak. It gives us a bad image that you are pathetic and weak," he said.
"I'm just not leveled up. That's not fair. I just barely turned 18," I protested.
He appeared thoughtful for a few seconds. "Well, technically the guy you killed in self defense was about 10 levels above you. That's not bad. So I guess you have a fair point."
Then he hung up.
...
Before going to sleep today with Melanie and Simone, I had a sudden thought.
Am I reliving some weird twisted version of Romeo and Juliette(s)?!
!
How do I avoid the tragedy flag parts?
Chapter 20
Unfortunately things didn't calm down for quite awhile.
Mom had a security team sent to guard the house.
(I'm also curious about some of the hidden reasons for her doing this, that she's not telling me about. She'd been more serious lately also. Trouble at work maybe? And this hypothesis looks more sure after seeing her on edge. Some would say she's on edge all the time, but lately more than normal.)
This mean, Melanie and Simone were temporarily granted the right to wear clothes and go out with me as long as I'm careful. But since I didn't have any, we had to go shopping that one night.
But on the plus side, I had several days of being at home, to work exclusively on enchant projects and enhancements while building my skills and magic both.
I put out 3 orders of enchanted daggers+2, 10 sets each. All were auctioned off on Murim eBay.
+$292
+$412
+$363
Not bad for just a few days of work.
Then I took care of some clothes for my minions, since its allowed.
But the losses for women's clothing for Simone and Melanie was something along the lines of -$274 dollars, for only two fairly nice outfits each and a pair of shoes. But the rules are the same as before; while other people are around they aren't allowed.
The demon lord clan has strange rules, I thought. I'd not noticed it until I started seeing how other people act. And there's a feeling to like we have to be really careful speaking our mind at home. But other family's would be allowed to quarrel more at home without feeling the boot coming down to bear.
I found out also that somehow Melanie's amplify skill has leveled up also. Now currently at +10% to core stats, and +20% max for skill effects!
This is still better than I'd hoped for.
Did the mind control effects influence this somehow?
Mom and dad want me to level up faster and were worried with the warring. So a few days ago they gave me two skill books! I used these right away and had been given the following skills, which are unfortunately a bit too basic;
[Mana Sensing] has been acquired!
[Mana Shielding] has been acquired!
I'd spent the last few days practicing with both of these.
Mana sensing is pretty basic. It can also let you track mages also, which bothers me. But to do that someone would have to have skill with it at insanely high levels that probably would take decades to hone.
My mana shielding skill is self only unfortunately. So I can't put it on Simone or Melanie. And its not easy to use yet. I haven't gotten it worked out quite yet.
Melanie's training is doing well.
But I was told later by mom that she doesn't think she'll ever be any good as a dungeon fighter or martial artist. Her stats just aren't quite there yet. And when I voiced objections over it, she says it would require an obscene amount of resources...resources which are more needed for myself.
Hm...
But did mom consider, what if she were given my enchanted and enhanced gear?
In a way the things I'm doing might even enable anyone to become a dungeon adventurer, if wearing a whole slew of gear!
And this only made me more determined.
I began tinkering for se
veral days. I must have lost tons of mana playing around. I even ended up blowing up a few items also, trying to discover things. (Fortunately others weren't at the house at the time, and it didn't create any smoke or fire, since it was a mana based enchantment breakage).
[Umbrella enchanted successfully] registered on my status screen when I finally fixed this option!
Wow! This skill is so cool!
I'd created an enchanted umbrella with an embedded skill called [Damage Absorption Shield], based loosely on the mage's basic [mana shielding] skill!
This works by having the user inject 10 mana into it, and then the shielding of the umbrella will absorb 20-50 damage, before needing to be reset! Its end game will end up more like total damage nullification if I can work it up; that's my hypothesis anyway.
And that's what the status screen says. But it would change according to whether or not either the defendant or the attacker had a higher level over one another, plus the other stats of both, etc.
Wow.
This thing could be really useful! And it could end up being more powerful than a normal skin wrap magic shielding technique; which unfortunately I'm not good at for some reason...
But it'd taken a lot of mana and several days to make this cool shielding enchant.
Plus, what would happen if I enhanced it?
I hadn't enhanced it yet because I had to work out the enchant first. But in theory, I could do that.
But...huh, what's this?
[Enchanter XP Bonus achieved for [Magic item creation!]! 10% of level in bonus XP rewarded!]
Wow cool.
So in theory, if I kept doing this, I might end up getting stronger than with the other method of just leveling up by monsters!
Maybe I could even create skills that I wouldn't normally have access to also?
...
We continued training at home.
But the idea of the guards here was a bit annoying. Plus, this whole time they didn't like us going outside of the house.
Simone gained two skills in a very short time.
[Simone gained athletics skill]
[Simone has chained the 'defend' skill!] also showed up in her system.
Huh? But why does Simone have a status screen anyway? She doesn't have magitek, I thought.
So we asked mom, and she said it was installed when they got her to monitor her situation with the enslavement enchant on her. She also asked me to be careful how I worded that to her. In the end, this is a boon for me, because now I can look at Simone's stats, which actually aren't that great, but are good in a few areas.
I paused to check Simone's stats by asking her to show it to me. I will also check Melanie's after this.
Name; Simone Mansfield
Race; Human
Magic job; NA
Level; 4
Health; 51/52
Mana; NA
Mana Regen; 0
Health regen; 2 (per day)
Element affinities; mind, enchantment
Str; 22Agi; 38Con; 44
Int; 54 Wis; 43App; 94
Skills; athletics, jogging, defend
OK, that makes sense. Simone is young, and inexperienced in the world when they picked her up. I wonder if she was entering college or some thing deal, because she's obviously over 18, but still very young.
I switched over to see Melanie's status screen.
Name; Melanie Williams
Race; Type 349F human hybrid
Magic job; Amplifier
Level; 12
Health; 123/123
Mana; 144/144
Mana Regen; 5 (per hour)
Health regen; 3 (per day)
Element affinities; mind, enchantment
Str; 17Agi; 26Con; 43
Int; 63 Wis; 61App; 95
Skills; athletics, mana affinity (enabled), defend-6,
Magic skills; Amplify, Mana Sensing
Hm...yeah, both of them are lacking in skills still. And it was told to me from the beginning to not use both of them for combat, but instead for the bedroom.
...
And there was tons of sex also with both of them since we were cooped up inside together.
...
During the last week, we heard constant skirmish reports.
There was a mercenary group that tried to kidnap Diego. He killed all of them ruthlessly himself, but the family is still looking for the remaining two.
There was a raid on the compound belonging to Irina's parents. But surprising was that this wasn't from enemies, but a punishment raid for pissing off my parents.
Because they are a branch family, they are still considering if they will execute them or just make them slaves. My parents want revenge for Irina's betrayal.
Her parents were shown proof of the betrayal and in shock. But it was discovered that they weren't in on it, only she was and her team.
Now the focus of the hunt is on locating her and her team. (When the assassin didn't come back, it seems that they fled to some hideout location, none of which anyone knows where its at.)
I really wish I hadn't been told about that part. I felt sick to my stomach hearing about it.
...
One day I was sitting up trying to regenerate mana when there's a knock on my bedroom door.
Before answering, I glanced over to Simone and Melanie. Both of them reached over to grab their T shirts and put them on, while laying in the bed with me. They hurriedly grabbed them, though that was about all they could manage in time. Luckily they were long shirts, and there were bed sheets also to use for cover.
"Yeah?" I called out.
I was surprised. Mom is home?
Weird.
I thought she never takes a day off.
"Jay? Can we talk for a minute?" mom asked, after I opened the bedroom door.
"Yes. What's up?" I asked politely.
"Come to the living room. I have someone I want you to meet," she said.
"Sure."
"Oh. Also, leave Melanie and Simone here," she added.
I nodded and followed mom to the living room. It didn't take us long to cross the length of the huge house until we got there. Sometimes I wish their mansion weren't so big. Plus, with so many floors its a chore to even cross the house.
When we did arrive in the living room, I was surprised that there were 4 young women there.
I looked at mom questioningly.
"Don't worry, son. I'll explain everything. Let me introduce you. First, this is Mandy," she introduced a brunette haired girl that looked too serious in a woman's business suit. "She's a knight magic job and good at what she does. She can do both business advisement and her magic knight job. She's trained in corporation procedures also. She can function as a bodyguard and secretary both, in other words."
"Hello. Nice to meet you," I said, shaking her hand and being direct.
She had a good handshake but looked a bit cold.
"This is Tabitha, a soldier dungeon class. Not a knight but has really great equipment," mom introduced me to another blonde woman that I shook hands with. "She's got secondary skills, as a chauffeur, and also sports trainer. If you go with her that would mean she could help you in other areas."
What does she mean by that?
"A pleasure," she gave me a slight bow.
I noticed right now they haven't approached very close to me. They also look a bit like they are trying to put forth a good first impression, but not for romance.
Then the last was a woman named Linny, a dark raven black haired girl. She had really deep looking eyes and nice looking eyebrows, but didn't say anything when I shook her hand.
"She's also a knight class. And if you've read the dungeon guides, they often work as tanks," mom informed.
Why is mom introducing me to tank classes?
I looked at her questioningly. I also noticed that she'd not introduced me to the fourth girl yet. All of them looked really beautiful really. But the fourth was quite striking also, but with an intelligent l
ook to her also.