Rebirth of the Nephilim

“That’s so fucking gross.”

Jay and Syd stared down at the mass of pulsating pustules hanging off to one side of the demon mother corpse, noses wrinkled from both the smell and the sight. As she watched, one of the gyrating growths split open, a slew of tiny purple tentacles spilling out as a miniature demon spawn core pulled itself out and plopped like a wet turd onto the ground. The demon’s orange eye stared up at her unblinkingly before the little abomination started crawling away, attempting to slip away under one of the many logs piled around the behemoth’s corpse.

Congratulations!

Demon Hatchling Defeated.

Bonus Experience Points Awarded

for Defeating a Demon Spawn of Samleos.

The notification appeared in Jadis’ mind as Syd lifted her maul from where she’d crushed the fleeing demon spawn.

“I guess they lay eggs,” Syd commented, futilely wiping some of the goo off of the weapon onto the ground. It was going to take a thorough washing in water to get rid of all the gunk built up on the maul from the dozen demons Jadis had just killed.

“Ugh. Nasty. Maybe we should just burn all this,” Jay suggested, smashing an egg to pulp that looked like it was just about to hatch.

“Maybe…” Syd mumbled as she looked over the corpse of the huge demon.

Jadis had, with relatively minor difficulty, finished off the demons that she had found feasting on the corpse of their matriarch. The injuries her two active bodies had sustained in the fighting had only been enough to drop her health pool to seventy-six, fifteen points total lost, which was an exceptionally positive result compared to the odds Jadis was against. What wounds each of her bodies did take, Jadis had transferred onto Dys who was able to weather the damage in her spot of safety. A bad blow to an elbow that would have slowed Jay down and made her vulnerable and more likely to spiral down into worse injuries was nullified thanks to Jadis’ new Shifting Reflection skill. She had to admit, the skill had some excellent combat utility, in the right circumstances.

In any case, she’d dealt with the bone thieves as quickly as she could, which brought her to the body of the dead matriarch, now far more exposed thanks to the activities of the bone thieves that had been recycling her bones.

A huge egg sack, as big as a horse in Jadis’ estimation, was attached to one side of the demon’s tentacled body. There had to be a hundred purple globes of twitching flesh inside of it, each one with a shell just barely translucent enough to show the shadow of the tiny demon stuffed inside, it’s singular eye glowing through.

“Let’s keep one,” Jay finally said, poking her maul into the mass of eggs.

“Well, we did want to study a bone thief squid core when we got the chance to…” Syd agreed, though the hesitation in her voice mirrored the trepidation Jadis felt at the idea of actually keeping one of the little demon squids around her.

She had hoped, at one point, to capture a demon that had a different eye color from the rest of their kind to see if she could figure out a reason for the difference, since the few she’d come across with different colorations had been oddly more powerful than the average bone thieves she’d encountered. Now, with the behemoth dead and all of its many distinctly orange eyes on full display, Jadis wasn’t so sure the idea of eye color indicating demonic strength was an accurate one. After all, if it was a sign of greater strength, why were the matriarch’s eyes just the normal orange color she was used to seeing on bone thieves?

“Hmph. Let’s just grab one with an odd eye color and kill the rest. It’s an opportunity to maybe learn something about these bitches, at any rate.”

Decision made, Jay took a quick jog back up the hill to fetch a container while Syd watched the wriggling mass, looking for a likely candidate. Eventually she spotted one egg amongst the rest that was on the small size but had a partially visible eye pressed up against the semi-translucent eggshell.

The eye glowed light blue, a color Jadis hadn’t seen represented before among the demons she’d slain so far.

“You’ll do,” Syd grunted, grabbing the slightly squishy egg from the pile and setting it aside. The cold, slimy mucous coating the egg was an unpleasant discovery, though not a surprise.

Nothing about the nastiness of the demons surprised Jadis anymore.

A few moments later, Jay returned with a clay jar and Syd plopped the egg inside. Putting the lid on and setting the container off to one side, Jay joined Syd in the task of getting rid of the rest of the demonic brood.

Jadis decided against trying to burn the body and egg sack. She didn’t want to risk starting a forest fire. It would have been a terrible irony to die to a fire she started just to clean up the body a massive monster she’d overcome great odds to slay. Instead, Jadis just went about breaking all the eggs in an unpleasant and protracted bout of demonic hatchling slaughter.

“I feel like we’re clubbing seals,” Jay complained, grimacing at the disgusting smells and splatters. “I might be sick again.”

“Just—damnit, let’s just get it done,” Syd growled before tossing her maul aside.

Tired of doing it the long way, Jay and Syd put aside their weapons and grabbed one end of a log, lifting it up off the ground and letting the huge weight drop down on what was left of the egg sack.

The resulting splatter was enough to make both of her bodies gag, but Jadis was done.

“Did that get us any more levels?” Syd wondered out loud as the two picked up their weapons and the clay jar before heading back up to the mining camp to clean off and rest.

“Just one more,” Jay answered after a quick check of the notifications running through her mind’s eye. “I guess hatchlings don’t count for much experience points-wise.”

Killing the dozen demons that had been scavenging the matriarch’s bones had turned out to be a huge boost to Jadis’ new secondary class. While Mirror Knight hadn’t gone up in level, no surprise at all since it was generally taking dozens of bone thieves to increase that classes’ level by that point, her Perverted Ritualist of D class had jumped all the way up to level seven from the single battle.

“Level eight now,” Jay mused, looking at her main menu. “I wonder what skills are available from this crazy class.”

“I one hundred percent guarantee at least one of them will be all about fucking.”

“Duh.”

Once Jay and Syd had washed off, they returned to the warehouse and joined Dys, finally resting after a tiring half of a day. As the three sat in a loose circle, preparing some hardtack and honey for a meal, Jadis reviewed the new skills made available to her upon reaching level eight in her secondary class.

3 Skill Selections Available.

New Skills:

Minor Attribute Improvement I

Erogenous Exacerbation

Anatomical Adaptation

Lascivious Empowerment

Ritualist’s Resilience

Minor Fractional Spread

Eldritch Overlay

“…Yeah, there’s no way that first skill isn’t a sex thing,” Dys said dryly, staring at the Erogenous Exacerbation skill.

“Hey, it might be something practical,” Syd said sardonically.

Erogenous Exacerbation

Active Skill. Temporarily increase the sensitivity of a single target’s erogenous zones. Lasts for one day.

All three bodies let out a sigh upon reading the skill description.

“Let’s just… set that aside for now,” Jay grimaced. “Who knows? Maybe it’ll have some kind of synergy with another skill that’s actually useful.”

Anatomical Adaptation

Passive Skill. Your sexual partners will be better able to accommodate your size.

“Okay, well, that’s… something.”

While Jadis was quick to dismiss the first skill as impractical, she was less certain when it came to Anatomical Adaptation. From her experience performing the Debauched Duplication ritual, having a skill that would make her length and girth less of a barrier to entry, so to speak, might actually be quite useful for a class that was based around sexual rituals. Even if she never met another person, a possibility she prayed to D wasn’t in her future, the skill would still make her self-interactions much easier.

“Put that one on the short list,” Dys finally conceded.

Pouring some water into the retrieved cauldron, Syd mixed in the honey and crushed hardtack. “Next!” She called out.

Lascivious Empowerment

Ritual Spell. Multiply a single attribute by an amount that increases per number of participants involved in ritual. Effect persists until the ritual is repeated and a new attribute is selected.

“Now that’s both sexy and practical,” Jay said with a grin. She was holding the clay jar containing the demon egg, examining the still unhatched tentacle monster within. Looking up at the other two, she asked, “Do you think it would count us as one participant or three?”

“Dunno,” Syd shrugged. “Also, what’s the multiplier? What are the conditions for participation? Is there a limit? That’s a lot of unknowns.”

“Yeah, color me interested, but that’s probably a second-string selection depending on what else we’ve got available,” Dys commented.

“Okay,” Jay agreed, “putting that one on the short list under Anatomical Adaptation.”

Jadis moved on to the next skill, hoping for better but quickly growing disappointed.

Ritualist’s Resilience

Passive Skill. Increases the Resilience attribute by 15 points.

“That’s a huge improvement,” Syd said, trying for a positive tone.

“—but it’s an attribute we don’t even know what it does,” Dys finished the thought with a huff.

“Still, that’s a big number compared to anything we’ve gotten from Mirror Knight,” Jay pointed out. “The only other skill we’ve been offered with that large of a raw number was Kaleidoscopic Boost, and that one was a roulette.”

“Mm, still not interested,” Dys dismissed the skill. “Maybe we reconsider it when we know what resilience does.”

“On to the next, then.”

Minor Fractional Spread

Passive Skill. Increase all physical attributes by 0.1 of the Eldritch attribute.

“That’s— That’s actually really good!” Jay cried out excitedly.

Doing quick math, Syd calculated, “We’d increase all our ‘physical’ stats by seven points! I don’t know how many attributes count for that, but if it’s more than two it’s way better than Ritualist’s Resilience.”

“Finally, we’re seeing a use for our Eldritch attribute!” Dys added.

Jadis gambled that the strange, perverted class would have something to do with her eldritch stat, and it seemed her gamble had paid off. She was still curious as to why the attribute was so much higher than the rest of her starting stats, but just finding a use was amazing.

“Taking that one, no question,” Jay said with finality. There was no counter argument Jadis could think of to reason out why she shouldn’t take the skill. It was a no brainer.

“Let’s see if the last one can top that baby,” Syd murmured as Jadis pulled up the description for the last available skill.

Eldritch Overlay

Ritual Spell. Replace the total of a single attribute with the total of the Eldritch attribute. Effect persists until the ritual is repeated and a new attribute is selected.

“Fucking sweet!” all three Jadis’ said in chorus.

“This pervert class fucking rocks!” Syd said while high-fiving Jay. “Absolutely worth it.”

From her position sprawled out on the rug, Dys cocked an eyebrow and asked, “Why is it so powerful? Isn’t this too good for a class we got for basically just fucking in a church?”

“Hey, don’t look a gift horse in the mouth,” Jay admonished her mirrored self. “If D or the Oros system or whatever wants to give us a broken-ass class for defiling a temple, I’m not going to complain.”

Dys and Syd both nodded in agreement. Jadis would take every advantage she got, happily. If D was going to throw her in a forest with the proverbial wolves, it was only fair that he give her some reward for overcoming the challenge. Of course, that view assumed D was the one who gave her the class, which she wasn’t certain of, but ultimately it didn’t matter. The class was chosen and so were her next three skills.

Decisions made, Jadis selected Eldritch Overlay, Minor Fractional Spread, and for the sake of smoothing over any future rituals, Anatomical Adaptation. Almost as an afterthought, she threw the four free attribute points she’d gotten from the even numbered levels into her strength score. When all was said and done, her main status menu looked quite a bit different from what it did at the start of that day.

Jadis Ahlstrom

Race: Nephilim

Primary Class: Mirror Knight (20)

Secondary Class: Perverted Ritualist of D (8)

Tertiary Class: None

Combined Level Rating: 28

Health: 141/420

Magic: 10/10

Attributes

Strength: 73

Dexterity: 17

Agility: 17

Vitality: 42

Fortitude: 27

Endurance: 29

Arcane: 0

Divine: 0

Eldritch: 70

Focus: 1

Resilience: 15

Will: 5

   “Well that explains what the system means by ‘physical attributes’ Jay whispered in awe, looking over her drastically improved stats.

“I think Minor Fraction Spread added to strength and then Mirror Knight’s Might multiplied it,” Syd announced, reviewing the numbers. “The math doesn’t make sense otherwise.”

“Our health pool is more than double what it was when we first came to Oros,” Dys added, a small laugh in her voice as she stretched out, her wounds looking even more healed from the sudden influx of health points. “I am feeling real good about us right now.”

“And we still have a ritual to perform,” Jay clapped her hands in delight. “Which attribute should we overlay to freaking seventy?”