Devil's Waltz Read online

  “Why haven’t you sent Scout Imps already? They’re just as resilient if not more so. Did Gabby forbid that?” She better had not.

  Derek’s oblong brows rose. “I— Um.”

  “Well?” Rowan flared his dark-ice mana for intimidation effect. Dirt beneath his soles froze. A gust of morbid wind picked up icy dirt. That was more or less all the magic he could do without invoking a skill.

  Derek said slowly, “I didn’t get a chance to fully explain, and I didn’t think risking our remaining few Demons was wise.”

  “They’re god damned Scout Imps. What else are we saving them for?!”

  A few Worker Dolls chuckled with low rumbles in the background, holding stacks of wood. Rowan sent them back to work. No slacking under his rule.

  “I didn’t wish to displease you,” Derek said. “Demons also grow powerful over time.”

  “That’s true, but it’d take months if not years years for a Scout Imp to grow into anything more than an Imp Mage.” Ambiguous had mentioned that from her tomes. When pushed to the limit enough times, a Demon may spontaneously evolve, but it was rare. A one in a hundred occurrence.

  Derek rubbed his neck, mumbling, "Iammahavaga…"

  Rowan massaged his brow with a thumb and index finger. Standing in front of him was not leadership material, incapable of intelligent decision. No wonder Stonehurst had been so mediocre and tripe. Derek Goodwill might just have to go for the good of the tribe. He was a weak link in too many ways; his insistence on being a leader wasn’t a boon to his character when he was so dumb and lacking for an adult. He would cause countless problems. The disappointing needed to be culled to make way for those with potential. This was going to be mighty dark empire, not a carebear light kindergarten. The children would understand over time—as long as none were Derek’s.

  Blinking to the blithering man in a fractal of slate ice, Rowan unholstered his wand and aimed it between those crimson eyes with a single agile motion. It was time for the first sentencing of his kingdom. “Tell me. Are any of those children yours?”

  Derek held a glare without flinching. How impressive. “No, but I care for them as if they were my—”

  “What are your professions?”

  "…"

  Dark-ice mana seethed in Rowan’s flesh, a gust of tainted chill blowing through the clearing. “Answer me!”

  “Administration is all. Level one-hundred-and-fifty-six.” Derek swallowed.

  Rowan hadn’t heard of that, so he pretended to consider the answer and thought out a message without looking at the chat box.

  Rowan Black: What does the Administration profession do? Can I kill the mayor?

  A reply came in two seconds.

  Gabby LeMort: NPC exclusive for granting chore quests that generate rewards out of pure magic, broadcasting messages, and other useful management things. Don’t kill him. Admin tomes are very rare. ^_^!

  Shit. That was probably why he’d been Stonehurst’s mayor. “Very well.” Rowan lowered his wand. “You may be of some use, but any more talk of evacuation before it’s necessary will result in your termination. You are now also to stand down from major leadership decisions and do your best to gain levels without endangering your life. Understand?!”

  Derek’s thick neck strained to the point of shaking. He spat, “Yes, Lord Black. I understand.”

  “Good. Leave me.” Rowan jerked his chin in the farms’ direction. “Go help train the children and build the farms. Give them repeatable quests where you see fit.”

  “I will continue to do that.” He held his head high and turned. He walked away with stiff limbs.

  At least he had enough of a brain to do that. Rowan shook his head and dearly hoped there was a item in the game to increase an NPC’s intelligence.

  After sending a contingency of Scout Imps into the north-east with mental orders, he blinked onto the spire’s front step, then dropped to his bottom with a grumble and opened the design-a-minion interface. It was time for some hard work on his part. Everything was hinging on this. He prayed to Draesear that crafted minions made of only bone and mana weren’t total crap.

  Chapter 8

  Birds and Sex Slaves

  Hours passed, and Rowan, at last, was satisfied with his dragon design. But a test subject, a simplistic pigeon, was needed.

  The tool for Rowan’s tier three World Boss bonus skill, Create Undead Minion Design, was straightforward enough, as he remembered. He imagined a design; the tool did the rest. The game interpreted his thoughts without error. Any change he envisioned instantly applied to the holographic 3D model. He could rotate, scale, duplicate, and sculpt his vision, limited only by his visual and spatial intelligence. The technology was revolutionary. Artists would pay entire fortunes of credits for a similar gizmo.

  Presets in his Undead Minion Library included a Skeleton Swordsman with a mage variant, an Undead War Bear, and that immutable Lich elite minion from his tier five bonus. And after careful inspection of the design interface, it turned out he couldn’t make a flying minion as straightforwardly as he’d assumed.

  At the bottom-right hovered a button labeled as augmentations, similar to those of the Builder profession. Only one node was visible and unlocked in the list: Tainted Frost Bolt. Rowan somehow knew he had to hunt them down out in the wild. Dungeons and raids dropped appropriate scrolls. Few Undead minions also sported harvestable augments.

  Rowan’s pigeon skeleton was a work of interpretive modern art; the proportions were somewhat accurate, and he made sure to use light density bone, mostly hollow with a lattice air pockets. He double-checked its frame, then pumped it full of patternless invisible life-giving mana, lacing it with the intention that the bones would magically hold together and that the construct was to move like a pigeon. He hit the simulate button.

  Physics and magical physics activated in a blur of colors. The tool generated a rocky surface and a deep pit for a test flight. The pigeon appeared at the top, and Rowan nudged it forward through the ghostly mental connection.

  That hollow head bobbed. Those scrawny feet pedaled like a real pigeon’s. It walked fine; however, when the wings flapped, the body didn’t fly after the legs jumped, crashing into the pit with a dust cloud. Two bones at the wings’ tips snapped thanks to the lack of cushioning skin and muscles.

  Hmmmmm. What if…

  Rowan reset the simulation, then pumped the wings full of mana—mana saturated with an intention that they’d generate upwards lift. He even painted the bone with a visual indicator of glowing frost. But too bad, for the aesthetic did nothing apart from dragging down the skeleton’s temperature. It now also cost extra mana to summon. Screw that. Rowan erased the frost and hit simulate.

  The pigeon jumped and…

  Crash. A pile of dust and broken bones.

  "Dog shit." Rowan’s bottom chaffed against uneven masonry on the eroded steps.

  He attempted a myriad of other mana manipulations, weaving and shaping mana into various windy patterns, stuffing the magic with a myriad of different intents. Nothing worked. Skeletal, featherless wings couldn’t generate sufficient lift; physics-based flight was inferior to magical levitation by an order of magnitude.

  And so came the inevitable: the eagle had to be sacrificed for its active flight skill. An asterisk Rowan had missed next to its Winged Flight skill indicated it was ripe for harvesting.

  Rowan sighed. What a massive waste of an elite minion.

  There was no other choice. The eagle had to go. He wasn’t going to waste time scouring the lands for flying monsters. Intuition urged him that very few sported Winged Flight or similar. Most things out there flew by racial passives, the Nihils and Imps included. This was the eagle’s final hour.

  Standing, Rowan tugged on the eagle’s mental leash, commanded it to his side. Goodbye, my first elite minion I once could my mount, he thought sourly.

  Perched atop the storehouse across the clearing, the proud Undead bird spread its feathery wings and launched forward. A g
ust of visible dark mana blew blackish-blue eddies. The bird was a graceful companion. Intelligent too. A shame to see it go. Oh well. Sacrifices had to be made. Such was the cycle of life... or undeath.

  “Thank you, Beastmaster girl,” Rowan said, pointing at the eagle with his wand. Tendrils of dark-ice mana burst from the tip, shot toward the eagle with blistering speed, and snagged it out of the air in a death grip. It gave no caws of resistance. The tendrils sucked out the augment, sucked out every last point of health as payment. Icy gray ash sprinkled onto the ground. A node two entries from the top brightened to full-color, the list resorting.

  Winged Flight (T7) Augmentation Unlocked.

  Another node further down also became visible and lit up.

  Mana Shield (T8) Augmentation unlocked.

  Sweet. Two for the price of one. Rowan didn’t want its lightning skills anyway.

  Now, time to craft that dragon and a swarm of fliers.

  But a soothe voice chuckled from the side. “Why’d you do that?”

  Rowan’s calves squeezed, twisting. He found one of Zaine’s Nihils sitting on a stack of marble. Those folded bat wings framed his shoulder-length blackish-brown hair and black armor that made him appear as a black flame frozen in time. The name escaped Rowan, his injured brain unhelpful.

  Oron Garthos, Tortured Nihil (Fallen Angel): Level 239

  Health: 3,250,530

  Mana: 2,600,400

  Stamina: 2,500,100

  “Harvesting its skills.” Rowan didn’t see a reason to lie. “You know where I can find some?”

  “Nah.”

  Rowan paused and considered his next words as Oron didn’t say more. Those hyper-inflated stats were intimidating, for three million health was half of Zaine’s, and for all the information the dialog unveiled, Oron might deal half as much damage. And to which class archetype did Fallen Angel belong?

  Rowan sniffed odorless air. “Then why are you here? Need something?”

  Oron shrugged, a lackadaisical expression forever taking stronghold on his sharp features. “I’m checking to see if we’ll hold. Everyone has been counting on your return. I’d like to see what you can do.”

  Oh. That was all? “Fine. Just don’t get in the way.”

  “Alright.” He hopped down and strode to a pile of hay at the side of the storehouse.

  Those wings released a constant miasma of darkness riddled with streaks of light. How the opposites wouldn’t annihilate each other was too peculiar. There wasn’t any reason why Oron’s class details would be top-secret like his origins in the afterlife, so Rowan asked, “By the way, what type of class is Fallen Angel?”

  He dropped onto the hay. His head inclined. “Why are you asking?”

  “Just curious.”

  “Hmm. Alright. It’s a melee to mid-range damage dealer based on dark-light mana. It’s kind of like a dark version of Justicar but not really, if you know what that class is.” His sword materialized in his hand and he leisurely flicked a slice. A crescent of pitch energy carved a welt into the dirt till it dissipated ten or so meters away. The attack was similar to Zaine’s Chaos Slash. “Got it?” His sword dematerialized in a wink of miasma.

  Just another sword waving DPS class. Nothing special. “I might’ve missed a word or two.”

  Oron frowned. “Is that what your kind call sarcasm?”

  “No.” Rowan turned and made space for himself, blinking to the center of the clearing in case of accidents. Frigid, energizing wind rushed up his nostrils and filled his lungs as he came out of the slate-ice fractal. It was the first time he’d used Rime Blink since logging in. The sensation was invigorating—something he’d been missing his entire life.

  He applied Winged Flight to his pigeon skeleton hologram. Its wings momentarily glowed in a silhouette of frost. The construction cost took a hike, and the minion-slot use increased from one to two. Winged Flight also came with a constant mana drain, which wasn’t a problem here by the spire. Anywhere else, air-time was limited to varying degrees depending on the design.

  And like the preset Lich and Skeleton Mage, it needed a core of pure mana. Rowan concentrated a well of plasma-like dark-ice magic into its chest cavity with intent that it should be used as a mana source until it was glowing light-blue with a swirling black tint. Endless mist poured from its skull and ribs. Good enough. The Simulate button was pushed with an afterthought.

  The pigeon looked left, then right, then spread those mana-laced wings and soared at perfect thirty-degree angle. Similar with the eagle, it didn’t even need to flap and could hover in a single spot in the air. Magic did all the work.

  Time for a proper test.

  First, bones were in demand. In a flurry of draining mana, Rowan conjured the necessary twenty-seven bones for the minimalistic body. Create Bone politely asked for no spoken incantation. But rudely, it took him on a wand-waving ride of twenty seconds to spit out the pieces… Nevermind, a more economical design could be sculpted later, including the dragon’s.

  Rowan whispered the two-word incantation for Construct Minion, feeding the bones with a double-helix of magic, concentrating on the pigeon’s design. The design’s mana cost was less than substantial, and thanks to the spire, not a sliver of his mana bar was eaten. Bones lifted off the dirt and assembled themselves, little by little at first, then rapidly pieced together. The skill completed with a shudder of ice sweeping the ground. And with a mental prod from Rowan, the pigeon flapped once—and vertically ascended. It hovered in front of his nose, a flap every now and then. The pigeon, spewing enough chilly mist to keep a fridge cool, was a flawless replica of the hologram.

  Skeletal Pigeon (Crafted Undead): Level 146

  Health: 1570

  Mana: 17500

  Stamina: 950

  Seventeen-thousand mana points. Maybe he overdid its magic source by a tad. The well within its ribcage was gushing mist, and blackish ice encased its talons and wings, glowing. It was more mana than bone.

  Rowan’s eyes bulged. It’s more mana than bone. I know what this means.

  Grinning deviously, he shooed the bird away as a present for his beautiful Gabrielle. It flew away with impressive speed, leaving behind a line of mist in the air.

  Oh, Ambiguous had logged back in and hadn’t said hello. Whatever. She didn’t have to pay a greeting to the Dark Lord.

  * * *

  Gabrielle stood by the sparring children and teens, twirled her emerald-tipped wand while she gave the occasional instruction. A commandeered elemental spawner spat out low-level Water Wisps for them to slay while the adults helped build the farms down the shore. So far, most showed some promise; a few were pretty good, and a minority of five or six were dreadful. That just won’t do. “Alright, my pretties!” she chirped, cupping her mouth with her hand. “I’m gonna turn it up to lesser elementals soon!”

  Two of the worst, two teenage boys, instantly straighted, spinning around. “Bu— But Lady LeMort! We’re doing the best we can!”

  “I can tell you’re slackin’ about.”

  “We’re not!”

  Gabrielle skipped to their spawner with a Puff, then tapped it with her watch, bringing it up to the next notch. A higher-level Water Wisp burst into existence and started shooting boiling water at the slackers. That set ‘em straight as they yelped and danced on their toes to dodge. The boy held his sword and shield with extra bravado, tanking a tiny bit more effectively, while another loaded an arrow into a poorly-held bow. The arrow fumbled onto the grass. Terrible!

  Gabrielle slew the wisp with a backhand slap and deactivated the spawner before it overwhelmed the boy. “Nope! Nope! Nope! All wrong!”

  The arrow-dropping boy groaned loudly, pulling at his hair. “Lady LeMort. I don’t want to be a fighter.”

  “Huh?” This was new. “Why not? You’re a teenage boy. Ya’d look weird in support robes.”

  “I don’t want either!” He stood straighter and chucked the bow the ground, catching a big portion of the kids’ attention. “
I want to be a master Cook like my parents were!” He thumped his chest so boyishly.

  Ambiguous chuckled from behind, and Gabrielle tossed her a laceration curse without looking. “You’re gonna be either a tank or a mage or a fighter and you’ll like it.” She puffed to him, and he flinched. Her arm moved by its own. A slap struck his cheek. “How else will ya hunt down a dragon for its juicy steaks? Hmmm?”

  A strong, healthy glare cemented on his bleeding face. Good. But he dared to say, “I’ll buy it with the gold I make.”

  Another slap struck his other cheek, cutting into that deathly grayish-white pearl skin. “And what happens when someone tries to take your goods by force?”