Purgatory: The Devil's Game

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by M. A. Carlson

Dazimel smiled and produced a single sheet of paper.

  “Just happened to have this lying around, huh?” I asked.

  Dazimel’s smile broadened. “Something like that. Anyway, I’ll sell it to you for the low, low price of two thousand tiny crystals.”

  “Highway robbery,” Asher squawked in outrage. “Let’s go Victor, we can find some elsewhere.”

  “Not likely,” Dazimel said, stopping me from turning away before I could even start.

  Asher glared, then through clenched teeth, he asked, “And just what is that supposed to mean?”

  “Soul paper is rare. In fact, there are less than ten sheets of it to be found anywhere in Sinner’s City. It just happens, that I have nine of those pages. The other is owned by the Proficiency Brokerage, and they won’t be selling any time soon,” Dazimel assured us.

  I glared at the boy. Grinding my own teeth, I asked, “The page is reusable, right?”

  Dazimel nodded. “Certainly, one page is all you will ever need . . . provided you don’t lose it.”

  I paid.

  “Nice doing business with you,” Dazimel called after us as we were walking away.

  I refused to reply. He’d played me well and I wasn’t ready to forgive him.

  One more time. I sat on my rickety cot and pulled out the vial of essence dust. I laid the corked vial on the paper I had just acquired. Then, sending the mental command ‘Analyze’, I felt my SE drain . . . and nothing happened.

  “Try pouring the essence onto the paper,” Asher suggested. It was what I intended to try next anyway.

  A small waiting period for my SE to recover and it was time to try again. I poured the contents of the vial on to the blank page. I put a finger to the paper, hoping that would act as direction for the proficiency. Again, I thought ‘Analyze’. This time, I finally got a reaction.

  Sloth Demon Essence

  Purity: 13%

  Weapon Imbuement Effect: 0.13% chance to afflict target with Sloth’s Touch

  Armor Imbuement Effect: Reduce Sloth Aura effectiveness by 0.13%

  And there it was. I finally knew exactly what the sloth parts did for me. I proceeded to break down, purify, and analyze several pieces. The purity seemed to always be between 8% on the low end and 14% on the high end. I assumed that had more to do with the level of the proficiency than anything I was specifically doing. More levels and experimentation would be needed. For now, I had a useful tool at my disposal.

  It was only after about a dozen teeth were broken down that I asked, “Asher, what is Sloth’s Touch? I mean, what does it mean if I afflict a target with sloth?”

  “Think of it as a slowing effect. Your target will be slower in all regards. Slower to move, slower to attack, slower to do pretty much everything,” Asher explained. “It more or less makes your target lazy.”

  That didn’t sound too bad to me, even with a small chance, it could make a lot of difference. Unfortunately, imbuing anything into a weapon was pointless. I had a spirit weapon. I didn’t have a physical weapon anymore. Or did I?

  Asher explained before that my spirit weapon was more or less a hard light construct. It even had a weight to it. Didn’t that mean that it had a physical form? I supposed there was only one way to really find out.

  I called on my weapon, the light quickly gathering and forming into my weapon of choice.

  “What are you doing?” Asher asked.

  I ignored him. If I told him what I was about to do, he might have tried to stop me. I sprinkled the purified essence dust on the weapon and before Asher could stop me, I thought ‘Imbue’.

  The mace flashed with light before dissolving back into pure light particles. It was enough to leave me seeing spots. Even Asher started screaming, “I’m blind, I’m blind! Oh, God, why am I blind? What did I do wrong? Forgive me, Lord, I beg of you! I’ll do better, I promise!”

  “Hush,” I warned the fireball. “It was just a bright flash of light. You’ll be able to see again shortly.” Granted, I was also blinded by that flash of light. It was intense. I wouldn’t have been surprised if I suffered damage from it.

  Thankfully, after a few seconds, I could see again . . . mostly. There were multicolor spots clouding my vision but even those were fading fast.

  “What in the name of all that is holy did you do, moron?” Asher demanded. Clearly, his vision had returned, and his promises and pleas were long forgotten. For a divine being, the flame didn’t act very divine.

  I tried to explain. “You said the spirit weapon was a hard light construct made of divine light. I thought, since it had a physical form, maybe it could be imbued. I suppose, I thought wrong.”

  “You suppose you thought wrong? Well, let me tell you, you definitely thought wrong! What possessed you to mess around with a divine object?” Asher yelled demandingly.

  “I thought that sloth debuff would be extremely useful against the pride demons!” I answered just as loudly. “Asher, you’re here to guide me, but ultimately, I am the one that needs to make the final decision on things. Right now, I needed an edge against the pride demons. I felt it was worth the risk.”

  Asher glared at me before speaking. “And if your risk destroyed your proficiency? Then what will you do?”

  Trying not to panic as that wasn’t something I thought was even possible, I opened my inventory. I pulled out my Scroll of Body and Soul and flipped to the proficiency in question and looked at it.

  Call Divine Spirit Weapon: Mace

  Level: 2

  Experience to Next Level: 1,000

  SE Cost: 100

  Call a Divine Spirit Weapon in the form of a mace to aid you in combat.

  Mace: 10-15 Damage

  Sloth’s Touch: 0.14/10

  “Ha,” I said, pointing at the new line in the description.

  Asher growled. “You got lucky. Don’t do it again.”

  Asher’s attitude, his ‘I know best’ mentality, was the crux of the problem. “I’m absolutely going to do it again. Asher, I need to be clear with you right now. I’m going to take risks. I’m going to do whatever it takes to get through Purgatory as quickly as I can. I very much appreciate and value having you with me, and consider you a friend, in spite of your ‘holier than thou’ attitude. I will take your guidance and advice on improving my stats and choosing proficiencies. I will use your knowledge to the best of my ability. But this right here, has proven beyond a doubt that you don’t know everything. You don’t know everything about every proficiency. You don’t know everything about every demon we’re going to face. What I am saying, is that I need you to get on board with being my partner, not my boss.”

  Asher stared at me, looking surprised, as if no one had ever spoken to him that way, and maybe no one ever had. Either way, it made the little fireball go quiet and his flames dim slightly. The surprised look turned into a thoughtful frown and eventually resulted in the little ball of fire turning away from me.

  Seeing I wasn’t going to be getting a response from him, I went back to work on my essence engineering. I wasn’t sure what the ‘0.14/10’ meant but I was excited to get it up to 10/10. Hopefully, I had enough bits and pieces to find out.

  I started with working on extracting all the demonic essence I could. I had saved up a lot of sloth teeth. Between my regeneration and my meager SE pool, I was only able to extract the essence from six teeth every hour. At an average of 0.10 purity, I needed at least one hundred teeth. I only had seventy-two. But I also had that big chunk of the sloth boss. Either way, it would take me days to get all the essence extracted and days more to purify it.

  “Hey, Asher,” I said, calling my guide’s attention.

  Asher turned to face me again, his face sullen. “What do you want?”

  “I need your help,” I said. “I think I’ve got enough material to get the Sloth’s Touch up to 10/10, or at least, I hope I do. But it will take a few weeks to do all the extraction, purification, and imbuing if I do nothing but essence engineering during that time. I know I
just said I was eager to get through Purgatory as fast as possible, but can we balance time in Purgatory with time spent on essence engineering?”

  Asher bobbed slowly. “It’s possible. It will slow your overall growth. However, Sloth’s Touch is . . . a good enhancement. I’m not sure what that 0.14/10 means though. I’ve never seen anything like it before.”

  I could guess at the meaning. Either 0.14 was the percentage it was able to effect or chance to affect a target, or it was like an experience bar where I needed to get it up to 10/10 for the weapon to have Sloth’s Touch at all. That would also take some experimentation.

  “Next question, do you think I could try imbuing it with another type of essence?” I asked. I was now curious if I could imbue it with bits of the pride demons or the imp tails.

  Asher looked hesitant to answer for a moment, as if he were afraid. Afraid that I would ignore him.

  “Just tell me what you think. I’m asking for your opinion,” I said.

  Asher bobbed and let out a long slow breath. “I think it’s too risky. At least, too risky at its current level and your current essence engineering level. I would not try to imbue a second essence into anything unless your proficiency was level 20. As for the mace, I wouldn’t try to add additional imbuements unless it was also stronger, level 10 at a minimum. Also with the mace, I wouldn’t try to imbue anything else until you did get to 10/10 on Sloth’s Touch. You don’t want to risk losing that blessing.”

  I nodded along. I liked a nice logical explanation. “Okay, that’s reasonable. Let’s focus on getting 10/10 in Sloth’s Touch before we mess with anything else.”

  “Good,” Asher bobbed then looked a little stuck. Like he wanted to say something but wasn’t sure how.

  “What is it?” I asked, fearing that ‘something’ he wanted to say was another snarky order to get back to work.

  Asher started slowly, almost nervously. “It is already getting late. I think if we’re going to balance time in Purgatory with time working on your essence engineering, you should get some sleep now. We’ll go for our normal training in the morning, I believe it’s a blunt weapon school day, then we’ll go into Purgatory, half the runs, then back here. Does that sound reasonable?”

  I nodded. “Perfectly reasonable. Asher, I don’t want you to be afraid to give me your opinions, suggestions, or ask me questions. Just . . . treat me like a partner and we’ll be fine.”

  Asher bobbed once, “Alright, partners. But I’m still going to call you an idiot or a moron when you do something epically stupid and dangerous.”

  I chuckled and smiled. “That’s also perfectly reasonable.”

  Asher’s smiled back. It might have been the first genuine smile I’d seen on the fireball’s face.

  Chapter 20 – Sloth’s Touch

  I got an answer to my question. I needed to get to 10/10 for sloth’s touch to become a part of my mace. Or at least, it seemed that way. After a few weeks of ‘testing’, I never noticed any slowing effect on any of the pride demons. Despite increasing that number daily, it was a long slog to bring it up to 10/10.

  Weeks passed and I slowly but surely gained experience points. I was absolutely right about the cost quickly surpassing what I could gain in a single day. At the next body proficiency, it cost 51,557 experience points for a single unused point then another 61,868 for the point after that. Now, I was just shy of hitting my fortieth overall point in Body and it cost 266,021 experience points. And despite getting to the point where I could get another body proficiency, we agreed to wait until we saw what kind of effect Sloth’s Touch would have on the difficulty of Purgatory before we spent any unused points or picked up another proficiency. I say again, it was a long and very boring slog. I had gotten to the point where those first three fights in the arena ended without taking a single point of damage. Even when I added the fourth fight, which pitted me against two archers and two sword and shield bearers, I took very little damage. It all quickly became rote experience.

  I slumped down on my cot, tired. It wasn’t so much a physical kind of tired but a mental one.

  “Today’s the day, right?” Asher asked, sounding just as tired as I felt.

  I nodded. If everything went well, then today was indeed the day. It was the day I completed sloth’s touch on my soul weapon. It would be about an hour or two of work to extract, purify, and imbue the last three or four bits of sloth demon tooth. I had done the door demon piece about two weeks prior. At that time, I did the math again. It left me worried I wasn’t going to have enough sloth demon parts. I assumed the door piece would be worth a lot . . . or rather I hoped it would. Luckily . . . thankfully, that one piece yielded twenty-two portions of essence all on its own. With that and the parts I had left, it was going to be enough.

  Sighing, I set to work once more. I was determined to see this through. Then . . . then I was long overdue to spend some unused points and pick up a proficiency or two. After that, it was finally time to crush the second floor . . . hopefully.

  Extract. The tooth dissolved into a sulfurous powder.

  Wait ten minutes.

  Purify. The powder turned into a mostly white powder and the sulfur smell dissipated.

  Wait ten minutes.

  Imbue. The powder was absorbed by the spirit weapon. 9.92/10.

  Wait ten minutes. Repeat.

  Call Divine Spirit Weapon: Mace

  Level: 2

  Experience to Next Level: 1,000

  SE Cost: 100

  Call a Divine Spirit Weapon in the form of a mace to aid you in combat.

  Mace: 10-15 Damage

  Sloth’s Touch: Chance on hit to afflict target with Sloth, slowing attacks, proficiencies, and movement speed.

  I grinned. There it was. It didn’t give me any percentages but that was okay as far as I was concerned. I at least had a chance. And the effect . . . wow! I couldn’t wait to see it in action.

  “It worked,” I said, letting out a breath in relief. I thought it would, hoped it would, but until I could see it for myself, I wasn’t sure what to expect.

  “Good, then time to place your points,” Asher said. “Now, as we discussed, ten points into constitution, one into strength, four into reflex and four into recovery. That will give us the best growth per point.”

  Asher and I had gone over the points a few times. Trying to calculate where we’d have the highest gains. Increasing my HP was important. The pride demons did a fair amount of damage, even with Asher’s using his shield proficiency on me. The others made small incremental changes, important, but small.

  Name: Victor Goodspeed

  Highest Floor Cleared: 1

  Experience Earned: 0

  Hierarchy: 4th

  Rank: 12th

  Title: Sinner

  HP: 300/300

  EP: 150/150

  SE: 100/100

  Body

  Experience to Next Point: 302,101

  Unused Points: 0

  Strength:

  15

  Reflex:

  15

  Constitution:

  30

  Recovery:

  16

  Soul

  Experience to Next Point: 14,388

  Unused Points: 0

  Faith:

  10

  Spirituality:

  10

  Righteousness:

  14

  Fortune:

  10

  Applied Statistics

  Health Regeneration:

  30

  Energy Regeneration:

  16

  Spirit Regeneration:

  14

  Attack Power:

  30

  Divine Power:

  20

  Speed:

  7

  Accuracy:

  51.50%

  Perception:

  5

  Block:

  31.50%

  Block Absorption:

  15

  Critical Strike Chance:


  0.50%

  Demonic Resistance:

  10

  Luck:

  0.10%

  Every little bit helped. Then it was time to add on the new proficiency I’d purchased almost a week prior. It was the most important for the time being, heavy armor proficiency. When Asher and I went hunting for proficiencies from the dealership, heavy armor was reasonably inexpensive. Sword and Board was an option, but Asher and I agreed it wasn’t so urgent. It would have been just one more thing to spend experience points on. Plus, I was still holding out hope for something more specific to the mace and shield.

  Anyway, I laid my Scroll of Body and Soul overtop of the heavy armor proficiency and was greeted with the expected flash of light. I smiled and turned to the last page where my new Body proficiency waited my review.

  Heavy Armor

  Level: 1

  Experience to Next Level: 1000

  Armored Speed: +10%

  Armored Defense: +10%

  Armored Energy Cost: -10%

  Proficiency to wear heavy armor in combat reducing incoming damage and improving your ability to move.

  My smile didn’t last. I was . . . underwhelmed. At least, I think I was. It was all . . . percentage based. How did that work? How did my heavy armor proficiency increase speed and defense, or reduce energy cost? It didn’t make sense to me. Looking to my guide, I asked, “Asher, what does this all mean?”

 

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