CH42

Spring 43, 11M 495Y

Cainite Territory 

Castle Camilla 

The siege equipment opened a hole into the castle, and Prog led them on the last leg of their disastrous campaign. Gabriel endured their decline as they suffered casualties by various monsters they were ill-equipped to handle. They climbed stairs, crossed bridges, and battled the castle's guardians in a breakneck march, leaving friends behind. Prog fell to a minotaur, and Gabriel avenged him, stabbing the distracted minotaur in the back of the head and gaining the silver whip skill at level 50. There were less than 50 of them at that point.

"This is your last chance to leave. If you stay here, I expect we're going to see more fighting before we're done." A bat flew down, and he sliced it in two with his whip. "This won't get any easier," Gabriel said.

No one retreated; running away alone would only get them killed. The castle's inhabitants had taught them either all retreated or none of them would.

"Where are all the male vampires? We've only run into other fell-type monsters." Brendan, his acting second, said.

Gabriel recalled giant bats, gargoyles, skeletons, suits of armor, and the minotaur. Not a single vampire had come out to fight them. He had to say something to keep the morale going. There weren't many of them left, but they were the strongest remaining.

"We'll find them soon," Gabriel said.

They crossed through more rooms filled with undead, gargoyles, and a werewolf. Gabriel's silver whip made short work of the last boss monster, allowing them to kill it with only four casualties. The remaining men had become veterans after surviving so many monster encounters. Gabriel reached lvl75 from kill after kill. His body felt too big for his armor. Soon enough, he would reach level 100, and then maybe he would have the skills to take on the vampire that raped his sister.

"Your sword has seen better days; you should use mine. I've been using my rifle more."

Gabriel nodded and traded his weapon for one that looked practically new. Most of them had traded weapons and armor with the dead when necessary. Bendon had become their quartermaster, carrying all the munitions.

They entered another floor where imps, goat demons, and succubi blocked their way. Half of their squad fell to subterfuge, cutting their number from 46 to 23. It was the succubi who dragged his men into the towers to the sounds of giggles and then silence. Scouts found the desiccated corpses of their men, and Gabriel traded for his sword back. Infernal blood blunted their swords and caused cracks in the metal from the high heat.

While there were fewer, those that remained were stronger than ever, and Gabriel couldn't stop them from pushing on. They would mutiny if he called a retreat. Really, they should have turned back when Prog fell.

A boss room greeted them, lit with braziers lighting a giantess of a succubus sitting on a throne in shifting flames surrounded by others of her kind. Gabriel watched, stunned, as the succubi fed the titanic lust queen with their stolen lifeforce. Lewd squelching noises and pleasurable moans echoed through the hall as the smaller succubi worshipped the massive demoness. His hand trembled. At level 80, he had grown by leaps and bounds faster than he ever should have. His squad had similarly improved. But could they take on a rank 3 monster in the higher realm of rank 3?

With the attribute fruits and levels, Gabriel barely scraped into the same rank as the succubi. Weapons and armor put him comfortably above them, but the monster on the throne was a completely different creature.

"I wish Prog was here," Gabriel admitted.

"Your troll minders rarely reach my floor. The mayor's pet monsters are useful only to ensure the game doesn't end too quickly." The succubi queen said.

She spread her legs, and half the men dropped their weapons and dove into the waiting arms of the succubi. Gabriel only stayed on his feet by closing his eyes. He raised his silver whip and began his work. Only his sense of evil skill allowed him to target and strike. Still, most of his attacks were misses as he made his way through the mob. More of his men fell by the second as he attacked and struggled against the inevitable. A blow caught him in the chest, knocking him into one of the pillars leading to the throne.

He felt ribs crack and blood spill from his lips. His level sat at 85, but he was nowhere near strong enough. More power he needed more power. He turned his attention to one of his own men struggling. At the end of the day, experience was experience, and he had to live if he was going to avenge his sister.

Gabriel slashed his sword, taking his squad mate in the throat. Lvl90 wasn't enough; he lashed out with his whip, killing friend and foe alike as the great evil clapped. Lvl100 gave him 5 new skills, and a haze clouding his mind, one he didn't know existed, vanished.

Blood dripped from his blade, and all his men were dead. None of them had been taken by the succubi queen's trance but himself.

He saw the bodies of knights, some dedicated others slowly being consumed by the succubi, and then there was the queen still sitting on the throne, her legs spread. She smirked at him, and truly, she was a statuesque being of utter beauty and brilliance. Choices for his next class appeared in front of him.

Dark Knight 9 APL

Gun Knight 8 APL

Dark Slayer 7APL

Dark Rune Knight (R) 15APL 

It seemed that after stepping into this castle, his only choice was to fall into darkness. Gabriel no longer saw himself as a hero, only the avenger who would do whatever he could to avenge his sister.

Dark Rune Knight (R) lvl1 

He moved in, killing succubi and the few living knights, slowly increasing his level. Gabriel's armor stretched, struggling to hold his growing body. He had crossed completely into the 3rd rank and would soon be beyond it. He lashed out with his skills, severing the heads of friends and foes to gain the experience needed to take on the evil sitting on the throne in front of him. Before he reached the 9th level in his new class, there were no more foes to fight with, leaving him to stagnate.

Lilim lvl380 

Succubus Queen lvl80 

Lavish Succubus lvl100 

Succubus lvl100 

Imp lvl100

A pure demon who worked her way up from the darkest pits of hell wasn't what he expected to face long before his blade slew a single vampire. He hadn't been ready for what he could do.

"There is a weakness to the human system that I am more than happy to exploit. You can not gain strength by consuming flesh like monsters, leaving most experience on the table. Do you know why?" Gabriel searched for a way out while keeping his eyes on the succubus queen. There was a door to the side, and he shifted his weight in its direction. "Your system was made to support monster tamers. The administrator of your system is the grand champion. Do you understand what that means for everyone else?"

Gabriel shifted and ran until a hand slammed into him. His armor dented inward, and his ribs shattered. His body slammed hard into a pillar, nearly taking his life then. He watched through his visor as the blood from succubi and his squad mates leaked into trenches rent into the floor leading to a drain. They never stood a chance; all of them were fed to the machine to further empower the monsters. It didn't matter how many gargoyles they killed when their blades couldn't touch a single vampire. He had felt his promise of revenge slip away.

The pendant on his chest warmed as the side door opened, and Anya stepped out. "This one belongs to me," Anya said.

He had never heard her voice carry such a commanding tone before.

"No human who enters Castle Camilla may leave with their humanity intact." The Succubus Queen said. 

His sister stood over him, a peerless picture of beauty with lovely white skin and a red dress that flowed when she walked. Her blonde hair had paled to moonlight silver, and her once-green eyes had become red. While there was no color in her cheeks, her lips were a shade of red similar to that of an aroused sex.

Anya lvl209 

Camilla lvl9 

Nosfuratu lvl100

Vampire lvl100

She smiled gently, exposing the same fangs as the man who raped her. Anya was stronger than that bastard; why was he allowed to keep breathing. She was so much stronger in only 4 months. It didn't make any sense.

"I want you to understand, big brother, why I'm about to do something, only I will enjoy to you. Listen, because I can only hold myself back for so long." Anya crossed her legs and moaned before biting her bottom lip. "Vampires, we turn, give us some attributes every time they have a meal. We receive less from each generation after ours, gaining the most from direct generations. Every vampire we turn is an important part of our power, and it's in our best interest to ensure they survive and kill the newly turned of our rivals."

She gripped his armor and wrenched it, tearing it down the middle. Gabriel caught his breath as she kissed him. Her cold lips stole his breath before she ripped his britches away.

"I don't want this," Gabriel said.

She bit his neck, and he felt himself grow aroused. Anya bit him repeatedly, draining him little by little as she used him more brutally than the succubi. Tears rolled down his cheeks as she pulled on his knees to force his cooperation.

"Look at me," Anya said.

Gabriel looked away. "Look at me." Her voice compelled him, and their eyes met. All resistances shattered, and his body moved, and she moaned in delight. She was validating him as a lover or more like a tool that finally did its job. Anya, his own sister, fed on him slowly, taking only a sip of blood at a time while his body worked, and all he could do was weep internally.

She pulled her lips away from his throat as she lifted herself and slammed back down on his beaten form. "You wanted to be my hero and save the princess. This is your chance to save me from poverty and take many maidens. If you do well, you may reach my level of strength." She ground her hips down on him and closed her eyes. "I'm going to give you my blood and put you in a room with a virgin I captured. As you rape her, you will turn, and I want you to drink her until the last drop. It will make the turning feel so much better and teach you how to be a vampire."

She bit her finger and placed it against one of his many neck wounds. Lightning flooded his veins, and his heart started beating rapidly. From his toes to his scalp, he felt warm, and a terrible heat awoke in the pit of his stomach.

"Make her look in your eyes, and she'll do whatever you say. It's the best part of the job. Welcome to conversions and acquisitions; drink your fill and grow strong, and soon, you'll be turning little girls like me all across the territory." Anya said.

She was lost to the darkness, and she had dragged him down with her.

…

The battles I was most proud of were the hard-fought ones that took all of my attention. Rarely were they against monsters or my fellow man. My hardest won victories, and the majority of my losses came from skills and the difficulty that came from fusion.

9 times, I stepped into the ring with my Berserk fusion, and 9 times, I was left reeling from a knockout blow. Tens of thousands of resets and so many exploded skills had left me with the feeling of an old plow horse. The cosmos didn't care about how angry I could get or how well I understood my chainsword. Every attempt to meld them failed when Berserk was added, even as a seed. Avatar, even as a blanked-out frame, failed time and time again. Decades had flown by in time stop, leaving me feeling drained even as I scribbled symbols on walls engraved by telekinesis. Rank 4 fell energy made excellent ink covering the palace walls in intricate calculations, fractals, and symbolism.

The dungeon environment had become a source of experimentation. I tried things in the dungeon I wouldn't dare on the surface with the full confidence no one would see it.

Most symbols I've found were only meaningful to the system, and the system itself most likely used another set of symbols for its own inner workings. I tried to make sense of the system language, but it encrypted itself when I looked at it for too long or gained any kind of ground in understanding it. I had no idea what attributes were and how they were different from skills.

At first, I thought that without the system, humans wouldn't be able to use skills at all, but that wasn't true. The skills I made could work just as well when optimized for buildings, and buildings definitely didn't have the system.

I stared at the Berserk skill written to encompass the wall with an avatar border that functioned. Only the attributes made a difference, and the interface, which I was confident I could eventually replicate. My understanding of the Berserk skill had increased and changed completely since I somehow enchanted the wall with it. While it wasn't quite my original skill, I had optimized my own until it didn't quite resemble the original either. That meant something, surely.

The palace was soaking in the emotion of anger and changing slowly. It was an odd sight. The border encompassed the palace while only taking up a single wall.

"Why does the palace feel angry?" Nana asked.

"Thank you, I thought it was too subtle to notice." I looked through my Berserk skill's internal makeup and saw something I hadn't before. "I can feel its anger flow through me."

I wasn't the only fuel for the skill. If anything, it thrived when surrounded by anger. That understanding changed the way I looked at the skill, making me feel like a caveman pounding a square into a round hole.

Berserk had been a phenomenal source of forward momentum. It kept me moving forward, training and fighting no matter the odds. I understood it better when I was putting my skill block together than after I gained experience with it.

I shook my head and entered the time stop for the 10th time. Berserk was no longer the seed. It became the water, sunlight, and nutrient-rich soil for my new skill to grow. It needed lots of help. Pieces of symbols learned from the system itself fell in as I absentmindedly ripped skills apart and put them back together, running multiple simulations at once. Things like Rider and Silver Strings were cannibalized for parts to fill in a lack of connections.

Even Blitz Kick was shattered when it failed to mesh. If I didn't need it, the skill was removed until I found something viable. It was an ugly thing at first, and I spent what felt like years editing and prettying it up until something beautiful appeared.

Cosmic Slayer (L) lvl1 

Rank 5 

Description: An alien force flows through your body, growing stronger with each enemy slain with weapons that defy convention. Bursting Stars unleash their payloads with your every cut as the cosmos turns in time with you as above or below. 

To Rank Up 

Slay Enemies Rank 5 0/5000

Slay Cosmic entities 0/5 

Use Spine of the Cosmos for a chain 0/1 

Use Teeth of the Cosmos for blades 0/1 

Use Blood of the Cosmos to oil the blade 0/1 

With Mapping, Skill Fusion, and Skill Sight intact, I had 8 skills to my name. I felt good, clear, completely sane. 

I wanted to stick my male genitals into Nana to celebrate, but we spent enough time fixing me.

We tore our way down the long elevator shaft into the bowels of the palace, where all the fun happened. Blinking lights were our only source of light as we descended and demolished the elevator at the bottom. Metal crunched under Nana's weight, and she looked almost entirely too pleased with herself. I stepped out of the elevator shaft while Nana ripped a bigger hole.

A distant voice called to us. "You've come. I've waited so long."

Fu crawled up from my backpack. "Are you going to wrap this up or let the monsters fight?"

"I thought I would give Nana a chance to try her luck," I said.

A skeletal hand ripped through the entrance to the underground lab, destroying valuable equipment and shaking the facility. If the building collapsed, I might die, and the empire would win. The hand lashed out as openings erupted along its joints, releasing long-reaching black tentacles. I studied the limbs, and the bones were very much alive. Masses of those tentacles lined the creature, leading up its arm to a massive creature made of wiggling black tentacles and massive bones. Two glowing eyes stared down at us from colossal sockets. It was the kind of view that made my heart beat in excitement.

"I guess liking a good fight wasn't all me being crazy," I said.

"Once a loon always," Fus said.

"Thanks for your vote of confidence," I said.

"Boss, I will fight it, but how can I beat it," Nana asked.

"We are the empire. How could we be defeated." A sinister voice called.

A battle chicken that looked like he had been under a heat lamp for too long approached, dripping with grease as his skin parted and cracked. Black tendrils spread over his flesh and closed the broken skin. A scientist made a run for it from behind a projector, and the battle chicken caught him.

"How sweet dark meat." The battle chicken said as he ripped the fox's leg off, and dark tendrils reached out and absorbed the other monster.

I snorted. "Is it because you also have dark meat, and they eat you most of the time?"

The looming shadow of the Empress overtook us as the skeletal jaws opened, and an orb of fell energy began to charge.

Nana lunged for the battle chicken, and they erupted into a clawing, biting fight, monster against a monster. During the battle, the battle chicken's flesh took on a more living appearance from the devoured scientist. It was incredible.

A hard blow from the battle chicken took her off guard and threw all 20ft of Nana's rear up and tail, uselessly flailing for something to hold onto. At the cost of the body's vitality the scientists were able to preserve a smaller body with all the benefits from the fell infusion.

I blocked a kick with my sword and felt my body shoot back despite my increased strength. Stopping in front of Nana, I had to face facts.

"I'm sorry, Nana," I said.

"We will fight together for as long as we can," Nana said.

 I shook my head. "You don't understand. We can't beat them." I sat my backpack down as the blast shot forth, and the air screamed. "But I can," I said.

I waved my hand forward, and the elevator shot from the shaft and impacted the battle chicken. Tables, a printer, and even a coffee maker slammed into the monster to distract him as I charged an attack of my own.

A slash from my blade split the concentrated blast in two as I reveled in the fluidity of my skills. The hum of my chainswords sang my favorite battle cry; its soothing hum to the cosmos bade me dance. The Empress shook her body, crashing into the side of the underground cave, distracted by my strike.

Tendrils lashed out as I launched a repulsion mixed with fell energy removing the attempt to consume me before taking an arm from the rooster.

"Maybe you'll be faster." Inwardly, I clicked my tongue. There was no blood to drain and bolster my regeneration. Sky Fiend Apotheosis needed blood to help my regeneration. I had plenty, but I wasn't rich, so I wouldn't mind gorging on a city's worth before I left.

I had no idea what I was thinking. An empire was its people simply kill enough of them and they wouldn't recover. Obviously, I wasn't thinking right; I was insane from unoptimized skills. Complicated plans like leading an army of gators into a city or influencing the youth with democracy were a year or decades-long plan.

The rooster struck with a kick covered in tendrils that I ducked under and then sliced him in the knee. I gripped the fell energy in his body and slammed him into a wall. His own fell mastery was practically nonexistent. I shook my head at the monster's weakness.

My hand reached out a hand and squeezed. The monster struggled to resist with its extreme physicality alone. The back of my right eye throbbed, a sign I was straining beyond my limit and dumped more regeneration at the problem. Blood was a currency I was happy to spend.

With a grunt, the battle chicken's chest caved in, taking his breath away. From there, it was all downhill.

Its body began to turn on itself and roll into a condensed meat and fell ball. Bones popped as it took on a mirror-black finish. I squeezed it until it was less than a foot in diameter. I dropped the ball on the ground, where it lay unmoving.

The fact remained this floor had a rank cap. No matter how big, floor 1 monsters were all rank 2 at the end of the day. While they were freaking out and trying to maximize their chances within their limits, I shattered mine. My battle had not been won against the mysteries of the system and skills far from it. I managed to find my way to the beginning of a long road.

Shaking my head, I gazed at my remaining opponent. Then, an item appeared.

Baseball 

Rank: 2 

Description: A device used to capture, store, and return monsters to base at the 2nd rank and up to unresisting rank 4. Once captured, monster loyalty becomes neutral. This technology has been developed from a fusion of Easton and Weston methods. 

"I will end you." The Empress screamed and launched herself. I did the only thing I could think of and slapped its face with the last and only construct I had created. The monster slammed into a nearby wall before it threw itself into another attack. I waved my hand and smacked it hard in the jaw. "Stop humiliating me."

"No," I said and threw my baseball.

The white and red ball covered in stich-like fractals flew true and hit the creature between the eyes. A light shot out, and the monster turned into fractals before flowing into the ball.

5 more balls appeared, and I added them to my bag. I took Nana with me back to the surface after finding the remaining scientist I sensed and capturing him, stealing the research and taking anything I thought was useful.

We emerged to the surface, and I silenced the cyclones, and together, we rampaged through the streets, restocking my blood supply. Hours later, after we cleared piles of the dead, I received a message saying my quest was complete.