Rebirth of the Nephilim

The discovery of the small pond was of interest to everyone in the camp, not just Jadis. It had been a few days since anyone had been able to bathe properly and the day’s fighting had been particularly nasty. Freezing cold water wasn’t ideal, but it was a huge step up from demon guts.

The soldiers ended up getting use of the pond first. Sent in two groups, one group would stand watch while the other cleaned themselves up. There hadn’t been any sign of further demonic activity so far, but everyone was on alert, fully expecting more hostiles to be in the area. Fortune’s Favored had opted to go after the soldiers. The full group sans Jadis would bathe once the soldiers got back, then Jadis would go last since she was likely to pollute the water the most.

In the meantime, while they waited, Jadis and her companions sat around the bonfire eating the meal that Bridget had prepared and discussed the levels that they had gained from the battle against the nithetre group and the Wailing Grudge.

“I’m CLR sixty-two now,” Kerr was saying as she chewed some meat off of a rib bone. “One level in Nox Archer, one level in Far Wilds Traveler, and one level in my brand-new class, Slut Sniper. Girls, I am officially an elite!”

“I’m so happy for you!” Eir said, clapping her hands as the others also offered their congratulations. “That is an odd class name, but I can only imagine it offers great benefits.”

“Yeah, yeah,” the archer winked at the priestess. “I know you were the one hoping to get a slut class, but you’ll just have to share the title with me.”

“So crass,” Eir shook her finger at Kerr, though there was no anger in the motion. “You could stand to show at least a modicum of decorum when we’re having serious discussions.”

“Sure, I could,” Kerr shrugged, “but I won’t.”

“Putting aside your inability to not turn a conversation into something crude,” Aila spoke up, “what skills and attributes did you get?”

Jadis and Kerr hadn’t yet had the opportunity to have a conversation with Aila about the particular details of Kerr’s new class. It was something they felt would need a moment of privacy, so they were going to talk it over later in the night. For the moment, Kerr was leaving off the Bonded part of her tertiary class title. That didn’t stop her from discussing her new skills though.

“For Far Wilds Traveler, I reached an even number level, twenty-eight, and got two free attribute points. I put them both into Dexterity, so now it’s sitting at sixty-nine.”

“Nice,” all three of Jadis said at the same time with a knowing smile. When everyone else just stared at her with mild confusion, she let out a little cough. “Uh, never mind. Please, continue.”

“…Right. Anyway,” Kerr shook her head. “Nox Archer hit level thirty-three, so I got a choice of skills. One was kind of a duplicate of my Silent Step skill that I have from my secondary class. It wasn’t one for one, but too much overlap for my taste. I took a stat-boosting passive skill instead called Archer’s Fleetness.”

Archer’s Fleetness

Passive Skill. Increases the Agility and Endurance attributes by 4 points.

“It isn’t anything amazing, but being able to move faster is nice and the Endurance buff is going to be super important for me. I’m going to need a lot of stamina to make use of my new tertiary class skill.”

“Why’s that?” Jay asked between big bites of fire-roasted drake meat.

Bridget really was a surprisingly good cook. She definitely knew how to roast meat, at least.

“My first skill in Slut Sniper costs a lot of stamina to use.”

Sniper’s Colossus Slayer

Active Skill. Increase the damage of your next bow shot by 0.1 of the target’s maximum health. Cost – 100 stamina.

“Wow,” Sabina chirped when Kerr had finished her description. “That’s a lot of stamina for a single skill. But ten percent of your target’s maximum health? That’s huge!”

Jadis couldn’t help but agree with the smith’s assessment. Stamina was undefined resource, controlled by the Endurance stat but also heavily modified and dependent on a wide variety of factors, ranging from what a person had eaten that day to how long they had slept and the comfort level of their sleeping arrangements, as well as their general health and well-being, among many other influences. It made it hard to know how much stamina a person had in reserve other than going off of the somewhat nebulous feeling of how tired or drained they felt at any given moment. All of that said, to use up a hundred points of stamina with a single ability seemed like it would deplete a large amount of the resource in one go. In fact, Jadis was pretty sure it was ten times the amount of other active skills that Kerr had at her disposal.

Then again, a full ten percent of a target’s maximum health? Not even current health, but maximum? That was potentially a massive amount of extra damage to put on a single bow shot. There was no upper limit to the damage mentioned, either. That meant that if Kerr’s target had ten thousand health, one arrow would do a thousand damage on top of whatever the other damage inherent to the attack. Those were truly colossal numbers, yet not outside the realm of possibility with demons and magic beasts considering how much damage such creatures were capable of absorbing during fights.

“That sounds like an amazing skill to me,” Bridget said, the sentiment echoed by the others around the bonfire. “I guess you’d want to reserve it for big bastards since it costs so much, but against things like that Wailing Grudge or even that stupid Nithetre, that would be a damn fine skill to have!”

As the others nodded in agreement, discussing the benefits of the skill, Kerr leaned in close to Jay and mouthed a few words so that only she could see. What Jadis interpreted was that the actual name of the new skill was “Bonded Sniper’s Colossus Slayer” and that she had left out the Bonded word to avoid confusion for the moment.

The group spent a few more minutes lightly discussing Kerr’s tertiary class and new skills before moving on to talk about everyone else’s level ups. While the gained experience points had been spread out across sixteen individuals, the massive number of demons they’d slain more than made up for the sharing. Every member of Fortune’s Favored had leveled up, some of them gaining rather interesting new skills.

Aila had gained three levels, no surprise considering how many of the demons she had personally killed with her explosion spells. Cart Driver had hit level twenty-five, giving her a couple of new skills to choose from. Jadis had expected her to pick another copy of Lesser Arcane Improvement to boost her Arcane attribute by another five points since her Cart Driver class didn’t offer many useful skills, but she’d been proven wrong when Aila talked about her newest ability.

Oversized Vehicle Maneuvering

Passive Skill. So long as you are driving, piloting, or guiding an unusually large land vehicle your ride will go smoother and faster. Your vehicle will be less likely to break down or become hindered by obstacles and you will be more likely to spot issues that would cause harm to or obstruct your vehicle. 

It wasn’t a combat skill. In fact, it was a skill only useful for driving carts, something that Aila had explicitly stated she wasn’t interested in doing any more now that she had a mage class. However, before Jadis could even point out the inconsistency, Aila explained her reasoning.

The gigantic wagon had been their mobile home for several weeks at this point and its uses had been abundantly displayed. In Aila’s opinion, their company was likely to make frequent use of the wagon in the future, perhaps riding it out every time they went on an excursion that would take them more than a day away from town. A skill that would not only help keep the Behemoth intact as well as improve the speed at which it moved was a sound investment. The skill would also help her spot issues, which meant they were less likely to fall into any pitfalls or other traps on the road. Besides all that, Aila saw the speed boost to their travel time as worth it just to help them finish their current mission faster.

“I can afford to use this skill slot for something other than battle utility,” Aila said with a loving smile directed at Dys. “You make that possible. I’m already seeing the benefits of your levels today, anyway.”

The single level in Cart Driver wasn’t the whole of her level ups, anyway. Aila had gained two levels in Nephilim Powered Arcanist, nineteen and twenty. Level nineteen had gifted her a passive skill that would greatly help with her combat ability.

Lesser Spell Range Expansion

Passive Skill. Increases the range of your single target spells by 3 times their base value. Does not apply to multiple target spells or spells with no target. Effect stacks with spell modifications.

It was a straightforward upgrade to her force bolt that wouldn’t interfere with her arcanist spell modifications. Aila wasn’t able to apply more than one modification to a spell; whenever she tried the new modification simply overrode the older one. This new skill wasn’t a modification, though, and the description explicitly stated it was compatible with her other modifications. Sure, it was only useful for her force bolt, but the text certainly left the possibility open for future single target spells. Besides, no one could dispute the usefulness of Aila being able to cast an exploding force bolt at a target three hundred feet away.

Reaching level twenty in the class meant that Aila had gotten five free attribute points to put where she liked. Since her Arcane stat was looking more than good, she’d chosen to put all the points into Focus, bringing the attribute up to thirty-five. Thanks to Nephilim Saturation, Aila had a total of five hundred magic points to spend, a huge number for a mage of her level to have without having had to sacrifice any power for it. As easy, and fun, as it was for Aila to regain her magic reserves with Jadis around, having a bigger pool to draw from was still extremely valuable.

Eir hadn’t gained as many levels as Aila. She’d still gained two, but both were in her much lower-level secondary class, Lustful Oracle of D. Her primary cleric class hadn’t leveled at all. Eir attributed the lack of a level to the fact that she didn’t actually participate much in the combat and hadn’t actually used her healing that much, not compared to other battles. Jadis had taken the bulk of the attacks and her heavy armor had mitigated most of the damage done. Several people had been severely injured, but overall the toll had been relatively light, especially considering what they’d fought against.

In any case, Eir had reached level eight in her secondary class. The single free point she’d put into Will to help her recover her magic reserves faster since she didn’t have a quick way of regaining the resource like Aila or Jadis. That wasn’t the interesting part, though. The level seven skill she’d gained was where the fun lay.

Protection of the D

Ritual Spell. Create a shielding effect around your body that will prevent you from taking lethal damage once. If you are struck with an attack that would do enough damage to put your health below 0, your health is instead dropped to 1. Any physical effects will be mitigated to a survivable state. Once the effect has been triggered, the spell ends. Spell does not protect against continuous damage. Effect persists until triggered or the ritual is repeated.

“That—that’s amazing!” Jay blurted out as Eir finished reciting the description of her new ritual.

“S—so much protection…” Thea whispered, awestruck. “That w—would be a wonderful spell to have as, ah, a fallback. I w—wish you could c—cast it on others.”

“Sadly I cannot,” Eir shook her head with genuine remorse. “It is meant only as a protection for myself, unfortunately. I, too, wish I could do more to protect you and everyone else here. Alas, that is not yet possible. Though, who knows? Maybe I will gain such a spell in the future. I will pray to Destarious and Lyssandria in thanks for this blessing, and in the hope of more that I can use to aid you all.”

“Hey, I’m just happy to know you’ll have a spell that’ll protect you from getting hurt,” Jay said as she smiled warmly at her priestess. “I’m always worried about you and everyone else that has low health points. It’s good to know you’ll have such a strong spell protecting you.”

“It’s a ritual, though, right?” Kerr asked, her ears perking up. “And your other ritual is lusty, isn’t it? What’s the deal with this one? Anything lewd?”

No one was ever able to tell if Eir was blushing thanks to the deep red color of her skin. However, Jadis now knew the elf well enough to know the difference between her being demure and her being embarrassed. At Kerr’s question, Eir was definitely the latter.

“Well, um, yes,” Eir murmured, her eyes looking anywhere but at the companions surrounding her. “It, ah, is most certainly on the lewd side, just as the other rituals we take part in.”

“Can’t be all that bad,” Syd said, half a grin on her face. “I mean, come on. We already do some pretty raunchy stuff. You aren’t trying to tell us that this ritual is worse than what we get up to regularly anyway, are you?”

“Ahem,” Eir cleared her throat. “Perhaps it is not too different from our regular activities. But I will need the help of others. Rather, I will need the participation of everyone present, actually. Multiple partners will need to assist with giving me, ah, full coverage… across my entire body.”

There was a brief silence as everyone digested what Eir had just delicately described. Eventually, Kerr and Bridget both started to laugh while Sabina turned to Thea and began to ask the embarrassed human a barrage of clarifying questions. Jadis’ feelings were put to words most accurately by Aila’s muted response.

“…My life has become so very strange.”