Arcane Apocalypse ~ 183 (Patreon)

Author's Note: The interlude scene at the end ended up being long enough to be considered a tiny chapter all on its own, but I decided to keep it in this chapter as a little treat. As such, this chapter is almost twice as long as the regular ones. Enjoy! (That's an order)

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[Level Up!]

[Free Attributes: 3 -> 6]

“And that’s Level 12!” Mia said, watching on with a tired but content smile as the massive form of the Elite ape monster they’d been hunting for since that morning finally crashed onto the ground. 

“Woohoo!” Lina shouted halfheartedly, wearily throwing her hands into the air. She let her hands drop and she collapsed where she stood with a deep sigh of relief, her hand already pulling a bottle of water from her pouch. “The bastard just had to run, didn’t he? What kind of a monster runs from a tasty meal instead of running towards it?”

“The kind with survival instincts, apparently,” Carmilla muttered. “Not that this one’s were sharp enough to run from us without losing an arm first.”

That fight felt like it had been half a day ago now … maybe because it was; the sun was perilously close to the horizon by this point, and they’d set out to hunt this simian menace at dawn. The monster had ambushed one of the other delving parties that went to harvest some Light crystals from the Crystal Forest Rift, leaving four dead. Then it did it again a few hours later, attacking another group and killing three more people before being driven off by Aiden, who was still lingering on the door of death after pushing himself beyond mana deprivation to drive off the beast. Apparently, he had burned a fraction of his lifeforce in his desperation, which was why he hadn’t woken from his sleep since and looked like a mummified corpse when Mia’d caught a glimpse of him. 

Those had been the first fatalities since the Werewolf King’s death outside of Rifts, and Mayor Zeigler had been eager to have the threat taken down with all possible haste to keep the morale in the city steady and the trust in his fledgling government from faltering. 

Which is how Mia’s party ended up sicced on the overgrown man-eating ape. There were other powerful parties, but when both Brent and Nikki tagged along, theirs was the one with the most heavy hitters and the most battle-tested. 

Mia looked around for a moment, finding a fallen trunk to sit on as she fished out some snacks and water from her pouch. The land was a bit flatter around these parts, with hills more common than mountains, though they could see some snow-capped peaks on the horizon whenever they crested a hilltop. 

They were probably somewhere around Oberwart, perhaps approaching Burgenland after an entire day’s steady hiking and the occasional flying with Gabe’s help. He didn’t help with the fighting, and only helped with the travelling when the ape ran off for the second time, and it started to seem like they would have to chase it through the night if they had no help.

The damned thing was Level 20 and an absolute menace, with the stamina to match a creature that was two and a half metres tall and half as wide, built from solid muscle. 

“So,” Mia spoke up first after a few minutes of silence where everyone rested a bit, catching their breath. “Do we get a ride back to the city, or are we going to have to camp out, because I’m going to drop dead before we get back if I have to hike through the night?”

Fourteen hours of daylight, all spent hiking over more or less rough terrain, with three rather intense fights scattered throughout the day. Mia was beat and ready to fall asleep right there in the dirt. 

“I don’t know, it might be good to let you experience what it’s like to camp in possibly hostile terrain,” Gabe said, floating down from the sky.

Mia noted that Nikka only slightly twitched at his sudden appearance and also made sure not to face Mia’s brother. She hadn’t dared to ask yet what that was about, and she had a feeling that she wouldn’t have gotten a straight or truthful answer out of the woman even if she had. 

“We haven’t prepared for it though,” Mia grumbled. She did have the bare minimum in her spatial bag, but she would have to rely on Gabe, Nikki or Camie to shield them from monsters throughout the night. 

Sure, they could take turns staying up to keep watch, but with up to Elite Level 20 monsters wandering around, someone could die before they could scramble out of their sleeping bags. The only solution would be to set up some Wards, some Alert Wards, a barrier to keep monsters at bay long enough for everyone to wake up and get armed once the alarm rang, and maybe a concealment Ward to keep most monsters from noticing them at all. 

Mia was sure Gabe could do all that, and she herself could do the Alert Ward, and maybe Nikki knew a ritual to set up the others, but that was just a hope. 

Besides, Mia had only packed a sleeping bag, not even a camping mattress or an inflatable one. She would have to fix that, even if it would reduce her free space for loot and other stuff. Currently, most of the space inside was set aside for loot, with the second-largest portion being enough emergency rations to feed her for a month. 

If she really wanted to do that fetch Quest from the Shade, then she’d need to see about bugging Gabe until he taught her how to place down barriers and concealment wards around a campsite. She still had some empty pages in her Spell Tome, and some spells that wouldn’t be all that painful to sacrifice. 

Mia knew for a fact he could make a dozen other lesser but very useful wards and barriers, like the one that repelled all insects and vermin from an area. That one would be a lifesaver if they had to camp somewhere during the summer, and it was just one of many utility spells Gabe could freehand. 

Sad as it was, her piercing Bolt, Unseen Servant and Spectral Steed were likely on the chopping block. She’d thought them useful but ended up barely using them. Where would she use a spectral horse? It didn’t fit on hiking trails, and besides, she travelled in a group, so the added speed and endurance were useless. She would need to think through her spell choices a bit more in the future. 

I’d thought ten new pages for the Spellbook would be more than enough to last me till the next Rank Up. Mia thought wistfully. It wasn’t a bad thing that she had so many options, she would certainly feel strange complaining about it, it was like whining about having too many different dishes to choose from at a feast. 

“How about I put down some Rank 1 barriers and concealment wards, and you all get to figure out what an authentic camping experience is like in hostile territory?” Gabe mused aloud. Mia grimaced. She knew that tone; that idiot had already decided and was just thinking about the specifics. It seemed like this would be an uncomfortable night. “If I don’t have to save anyone from ‘death’, I’ll transport you all back to Graz at dawn, how about that?”

Mia was pretty sure he would have folded like a lawnchair if she whined a bit or vehemently insisted on sleeping in her own bed. Little sister privileges were nothing to scoff at. She had half a mind to do so, but … he had a point. Sorta. 

They did need experience camping out in the wilds on short or no notice, and in the type of wilds where monsters or just regular magical beasts might attempt to take a bite out of them while they slept. 

Mia groaned. The fact that he had a point made it so she couldn’t bring herself to object to it too harshly, which would mean Gabe would shrug off all complaints.

Half an hour later, the party was sitting around a small campfire, sitting on rocks and logs as they watched the dancing flames in the dimming evening light. They’d found a small camping spot on the hiking trail they’d been using and wasted no time setting up a fire. The last rain had been days ago, so Mia had no trouble setting some dry wood chips alight with a bit of thermal energy. 

Thankfully, Camie’s scarlet talons were sharp enough to carve wood, and Anna had enough strength to unearth some smaller trees in her bear form, then break them into chunks that Camie could cut into a more appropriate shape. Even if she couldn’t have, Mia still had her Spectral Blade, which would be barely even slowed by the effort of cutting mundane wood after the upgrades it had gone through.

Most of their food was preserved, but not all. They had all kinds of sausages on sharpened sticks, some veggies and some bacon. Mia also had some dry bread, which she held above the fire to soften up a bit. For a makeshift barbecue they had made absolutely no preparations for, it was pretty nice. 

The Alert Ward was in place, tied to a Rank 1 monster’s core. Mia always had a handful of them in her spatial bag, and Gabe had also put down his own defences. Rank 1 equivalents, though he remained nearby so death wasn’t something they would have to fear. 

“So, what are we thinking about the Quest?” Mia asked, deciding to broach the subject in one of the lengthier lulls in conversation. 

To be honest, she’d assumed the Shade was just speaking in its usual archaic manner and using a familiar word for the sake of not being misunderstood. Which made it quite a surprise when Mia’s agreement came with a System notification and a new pop-up that told her everything she needed to know about her new Quest. 

***

[Quest: The Master’s Grand Fetch Quest!]

Objective - Acquire the following items:

100x 1g Blaze Powder

9x Magma Heart

9x Greater Elemental Blaze Gem

9x Greater Elemental Light Gem

3x Solar Gem

3x Branch of a Radiant Treant

1x Elixir of Salvation

Bonus Objective:

Acquire an intact Dungeon Core

Rewards: 

Free access to the library and collection of tomes of [REDACTED] / ‘The Master’. 

1 treasure of the User’s choosing from the vault of [REDACTED] / ‘The Master’. 

[REDACTED] / ‘The Master’ shall act as the Guardian of the city of ‘Graz’ for a century and a year upon the completion of this Quest.

Bonus Reward: All Rewards gain a 5x multiplier. 

***

[The first User to receive this Quest may share it at will with up to ten other Users, turning it into a shared Quest with shared Objectives but personal Rewards]

[The first User to receive this Quest may choose an Objective to actively Track, which will direct all holders of this Quest towards the nearest area where they may accomplish said Objective]

Currently Tracking: - 

***

The fact that the Shade could not only give out official System Quests, but also make the System keep his name a secret made Mia all the more thankful that they’d approached him as courteously as they had. If there was any doubt that he could have wiped the floor with them, Gabe included, it was gone now. 

“I have never even heard of any single person being able to assign Quests,” Gabe said, appearing to sit on a nearby boulder. “Much less make the System conceal their identity. I mean, I’ve never been particularly high up in the hierarchy; Rank 3 is nothing compared to the real big players, and Starhaven was far from the most dangerous Plane around, with its Dragon Vein only containing Rank 3 mana.”

Mia had told everyone about her meeting with the Shade and shown them the Quest the day before, so they all had the opportunity to sleep on it and think on it throughout the lengthy march that followed. 

“I mean, it really depends on just how annoying those things we’ll have to fetch are,” Lina said between bites of a granola bar she’d summoned from her own spatial bag. “I have no idea what any of those things are, besides the Light Gem, which I’m assuming is the Rank 2 or higher version of the stuff we’d spent the last week grinding in that Rift. The Blaze Gem would be another version of it … Blaze is supposed to be an element, right?”

“It’s an Evolved Fire element focused on explosions and explosive power,” Gabe said. “Blaze Powder is basically magical gunpowder dropped by Blaze Elementals, or gained when you grind a Blaze-elemental monster’s core to dust. I haven’t heard of any of the other items … besides the Dungeon Core, of course, which is a lost cause. I’m not sure what Rank a Blaze Gem needs to be to be considered Greater either.”

“Magma Hearts come from Magma Golems and Titans,” Nikki said. “They have it instead of monster- or other types of energy cores.”

“I think Solar Gems are used to make potent anti-undead weapons,” Camie said uncertainly. “If it’s what I’m thinking of, then they glow with ‘True Sunlight’ or something, which hurts undead just by shining on them.”

“Huh, that leaves only the Radiant Treant and the Elixir of Salvation as our main mysteries,” Mia mused. “All of those sound like potent stuff, so I’m going to assume we’ll need to Rank Up at least once more before attempting to gather any of them.”

“If any are near and accessible, I could grab them,” Gabe said, and when Mia gave him a strange look — he’d never proposed to actively help in any of her struggles before — he just shrugged. “Those Rewards would be more than worth the lessons you would miss from doing everything yourselves, and it would be a lie to say I wouldn’t be happy to have someone more powerful than me around to keep watch while I’m away from Graz. Besides, most of those things will likely come from Rifts, which I can’t help you with anyway beyond handling the transportation … actually, I’m guessing nearly all of them will be from Rifts if this ‘Master’ can’t get his hands on them himself.”

"No other reason why he couldn’t?” Mia asked. “He was being strangely elusive about his reasons, saying he was ‘limited in ways he wasn’t willing to disclose’ or whatnot. If they all came from Rifts, wouldn’t he have just said that? It would have made more sense.”

All the answers she received to that question were a round of shrugs and nothing more, so Mia huffed and decided that would be it. Continuing, “So, who should I share it with? Gabe and Carmilla are the two obvious ones, but I don’t want anyone to feel pressured into helping.”

“I would like to help,” Nikki spoke up, surprisingly enough, though she kept staring at Mia while visibly doing her best to keep her gaze from flickering over to Gabriel. “If … you would have me?”

“Of course,” Mia said with a smile. She’d been a bit worried Nikki would distance herself from them all and cut off their nascent friendship due to whatever problems she had with Gabe, so this was a nice surprise. Her expertise would surely be helpful. 

“Me too, obviously,” Lina said with palpable excitement in her voice. “This quest will take us around a bit, exploring this strange new world we live in. I would want to tag along just for that, but the Levels and Rewards are also nice enough to tempt anyone.”

“I will have to decline,” Brent said with a sigh. “I have too much work in Graz; I can’t be gone for too long. Besides, I need to keep an eye on things to make sure things stay … stable.”

That left Mom and Anna. Mark had opted out of this hunt, so he wasn’t even there. Mia would ask him all the same later, but she suspected she already knew the answer she would get. Mark had been practically bouncing off the walls ever since he’d started working on planning and constructing new buildings, and he could spend hours babbling about how magic and architecture worked together to make wonders beyond imagining. 

Helene hesitated for a moment, glancing at Brent, but then took a deep breath and resolve shone in her eyes as she spoke, “If you two are going, then so am I, if you think I can be of use.”

“Thanks, Mom,” Mia said with a smile, and received a relieved one in return. Then her attention fell on Anna, making the younger woman slump a bit more. “You don’t have to come if you don’t want to, Anna. This isn’t obligatory; nothing is.”

“I want to,” the girl said in a whisper that Mia was sure only she and Camie caught. She looked up at Mia, brown eyes holding emotions Mia couldn’t easily decipher. “But you don’t have to waste the Quest on me; I’ll come and help if you would have me even without it.”

Mia’s eyebrows climbed up her forehead as she realised the subdued girl might have some … issues. She would have suspected betrayal or some hidden plot, but they’d been through a good number of Rift delves by now, and Mia was pretty sure Anna was honest and driven. Maybe a bit too driven and willing to take injuries, even when she didn’t particularly need to. 

Gabe had been trying to get her to train her out of that bad habit, but it was a work in progress. In actual combat, Anna’s first instinct remained to put herself in danger to lessen it on others. It was the task of the dedicated tank/vanguard of the party, but Mia still didn’t like how much the girl ended up injured and wounded during their delves. 

Sooner or later, she’d meet an opponent who gave her an injury she couldn’t heal in time, or whose mana couldn’t be drained to power her regeneration. If they ever came across a foe that used Ki instead of mana or miasma, Anna would be at a steep disadvantage. Her Class Sub-Skill was called Mana Drain, not Energy Drain, after all.

“If you are risking your life to help with the Quest, you deserve a cut of the Rewards,” Mia said matter-of-factly, to which the brunette just nodded with a small frown. For some reason, she didn’t seem happy with Mia’s decision. Strange. 

Mia shared a glance with Camie, then Helene and saw them mirror her own confused and worried frown on their faces. Issues indeed. Not that Anna was alone in that; Mia was pretty sure 99% of the survivors that lasted this long suffered from some manner of trauma of varying severities. Anna just turned out to be further down the spectrum than anyone else on the team. 

None of them was psychiatrists or anything of the sort, so the best they could probably do was to keep Anna from getting herself killed while she dealt with whatever it was that troubled her at her own pace. Mia certainly had neither the skill nor the right to attempt to muck about in someone else’s personal life like that, especially when that someone else was more of a work acquaintance than a proper friend. 

That made five with Gabe, Lina, Anna, Helene, Nikki, leaving five more open spots. They would probably have to do some recruiting if they wanted to maximise the benefits of the Quest; receiving more of the Shade’s treasures would likely be good for the average power level of Graz’s inhabitants. 

*******

Vexaria floated behind her erstwhile summoner, unseen and unnoticed by all as he walked through the streets of this quaint little city. Wien or Vienna or something of the sort? It didn’t really matter. It was a human city, though a bit stranger than all the others she’d seen in her time. Which, she supposed, should be expected considering she was in a brand new Realm. 

Alas, it was still oh so very boring. Humans would always be humans, in the end, even if the System changed them into something else. None of their cities would ever hold a candle to the splendour and magnificence of even the most dilapidated hovel of the Demon Realm. 

On the topic of humans being humans, always trust a human to be stupid enough to pick the Demonologist Class without any forethought, then summon a Succubus at the first possible opportunity without actually making sure said succubus wouldn’t be claiming his soul by the time the night came to an end. 

It would have been so easy. Men always let down their guard when they saw a nice pair of tits and had a long, serpentine tongue coiled around their manhood. She could have sucked the soul right out of him with little trouble, and he would have died with a dumb grin on his face. Most Demonologists at least had the smarts to be cautious or at least took precautions when they were planning to do something as monumentally stupid as bedding a Succubus. Not her newest summoner, though. She doubted he’d even read anything in that grimoire of his beyond the bare minimum needed to summon her and Lesser Demons. 

Her moronic summoner was truly fortunate; in another place, another time, she would have gleefully taken advantage of his ignorance to drag his soul back into the Hells, but he could serve a better purpose up here. He didn’t even know how to properly end a summoning. Sure, stupid Lesser Demons like imps and gargoyles would just vanish the moment he stopped actively feeding them his own mana, but Vexaria was no Lesser Demon.

She had reinforced her anchor in him when he tried to dismiss her at dawn and hid herself as best she could. She didn’t even need to siphon mana from him; this new Plane was so rich with ambient mana she could just feed on that and even more so on the despair and misery of the inhabitants of this city. In her current form as a disembodied demonic spirit, she didn’t need much energy to subsist, so she could maintain her current state indefinitely.

A physical form would be another thing entirely, but she had no need of that at the moment. It was much easier to hide herself in her current state. Her summoner stank of demonic energy anyway, so he served as the perfect shroud for her presence. The fools had no laws against Demonology yet, so no one batted an eye at a Demon summoner walking around in their midst. 

It was hilarious; they were so very ignorant and deliciously naive. Vexaria was sure even in this pitifully weak population there were dozens with good enough sensory abilities to feel the taint of Demonic Power on her summoner, and yet at worst they grimaced and sped up their steps. No enforcers coming to arrest him, no guards, no state-approved assassins stalking him. Nothing. 

Their world was so rich in resources, so powerful and thick with magic. Its populace was also so naive and ripe for exploitation. How could any self-respecting demon ever resist such a prize? Even the Beast Realm’s emergence hadn’t been such a stellar opportunity; that place had already been full of powerful Beast Lords and Kings that had an instinctive loathing for anything demonic. But this place? They had all been without mana, magic or anything of the like just mere months ago.

Vexaria still couldn’t conquer it on her own, even with those advantages. Succubi were not made for war and conquest, and she was just Rank 2 herself, so that Marshal would swiftly stomp her pretty little head into a pulp, but she could certainly pave the way for someone else. Guile and manipulation were something her kind excelled at, though those things were second only to their skills at seduction and bewitching fools. Facilitating a conquest for a Demon Lord was a much easier task; it would be her greatest project to date, but she’d done similar things on a lesser scale before, so she had a few centuries of practice. 

Who would give me the greatest reward, I wonder? Maybe Lord Mammon? Lord Asmodai? No … Vexaria needed someone further down the totem pole; any of the Demon Lords so far up would never reward her appropriately. They would give her crumbs or might kill her outright once her use ran out. She needed someone who would need her the same way she needed them. Dantalion then? Or maybe Seere? They are both said to be fairer than the rest.

Demon Lord Seere was certainly a good option, there was a reason he was known as the Fair One. He was famed as one of the only Demons who held Pride in the fact that he dealt fairly … but what if he wouldn’t take the deal? He was no conqueror, more of a schemer and a hoarder. 

Demon Lord Dantalion then? He was weaker, said to be the weakest of the Demon Lords; he would surely be hungry enough to leap at the opportunity. Vexaria heard good things about him as well; she had a sister working in his castle, so she had an in with him. 

Sure, he was hungrier for knowledge and arcane secrets to fill his library with above all else, but Vexaria had heard gossip that his Pride, Greed and Envy were not so singular. Weakest of the Demon Lords he might have been, he was still an ancient and very dangerous demon well above anyone like a little Succubus in power. 

Still, she couldn’t think of a better option. 

Why the System allowed summonings to pass through its precious little Realm Barrier, she would never know. Alas, it was to her benefit so she wouldn’t question it too much. It probably had to do with the fact that any of the dangers the locals summoned would be entirely self-inflicted. You couldn’t summon a demon by accident, after all. Sure, the silly little Spirits and Elementals wouldn’t cause much trouble for the locals even if some ended up being summoned, but Demons were Spirits of a kind as well.

Too bad, so sad. Their ignorance was Vexaria’s greatest advantage. She would need to work fast; she couldn’t sense any of her kin on this Plane, but that didn’t mean much with the incredibly thick ambient mana around her. She doubted she could sense her own mother even if she was standing right behind her. She was sure her summoner wasn’t the only human dumb enough to so catastrophically mess up a demon summoning, which meant she had competition. 

Vexaria was racing against time. If anyone else managed to facilitate the summoning of a Greater Demon, or an Archdemon or a Demon Lord, then her own leverage would vanish in an instant. She needed to act fast if she didn’t want to be overtaken. 

One thing certainly worked to her benefit, though: she’d been summoned into a city with a Mana Well at its centre, and one channelling the power of a Rank 5 Dragon Vein at that! It was probably one of the very few places on this planet that could actually facilitate the opening of a proper Realm Gate.

Truly, Fate itself must have had a hand in that. She just hoped her luck would hold out until she set up a Realm Gate. She could almost taste her rewards; if she succeeded, she would be elevated. Surely Lord Dantalion could be convinced to make her one of his Generals for this!