[SS 2.84] Bad Vibes (Part 3/4) (Patreon)

In reality, it wasn’t anything exciting. They were at a random road on the hill with guard rails on both sides. “Sadly, there’s rarely any traffic here, so we’ll have to play pretend instead. I task you to imagine that there’s a car suddenly speeding down this road, about to hit you. Or actually, no, better, pretending it’s a rampaging beast running you down, about to swallow you whole. You know what that’s like. So try to stop it.”

“Err, alright.” Hopefully no cars would come while she was doing this. But there’d been no signs of life anywhere yet, so it felt unlikely. She wandered into the middle of the road, aiming toward one side. “I guess if there was a monster running at me, I’d do this.” A spiked ice barricade spawned in front of her almost instantaneously, sharp and ready to impale any foe.

“Wow impressive.” Giatour ooo’d and awe’d. “You made that quite fast, and it does look like it’d do some serious damage. But I don’t know that it’d kill something as strong as I’m imagining. Probably just make them even more mad.”

So Gelic followed up with, “Well, I actually poisoned it too. You just can’t see it.” She hadn’t really poisoned it, but he didn’t need to know that. Why waste her low MP on something invisible? “And if it was still alive after that, and as big as you’d say, I’d maybe hit it with one of these.” She spawned a big version of her ice axe and let it fall in front of the barrier, ending with it all Salvaged away before it actually shattered.

“Hmm, yes, that’d be quite deadly,” the man admitted. “And poison, huh? I remember my friend mentioning something like that. Yes, quite deadly indeed. Would you say your poison is pretty strong?”

“Yeah, I suppose,” she answered. “I’ve been told it’s one of the more deadly, rarer ones.”

“I’ll take care not to touch it then,” he smirked. Yes, since there were no Summoner protections, that would be genuinely bad for him. “Alright, then what if they were charging at you from both sides? How would you handle that?”

“Uhhh, I’d probably just dodge in that case.” Gelic bounced up and off the road. Maybe he’d argue that the scenario was different, and it was tight quarters, but in this location, there was no reason to just stay in place.

“Ah, yes that makes sense.” Giatour nodded. “A shame that there’s not two of you, because then you could defend twice as well.”

Huh?! That caught her off-guard. It was such a random thing to say. Did he know she had Duplicate somehow? Absolutely no Summoners should. That was likely just a random musing from his author mind, but it still felt weird and coincidental. “Yeah, that’d be nice,” she leaned into it, doing her best to make it sound like a genuine want. “Hey, is this really helping you out?”

“Oh, yes, it most certainly is.” He said that in a weird way. Detect Falsehoods didn’t see anything wrong, but it still felt off. Maybe the man was just off-putting in general, which would lean into why he was out here alone in the middle of nowhere. But then something spiked her anxiousness again.

[A Demon has been deterred]

“Hey, Angie, everything okay?” She immediately sent a mental message to her counterpart stuck at home. 

“Hmm, yeah,” she answered. “I just looked and nothing. Must have been a passing Demon. Maybe with the Field invisible now, it’ll happen more often.” Yes, that could definitely be a possibility. 

“Hey, could you see about moving it so that only the complex is in the range?” Gelic requested. “Try to remove the road and get it lower to the ground so it won’t clip any high flyers.”

“Sure, I’ll work on that.”

Though it was mostly done, Giatour unintentionally interrupted their silent conversation. “But I do think seeing proper action would help more. I think I know a spot nearby where there’s some of those maligned things. Is that the right word? It doesn’t sound right.”

“Malignants,” Gelic corrected, and then expanded her Tracker outside the usual personal space range she passively kept. “Huh, there are some, but they feel weak.”

“Weak is fine! Weak is safe, right? I wouldn’t want you getting hurt in your attempts to humor me.” He smiled at her again, but damn, why did that make her feel weird? It was like Suspecting Skin wanted to shiver her body again, but it didn’t quite trigger.

“Huh, they really are weak.” After a decent walk down to the shoreline, Gelic spotted the few puny Malignants on a small islet not too far from the coast. With her newly enhanced Scrying Eye, she could see that they’d only give like three Essence each. It honestly wasn’t even really worth her time at this point. She should still probably kill any Malignants she saw, but since they were stranded out on their tiny island, they really weren’t a threat. 

“So how would you take them out from here?”

“Hmm, just a seeking shot,” she answered then demonstrated. A javelin of ice spawned at her side and then flew the distance in the blink of an eye, killing the Malignant instantly. “Guess, I’ll clear the rest out too.”

“Wait, don’t do that,” Giatour complained. “That’d be a waste when we have real targets. C’mon, I’m sure you have other ways to take care of them.”

“Not really from a distance,” she argued. If she had Discharge, then maybe she could zap them from here, but there was no point bringing that up. “I’m working on getting better at spawning my ice at a distance, so I could spawn it above them and let it fall down like hail, but definitely not from this far away.”

“Well, why not get closer then,” he suggested. “Hmm, well, I’d want to see it better than from here. I know you could just bounce or fly over there, but what about me? New scenario! Pretend you need to help me across for important reasons. How would you do it?”

Gelic genuinely thought about that for a moment. The easiest answer would be to pick him up and jump, but she couldn’t do that as a Demon. It’d require her turning human and carrying him that way, but she found that idea unpleasant, having no interest in literally sweeping the man off his feet. But there was another way. She just had to figure out how to optimize it with her low MP pool.

“Mkay, I’ve got it,” she reported and then started to bounce a few times. It wasn’t to get her across, but rather just to get some height. This was to make Flutter trigger, letting Bumble activate for free. In the limited window, she quickly glided across the water, letting her feet dip gently into the ocean. Everything she touched quickly became a sheet of ice, doing it this way so that she didn’t accidentally freeze a much larger than needed chunk than if she tried to do it from the shore. 

After touching down on the islet, a frozen bridge was left behind her. Since it was something she couldn’t Salvage—made by a reaction instead of a creation—it was definitely a riskier thing to do, because it’d be left behind and take a while to melt. But since this place was so deserted, it should be fine to leave the random frozen anomaly around. 

[Fluttering Bumble Lv.7, Flash-Freeze Lv.3]

After checking the thickness with a prod of his foot, Giatour took a confident step. Only for him to immediately slip and land hard on his back. “I’m fine, I’m okay!” he reported as he wobbled back to his feet. “But, uhh, any way to make it less slick?” 

Hmm, she could probably use Shaved Ice to make the whole thing a grittier texture, but she wasn’t even going to entertain buying the Skill for this man. So she skated back over and pointed to his feet with her claws, asking him to raise it for a moment. “There, that should be good.” She made spiky ice cleats around his soles, wrapping around the top so that they’d stay put. It’d probably get cold pretty quickly, but she could Salvage it once he crossed.

“This, uhh, this ice isn’t poisoned, right?” After she assured him otherwise, he made the trek across the water. The cleats worked well, and should have honestly allowed him to walk fine, but it was like watching a baby animal. It made the whole endeavor take way longer than it should have, but hey, more inspiration for his book, right? Might as well experience a trial for himself. 

“Okay, how about that ice rain?” he asked once they were on dry land again. So she humored him and made some hail strike down a Malignant. “Very cool. Can I see the poison this time?”

So she obliged that too, using a tainted poison dagger, except there was one minor problem. “Ah, it died too fast.” After just a second of a few Toxic stacks, the Malignant went poof. “My poison gets a lot stronger if I can touch something twice, but I didn’t even get the chance.” After that, she properly Stabbed and then Airstriked the last remaining ones, just to do something different, clearing the islet of its terrible threat.

[Gained 14 Essence]

Yep, that was all she got for the five Malignants combined. They must have never gotten to feed a single time in their lives. Kinda sad. 

“Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful!” He began praising her as if she’d just done some absolutely amazing feats. “You might be the most spectacular Demon I’ve ever met.”

Lie, she noted, but supposed it was a harmless one

“Or at least the most interesting,” the man corrected.

Huh, not a lie that time.

“I think we should keep this trip going!” Giatour sounded genuinely enthused for some reason, except… another lie? Weird.

“Maybe we could meet up with my friend, he’s not too far.”

Lie.

“I’m sure he’d love to meet you too.”

Half-lie?

“We’ll have a great day together!”

Lie. Not just a lie, a huge lie. It was like an alarm was going off in her head. Not only that, there was another jolt of Suspecting Skin, like she was going to be attacked any moment. That made her glance around again in a panic, but there was nothing, nothing but the man in front of her, who from her analysis should be completely unthreatening, yet… His eyes were freaking her out again. 

“Nope, I’m leaving, bye!” Gelic didn’t stick around for arguments, and immediately poofed back to her apartment. Divining Ear, absolutely do not let any further requests from that man or anyone he’s friends with through ever again!

[Accepted]

“Everything alright?” Angie tilted her head at her Demon self. Apparently, even she could tell how rattled her real body was.

“Y-yeah.” Angelica tried to collect herself and turned back to human. “That dude was just a mega-creep. So off-putting. I don’t know if he was dangerous or what but… but he lives on the other side of the world, and I’ve made it so he can’t contact us again. No way he’s strong enough to forcibly call us either. So it’s probably best to just forget about him. I just need a minute. How did things go with you?”

“Oh, it was pretty quiet here, besides that random passerby Demon. I moved the Deterring Field Rune under the crawlspace, so hopefully no more false-positives anymore. But I learned a lot. Probably easier for you to just reabsorb me than to explain it all. Oh, and you got two texts.

“One was from our mom. She said that she was real busy this coming weekend, but if we suggested a restaurant or something we could just do in an hour or two, she’d see if she could make it work. The second was from Vystal. Apparently this work in a few days has a uniform, so she was asking what our—what Merlina’s sizes are. I didn’t seem to know, so we probably need to go get Merlina measured. Was gonna wait and see if you wanted to do it, but why don’t you just remake me, and I’ll take care of it while you rest here.”

“Uhh, sure, thank you.” Angelica accepted the kind offer. Angie really was becoming quite reliable. “Alright then.” She reached out and touched the clone. “Let’s see what you learned.”