Had all the other places that were indicated on the map also been destroyed in a similar fashion? I feared for my own little town. I liked most of the people there. I could see the faces of the children in the orphanage. I imagined them crying as the succubi attacked, and my heart sank.
No, I had to be stronger. I would have to deal with the succubi. I won’t allow them to reach my town.
“What is that?” Danor said, pointing a fat finger towards the far side of the town. Something seemed to be hovering above the buildings there. A bird?
The movement of the hovering object was very unlike that of a bird however. There was something very humanoid about the object as well.
A flying man?
A succubus?
I gulped.
Still, I decided to find out. I made the Sphere move forward towards the flying object. In a few minutes I realised that the flying object was in fact a human. A girl. One with long silky hair.
She had her back turned to us and hadn’t noticed us thus far. I thanked the gods that she didn’t have wings or a tail. But still… how could a human fly?
Keeping the craft steady, I moved out of the Sphere through the hole.
“Hey, be careful!” Danor said from below.
“Don’t worry,” I reassured him, as I stood up on the top of the Sphere. My feet still had contact with the body of the sphere and it was for this reason that I was able to control it despite not being inside it. Vertigo came over me, but I fought it. The wind hit my face.
“Hey!” I called aloud to the girl.
She whirled around. There was hope in her face when she first did so. But when she saw that a person standing on the top of a flying sphere had called out to her, the hope left her face, and it was replaced by a frown of confusion. And then fear.
“Who are you?” she asked me. There was a certain amount of threat in her voice.
“Are you with the succubi?” I asked her. It was the wrong question apparently. She shot forward at the craft and hit the windshield with her fist. She was powerful and the Sphere rocked away and it was with massive mental concentration that I could stop it from crashing onto one of the buildings. Even I was myself almost thrown away, but I managed to catch the lid and maintain my balance in the nick of time.
“Get in!” Danor cried from below. I heeded his advice and I leapt back inside. I however left the lid open.
“Where has she gone?” I asked. The windshield had taken the impact admirably. There was no sign of the hit anywhere on it. I turned the Sphere in all directions. But the girl seemed to have just vanished. I would have liked to keep her in sight. She was powerful. Still, I didn’t understand the cause behind her attack. Was she with the succubi or not?
All of a sudden, the craft experienced a massive force from below. The craft shot up because of the impact. For a moment, my concentration was broken, and I struggled to regain it back for I had hit my head on one side of the craft and it was throbbing badly.
“We are crashing!” Danor said.
“Shit, I can’t concentrate,” I said, “Brace for it.” Danor grabbed hold of the seat like it was a life saver. I put my hands over my head, I didn’t want to receive a head wound again.
I felt the impact as the craft crashed against a bunch of houses. For a few seconds the craft, being spherical, kept rolling, but then it eventually came to a halt. Massaging my head, I stood up.
Barely had I done so when someone peeped into the Sphere through the entry hole. It was the girl. There was vengeance on her face.
“Who are you?” she said. “I am asking you for the final time. If you are friends of the succubi then considered yourself dead.”
Apparently she hated the succubi.
“No,” I said. I cursed myself. I had asked her the wrong question. The expression of the girl softened significantly.
“Then who are you? And by what magic do you make this thing fly?”
“We are on a quest to destroy the succubi,” I told the girl, looking her in the eye.
“So you are not their friends?”
“Obviously we aren’t,” I said. The girl kept staring at me for a while. Then she finally nodded.
“Okay,” she said, “I am sorry for what I did to you.”
I wanted to make the craft hover, but because of my head I struggled to concentrate. I needed some fresh air.
“Let me go out,” I said to the girl. She moved away from the lid. The air outside wasn’t exactly fresh. The impact of the Sphere on the houses had caused a lot of dust to be suspended in the air. I covered my nose.
“The succubi did this?” I asked the girl. She nodded.
For a second her face convulsed with emotion.
“They took away everyone,” she said.
“You used to live here?” I asked her. She nodded.
“It was my home till a couple of days ago,” she said.
“You didn’t fight the succubi?” I said. “I mean, you are powerful.”
“I received my powers after the succubi had destroyed everything,” she said. “The townsfolk had fled to the hills, but I searched there and there is no sign of them. The succubi took them all.”
“How did you receive your powers?” I asked, curious.
“I had wiped my memory and renounced the ability to see stats. But I stumbled on a device shortly after the succubi attacked that gave me back my powers and the ability to see stats. But using my powers is not easy. I need a lot of mental concentration to fly.”
“You sure need to,” I said. I had experienced that enough with the Sphere.
At that moment there was a great sound behind me. I turned to see that it was Danor. He had tried to come out through the hole and had got stuck in the process. He smiled meekly.
“Some help please?”
I pulled him out.
The girl went and touched the Sphere.
“Interesting craft,” she said.
“What is your name?” I asked her.
“Lana,” she replied. “And you two?”
“Lanak,” I said, fighting a grin.
“And I am Danor,” the giant man said.
The girl came over to me.
“Lanak, eh?” she said.
“Look, I didn’t make that up. It’s really my name.”
“I believe that,” she said. “Anyway, how do you plan to destroy the Succubi?”
I told about my plans to travel to the place where the Succubi queen lived.
“And then?” she asked.
I had never really thought about that. I had always expected the quest to unwrap on its own, giving me an idea how the queen could be destroyed. Even the wizard hadn’t told me much about how the queen could be killed. But then, I was a succubi tamer after all. Maybe I would find a way to tame the queen instead of killing her.
“I am a Succubi tamer,” I said, “well... I used to be.” I didn’t know why but I didn’t like to look like a fool in front of the girl. Maybe it was because I had become young again. Since the girl had the power to see her stats, I reckoned she was likely to be a player and most players had come to the game world before the war had broken out, so there was a good possibility that the two of us were of around the same age. Maybe she had also uploaded herself to the game world when she had been on her death bed in the real world.
“So you are going to tame the queen?” Lana asked. “And make her stop all the carnage?”
“I was hoping for that, yes.”
“But as far as I had heard taming is very hard,” Lana said. “Most of the succubi end up being killed.”
“It’s hard, but hopefully not impossible,” I said.
“My sister became a succubus after she consumed a pill filled with black magic,” Lana said and I could see that there was much pain in her eyes when she spoke that. “And so did many other women. I reckon they also turned the men into demons. Would it be possible for me to travel with you?”
“I would like that,” I said, “you have your pow
ers. Would be good to have you around.”
“I need to rest to keep recharging, though,” Lana said.
***
I didn’t have a good feeling that all those beings in the air were birds.
We were nearing another of the glowing spots in the map. Very soon a notification appeared in my vision, confirming my suspicions.
New sub-quest alert!
You have reached a place that has strong associations with your quest to defeat the succubi queen. Here, pills are prepared to turn normal girls into succubi.
Would you like to destroy the facility that is being used to create the pills?
Yes/No?
Rewards: Unknown
So this was the place where the pills were being created? The very pills which turned Lana’s sister into a succubus.
I made the craft land.
“I don’t think we should go any further,” I said. I told Lana and Danor about the quest notification I had just received, even though I had not yet accepted the sub-quest yet.
“I want to go there,” Lana said, anger rising in her face. “I want to destroy whatever process they are using to create the cursed pills.”
“I think they will easily detect the Sphere if we go any further,” Danor said with a meaningful look at Lana.
“We will go there on foot then,” I said. Danor gasped. But he didn’t say anything.
“You can stay in the craft, Danor,” I said to the big guy.
Danor shook his head.
“I have felt useless my entire life. I will go with you. I will beat a succubus to death if she comes for you.”
I wouldn’t have actually wanted to kill a succubus, but it was still better than being taken by one and transformed into a demon.
I accepted the sub-quest and the three of us went out of the Sphere.
“The town they have taken over is still about four miles from here,” Lana said.
“Well,” I said, “at least we would be safe. Even if it would take us more time.”
Lana looked into my eyes.
“Give me your hand,” she said. With some uncertainty as to what she planned to do I extended my hand to her. She grasped it.
“And yours too,” she said to Danor.
She took both our hands and closed her eyes. Suddenly I felt weightless. Next, the three of us were hovering in air.
“How are you doing that!” I said to Lana. She opened her eyes with an irritated frown. The three of us fell to the ground. Luckily we hadn’t gone a long way up, or it would have hurt like hell.
“Do not break my concentration,” Lana said to me. “Do not even speak to me. I could have given you the power of flight but I would need to level up to do that. And I haven’t done anything to level up yet.”
“Cool,” I said. Danor and I nodded.
Lana took our hands again. This time she didn’t close her eyes. Instead she stared ahead, towards the town occupied by the succubi and the demons with extreme concentration. And we began to move towards it. Initially our speed was slow, then Lana increased the speed. Within a minute we were a mere two hundred metres from the walls of the town. Lana landed. The moment she did so she fell onto the ground in a heap.
“You all right?” I said, placing a hand on her shoulder.
It was a moment before she replied.
“Yeah.” She stood back up.
There were a few succubi at the walls. They were all in their beautiful forms. I felt attracted to them even though they hadn’t cast their charm. I glanced at Danor and he was staring at them with his mouth agape.
A worry bit my mind. It would not be easy to get inside the town and not feel drawn to them. Only Lana would be unaffected since she was a girl. Lana could see the worry on my face and also the lust in Danor’s eyes.
“So are you afraid to go there?” Lana asked me. I had dealt with the succubus at the river back in my own town, but then there had been only one succubus and with some effort I had been able to throw off her charm. Here there were hundreds of succubi.
“Let me think,” I said. “And Danor, I would like you to look at the tree next to you.”
Danor looked at me with a slightly irritated face at having disturbed him from staring at the succubi. But he did as told.
I scratched my head. I thought of the day when I had first unlocked the skill of becoming a succubi tamer. The skill essentially allowed you to ignore the charm of the succubi. Though I had given up the skill when I had renounced my ability to see stats and settled down for the life of a carpenter, I knew that I had not given up all the resistance to the charm of the succubi. I was still way less affected by the succubi’s charm than a normal man like Danor.
In those days I used to be a sucker for gold. I had been lured by a succubus into a house and even now I could remember her tell me “I will give you a lot of gold… and more.” I had been hesitant initially, but since she was a cute girl I had decided to go into the house.
Once inside the house the girl had told me that she couldn’t give me the gold, but she would give me the other thing she had promised. I had grown irritated. It was the gold I was really after. The irritation had saved my life and stopped me from becoming a slave of the succubi forever. The succubi normally worked alone, but this particular one had friends. I was resisting her charm, and when she saw that I would not fall for the trap, she clapped her hands in a peculiar manner. Next moment, four more girls burst in through the windows of the house. They all possessed wings and tails and horns. These extensions immediately appeared on the girl’s body as well. The faces of the succubi however changed from cute to demon-like.
They were going to bite me. If charm didn’t work, a bite would. That was the motto of all succubi.
Luckily I had my sword hanging at my waist. As the five succubi pounced on me, I kicked one on the leg, so that she lost balance and fell. I threw another kick on one’s stomach, even as I avoided the fangs of yet another. By this point I had drawn out my sword. In a final desperate attempt at survival, I swung it at one of the succubi lunging at me to sink her fangs into my neck.
My aim was her throat. I missed as she ducked. The sword instead hit one of her horns. My sword was sharp and her bloodied horn fell to the ground. The other succubi cried out even as the one I had hit fell to the ground. Perhaps they thought that I knew the trick of killing them and they fled out of the windows. As for the succubus that had fallen to the floor unconscious I watched, my heart racing in my chest, as she turned into a normal girl.
A dead normal girl.
And then she vanished. Soon after I received a notification saying that I had successfully resisted five succubi on my own and even killed one and I was blessed with the powers of a succubi tamer. The powers required a lot of mental effort, but they were much rewarding than killing the succubi as you needn’t feel the guilt afterwards.
However, when I realised later that the powers were also making me age fast, I eventually decided to renounce them.
“I will need to resist a bunch of them if I want to have the tamer powers again,” I told Lana presently. “We must expose ourselves to them. The more we do so, the more our resistance will increase and the more the chances of getting the tamer powers.”
“If we are able to resist that is,” Lana said, her eyes at Danor who was constantly peeking at the succubi in the distance even though I had asked him to look at the tree. I wondered if I should have asked Danor to stand guard at the place where we left the Sphere. There was a reason there were so few succubi tamers around. You need to have a strong desire for something else. My lust for gold had saved me the other time.
“Resistance comes on exposure,” I said. I grabbed Danor by the waist and moved him so that he was looking directly at the Succubi.
“How do you feel, Danor?” I asked him.
“I feel like I want to be with them,” Danor said.
“You said you want to be of use,” I said. I would need to pull Danor’s emotions if I wanted to build up hi
s resistance. I had to replace his lust for the succubi with a different yet very strong emotion. “You will be of use only if you are able to hate the succubi. Can you hate the succubi, Danor? Or are your tribesmen right? You are going to mess up once again? Is that going to be it?”
I could see as the look on Danor’s face went a transformation.
“I-I,” he said. His eyes swelled and a big fat tear rolled down his cheek. He gritted his teeth, “I am not going to mess up.”
I nodded at him.
“Then let’s do this, eh? Let’s hate the succubi. If you fail, then you would know that you have messed up all over again.”
Danor nodded. He was fuming even as he wiped his face which had turned quite pink from the sobbing.
The three of us began to walk toward the wall.
One of the succubi who had been sitting on top of the wall spotted us. She smiled a loving smile down at us and she raised her arms, signalling a bunch of other succubi who were at other points on the wall.
“Oh, we have visitors today!” she said in a shrill attractive voice.
Ten succubi jumped down from the wall and then approached us. I was beginning to feel faint now. The succubi in their current form were strikingly beautiful.
“Are you useful, Danor?” I asked the big man. It was more to empower myself than anything.
“Aye, I am,” Danor said and from the sound of his voice he meant it.
The succubi reached us. They never made any moves that would alert people and make them realise that they were frightening demons in reality. Only when charm didn’t work did they utilise other methods.
“Weary travellers, I see,” one of the succubi said. She was the tallest one amongst the lot. Perhaps the most stunning one as well. I felt my stomach go butterflies. Danor laid a hand down on my shoulder. I reckoned he was doing so more to control his own mind. But it helped. I suddenly felt like I had woken up for a dream.
Chains of a Succubus Page 8