Newly Summoned Demoness - Chapter 9 – Stairs (Patreon)

The choice to evolve into an Ash Demon or not, hung in the air, taunting Elania for over a minute. If this was a monster evolution game, then ‘evolving’ might make her stronger. Maybe even better suited for the hellish landscape that remained after the massive fire that she’d accidentally started.

Despite all the game-like systems that floated in the air, nothing said that any of her choices were a ‘game,’ though.

Ash rained down slowly from the ceiling, and the radiant heat felt like it would bake her skin with its unrelenting oppressiveness. That was one vote for accepting the evolution, but she had no idea just what becoming an Ash Demon or evolution entailed.

Things were bad enough that the [System] called her a Lesser Demon already.

Ultimately, she swiped the message away. She didn’t want to risk becoming a mindless monster.

She was quite happy with just being normal Elania, a hapless college student who had somehow been summoned to a weird-ass world and wanted to go home. Changing her race might help her in the current circumstances, but her experimentation had already produced one catastrophe.

Until she learned more, she didn’t think it was wise to jump into potentially irreversible things.

Smoke continued to thicken as the active fires burned themselves out into smoldering remains. Most of it swirled around the ceiling, pooling in a thick cloud. Elania pulled out her mana shard for a bit of extra light because the smoke was hampering her [Darkvision]. It helped slightly, but it highlighted the immediate need to look for a more hospitable location.

Pressing forward through the chamber, she did her best to avoid any visible hot spots on the ground to spare her feet from burns. It made the trek even more challenging, and the burning in her throat from the scorched air had her worrying about suffocating. If that was true, though, she expected she would have already passed out earlier.

As it was, it was just extremely uncomfortable. Painful.

When she reached the choke point to the next chamber, she paused and made a small rock pile. She wasn’t exactly sure, but all the chambers looked much alike, and she wanted to determine if she really had been going in circles like she had feared earlier.

Several more passages went by, the ash and soot in the air raining down on her like snow. The thick cloud of smoke above her head had lowered dangerously until the air quality at the height of her head was bad enough that it forced her to crouch while walking. Frustration and panic gnawed at her as she continued desperately to look for a way out.

[Your natural resistance to poison-based effects has increased!]

Elania froze in her tracks and frowned. “Why?” she whispered, looking around for some type of poison. The sudden break highlighted how her entire body ached painfully. She wasn’t sure what felt worse: her stinging feet, the rapidly coloring bruises from the battle, or her eyes and lungs that burned and watered from the smoke-filled air.

The idea that the poison could easily be held in the tainted air hit her. She covered her mouth with the black robe. Maybe she had been breathing the poison in?

Carbon monoxide was the obvious choice, but there were a whole host of things that the fire could have released, not even considering the world’s weird fantasy-esque nature.

There seemed to still be oxygen, though, and she’d traveled through several chambers, at least a few kilometers, so why hadn’t she fallen over dead?

Elania picked up her pace and continued forward, looking for some change or something new to help her.

She almost missed it.

A weak but noticeable breeze of cooler air pressed against her side. She didn’t spot anything that could be the source, but cooler air had to be coming from somewhere, right? Instead of going for the exit to the next chamber, she turned straight into the breeze. It led directly to the side-wall of the cavern, and behind a row of rocks, a small, human-sized cubby-hole was hidden.

What riveted her attention, though, was that there were stairs. Ancient-looking, worn stairs that had crumbled in some places—but definitely stairs, carved right into the flank of the cavern. They were the source of the cooler air, which was creating a clean pocket around them as the airflow pushed away the smoke.

It was the first sign of anything artificial in the ‘natural’ cave system she’d been exploring since leaving the cultist’s dungeon lair.

The air was clearly coming from somewhere, and she took a hesitant first step. Her first step didn’t crack or collapse the stone under her weight, and she immediately began to trudge upward. The floor was cool to the soles of her feet, and she enjoyed the refreshing feeling as she closed her eyes to let the air blow over her face.

The constant cool breeze was a welcome change from the charred cavern she left behind. Continuing upwards, she held the mana shard up above her head, which created pretty sparkles and etchings to reveal themselves in the stonework near the ceiling.

That might have been something to create hesitation; dealing with magic was firmly in her ‘let’s not fuck around with things we don’t understand’ category after sparking the glow moss into a conflagration, but…

Really, she didn’t want to trudge around the burnt remains she’d left behind, and the air had to be coming from somewhere more hospitable than the area she was leaving behind.

The second scary thought was that stairs meant people, and while it was hard to imagine that whoever she might meet would be worse than the cultists or holy knight… it wasn’t impossible. She had no idea on what the ratio of batshit crazy and well-adjusted was in ‘Eladu’ or wherever the heck she was. Worse, what if there was an actual monster?

Inside her robe pocket, she squeezed the hilt of the stolen dagger for reassurance. She’d just have to do her best.

The spiraling stairs seemed to go on forever, and in several spots, she found they had crumbled, forcing her to climb over the rubble to continue. It was a new form of endurance workout that was more challenging than the one below. By the time she reached the first landing, her legs felt like jelly.

Glancing back the way she had come, the thought of the staircase being a major building code violation made her giggle. She’d climbed the equivalent of what had to have been thirty or forty floors. If someone slipped and fell, they’d roll a very long way before coming to a stop.

The stone landing wasn’t very large, a second staircase led upward, and there was an opening where, presumably, there might have been a door at one time. Exploring the room led to a second and third, and she decided to stop and rest before trying to climb higher.

The burning of her lungs and eyes had stopped, but everything else was painful. There was a raised block that was well suited as a bench in the chamber farthest away from the stairs and she sat down on it heavily. Other than the block, there wasn’t anything but rubble and broken stones.

Her feet burned in protest of her long march. They had been sore before, but now they were bad. She pulled a foot up to examine it, shining the mana shard with her free hand. They were covered in grime, ashes, and blood.

Pulling out her dagger, she cut a few strips of cloth from the less singed end of one of her spare cultist robes and did her best to wipe them down. It wasn’t very effective without water, but it was something.

The thought of water sent a slight panic through her. She had had nothing to drink or eat since she’d arrived, but it had been at least a day since she escaped. You couldn’t live long without water, but… licking her lips, she didn’t feel parched. As soon as she’d left the burnt area below, the parched feeling in her mouth and throat had gone away.

While she wasn’t an expert, she didn’t feel dehydrated, and her hunger had disappeared. It was strange enough that she wasn’t even sure if she needed to eat or drink anymore. That just left her feeling confused and wearier.

She leaned back against the cool stone wall and let out a sigh. It was hard to fight against the exhaustion that filled her.

Taking a deep breath, she sat back up and eyed the cut robe. She took the dagger and carefully sliced it into one long spiraling strip. Cutting that into three equal length strips gave her three pieces to work with.

She wrapped one around each of her feet, starting at the base of her toes and then working her way up to her ankle to tie it off. Just tight enough to not come loose, but not so tight that they cut off circulation. The third one went around her chest to support her breasts.

All the running around naked had been distinctly uncomfortable, and wrapping something around her feet was something she should have considered and done far earlier.

[Survival Crafting Rank E has been unlocked and slotted.]

Another skill. What was the trick to unlocking them? Where was her hiking or climbing skill? Certainly she deserved it?

A simple thought brought up her status screen.

[Status: Elania Reyes]

[Level 5 Lesser Demon (Summoned Potency 9999+)]

[Karma: 12345]

[Power: 47/100]

[Perks: 1] (Summoned from Another World!)

She immediately noticed that mention of ‘Skills’ had disappeared, and that her ‘Power’ stat had skyrocketed. She wasn’t sure what that meant, but it didn’t seem like she had Health Points.

That left power representing her mana? Because if it was HP, the way she felt indicated she should have been losing them, not gaining.

Stretching caused her to wince, and she didn’t want to think about what was going to happen to her in the next few days. There was no way she’d escape an entire body of sore muscles.

A way to convert power into healing would have been really nice.

What about her skills? As soon as the thought came, a second screen appeared to join the first.

[Class: Escapee]

[Skill Slots: 3]

[Slotted Skills: Improvised Combat (Rank E), Stealth (Rank E), Survival Crafting (Rank E)]

[Affinities: (Demonic), (Mana)]

[Magical: Demonic Aura (Rank E) (Activated), Mana Manipulation (Rank E)]

[Physical: Darkvision (Rank C) (Activated)]

[Mundane: Identify (Rank E), Universal Speech (Rank S), Reading (Rank A), Writing (Rank B)]

Her eyes widened as she took in the change to her ‘class.’ Escapee? She hadn’t seen any notice or anything about it changing, and really, what kind of name for a class was that? What in the heck did her skills have to do with ‘escapee’ anyway? If anything, shouldn’t it have been mage or scholar based on her skills?

Her eyes slid downward to the second bit of annoying information. The number of her skill slots had increased by one, presumably when she’d gained the [Survival Crafting] skill?

She didn’t understand that at all. Did she just get a new slot whenever she gained a skill? Was there a way to swap them out, and if so, what effect did that have on the skill?

Elania bit her lip and studied the screen with a growing frustration. Why couldn’t things be simple?

There had been a message about poison resistance increasing as well, but it wasn’t listed anywhere that she could see. Wasn’t the entire point of a stupid game system to show the user clear indications of their abilities, powers, and attributes?

Where were the simple listings for Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, or Charisma? Was the stupid [System] broken for her?

She let out a yawn and suddenly felt exhausted. She pocketed her dagger and the mana shard before using the last remaining robe as a pillow as she curled up on the stone bench. It wasn’t comfortable at all, but she needed another nap.

A few seconds later, she was snoring in the quiet darkness.

***

Yes, I know I'm supposed to be writing shipcore and sigma chapters... and I keep writing more demoness. I just feel inspired to work on Demoness right now, and every time I deviate from that or try to do something else it makes me feel miserable. So here is another demoness chapter, because I'd rather put something out than nothing.