It took Zoe less time to fill the awakening gem than it had the mana crystal, and it didn’t explode this time. After only a few false starts, Zoe was left with a seething, ruby fire arcing through the dark glass of the gem. There was nothing left to do but go through with it.
You are eligible to awaken the element: Hellfire. Do you wish to proceed?
Yes, Zoe thought for the second time that day.
3 core stats are eligible for elemental awakening:
Power
Acuity
Durability
Choose a core stat with which to awaken the element: Hellfire.
Power.
As expected, the system double-checked her selection, and a fleeting wave of energy ricocheted in and back out of her core. This time, Zoe paid more attention to what happened to the awakening gem itself during the process. It was nothing spectacular—the gem just crumbled into motes of ruby light that settled into the palm of her hand. It’s a shame they aren’t reusable. It would be convenient if you could just refill the same gem with another element.
Your Power has awakened to Hellfire.
Zoe knew what her stats looked like now, but she pulled them up anyway.
-Stats and Bindings-
Power (Hellfire) 233
Perception (Shadow) 142
Acuity 125
Durability 120
Vitality (Blood) 257
She felt proud of her new progress. Three down, two to go. That was equivalent to sixty percent.
“Congratulations on working through that math,” Lilith muttered. “I know calculations like that must be difficult for you.”
Leave it to the real demon to turn her progress into a mockery. Zoe didn’t pay much mind to Lilith’s snark by this point. She had more important considerations, like testing out how awakening her Power with hellfire might have improved her related skills. To that end, Zoe continued deeper in search of more monsters.
_____
It wasn’t hard to find more monsters. It also wasn’t hard to group them in three categories—bats, beetles, and ghouls. The former were all just like the ones that had so rudely interrupted Zoe while she was working on creating her hellfire awakening gem. The latter had more variety, though they were all more or less humanoid, and most were of a similar fungal nature.
The beetles were the most variable, in general being both the weakest and the most dangerous to Zoe. While they were all slow-moving and vulnerable, more than once she’d mistakenly stuck a hand or foot into a rocky crevasse that was already occupied. The wounds healed, but Zoe’s frustration only grew.
Rending Touch has reached level 11!
Rending Touch has reached level 12!
Rejuvenate has reached level 19!
Hellfire Blast has reached level 2!
Hellfire Blast has reached level 3!
…
Hellfire Blast has reached level 9!
Mending Touch has reached level 15!
Zoe heaved a sigh as she wiped the green ichor staining her hands on a nearby bed of moss. The beetles were getting nastier. At first, only a rare handful were protected by a thicker, metallicized carapace. Yet at the current depth, none of the beetles didn’t have it. Like the bats, their metallic exterior made the vile critters a royal pain to put down. It didn’t help that they were biting, spitting acid and venom, and—in two cases—detonating at the same time that she was trying to crack through them.
On the upside, they continued to net her more levels. Her short jaunt through the mines had yielded greater gains than the preceding three weeks combined, so maybe she shouldn’t be complaining.
You have leveled up! You are now level 36.
+15 stat points
+4% core progression
Reaching level thirty-six brought her total core progression to sixty-two percent and her banked stat points to a whopping 180. There wasn’t much Zoe could do with the core progression, other than keep on leveling and munching on her accumulated monster cores. She’d have to be careful not to cause an evolution at an inconvenient time, once it got closer to reaching one hundred.
As for the ludicrous number of unused stat points, she could go ahead and distributed a decent chunk of those. The first order of business was to shore up her lagging Acuity and Durability. It was a minor coincidence that her two lowest stats were the two she had yet to commit to awakening. Of the two, Zoe considered Durability to be more important by a wide margin.
As far as Zoe could see—and as far as Lilith or the system itself could explain it—Acuity was a weird synonym for the typical ‘dexterity’ value Zoe was used to in games. It was important, and something she shouldn’t leave behind—but Durability represented the totality of her static defenses. While Vitality could repair and recover from damage, Durability would mitigate or outright prevent damaging effects from happening in the first place.
In games, Zoe was a big fan of glass canon strategies. In her mind, the spawn point was one of the more powerful tools in a character’s arsenal—she paid for the checkpoint, she was going to use the checkpoint. There were not checkpoints in real life, so she was now in the equivalent of a hardcore challenge run.
In that spirit, Zoe went ahead and spent eighty points to bring her Durability to an even 200. She then put twenty-five into Acuity and eight into Perception to bring both up to an even and respectable 150. That left her with sixty-seven points remaining. The resulting distribution was far from even, but it didn’t feel quite so imbalanced.
-Stats and Bindings-
Power (Hellfire) 233
Perception (Shadow) 150
Acuity 150
Durability 200
Vitality (Blood) 257
Zoe had given a reasonable amount of thought to stat balancing in the past week or so. She’d also talked with Lilith about it. The overall conclusion she reached was that there were separate stats for a reason, so keeping them all even usually wasn’t optimal. Different classes and skill sets would benefit from a different focus—but what was worse than spreading them all equally was to totally neglect any of them.
While Lilith admitted certain archetypes could in theory attain disproportionate strength with extreme investment in a single stat, it inevitably created critical vulnerabilities that would invariably create problems in practice.
With all that in mind, the broad strategy was to put extra emphasis on some stats while ensuring none of them fell too far behind. The specific degree and kind of emphasis would dependent on a person’s individual circumstances.
Zoe’s own case was a bit tricky. Her classes, along with most of her foundational skills, put a distinct emphasis on Vitality and Perception. That being said, later developments—both in skills and her personal circumstances—added an additional emphasis on Power.
Prioritizing three stats wasn’t too bad—but it didn’t stop there. Even with her potent Vitality, Durability was important for Zoe’s ultimate survival. Likewise, it was now starting to become clear that Acuity would play an increasingly important role in everything from Zoe’s more advanced abilities to her developing arcane skills.
As such, what elements Zoe chose for her last two bindings was also crucial. To that end, her difficulty with the bats and beetles gave her an idea. Zoe was going to awaken shadow again for her Acutiy—and for Durability, she would choose metal.
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Lilith thought metal for durability was a weird choice. “It’s a tough substance,” she admitted, “but metal is a rare and arcane element. It’s almost exclusively used by true mages for Acuity, Power, or both.”
So when Zoe finished wiping off as best she could, found another hiding spot safe from monsters, and withdrew two empty awakening gems, a shadow mana crystal, and a metal mana crystal, she expected Lilith to berate her for being an ignorant moron. She was surprised when the surly apparition did nothing of the kind.
“I said I think it’s an odd choice,” Lilith explained, “not a terrible one. As long as you understand what tends to work well and don’t attempt things that will cripple us, the best way to advance is to go with what you think feels right.”
It was a weirdly encouraging thing to hear, and not one Zoe would take lightly. It only increased her confidence in her path forward. Crystals in hand, she decided to start with shadow. She had already awakened the element for one stat and had skills relating to it, so it wouldn’t be as much of a problem if she screwed things up. On top of that, it sounded like metal mana crystals—let alone awakening gems—would be considerably harder to acquire in the future.
Zoe couldn’t help but feel grateful to Basil for leaving her with so many useful items. She didn’t forgive him for nearly killing her, trying to enslave her, later decapitating her, or sticking her in a prison cell, but she did appreciate his resources.
With an empty awakening gem in one hand and shadow mana crystal in the other, Zoe began the process of converting from one into the other.
While it was a bit different, it was also easier than creating the awakening gem from scratch with a skill. All she had to do was suck the shadow mana into her channels but stop it from going into her core. Then she would hold it steady and open a path for it to go back out and into the awakening gem.
It wasn’t trivial, but it was a lot less finicky than holding a skill at the cusp of activation. She got it right on her first try, and even earned a few skill levels from it.
Mana Channeling has reached level 6!
…
Mana Channeling has reached level 8!
Manasight has reached level 6!
Manasight has reached level 7!
Mana Manipulation has reached level 4!
Zoe’s eyes widened when she saw just how much she got for it. It almost felt like cheating. It hadn’t been that difficult, and she’d gotten all the materials handed to her basically for free.
She didn’t waste time using her newly made shadow awakening gem. Like always, the sequence of system prompts was the same. Zoe didn’t bother to read most of them this time—something which she decided she should be careful not to make a habit of.
Your Acuity has awakened to Shadow.
That left only one more—and Zoe didn’t pause to celebrate.
Zoe didn’t know whether creating the awakening gem for metal was more difficult than shadow because she didn’t already have a stat awakened with the element, due to some nature of the element itself, or just because she was more nervous. Regardless of the reason, she found the process took more effort and a noticeably longer time. In the end, she still succeeded, and still got some more skill levels out of it.
Manasight has reached level 8!
Mana Manipulation has reached level 5!
Mana Channeling has reached level 9!
Mana Channeling has reached level 10!
Mana Channeling has reached Tier II.
+5 Acuity, +5 Vitality
Another skill had reached Tier II. Along with getting some free extra stat points and a bigger jump in power, tiering up skills paved the way for skill fusions. As Lilith had outlined recently, each skill had five tiers. Skills could be fused into a single, stronger, combined skill, with the number of ingredients dependent on the lowest tier. For example, Tier II meant she could combine two together, while Tier III skills could combine three at once. The resulting fusion would start out one tier higher.
It didn’t take long for Zoe to catch on to the fact that with enough Tier II skills, she could power through all the way up to getting some kind of Tier V monstrosity in a single sitting, but Lilith said not to do that.
Regardless, the skill levels had distracted Zoe from the biggest advancement—her final awakening gem. The metal awakening gem didn’t have a glow so much as a shine. The glass had taken on a silvery, reflective, half-opaque quality. It made Zoe think of a mirror with a dimension of extra depth to it.
You are eligible to awaken Durability to the element: Metal. Do you wish to proceed?
Huh. Zoe noted that the system prompt was different this time. I guess it combined several of the messages, because I only have one stat left to awaken. Zoe confirmed her choice, then confirmed it again when the system double-checked.
Your Durability has awakened to Metal.
…
You have completed a full set of elemental bindings. You can now use an appropriate technique to advance to Rank E.
Zoe waited to see if the system would give her anything else. She waited several seconds, but it looked like that was going to be it. She had hoped that the system would give her a convenient option to start the process like it had with her core evolutions and class upgrade.
“I told you. I told you this ages ago. We need a suitable advancement technique, it’s harder than evolution or class progression, and that goes for both monsters and non-monsters, and we’re both.” Lilith’s dramatic groaning made it sound like the phantom was on the brink of death. “Why did my past self have to continue to exist as an idiot.”
It was the final bit that made Zoe’s mood sour. For all that Lilith’s presence was unnerving, Zoe had warmed up to the apparition’s complaining. It helped that she also counted as a sentient handbook to the system and all things demonic.
Yet the deeper nature of Lilith’s existence and, for lack of a better word, workings, continued to leave Zoe deeply uncomfortable. Closer inspection revealed that the other demon didn’t use pronouns like ‘we’ to mean the two of them as a group, but to mean they were the same person. As if that weren’t bad enough, it had become clear that Lilith thought she was the ‘real’ Zoe, and that Zoe herself was like a past version that had duplicated itself and taken over.
Freaky stuff.
Zoe’s mood bounced back when she remembered that she had several of those advancement techniques stashed in her inventory along with the assorted rituals and skill tomes. She had yet to do much with any of those.
There was also the chance that none of them were right for her, which would mean going on a search like most people. Zoe hoped it wouldn’t come to that. Either way, she was going to leave the mines for now and see what was happening back on the surface.
Going up didn’t take as long as going down. That seemed backwards, but there were two good reasons for it. The first was that Zoe was by now somewhat familiar with the immediate terrain, and the second was that she had been thorough in killing everything on the way. The rope she tied to the top, while unnecessary, did make things easier at a few points. Zoe patted herself on the back for her foresight with that one.
After reaching the top, it only took her a couple minutes to backtrack from the round chamber with the five branching tunnels. Those would be interesting to explore when she came back. With the amount of progress she’d made in this place, that was something Zoe was undoubtedly going to do.
Reaching the lift, Zoe froze. She’d been wondering how she was going to get back to the top—if the guildsmaster hadn’t been standing around waiting for her to call up, she was prepared to dig her claws into the stone and endure a second round of climbing. That wasn’t going to be the case, because the sour old man was standing around on the platform itself, underground.
Zoe’s heart raced. The sound of her talons scraping against a rock alerted him to her presence—and she hadn’t done anything to hide her demonic features.
Lesser Disguise!
High Perception and old fashioned quick thinking saved her. The disguise activated before he could get a proper look at her, and it was dark enough in the tunnel she’d emerged from that even her own enhanced low-light vision struggled to discern individual features.
“Oh, you survived.” The guildsmaster said it like he was surprised but not impressed.
Zoe didn’t know what a person was supposed to say in the face of an attitude like that, so she settled on matching the cranky bastard’s energy. “Yeah. I’m a healer, surviving shit is sort of my thing.”
As Zoe approached close enough to see the guildsmaster’s face properly, she caught sight of something unexpected—a wry smile. “Well said, girl, well said. Come on, up you go. There’s a fellow here who wants to see you.” Turning his back, the lightning mage shambled to the other side of the platform and sent an arc of magic into the end of a rusted—something. Zoe rushed forward to jump on the lift as it shuddered to life. She still didn’t trust it, but she wasn’t keen on being left behind.
“So,” she began, once the lift had rattled into a climb, “You said someone is waiting for me? Who?”
The old man scowled over his shoulder. “Girl, if I knew the answer to that, I would have told you.” Shaking his head, he muttered something indistinct but likely offensive. “Oh yeah, you’re a healer, yeah? Going by the blood, the lack of valuables, and the fact you look pleased with yourself, you weren’t exactly down here for a foolish quest for riches.” He paused, and Zoe didn’t like where this was going. “What’s the deal with that, then?”
Zoe didn’t have a good story prepared for this, but she did have some skills.
Acting!
Persuasion!
“Yeah, I’m not gonna lie—I was a little disappointed that there weren’t just piles of metal sitting around, but that wasn’t very realistic to expect. I did have three different goals for this though, and that was only the first. I also wanted to see if any of the monsters could provide useful ingredients. The alchemy shop next to my place buys raw local materials.”
That was true. Zoe’s medicine practice was adjacent to a much larger shop selling alchemical products and supplies, various enchanted items, and several kitchen drawers worth of various pseudo-magical utilities. The fancy sign hanging above the walkway designated it as Loch Alchemy & Enchanting. Zoe confirmed that yes, it was just one location of an enterprise owned and operated by one of her two favorite Rank A assholes—Lord Darius Loch, alchemist, alleged war-hero, and a frighteningly powerful man she couldn’t afford to piss off.
Aside from being one of a handful of combat capable, Rank A people in the region, he knew what she was.
The guildsmaster remained quiet for a moment. “You said you had three goals for coming here, but that’s only two.”
Leaning on her acting skill, Zoe flashed a wry grin. “Yeah. I also figured I could practice more extreme medicine on some of the monsters, thinks that aren’t as common in a peaceful place like this. It would be easier to do it with humans, but the government notoriously doesn’t like it when you do that.”
“Hmm.” The guildsmaster eyed her up and down. “And how did that work out? Not many monsters down here have red blood like that.”
“The monsters didn’t exactly cooperate, but I still got some good levels out of it.”
The old lightning mage didn’t smile this time. He laughed himself hoarse all the way to the top. This let Zoe release hold of her skills and turn her thoughts inward.
Acting has reached level 6!
Acting has reached level 7!
The lift jerked to a shuddering stop, breaking Zoe out of her thoughts. They’d arrived back on the surface. The guildsmaster waved her off without a word, and Zoe didn’t mind leaving the old loner without a fuss. It didn’t take her long to find out what he meant about someone waiting for her, because there was a guy in rough armor waiting outside the cave entrance.
“Hi there. I’m Olivia.” Zoe stuck her hand out, and the man shook it. He had a sharp, narrow face and carried himself like someone who was fit from a rough lifestyle rather than deliberate athleticism. “You wanted to talk to me?”
Zoe assumed he was hear for something healing related. There were several alternatives, but none of them were good—and if any of them were the case, she’d still be best off by defaulting to expecting healer work. No need to invite suspicion.
The man nodded. Zoe noticed his subtle glance behind her, like he was checking that they were alone and out of earshot. “Yes. As I understand it, you’re a healer of some sort. I’ve recently arrived here in Blossomfell, and folks say your new practice does good work.”
Zoe relaxed inside. The confirmation of this man’s intentions was expected, but something about him had set her on edge. “Yes. I’d like to act humble, but everything they say about me is true, well, except for the bad things.”
The man chuckled, and Zoe waited for him to introduce himself. He didn’t look like he was in a hurry, so whatever warranted her services wasn’t a true emergency. “I suppose I ought to introduce myself. Inquisitor Captain Marceus, at your service.”
Zoe’s mind struggled to reroute and get back on track as the man swooped down into a curt bow. Straightening up, he flashed a badge of some sort and continued. “I’m here investigating some disturbing reports. I suspect most of it is nothing but rumor, but I have confirmed the presence of a higher demon in Blossomfell.”
The Inquisitor scratched his neck and gave Zoe a sheepish smile. “I was wondering if you’d know anything about that.”
ANNOUNCEMENT!
As stated in the pre-chapter note, Murder Medic book 1 will be stubbing in 1 week. This means that following the next update on February 7th, chapters 1-43 will no longer be visible here on Royal Road.
Book 1 will become available on Amazon as a Kindle ebook on February 25th.
Royal Road updates will continue as normal.
