Chapter 46 - 47 - 48 / Lesser Demon Access (Patreon)

This is a 2.5 chapter release! Sorry for the delays! 48 is cut a bit short... just wanted to get everything I had to you all since you have waited so long. Have been doing a lot better this week at writing, and am hopeful to have a 49 for Monday to pick up right where 48 drops off!

Read below or get it here! 

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Chapter 46 – Maps and Thugs

Elania was starting to rethink her plan to look for the Mercenary District’s Artificer Row as she walked down the side street. She had asked directions from the waitress again, just to confirm the ones from Henri and Elburn had given her. That, and that she hadn’t misremembered or scrambled them in her head, which was probably more likely she admitted to herself. Luckily, what the waitress said matched what Elania remembered, so after her fourth Frujuice and way too much people watching, she had set out to look for her goal.

She hadn’t needed to go far on the main row, as the side street she needed to turn off on wasn’t that much further into the district. She’d barely hesitated at the slightly dimmer lighting. Elania hadn’t appreciated just how much light the extra fixtures on the buildings had provided the main street, and the further she delved into the district, the less and less those were in appearance until they were only present on the block corners. The alleys didn’t have any at all and were darkened enough that her eyes would adjust into a near monochrome if she looked down them.

The fact she had a sort of night vision made them a lot less scary. However, they looked quite full of trash and debris and definitely not the type of place to spend any time in. She had spotted a few shadowy figures sleeping or moving about in a few of them as she went. That was enough to prod her to walk closer to the center of the street. The feeling of being watched started to prickle at her back, but the few times she peeked back the way she had come, there was no one there.

‘Maybe if I learned Demon-Jujutsu or whatever, I’d stop feeling so nervous.’

Or really, any real fighting ability would do. So far, she had flailed her way through everything, relying on her superior racial strength to survive. She had turned her [Mana Manipulation] into a weapon, but that was risky at best and limited in range unless she wanted to burn copious amounts of her reserves.

She had no idea where to even start with ‘Magic,’ so the idea of using some sort of ranged weapon...a bow or crossbow maybe, appealed to her. The memory of Marcus preparing to shoot at her was still fresh and outlined just how vulnerable she’d be to someone with a projectile weapon where she couldn’t get into ‘Power Punch’ distance.

The thought of having to learn to use a bow from someone like Marcus made her feel uncomfortable, though. Maybe if she met Tessa again, she could learn to use a sword and shield with a few lessons instead. With a class like ‘Knight,’ the other demon should know all about swords, Elania told herself. Although it was probably wishful thinking that she’d be free to teach anything.

Elania frowned and came to a stop at a large T-intersection. The path going straight ahead shrunk and grew almost as dim as the alleys she had seen, while the turn continued to be about the same. Her first instinct was to follow the better lit main path, but... the directions she had been given didn’t include any turns or junctions like this.

She was supposed to follow the street she was on until it ended in a square with multiple branches... that was definitely not where she was at now as directions and reality didn’t match up once again. Was everyone so bad at fucking directions? Elania bit her lip and looked down both paths again.

‘What I need is a map.’

Suddenly, she recalled a brief tidbit from Marcus of all people from one of their early conversations.

“Fun idea, but no. It’s an artifice that provides certain functions to those who reside in the area. Clock, maps, the ability to call the guards, among other things.”

Elania repeated the keyword in her head.

'Maps.'

Henri had shown her the stone, and it had been as simple as putting her hand on it and getting a simple status box to show it to her. Neither he, Elburn, or even Tessa had mentioned Maps. They had all given her directions when a map would have been much more straightforward, especially if it worked somehow like her [Status] or other screens.

Why had they not even mentioned it?

[User Binding: Neftasu]

[Clock: 5:18]

[Emergency]

[Locked]

[Other]

Yeah, that looked like it had earlier when Henri had shown her the Binding Stone. It had been easy for her to transfer the [Clock] function over to her custom [Hud] window, so she’d not used this screen more than once. Was the locked function the map? A quick glance around showed no one nearby, so she decided to test [Other] before going on.

[Unbind]

[Locked]

[Locked]

[Activate Management Interface]

Well, she didn’t want to ‘Unbind’ that would take away her Clock she guessed, and everything else seemed locked except the last option, which she wasn’t sure about. It was the only choice if she wanted to continue investigating, though, so she activated it and received a deluge of messages she wasn’t prepared for.

[Attempting to Grant Management Access]

[New Management Permissions Restricted]

[Management Authority Exceeds Current Management Authority]

[Overriding Management Permission Restrictions]

[Management Access Granted: City-State Neftasu, Elania Reyes, Full Access]

[Stripping Previous Management Requires Core Access]

[Resetting User Confidentiality Settings to Management Default]

[Management Interface Activated]

What the hell had she just done? Elania bit her lip, the messages stopped, and nothing else seemed to happen, so she activated the [Bind] screen again.

[Manager Binding: Neftasu]

[Clock: 5:19]

[Emergency]

[Map]

[Other]

There it was. For such a verbose response, just the first part of the screen had changed from ‘User Binding’ to ‘Manager Binding’, and the [Locked] function now revealed was a map. Rather than spend time panicking over the log messages, Elania quickly activated the [Map] function.

She was rewarded with a huge screen popping into place in front of her, the slightly transparent image expanding to several feet wide and tall. It was much too close and almost made her go cross-eyed. Elania took an instinctive step backward, but the screen followed her movement perfectly, which was even more disorienting.

‘Fuck, whoever designed this was near-sighted or something.’

Thankfully, she knew what to do to actually manipulate the screen and push it a bit further away, just like she had managed to customize her [HUD] screen.

The map was not what she expected. Google Maps might have spoiled her. The dark blue background has several weird areas where beige bled through in irregular patterns. Over that, a grid of darker black lines arranged all over it in what she assumed were buildings as she looked closer. There were absolutely zero labels of any sort, and she was barely able to get an understanding of the city’s layout. If the map was even the entire city. She’d been told the magic barrier she’d passed through was a sphere, and the map was shaped in a circle, which suggested what she was looking at was probably a top-down view.

Of course, there was no legend anywhere to be seen, but there was an odd-looking rectangle box in one corner. Elania was about to try to figure that box out when she realized that the blue and beige colors were shifting. She focused on one of the beige splotches that stood out, and sure enough, around the edges of it, the blue was shifting.

Zoom-In? Just her thought of looking for that function rewarded her with the map slowly responding, and she realized that the solid blue color was anything but solid. It was thousands of small blue dots. Most of them were stationary, but many were moving. It took a moment, but then she had a theory on what they were.

‘People. The dots are people, this isn’t a map of where to go, it’s a map of the population of the entire city.’

Suddenly, the blank rectangle in the corner made more sense to her.

‘Henri.’

The sea of blue dots disappeared, leaving just a neat beige with black lines all over it. That prompted her to Zoom-out and there it was. A single green dot sitting somewhere near the center right of the center of the city.

‘Tessa.’

The Henri-dot disappeared, to be replaced by another green dot, this one near the eastern, or what she assumed was the eastern side of the city due to her association with east being to the right.

‘This is why no one mentioned the map, and that function was locked, giving everyone a map that locates everyone in the city would be… dangerous.’

It didn’t explain why she suddenly was able to have this ‘Management’ ability, though, or why she’d be permitted to access it.

‘Elania Reyes’

[Confidentiality settings prevent this user from being displayed. Change status to visible? Y/N]

‘Oh, definitely not.’

Elania was quite happy that no one would be using this [Map] to track her. The question of just why she’d have more authority than the current management was a bit nagging though. She’d need to be careful and keep her access to the [Map] hidden, since she figured that someone would be rather miffed if they found out some random ‘Demon’ could locate just about anyone she wanted.

There was only one problem.

She didn’t know the name of any Artificer, and there were no street names or building labels at all, just a mess of black lines that indicated buildings, and only on a single level, at that.

Try as she might, whatever commands she tried failed to change that. The map was, in the end, a big people tracker, not a roadmap to the Artificer district.

Elania sighed and glanced down the two streets. She’d spent a good five or ten minutes just standing there, lost and looking at the map.

“Found another one, Mac.”

Elania’s heart leapt instantly as the voice cutting through the silence much too close behind her. Before she could turn around, an arm wrapped around her left side to grab her breast.

The sudden unwanted touch almost paralyzed her in fear; it would have done so before.

Elania the reaction after the brief hesitation was vicious as she reached up with her free hand to grab her assailant's hand and crush down on it with all her strength. Despite it being larger than hers, she felt the resistance he offered falter instantly as bone and sinew shifted under her fingers. The weakness allowed her to twist around in his grip to face him. The man had obviously not been expecting much resistance, if any, and while he was still reacting to the pain in his hand, she shoved him as hard as she could.

He didn’t quite go flying through the air. Her leverage had not been good enough for that, and the tight confines meant she hadn’t been able to produce enough momentum. He still staggered backward and tumbled onto his backside.

“Fucking bitch! I’ll kill you!”

Elania’s heart fell as she took in the scene; her assailant wasn’t alone. There were two others, standing just behind where her attacker had fallen. One was another man, and the other was a young girl that looked like she was maybe ten or eleven and had her head down looking at the ground.

[Bruiser – Human – Lvl 58]

[Rogue – Human – Lvl 78]

[Classless – Human – Level 15]

The one who had grabbed her was a Bruiser, while the one holding the girl was a Rogue. Both seemed relatively low level compared to everyone Elania had met so far.

As the man got off the ground and back onto his feet, his earlier words clarified their purpose as Elania phrased them in her head.

‘They’re grabbing girls off the street. Human-fucking-traffickers.’

A knife suddenly appeared but failed to produce any instinctive fear in her. She’d fought a Razorclaw with teeth bigger than the short length of metal, and she felt herself settling and preparing to counter whatever rush came at her.

The Rogue had apparently been doing his own examination because his hand settled on his partner’s shoulder and stopped him.

“Wait, Ned, she’s not a girl, that’s a Demon.”

Elania could feel the men’s attitude and posture change immediately from eager attackers to wanting to escape. Suddenly, she wanted to pounce on them, and teach them a lesson for attacking her. A system prompt suddenly appeared.

[Darkwalker Transformation, Y/N?]

‘At least if fucking asked this time.’

Turning into an oversized black panther monster seemed like it was a terrible idea in the middle of the city, though. It was good to know it was there if she needed it, but the last time, she’d had trouble turning back, and plus, she would end up naked and unable to carry her stuff.

“Don’t you two have identify?” Somehow Elania managed to bite back an expletive, but the tone in her voice seemed to convey enough sentiment to whip the Rogue at least.

“We’re sorry, didn’t mean to grab you.”

“Wait, she’s lower level than us, we could—”

“Don’t be a fucking bigger moron.”

Ned turned toward her and held up a hand toward her. “We don’t want any trouble, just a misunderstanding. Mac, let’s go.”

The bigger Bruiser, despite his bravado, seemed content to retreat with his friend, but Elania’s eyes settled on the young girl. The Rogue’s hand had never left the girl’s shoulder, and as the two men turned away the girl was pulled with them.

The memory of Marcus urging her to ignore others who were in trouble when they first arrived in the city came to Elania suddenly, a frown taking shape on her lips as she made a decision.

“Wait.”

The two men flinched in response to her command, halting midway in their turn. Elania let the time stretch for a second as they stared at her blankly.

“Leave the girl.”

Chapter 47 - Orphans

The two men almost flinched when Elania ordered them to leave the girl. The girl responded as well, looking up from the ground for the first time to stare at Elania with widened eyes. A reddened splotch marred the side of the young girl’s face, and Elania felt her anger at the Rogue and Bruiser redouble.

The Bruiser recovered from his shock first, anger marring his face, “She’s only level 48 we can…”

“My master thought the same thing, but that didn’t make it any harder to pull his spine out of his back…” It was a lie. A bluff. Elania was grateful she’d taken that ‘All the World’s a Stage’ class as a Freshman. It hadn’t been required of a General Studies – Maybe a History Major, but she had been drawn to it from how fun the playacting activities were to do with her classmates.

She added a smile to the act, and suddenly wished she had terrifying teeth like Tessa did to add to the scene she had set.

The two men were frozen. Seconds ticked by Elania and felt like the bluff was eroding as the silence lengthened, that they might choose to fight instead. She did not want that, as it would almost certainly become a terrible mess in alley that she'd have a hard time explaining, although she felt quite confident at being able to handle the two thugs. She should have thought of that before she had acted.

‘Stupid, reckless, Elania.’

She changed her mask from casually polite to annoyed anger.

“I’m peckish, you two can stay if you wish. I’ll be more hungry later.”

Doubt gnawed at Elania’s core; what if she had misjudged the situation? What if the men knew the girl, or if they cared for her, and Elania had misjudged everything. Their actions didn’t seem to suggest that, but…

Elania focused some of her ‘Power’ into her hand, a slight yellow glow surrounding it. That seemed to spur the Rogue, who seemed to be the ad-hoc leader of the duo.

“Magic-type.” He said before suddenly shoving the girl forward toward Elania. The girl immediately lost her footing and went sliding on the rough stone, and Elania bit back a curse. The Rogue grabbed his partner’s arm and dragged him away, though, and the two quickly moved into a sprint down toward the darker street that she had been considering earlier.

The girl burst into sobs, whether from being hurt or fear – or even both, Elania wasn’t sure. Moving forward, she kept an eye on the retreating thugs to make sure they kept moving away while kneeling to help the girl.

“Hey.”

As soon as she spoke, the crying intensified, and Elania bit her lip. Maybe the whole insinuation that Elania would eat her had been overblown, but at least it had sent the thugs packing. The girl had obviously been paying more attention during the exchange than Elania thought, as that threat translated into terror as the girl finally looked up to stare at her.

‘Basics, Elania, Basics, let’s not terrify her more.’

“Hi. What’s your name?”

As Elania looked the girl over, she realized the mop of hair that she had thought was a light brown was blonde, molted over with dirt and grime. Her cheek was red where she’d probably been hit by the thugs earlier, and now she had some scrapes on her hands where she had fallen. The added layer of dust from the road barely seemed worth mentioning because the girl was already coated in a thick coat of grime.

It took another moment for the girl to bring her sobs under control, but Elania remained patient. A passer-by gave them an odd look as they walked past, probably because they were both sitting on the side of the street, but he hurried away without comment as soon as he saw Elania look at him.

“T… Tina…”

“Hello, Tina. My name is Elania.”

“A…are you going to eat me?”

“No. I just wanted to scare those men away. Did you know them, were they taking care of you?”

Tina’s head immediately started doing a tilt to the left that had Elania thinking the girl was having a seizure, then the situation where Tanyan had her tilt her head while a Darkwalker caused the gesture to click for her.

‘Ok, so nodding isn’t universal. Everyone’s probably been thinking I’m a weird head-up-and-downer everytime I’ve done it. Oook. Left-tilt-no, Right-tilt-yes. Don't confuse your directions or get them backward because the person facing you is looking the other way. Fuck.’

The answer confirmed one thing to Elania though, those thugs were definitely the bastard-creeps she’d taken them for, and she didn’t need to feel bad about kidnapping someone.

“Ok. Do you know where your parents are?”

“They’re dead.”

‘Way-to-go-Elania.’

“I’m sorry. Who is taking care of you? Do you know where you live?”

Tina looked away, and the sudden refusal to answer hinted to Elania that the girl didn’t have anyone and was probably living on the street or something. That certainly would explain the coat of grime on her. Elania frowned, considering what to do. Maybe there were some orphanages took in children? Did that kind of thing even exist in this fucked-up-world?

Tina’s stomach suddenly rumbled loudly, prompting Elania to ask, “Are you hungry?”

The rapid tilting of Tina’s head to the right had Elania bite her lip. Elania wanted to know exactly how head tilting had become a thing because just thinking about copying the gesture for very long made her neck hurt.

“I’m hungry too –“

Elania paused midsentence as she saw the fear crisscross Tina’s face again, before quickly resuming with a question.

“ – do you have any money?”

“N…No.”

“I don’t either. It costs money for food. Do you know your way around here? I haven’t been to Neftasu before and am a little lost.”

The girl blinked at her for a few seconds, but then Elania was greeted with the Eladu version of a nod.

“I… I know a little.”

“I’m looking for the Artificers, do you know where their street is?”

“The… the ones who sell to the nobles, or the ones who make things?”

God, even the little orphan girl, knew that much, and Elania was reminded of her earlier escapade and screw up going to the wrong shops. It also probably meant the girl knew a lot more about the city's locations and people than Elania did. An idea sprouted and took shape.

“Tina, if you help me find the Artificer I need, I’ll buy us some food.”

The hopeful look on Tina’s face made Elania smile.

“There is another thing. It will help me with trading with the artificer.”

Elania paused, suspecting the next ask would be a little troublesome, so she thought of a way to word it correctly.

“Do you know how red-eyed demons are more scary than blue-eyed demons?”

Tina hesitated as if her answer might offend Elania but ultimately tilted her head affirmatively.

“I need you to make a little contract with me. That way I won’t be so scary to people anymore.”

Before Elania even finished, Tina had a terrified look again.

“N... no! I don’t want to. Brucie says that is how demons eat people!”

Elania wasn’t sure who ‘Brucie’ was, but she didn’t have much to dispel that claim. Elania knew demons had a reputation for screwing people over with contracts… but the only way she could really disprove that was by offering one that the girl could hopefully understand was safe.

Elania quickly came up with as tame a contract as she could think up. There wasn’t really any need for penalties, so those went first. That made it relatively safe to leave the requirements open-ended. Either party could cancel at any time. Since Elania just needed the contract for the eye-color change, that seemed perfectly acceptable. She checked to make sure the Essence Upkeep was reasonable, not that she had much to go by that other than what Tanyan had accepted earlier. Still, it was a little less and seemed like a low amount.

“Please, Tina. Take a look yourself and decide if it is safe or not. I promise I’m not trying to trick you.”

[Spoiler]

[Contractor: Elania Reyes]

[Contractee: Tina]

[Duration: One Day]

[Essence Upkeep: Contractee 0.03/hr]

[Contractor Requirements]

• Contractor will buy Contractee some food after she has some money.

[Contractee Requirements]

• Contractee will help Contractor find the places she needs to go.

[Contractor Penalty Clause]

• There is no penalty for the Contractor upon failure or cancelation of this contract.

[Contractee Penalty Clause]

• There is no penalty for the Contractee upon failure or cancelation of this contract.

[/Spoiler]

Elania sent the contract, and to the girl’s credit, she stared at some air that Elania assumed was whatever form Tina’s system showed her. Elania stayed patiently quiet, although she was noticing more and more people walking by. None of them had said anything or paid them much heed, but the two of them were kneeling and sitting on the side of the road and that would probably draw attention to them sooner or later.

Attention was something Elania did not want, even if it kept happening.

Ding!

[You have gained a level in Contracting!]

The message and sound tore Elania’s attention back to Tina, who had accepted the contract.

“Ok… I’ll show you.”

Chapter 48 – The Real Artificers

Elania was relieved when Tina led her down the lighted street and not the darker one the Rogue and Bruiser had fled down. She had a slight worry the two would return and attempt to extract revenge of some sort, so she had opened the map and added the two names they had helpfully divulged while talking to the screen.

That was another revelation, she was able to have more than one specific person displayed on the map at once, and while she didn’t show up on it herself, Tina did. That allowed her to gauge the distance the two thugs had fled, and it was at least a little reassuring to see that they had moved all the way to the opposite side of the Merc’ District.

Elania tried to add ‘Brucie’ to the map, but quickly found out that there were a lot of Brucies apparently, and that gave her another revelation to how the map worked. If she knew someone’s name and had met them, the map would highlight that specific person on it. If she just had a random name, it was highlighting every single person that shared it.

She didn’t have time to experiment more, or go through and add everyone she wanted to the map as Tina picked up her pace.

The girl had rebounded quickly, and although she didn’t seem happy or cheerful, she picked their turns down the street with a seeming assuredness of someone who was used to traveling them and knew where they were going. At least it seemed that way to Elania.

[Clock: 5:59]

It was getting closer to the ‘opening’ time for things, although considering everything else, Elania wondered how much leeway and flexibility an opening time would be. The city was hardly a shopping mall with a synchronized time schedule. When they arrived, maybe they would be able to pick a few shops that seemed open already.

Elania flipped her backpack around to rest on her front, and started to rummage inside the main pocket. The ‘Monster Core’ was still safely nestled inside the bundle she had wrapped around it, which was comforting. She remembered he interplay of Marcus’ offer of two small golds and mentally made that the least she’d accept for it if she got desperate. Tanyan had said it was worth at least four if it ‘was a common’ one. Suddenly she wanted to know what made a core ‘common’ or better. If they had grades, how was she supposed to tell if it was better or worse?

Were better grades worth a lot more or just a little? Elania followed around the corner with the sinking feeling that no matter what she did she was going to get ripped off in the trade.

At least a few gold would be enough to live on for a while, judging by the drink prices and what she had learned about the cost of a inn room in the city, which was consierably cheaper than out at the waystation.

Elania’s thoughts stopped when Tina halted for the first time, looking down a small side street before turning to look back at Elania.

“We are almost there, but…”

Elania smiled encouragingly, “But?”

“There are usually guards all over the Artificer Row… they usually don’t let random people in… there is a side street here and we can get past that, but…”

Elania considered for a moment, but quickly discarded the idea of trying to sneak in. They were here for legitimate reasons at least.

“That’s alright, just take us to the main entrance, and I’ll talk to the guard.”

Tina seemed a bit doubtful but tilted her head affirmatively and then they were once again headed down the main street. A healthy stream of people had begun to appear, and a few times Elania and Tina had to switch from walking side-by-side to Tina leading single file.

Elania couldn’t shake the nervous feeling she got every time someone passed. The thought of some random person snatching the girl from right in-front of her was impossible to shake. It was a bit early to be ‘protective’ of her, but she was a Lifeline that Elania hadn’t realized she needed—someone who knew their way around, and the addition of the Contract and blue-eye thing didn’t hurt either.

At the very least, it would help get her accepted with a lot less question, she suspected.