The Deceiver's Path - Chapter 138 - Shadows in the Snow (Patreon)

As Piper trudged down the snowy mountain road, the sun slowly sank behind the horizon, casting long shadows across the road. On either side of her, the colossal statues carved into the living rock loomed like ancient sentinels set to watch the pass. It almost seemed like their weathered faces peered down at her with disapproving expressions.

Sarnyxia slowed and brushed her hands frantically at the snowflakes landing on her exposed skin. “I have no idea why your kind deigns to live in this place. Even the worst punishment in the Infernal Realm pales in comparison to this horridness.”

Piper’s lip twitched up into the ghost of a smile. “Somehow, I doubt that. Remember, I’ve been to the Infernal Realm. There are people trapped in demonic trees there.”

“True,” the demoness continued. “However, at least they are warm.”

Slowing her pace slightly, Piper noticed carvings on the base of the statues she’d missed during her previous trips through the gorge. She walked over and peered at the closest one. But after studying the lines for several seconds, she couldn’t make heads nor tails of the language. Though she did notice several carvings of dragons dotting the bases.

Piper stepped back. “I wonder who these people were?”

Her companion sniffed. “Why would anyone care?”

“There could be some cool stories behind these,” Piper insisted. “Aren’t you even a little interested?”

“Since you most likely won’t let this go until I answer, I will say this: these statues were most likely created by vain rulers who forced others to endlessly labor to satisfy their over-inflated egos. I have no interest in learning anything about them.”

Piper laughed. “You sure know how to take the fun out of stuff.”

“I suppose it might be amusing to have an army of laborers craft my likeness into these mountains. Would that be considered fun?”

“Not really…”

Piper glanced over at Sarnyxia and realized she should hide the demoness’ appearance. It was extremely unlikely that they would encounter anyone else on the snowy road, but she didn’t want to take any chances. She raised her hand and cast [Shifting Veil].

As she did, she pictured the likeness of the dark-haired woman she’d used previously to disguise Sarnyxia. She also added some simple armor, along with a tunic and leggings. Finally, she tweaked the illusion to give the demoness a fur coat.

Shivering, Sarnyxia eyed Piper expectantly. “Would it be too much to ask that you make this illusion real? Or would you prefer I turn into a block of ice?”

“I’m sure you’ll be fine.” She then paused as she considered her summons’ words. Was it possible to make only a portion of her illusion real with [Flesh Weaver]? She decided that she should at least try. Not least because it might actually get Sarnyxia to stop complaining.

She focused on the thick fur coat and clothing that the demoness was wearing. As she did, she specifically concentrated on leaving out the rest of the illusion from her spell. She imagined strange things would happen if she tried to make the human part real as well.

If she did that, either the demoness would end up wearing a human skin, or she might be trapped inside of a body with no way out. Either way, Sarnyxia would never let her hear the end of it. Although after she thought about it for a second, she had a feeling that Sarnyxia would have no problem wearing human skin.

Piper watched intently as she cast [Flesh Weaver]. A sigh of relief from the demoness a moment later indicated that her attempt had been met with success. Evidently, she could choose portions of her illusion spells to make solid. That could lead to some interesting possibilities in the future.

A freezing gust of wind followed by swirling snow briefly made her consider creating heavier winter gear for herself. But she dismissed the idea almost as quickly as it popped into her mind. For now, her cloak was sufficient to ward off the cold.

Plus, she wanted to conserve as much mana as possible in case the redcaps returned. By the end of the battle, she’d only slain seven of their number, though she’d originally thought the death toll had been much higher than that. Anything over level 400 was proving to be shockingly difficult to kill.

At the thought of the redcaps, she pulled up her character sheet to see how many levels she’d gained. In the heat of battle, she’d been forced to ignore most of her notifications. But now was the perfect time to go over them.

Piper Ashcroft

Race: Shadeling, Level 112

Class: Deceiver (Epic), Level 112

Class: Shadowflame Temptress (Legendary), Level 51

Attributes

Strength – 229

Dexterity – 200

Stamina - 100

Vitality – 100

Perception – 100

Swiftness - 98

Magic - 600

Mana - 3250

Mana Regeneration – 3250

Free Attribute Points - 374

Racial Skills (6/10)

·         Demonic Blood, Level 46

·         Demonic Fury, Level 3

·         Demonic Intellect, Level 18

·         Demonic Lashrend, Level 37

·         Infernal Resistance, Level 12

·         Subjugator, Level 20

Skills (10/10)

·         Ambush Detection, Level 13

·         Animal Caretaker, Level 38

·         Archery, Level 43

·         Cooking, Level 15

·         Enduring Casting, Level 24

·         Identify, Level 23

·         Hunting, Level 21

·         Running, Level 30

·         Hammer Wielding, Level 10

·         Subterfuge, Level 39

Deceiver Spells (7/10)

·         False Face, Level 38

·         Phantom Flesh, Level 27

·         Truth Shroud, Level 43

·         Shifting Veil, Level 35

·         Shroud of the Damned, Level 12

·         Umbral Terror, Level 15

·         Wraithskin, Level 25

Shadowflame Temptress Spells (3/10)

·         Misery Crown, Level 4

·         Pit Chains, Level 18

·         Void Silence, Level 9

As Piper pored over her character sheet, she was pleased to see that she’d gained 11 levels in each of her classes. That gave her a whopping 374 free attribute points to allocate.

Her first thought was to improve her physical stats again. The gap between herself and high-level melee classes was becoming more pronounced by the day. This was especially true with the redcaps, who had probably gained some rare or epic classes fighting against demons.

The thought of nearby demons made her stomach twist. She knew from Selene that there was probably an infernal cult nearby. But she hadn’t expected there to be demons. There must be at least one summoner in their ranks. And that made them incredibly dangerous.

Blowing out her cheeks, she returned to her character sheet. She could worry about demons another time. Preferably when she wasn’t hiking through the biting cold and trying to make it back to the villa before the world was swallowed up by the approaching night.

Glancing over her skills, she noted there had been some nice increases in a few of them. Among her racial skills, only [Subjugator] had gained any levels. But the battle against the redcaps hadn’t allowed her to use many of her skills.

Her normal skills were a different matter, she’d seen a big leap in her [Ambush Detection], [Archery], and [Hammer Wielding]. Her weapon skills had increased by 5 and 4 levels respectively, which was an impressive jump.

Several of her spells had also seen an increase in levels, with [Shifting Veil] and [Umbral Terror] having big jumps. She was starting to find that with each level increase in [Shifting Veil], the size of the illusion she could conjure kept growing as well. In the future, she might be able to cast spells that could hide entire villages—or conjure illusory monsters the size of hills.

I might have fun with that, she thought to herself. A giant illusory dragon would probably scare away most enemies.

Returning to her stats, she tried to decide how to allocate them. Her classes focused entirely on magic, which made physical stats seem like a waste. As time went on, the gulf between herself and melee classes would only continue to grow. As much as she enjoyed being strong, she really needed to continue improving her magical attributes.

But that didn’t mean she had to ignore all of her physical stats. She started by placing 100 points into Vitality, 50 points into Stamina, and 2 points into Swiftness. The increased Vitality should make her much harder to kill, while also helping her to heal faster when [Demonic Blood] wasn’t an option. The Stamina would allow her to fight longer and perform more strenuous actions.

As for the 2 points in Swiftness, she just liked seeing the stat at a nice even 100. It made her happier keeping most of her stats at round numbers.

The remaining 222 points she immediately dumped into mana. Her new spell [Flesh Weaver] required a huge amount of the resource. She didn’t want to run out of mana at a pivotal moment in the future when all their lives depended on a spell.

Satisfied with her decision, she returned her attention to the road. Unsurprisingly, nothing had changed on the icy path stretching off into the distance. At least they were nearing the end of the gorge with the statues, which meant they were making headway toward the villa.

A glance up at the sky made her realize she would never make it before nightfall. And with her sense of direction, she really didn’t want to blunder around after dark. However, she quickly realized that on the windswept mountains, there were few places to shelter. Even the gorge acted more like a wind tunnel than a place to escape the elements.

The sound of falling rocks made her look up. Perched atop the nearest statue was the wyvern they’d encountered earlier in the day. The reptile had looked tiny from a distance, but up close the scaly monstrosity was nearly the size of an inn. If these were considered small compared to dragons, she never wanted to meet their scaly cousins.

Sarnyxia pressed her lips together until they formed a line. “I would suggest walking faster.”

“Thanks for the great advice. I was just going to slow down so I could get eaten.”

“There is no need to be sarcastic.”

Piper shot another glance over at the wyvern, who was now staring in her direction. Wasn’t it enough that she’d already fought a group of slavers and redcaps today? Now she had to fight an oversized flying lizard?

At least her mana had almost completely refilled after using [Flesh Weaver] on Sarnyxia’s clothing. She should be able to unleash everything she had on the wyvern if it came to that. Not that she wanted to fight something that could apparently handle an adventurer with ease.

Increasing her pace, she kept shooting glances over her shoulder. Each time, the wyvern had worked its way closer to the edge of the statue. Its hourglass eyes regarded her coldly through the blowing snow.

Piper broke into a jog, keeping an eye out for patches of ice. The last thing she needed right now was a sprained ankle from a fall. “I want you to use ‘Wraithskin’,” she called out to Sarnyxia. “Our best bet is to hide from it.”

“I fear your illusion won’t work,” the demoness replied. “That creature is far above level 2000.”

“What?” Piper exclaimed. “Are you sure?”

“I used [Identify] mere moments ago. A predator like that would likely have an extremely high perception skill.”

“What the heck are we supposed to do then?”

“I would suggest running.”

 Piper didn’t need to be told a second time and broke into a sprint. She sped down the road and burst out of the gorge onto the mountainside beyond. The second she did, a powerful blast of wind staggered her and almost knocked her over.

After she managed to right herself, she continued onward with Sarnyxia at her side. Behind them, she could hear the flapping of leathery wings growing closer. She increased her speed as Sarnyxia spun around to face the beast. Most likely, her summons was going to buy her time to escape.

As the beating of wings became almost deafening, she heard another sound—the pounding of hoofbeats. Over the crest of the hill a group of mounted figures appeared, riding hard in their direction.

She immediately recognized the symbol of a silver griffon on the mount’s caparison. At the lead rode Lysander, holding a crossbow in his grip.

As he neared her position, he fired a bolt at the pursuing wyvern. Instantly, everyone else in the group followed suit, pelting the creature with fire, ice, and lightning.

A roar nearly deafened Piper as the others from the villa swarmed around her position. Another wave of projectiles followed, making the creature roar again. But this time the bellow had a tinge of pain to it.

Turning around, she watched with shock as the wyvern flapped away, trailing smoke from one of its wings.

Lysander leapt down from his horse, his brow reaching toward his hairline. For the first time since they’d met, he looked genuinely shocked. “I thought for sure you’d ruined my perfect record.” He paused and then clapped her on the shoulder. “I’m happy to see you’re alright. Leave it to an illusionist to slip away from a redcap raiding party.”

“I guess I got lucky,” she said. “At least until I ran into the wyvern. You arrived just in time.”

The man stared after the retreating wyvern. “So it seems. Let’s get you back to the villa. We brought a spare horse in case you survived.”

Piper was led over to a massive horse that studiously ignored her. She sighed as she struggled to mount the tall beast. When she got back to the villa, she really needed to talk to them about getting the pony that she’d been promised.