by EA Hooper
“Aw, man,” Ned said. “That takes away the fun of hunting people myself.”
“Yeah, but it also means everyone won’t hate us,” Jeanie noted. “We’ll walk away looking like the good guys.” She shook Noah’s hand, and then her eyes turned red. A wicked smile crossed the woman’s face. “Ah, what a body! Powerful, tons of abilities, and beautiful as well.”
“Fine, I’ll agree,” Ned said, reaching forward. “Just give me a real twisted devil.”
“I have just the friend,” Noah’s voice replied, shaking his hand.
Ned’s eyes flashed red, and he looked at his hands. “I hope you have as much fun as I do with your body,” he told himself. Ned grabbed a pinky and twisted it back until it snapped. “You feel that, don’t you? Hurts, right? Don’t worry, Neddy, I’ll do a lot worse to other people than I do to you. I just might torture this body a little bit during our downtime to keep us entertained.”
The devil-possessed players stared at Ryker and Devon.
“Do you have any friends with even an ounce of honor?” Ryker asked, hesitantly.
Ned and Jeanie scoffed at once.
“You’ll find we’re quite honorable,” Noah’s voice replied. “We give you exactly what you agree to. I have a friend that’ll take good care of your body. He won’t torture anyone, just defeat them and move on to the next opponent.”
Don’t do it, Ryker! Come on, think this through.
Ryker sighed and shook Noah’s hand. Instantly, his irises turned red, and he crossed his arms. “It’ll take a lot of work to whip these humans into shape, but I relish the thought that they might defeat the angels one day.”
Everyone turned to Devon, and the young man shook his head. “Nope, not happening,” he said. “This is a terrible idea, and you’re all crazy for agreeing to this. I’d rather be one of the people getting hunted. Sorry, boss.”
“Devon, you’ve worked with me for decades,” Isaac said. “After all this time, I honestly think of you as a close friend. The only way to protect you is if everyone thinks you were just another victim of my scheme. Please, my friend, shake the man’s hand.”
Devon curled his hands into fists, but a sadness fell over his face. “I don’t want to see you take the fall for this, but I know you won’t listen to me—you never have.” He wiped a tear from his eye, then shook Noah’s hand. Red light filled his irises, and his face changed from sad to happy in an instant.
Isaac frowned. “That’s not true, Devon. I’ve always taken your criticism very seriously. It’s why I’m moving forward with a heavy heart. Devil-Noah, go ahead and break the Jump Gates, then start another attack on Risegard. Try to act like the Demon Lord normally does, so no one notices anything odd while I set the rest of my plan in motion.”
No! Don’t do this!
Noah struggled to retake control of his avatar. Even raising a finger would’ve felt like a win and given him hope, but he couldn’t move a single muscle. After his body stepped through a portal, he heard a whisper in his ear.
An aristocratic devil says you should sit back and enjoy the long, violent ride.
Chapter 22 | Year 93
Player: Vincent the Builder
Location: Styxis (World) | Risegard (City) | Derelict Market (District)
Class: Ranger
Subclass: Mage
Vitality: Lv 186
Spirit*: Lv 196
Resolve: Lv 178
Perception*: Lv 201
Agility: Lv 186
Strength: Lv 185
Over the next several weeks, Vincent worked relentlessly through building contracts. He followed each one’s exact layout, sometimes completing an entire building before drones could finish the ground floor of a nearby project. After the first few constructions, Vincent used the payments to max out his tome with 100,000 Builder Points. A prompt appeared, asking if he wanted to pay that amount to promote the tome to Grade 2, but he held off since he needed the points for construction.
He put the rest of the gild toward Jim’s debt. After finishing those first fifty-seven jobs in three weeks of nonstop work, he had sent Isaac almost half of what he needed for their contract. Vincent rebuilt multiple destroyed guild halls, a dozen homes, various shops, and even built five new defense towers. Those took the longest, requiring him to build between monster attacks.
It didn’t take long for people to start recognizing Vincent throughout the city, calling him that builder guy. He took a liking to his new identity, even changing his player name to Vincent the Builder.
After his first three weeks on the original contracts, Juniper brought him a couple dozen more. He hurried through those, only to receive another dozen. The contracts became smaller and fewer as players ran low on gild, but Vincent kept his prices as low as he could.
With projects slowing down after the first month, Vincent used downtime to work on his spells in Juniper’s forge. He practiced with fire frequencies and managed to hit forty-six percent with the tuning fork. By the end of the second month on Risegard, he had raised it another percent and even completed development on Impact Blaze. The repeated use of spells had also brought his Spirit up a level.
While Vincent worked on buildings and spells, the war raged in the background. He grew used to the constant sounds of explosions and the flash of spells in the distance. Sometimes, he recognized Lemm’s Resounding Bombardment flying in the sky like fireworks.
Xan and Quinn had their first encounter with the Demon Lord, which made Vincent feel a little left out. Everyone in the city talked about how Quinn had almost gotten a direct hit on the Exotic Boss with her Concentrated Bracers directing a more powerful Gravity Fist.
From what Vincent had heard, the Demon Lord had limped away, swearing his vengeance almost like a cartoon villain. Of course, Quinn had been critically injured in the fight and hadn’t made it back to Xan for healing, but once she respawned, she swore it was her favorite fight of all time. Luckily, Xan had recovered her items.
Vincent sighed, wishing he had been there as he read over the party chat that he’d muted while working on an elaborate extension to Lazy Hollifer’s underground dungeon. Once he completed the job, he went next door to Juniper’s shop. The girl had left to bring three skyglass swords she’d completed to Antonio and his two best men.
Vincent went to the basement and practiced combining his Gravity Shield with Density Field under the forge’s microbeams. He’d run into a wall where the spell’s development hadn’t moved in two months, but that wasn’t unusual with negative energy abilities. The biggest problem with the new spell was that it drained a lot more mana than either spell alone would normally cost. In just a few minutes of attempts, Vincent burned through multiple ethers and elixirs.
He disabled the microbeams and stepped away to let his body heal before heading downstairs where he’d built an open chamber for Juniper’s refinery. They were waiting for a break in the war to go to Lavrin and establish a mining operation, so Vincent used the free space to practice combining Impact Blast with negative energy. He’d built several standing walls with his tome to target, but he’d yet to reach a single percent of the new spell’s development.
Vincent readied Impact Blast, holding it in his palm. Just like he’d done when developing other negative energy spells, he tried to clear his thoughts and push away the constant bombardment of frequencies coming from the world around him. Every past attempt had led to him snuffing out the attack, but sometimes he noticed a compression in the heat and intensity for a split-second before the spell failed.
The fire flickered in his hand, and rather than wait for it to fail like previous attempts, Vincent unleashed the blast. It struck the wall and exploded like a normal Impact Blast, so he gathered fire into his hand to try again. Vincent tried to push away the frequencies a little harder than his last attempt, but the fire faded in an instant. The next try, he took his time, controlling his breathing and even closing his eyes. He waited until he couldn’t feel the heat in his hands and tried to r
elease it, only to find the fire had vanished.
Vincent drank ethers and tried again. The hours flew past, and eventually he received a message from Juniper about a new contract. She claimed it was the biggest contract they ever could’ve imagined, but it had come from Isaac, surprisingly.
That’s strange, considering everyone allied with him has avoided working with me, Vincent noted.
Vincent’s momentary distraction made him forget about the Impact Blast in his hands that he’d been trying to zero out. For the briefest moment, he saw a black outline around the flames, but when he looked, the spell fizzled out.
Spell Creation: 1%
That’s… something, I suppose.
He headed upstairs to the shop, finding Juniper talking to two people that Vincent recognized as Boss Hunters who had been with Jeanie at the quarry. One of the two saw Vincent first and waved him over.
The woman bowed, then flashed a big smile at Vincent. “Our boss sent us a message, asking we oversee your work since the Boss Hunters aided Iijin Industries with the cost of this contract. We’ll lead you to the work location right away.”
“Woah, hang on,” Juniper said. “Now that Vince is here, I wanted to check with him about this contract. It’s a little weird.”
“How so?” the woman asked, still smiling.
“Isaac wrote that Vince would be paid in-person at the work site,” Juniper noted. “However, it’d be dangerous to build this trench with the war is going. Especially when holding all that gild.”
“You can go with him, if you like,” the woman replied, speaking with a soft voice. “Storage deposits are complicated right now because of all the overlapping contracts between multiple guilds. It would actually violate one of their biggest contracts to pay you for this work through that method. Paying in-person is just an easy workaround.”
“Vince, add me to your team,” Juniper said, holding out her hand. “I’ll keep watch while you work.”
Vincent added her to the World Knights, and then they followed the two guildsmen out of the shop.
>Juniper: Just so you know, I think this is some weird trap. They probably want you to do all that work, and then they’ll off you to take back the gild.
>Vincent: I agree. I’ll use this chance to upgrade my tome to Grade 2, then refill my Builder Points. Even if they kill us, I’ll still get something out of it.
>Juniper: Good thinking, but let’s try not to lose. I’d hate for Skytorn to fall into their hands.
>Jim: Woah, woah. Who’re you making trouble with, Vince?
>Vincent: I’m not making trouble; Isaac hired me for a huge deal. They’re trying to get me to build a massive trench that wraps around the city. They’re paying in person, so I assume they want to kill me and take the gild back.
>Jim: That’s one big project. How much are they paying?
>Vincent: The project itself will cost at least a million gild worth of Builder Points—more than I can even store at once—but they’re offering to negate the rest of your debt, plus a hundred-thousand gild bonus.
>Jim: Yeah, man! I knew it wouldn’t take you long to free me. Keep Xan and Quinn with you for protection.
>Alexandria: Sorry, we can’t. There’s a big horde of hell ants over here—the biggest I’ve seen. They even made it past the tower. I was actually about to ask Vince to help us.
>Quinn: My god, there’re so many of these creepy bastards. Luckily, my bracers let me one-hit-kill them if I get a concentrated Gravity Fist to their foreheads. So, it’s not that—ah, crap. One just bit off my arm. Xan, where you at, girl?
>Alexandria: Near the tower. I’m kind of surrounded, but I’ll use my Full Restore on you if you get here quickly.
>Quinn: Cool, on my way.
When Vincent reached the starting worksite, he looked over the trenches and barren landscape beyond the Boss Hunters’ defense towers. Not a single monster stood in his line of sight, even as he saw messages on the local guild chat that showed the Crickets’ towers were under a heavy assault.
A little strange, Vincent noticed.
“Yo, old man!” a young woman’s voice shouted from the tower. A scrawny girl leapt from the rooftop and landed beside them. When she looked up at him, Vincent recognized her right away as Gwendolyn, one of Lucas’s more frustrating generals. “Long time, no explode.”
The girl reached out for a handshake, but Vincent paused to make sure she wasn’t hiding a Hard-Mana Grenade before he finally shook it.
“I hope you haven’t caused any more trouble since we met,” Vincent told her.
“No, I’ve been good!” she replied. “Even joined a proper guild, and I’ve been helping the war effort. Plus, they put me with Fynn up there. He keeps me in line.”
Vincent looked up in time to see the Wolf Lord drop to the ground beside him. The serious-faced man nodded, then shook Vincent’s hand.
“Heard you were building us a new trench,” Fynn said.
“That’s right,” Vincent said, discretely sending him a team invite.
Fynn raised an eyebrow, but accepted.
The other guildsmen led Vincent to the worksite, and he half-listened as they explained their plans for the trench.
>Vincent: I’m glad you’re here, Fynn. I was worried Isaac and Jeanie were up to something fishy.
>Fynn: Not that I’m aware.
>Quinn: Woah, it’s Fynn! Are you working with the bad guys again?
>Fynn: Bad guys? I’m not sure what you mean.
>Vincent: The Boss Hunters and Iijin Industries have caused us trouble. I thought this might be a trap.
>Fynn: Why’d you agree if you thought it was a trap?
>Jim: They’re trying to bail me out.
>Vincent: Plus, where’s the fun in not walking into a trap?
>Fynn: That makes no sense.
>Quinn: Makes sense to me!
>Alexandria: Sounds like a good time.
Juniper laughed over the voice chat.
>Juniper: I’m already glad I joined this team.
>Jim: They’re all crazy, Fynn. Get out before they sucker you in with friendship.
“Hello?” the guildsman asked Vincent. “Were you even listening?”
“Sorry,” Vincent said. “I think I got the gist of what you were asking. Give me some gild, and I’ll start the trench.”
Once the guildsman handed Vincent a bag of gild, the Ranger equipped his Builder’s Tome and got to work. He opened a massive pit in the ground that swallowed the next trench over. Vincent dug it much deeper and wider than the other channels, and he covered the walls and ground below with greystone.
The Boss Hunters looked on in awe as he worked, then gave him more gild when he completed the first section. They asked him to build in the direction opposite of the current battles, and Vincent worked for several hours just to finish the first quarter of the project. In that time, the guildsmen kept him supplied with multiple bags of gild.
After Vincent finished the first quarter of the project, Isaac approached the side of the trench and stared down at him. “This is good work!” he shouted. “Juniper required in the contract that I bring half the payment now, then half at the end.” He tossed a massive bag to the Ranger.
Vincent opened the bag, realizing it was full of item crystals. Each one held a stack of gild, and all of it together totaled fifty thousand. Rather than keep it in his inventory, he had another idea. He opened his Builder’s Tome to the last page that Archie had shown him.
Promote this tome to Grade 2 – Cost: 100,000 BP
Vincent put enough gild to max out his points, then accepted. A magical shimmer ran across the tome, and he watched the book grow thicker.
Maximum BP raised to 1,000,000.
Grade 3 available for 1,000,000.
New building materials now available.
New building types now available.
Jump Gates now available.
Jump Gates? Vincent wondered. Oh, of course! This is how the Jump Gates must’ve be
en made in the first place. I never really thought about where they came from or who made them.
Vincent poured the rest of the gild into his upgraded tome.
Builder Points: 115,630.
The Boss Hunters continued to bring Vincent bags of gild to expand the trench. He purposely overestimated how much gild he needed per section, then covertly funneled the extra coins into his tome.
After a day of nonstop work, Vincent had almost circled around to where Xan and Quinn had been fighting devils and hell ants. The monster attacks there had been relentless over the last day, and Vincent looked forward to completing the trench so he could go help his guildsmen.
Juniper stayed nearby the entire time, keeping watch for devils or hell ants. Fynn remained on their team chat and even checked the Boss Hunters’ chatlogs to make sure there wasn’t anything suspicious planned. He didn’t find anything at first, but as the circular trench reached eighty five percent completion, Fynn reappeared on the voice chat.
>Fynn: Okay, now I’m also suspicious. Someone on the guild chat just reported the Southwest Jump Gate was shattered and is inoperable.
Vincent paused construction as he read the text to make sure he’d heard Fynn correctly.
>Juniper: What? How is that possible? Jump Gates are virtually indestructible.
>Vincent: Negative Energy could do it. That’s how I broke a piece off Midrun’s Daiglass Tower.
>Fynn: That’s true, but this would take a much bigger attack then I’ve seen from you. The screenshot on the guild chat shows it has about a thousand cracks running across it, and it lost its glow. Someone I know is running to check the other one, but I suspect it’s already broken.
>Jim: Everyone, you need to leave Risegard at once! I don’t have time to explain, but I’m sorry I dragged you into this mess.
Crow-Foot Jim has left the World Knights.
Vincent tried to send Jim a private chat invite, but he found his friend removed from his friend list.
>Alexandria: Jim’s not on my friend list! What the hell is happening?