“Sorry.. uh.. do you feel any different?”
“Well.. I’m really hungry, yeah? I do feel a bit stronger though…” No wonder she feels stronger, in this dimly lit cavern her stats should be equivalent of someone at level 200!
“Okay, that’s good. I was afraid it didn’t work..”
“What didn’t work? Somebody talk to me!”
Lilith looked towards Denise with watery eyes. “You… both of you died. I’m sorry, I messed up, and the dragon came back and killed you.”
“Died? What are you talking about, I’m right… Jin… what did you do?” Suddenly, I felt an accusing gaze and turned to see Denise staring at me.
“I made a ritual that would revive you. I couldn’t just let you stay dead, could I?”
“So that’s what you meant… No, aside from feeling stronger, I don’t notice any differences. Happy?” I nodded to her, so she sighed. “Now can someone please get me something to eat? I’ve got a craving for a steak like you wouldn’t believe! Oh, and since he probably forgot, how’s Midnight doing?”
Lilith and Levy giggled, because I really had forgotten. “He’s doing fine. He’s been sulking for a while because you two died, but if you visit I’m sure he’ll cheer up!”
“In my defense, I was a bit busy going against the laws of nature.” I tried to speak up for myself, but Denise wasn’t having any of it. Instead, she leapt to her feet and ran out of the cavern.
“Gonna find a restaurant! Catch you guys in a bit!” With that last line, she rushed off, likely heading towards the Gourmet Fiend for a big meal. Oddly enough, I wasn’t that hungry when I came back, though I had been fully aware for three days in that endless void.
“Okay, now that she’s gone, you going to tell us what the problem is?” Lilith looked to me, her face showing the same concern I had held a few moments ago.
“The ritual worked. But… not quite. Denise isn’t human anymore. To be quite honest, I’m not sure what she is now. She can regenerate, and gains strength in the darkness. But thankfully, it really does seem to be Denise in there.”
Lilith nodded to my explanation. “She didn’t feel like a demon, so you don’t have to worry about that. I would have noticed. I did notice that she looked a little different though. It might be harder for her to stay hidden in cities from now on.”
“I agree. But, I have got some business to take care of for the next couple days… don’t I, Levy?” I grinned to the childlike demon, who nodded happily.
“Jin said he’d teach me some spells while he’s here.” She smiled up to Lilith, who shook her head with a grin.
“Fine, I’ll keep an eye on Denise. Anything you want me to watch out for?”
“This might sound strange but… there is a fictional race in my world that almost matches up with what she gained. If you can get her in front of a mirror, just check for a reflection? This race doesn’t show up in mirrors.”
“Doesn’t show up in mirrors? Well, there certainly aren’t very many things like that around here.” Lilith nodded to my request, and then ran off to spend some time with Denise. That just left myself and Levy here in the cavern.
“Alright, so what do you want to start with?” I turned towards the grinning Levy, who knew that she was going to be getting into mischief.
Can we start with your Rewrite rune? I’ll be careful how I use it, promise! Given that this was a dark area, Levy apparently decided to hold the conversation mentally so that Lilith couldn’t eavesdrop.
Fine, fine. The biggest factor of that rune is that it allows you to alter the nature of an object. For instance, you can turn a silver coin into a gold one. I began explaining the benefits of the Customize spell to Levy, since I did promise to teach her about the rune.
Really? That’s what you don’t want mom to find out? I guess it makes sense? What other kinds of things can you do with it?
Well, so far the only other spell I’ve made is the Become spell, which uses the Rewrite rune to alter a spell I cast into a different one for greatly reduced magic cost.
Ooh, that sounds interesting! By the way, I tried earlier and I wasn’t able to make a new rune like you said to do in your head. Maybe only foreigners can do it?
It’s possible, but once we make a rune, anyone we teach it to can use it. I found that out when I did the first ritual with Lilith. I recalled the ritual from back before I met Levy, where multiple demon mages had been gathered to use runes I created to alter the contract between heaven and hell.
Totally not fair! I want to make new runes too!
I understand. It is kind of cool, isn’t it? I smirked towards Levy. Alright, so next, how about we go over some of the spells I’ve learned? You should be able to cast them since you got the spell information out of my head. Now that is what’s unfair, how this connection only goes one way.
Levy let out a small giggle at my mental complaint. Payback’s a succubus!
After that, I went through some of the spells I had learned. Mostly the advanced ones, since it seemed she could simply pull the easy ones from my head and cast them. I guess I can see how Bonded Acolytes could be extremely useful, since they can learn all of your spells and act separately from you.
Levy was learning at a remarkable pace, though I noticed that the closer she got to my level the longer it took for her to gain any levels. Back when I left her after training for the first time, she was right around level eighty, but now she has essentially absorbed at least the first ranks of all of my magic talents. She seemed particularly interested in Origin Magic once I explained to her what it was. I guess since she found out she can’t create new runes she wants to try creating unique items or creatures instead.
By now, her level was just passing a hundred, and she still hadn’t evolved. I was just around 130 when Krath commented that I was a fresh third evolution in my Demon Cloak, so maybe 125 was the next benchmark?
At the end of the day, she had managed to learn almost all of my spells. I figured that was good, because it gave me one full day to relax with Denise before we went off. Speaking of which.. I wonder how Kev’s training is going. We had dumped him on some island in the Shattered Realm before we left to go to the island that had the nature dragon. That was over a week ago now, so has he made any progress? I’ll have to check on him. By the way, before I left I took a look at Levy’s character information. She seemed as pleased by her growth as I was.
Name: Levy
Race: Demon(Bonded Acolyte)
Title: Arcane Savant
Fame: 50
Gild: 30
Level: 110
Health: 425
Mana: 2492
Strength: 28
Agility: 31
Endurance: 75
Wisdom: 264
Intelligence: 445
Luck: 4
Attack: 10 + 14
Defense: 10 + 34
Talents: Magical Talent 21(+2), Mana Recovery 12, Mana Pool 12, Infernal Magic 15, Magical Knowledge 21(+2), Scholar 10, Nature Magic 5, Summoning Magic 5, Origin Magic 2, Divination 2, Enchanting 5
Title Bonus: +2 Magical Talent/Knowledge
Somehow, she feels more like a cheat than I do, and that’s saying something. So, on my way back from teaching Levy, after the two of us erased the ritual circle, I used my Message spell to call ‘Kevlar’.
“Hello?”
“Hey Kev, how’s it going?”
“Chris! You’re alright?”
“It’s Jin, remember? And yeah, why wouldn’t I be?”
“Well, a few days ago I tried to give you a call and the coin wouldn’t work. It let me call someone else, but not you. What happened?”
“Ah, sorry. I was… in a place that blocked magic like that.” Really, that wasn’t a lie. I had tried myself to use my Message spell while in the void, with no luck. “So, what’s up?”
“Ah, my first week of tuition was over, so I’m doing odd jobs to raise money for another week. They said I seem to be learning okay, though. I’ve
already got plenty of strength and speed, I just need to practice technique.”
“That’s why we had you go there. There might be some unique sword skills you can learn if you train hard.”
“Right! Don’t games always have stuff like that for warriors?”
“Kev… How many times do I have to say not to treat this like a game? Take it seriously, and you’ll notice things get a lot easier.”
“Gotcha. I’ll see what I can do! You manage to find your dungeon yet?”
I shook my head, sighing a bit. “Nope, was a big waste of time. The map I got from Grazel must be outdated or something. The island I wanted to go to isn’t where the map says it is.” Again, technically not a lie.
“Bummer. Well, I should be another week before I’m ready to get out of here, once I can get the tuition I need. Any idea what you’re going to do next?”
“I thought about heading towards the kingdom’s mage college, see if I can find anything useful there.”
“Good luck! I need to get back to this delivery, so I’ll call you in a week.”
“Alright. Take care.” And with that, I ended the call, walking around the streets of Hell. It took me a moment to realize I had wandered into the District of Envy, Hell’s shopping area. I decided to take a look around, see if there was anything interesting I could pick up. I kind of wanted to get something for Denise as a ‘welcome back’ present.
Chapter 3
After a while of searching, I found something that would be suitable as a present to Denise. Well, I hoped it would at least. There were too many options, since we didn’t have to worry about funds. That meant that it had to be a significant present for another reason.
Now, where is she? She can’t still be eating, can she? I guess she would have gone to visit Midnight after she was done. I nodded to myself, and then started wondering just where they were keeping him.
“I’ll show you~.” A little girl’s voice rang out from behind me, and I jumped a bit. Of course, it had to be Levy. Only she could sneak up on me so easily while reading my thoughts.
“To be fair, I can’t really stop reading them, you know? That’s a downside, isn’t it?” She smiled sweetly to me, and suddenly I had to imagine what sort of thoughts she wished she could tune out..
“Yes… those.” Her smile froze, her face scrunching up as she obviously knew what I was thinking about. “I understand where those thoughts come from… but it’s a pain to hear them, you know?”
I’m sorry, I definitely don’t mean to think of things like that on purpose, but the more you try not to think of something the more you think about it. Of course, as this line of thought continued, Levy put her hands over her ears and began singing “Lalalalalala” to try to block it out.
“I see. So there really is a downside to this connection for you.” I smirked a bit, and began laughing. For a while now, I had been thinking this link was so unfair because she had all the powers from it.
“Yes, there is. Now please… can we just go find your horse? You want to give that thing to Denise, right?” When she mentioned the gift I had purchased, my mind went back to Denise. Relieved by my mental change of subject, Levy let out a soft sigh.
“Before, I would just be able to find the two of them on my mental map… I guess the party was disbanded when we were killed. Well, once we set off again, it should remake the team.”
“You have so many cheat-like abilities, you know? But, I guess I have a few too thanks to you. Especially when it comes to learning magic!” Levy beamed proudly at her progress that she had made in such a short time. Even I hadn’t been able to get to level 100 within a month.
“Yeah, you definitely do. So, you said you knew where they were keeping Midnight?”
“Yeah. We don’t have normal stables, since the closest thing Hell has to horses are the demons who somehow evolve into beasts like Nightmares or Hellhounds. So Midnight is being kept on your ship, and people have been going to take care of him. No, don’t worry, nobody tried to mess with the ship itself.”
“Sorry, instinctual thought there.” I smiled to Levy and we started moving towards the harbor. Since Hell had an army, of course that included a naval force, the Fleet of Cocytus. It was impossible to tell how deep the waters were, but they housed all of Hell’s aquatic demons. Realistically, it may even be as big as the above-ground section of Hell.
“I know. So, what do you plan on doing now? I mean, any time you come to Hell, it looks like I can learn everything you know pretty easily by digging through your thoughts. Won’t it be inconvenient for you if I know all your secrets?”
I shrugged, walking down the road with Levy. “I’ve thought about it, which of course means you’ve heard me think about it. But, if I can’t trust you to know what secrets to keep and where not to dig around, then I’m basically screwed right? No way am I going to do anything that would hurt you, and I doubt you want to do anything to hurt me.”
“..And… you’re alright with that? Just leaving everything in your head as an open book to me?”
“Why not? There’s nothing I can really do about it, is there?”
“Well, if you stopped coming here… I wouldn’t be able to read your mind..”
“What kind of nonsense are you talking about? Didn’t I already say that I’d be relying on you and your mother a lot from now on? Besides, there are some advantages to this as well, you know?”
She looked up at me curiously as we rounded a corner, so I sent her a thought. Isn’t it fun to have secret conversations that nobody else can eavesdrop on?
She started to giggle, nodding. It is. So… you’re really alright with this?
No point in lying, so I’ll say that it does make me uncomfortable at times, but it’s pretty cool. More to the point, aren’t you a little too worried for someone that should know my answer before you even ask the question?
I don’t always read you so deeply! It’s rude… isn’t it? She kept her eyes focused on me, and I smiled. It totally is. I’m not going to do stuff like that. If you think that something’s alright for me to look at, then that’s one thing. But I won’t just dig around for whatever I feel like.
You done yet?
Yeah, yeah… She nodded slightly as we left the District of Envy and moved closer to the port.
I think you just proved why I can trust you with this link, didn’t you? You won’t be just digging around for whatever you want, and you know what stuff needs to be kept secret.
Fine.. I get it. She smiled just slightly, and as soon as I saw it she turned her head away.
My turn to ask a question, okay? I asked mentally as I walked with Levy down the street, the water now plainly visible in the distance.
Sure, what is it?
That incident with the dragon, you knew I was about to be killed a second before it happened, didn’t you? I recalled when I had died, Levy had turned around and screamed to me just an instant before it happened.
Ah… yeah… I didn’t even notice that it hadn’t happened yet. I just felt like you were in a lot of danger, so I tried to warn you… Sorry, I wasn’t quite fast enough.
No, if I had been paying more attention, we might have been able to avoid it. You can’t blame yourself for that. I reached over, patting her head. Finally, I could see the docked ship Unity in the distance. It was a large Galleon that normally I’d have no hope of piloting by myself, but when I had it commissioned, it was built for a minimal crew. So minimal that I can crew the ship entirely with my own mana.
That was another reason why I had to wait in Hell before we could set off again. With both my Intelligence and Wisdom cut in half, my mana recovery would be down to about a quarter of what it normally is. So there is a fair chance that I might run out of energy if I were to pilot it now.
Yeah, I tried to tap into it and pilot the ship in the port a bit myself while you were gone. Was too much of a drain and I ended up having to stop after a few hours.
That’s alright. I usually have more
energy than you, and a greater recovery speed. I’ve also got a pair of items that doubles that. I’ve been so focused on building up my magical ability to the maximum, I’ve completely neglected my defenses.
“You need to get some enchanted armor then, to help you keep your defense up.”
Seeing as Levy moved our mental conversation to a verbal one, I decided to follow suit. “Yeah, but I’d need a shifting armor. Like Lilith’s Nightmare Gauntlet, something that could change the shape to match my needs. I won’t always be pretending not to be a real mage.”
“Well, if you’re going to pretend not to be a real mage… how about genuinely learning some fighter abilities? From what I saw, your magic is already at a level where you won’t need to invest much more in it, without turning into complete overkill. You could pretend to be a novice foreigner, just getting ready to start off, and enroll in the Fighter’s Guild.”
The Dive: Birth of a Hero Page 3