“One last gear check!” Ashtoreth said as she rose the morning of their departure.
Dazel moved into the warm spot that she’d left on the bed, curling up to fall back to sleep. “You don’t need another gear check.”
“I can’t hurt,” said Ashtoreth. “And I, for one, like to lord over my magic items, thank you very much.”
She consulted the system to look at her magic items. There was no limit on the amount of magical items a person could benefit from, but there was a limit on the overall power of those items that scaled with level. Ashtoreth had long since reached the limit, and just like the humans, her gear had been optimized out a selection of hundreds of items.
Ashtoreth looked at her list:
[Ashtoreth’s Glamorous Diadem]
[Ashtoreth’s Heart-Shaped Locket]
[Ashtoreth’s Boots of Cosmic Bounding]
[Ashtoreth’s Armbands of Infernal Slaying]
[Ashtoreth’s Heartfelt Wayfinder]
[Ashtoreth’s Apocalypse Gauntlet]
[Ashtoreth’s Mercurial Steelskin]
[Ashtoreth’s Mindguard Earrings]
[Ring of Cosmic Communication]
Named items were awarded from bosses that had been killed solo, and counted a little less, relative to their power, to the overall item budget. Naturally, the only items that any of them were using that didn’t bear their names were the rings that Dazel had given them.
[Ashtoreth’s Glamorous Diadem] was much the same, though the strength of the glamours had increased. Against the initial low-level foes of the invasion, it would easily deceive even the ones with truesight.
Most importantly, it still had her dragonfire-granting gemstone embedded front and center, allowing her hellfire to burn away spells. She’d need it, along with her [Hellfire Nova] to destroy the demiplanar bastions for good.
[Ashtoreth’s Heart-Shaped Locket] now held 7 hearts, not 3, but was otherwise mostly the same. It was also well-stocked with hearts from behemoth bosses found in the primeval realms. Such bosses were built with stupendously high stats compared to other bosses of equal levels, almost all of it [Strength], [Vitality], and [Defense]. She 5 such hearts, along with 2 more spellcasting-focused hearts that she’d torn from eldritch abominations.
She was going in with a buff from a heart that she’d torn from a hydra along with a buff that she’d gotten from a diabolic spellcaster. The stat bonuses, compared to her baseline, were enormous:
{Your [Devoured Flesh] buff: +780 DEX | +1521 STR | +1588 VIT | +812 MAG | +931 PSY | +1611 DEF}
{Your [Connoisseur] buff: + 325 Death Resistance | + 325 Fire Resistance | + 325 Shadow Resistance | + 325 Profane Resistance | + 325 Frost Resistance | + 163 Lightning Resistance | + 880 Physical Resistance | + 880 Poison Resistance}
The rest of her magic items were all not only powerful, but hand-selected to meet her needs. Some of them were essential pieces of the plan:
[Ashtoreth’s Boots of Cosmic Strides]
100% charged.
These enchanted boots allow you to spend their charge to use the [Runic Warp] ability.
The boots automatically charge by draining your [Bloodfire] while you wear them.
The boots can also be charged quickly by anyone with the [Warp] aspect who channels [Mana] into them.
The boots were a critical part of their assault plan. [Runic Warp] was a spell that allowed one to spend a high amount of time and resources to teleport long distances, even across planes. It was especially effective with permanent, enchanted rune circles at both the departure point and destination.
Ashtoreth would be leaping between Earth and Hell’s fragmentary archipelago of demiplanar bastions as fast as she possibly could. She’d probably get to see a lot of Earth cities, given that the easiest portals to hijack and take back to the bastions would be the biggest ones, and the biggest ones would be targeting Earth’s population centers.
Because Kylie would be establishing their teleportation network with runic circles, all of them had [Runic Warp] boots. Few things could change the entire character of a war like one side gaining the ability to teleport.
The boots were one half of the two essential items she had for the assault.
The second was the most potent magical item she’d gotten, a boss item that she’d upgraded twice. It was a single gauntlet of polished black metal, its surface etched with faintly glowing purple runes. A purple gemstone was set into the back of the hand, and the fingertips were sharpened to points. Naturally, it would shift along with her hands when she formed her claws.
[Ashtoreth’s Apocalypse Gauntlet]
Your [Hellfire Nova] no longer has an upper limit on the amount of [Bloodfire] it can store.
You may store a conjured novaheart in the gauntlet. The novaheart moves with you and can be charged with [Bloodfire] as normal. Failing to frequently feed a stored novaheart with [Bloodfire] will cause it to deteriorate.
Once you deploy a novaheart, you must wait thirty seconds before you can detonate it.
She had the ability to feed the hearts of armies into her novaheart. Her maximum [Bloodfire] was already approaching 200,000. With millions of [Bloodfire] in her [Hellfire Nova], she’d have the power to utterly destroy the city-sized interplanar citadels that Hell used to invade other worlds, obliterating their enchantments with the power of her draconic spellfire and incinerating their inhabitants in a single moment.
She made a fist with her gauntlet. She was eager to use it.
It was going to be like Independence Day, but purple.
Apart from those, there were her statted items. The first were her armbands:
[Ashtoreth’s Armbands of Infernal Slaying]
The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
+ 900 [Defense] penetration against infernals.
You gain the ability to sense nearby infernals.
It was an extraordinary flat bonus. A normal named item from a boss granted 2 times the boss’s level in stats, often with an accompanying minor perk. The fact that the armbands were narrowed to only affecting attacks against infernals meant they were even stronger. With her various abilities and her armbands, Ashtoreth would be completely negating the defense of most of the initial invaders.
The sense ability was a decent perk. She still had her [Ashtoreth’s Heartfelt Wayfinder] to help find nearby bosses, as well.
Her clothes hadn’t much changed, only gotten better:
[Ashtoreth’s Mercurial Steelskin]
+ 300 [Defense]
Any glamour you use to change the appearance of your clothing gains a very high bonus to its effect strength and does not deplete or count against the charge of your [Ashtoreth’s Glamourous Diadem].
This clothing grants a very high resistance bonus against all effects which would hinder your movement or render you immobile.
She’d also gotten some very pretty purple teardrop earrings to shore up the fact that her low [Psyche] made her particularly vulnerable to the most popular mode of delivery for controlling and disabling abilities:
[Ashtoreth’s Mindguard Earrings]
+ 300 [Defense]
+ 900 Psychic Resistance
Her elvish leather satchel was now [Ashtoreth’s Spatial Satchel], which not only had an extradimensional space as its interior, but had a unique effect for Wanderlust: whenever she could use [Consume Heart] with the scythe, she could warp the hearts into her satchel rather than immediately consuming them.
And then at last there was Dazel’s [Ring of Cosmic Communication]. It was a minor item that would let them speak with each other even as they split up across the world to deal with the invasion.
She was also afraid it was a trap.
She wanted to trust Dazel, of course. But she didn’t. There was no reason that his contract couldn’t just be a cover for what he was really after.
The item said it did exactly what he’d claimed it did when he gave it to her, and she’d never heard of an item hiding a function from the system before… but still. Dazel could do extraordinary things, as evidenced by what he’d accomplished with the antithesis shard.
Somehow, she’d have to find a way to examine it further.
She’d given [Ashtoreth’s Hidden Housekey] to Frost, for now, since he was the one who would be guarding their base of operations in any case.
Unlike the others, her extradimensional space held only a few extra magic items. It would be needed to store hearts, after all, and she was less likely to encounter humans.
Having looked over her items, she checked her skills. The last ten that she’d gotten were clearly exclusive to the second tier. All of them were fairly strong:
210: [Aura Magnitude]
220: [Lasting Theft of Power]
230: [Claws: Luftschloss Mimikry]
240: [Targeted Theft of Power]
250: [Archfiend: Bolstered Resistances]
260: [Bloodfire Boon Aura]
270: [Wanderlust: Might is Magic II]
280: [Theft of Boons]
290: [Wanderlust and Rammstein: Auto-Loading]
300: [Hellfire Nova II]
[Aura Magnitude] quintupled the radius of her aura, from 6 meters per aura advancement to 30 meters per aura advancement. She’d upgraded the aura with [Bloodfire Boon Aura], which granted 20% of her class [Bloodfire Boon] ability to nearby creatures.
Her [Bloodfire Boon] was currently at 4727 [Defense], so the bonus was fairly strong, especially if she was buffing low-level humans. Given that her aura also granted half of her [Devoured Flesh] buff, the 90 meter range on her aura was a welcome addition.
[Lasting Theft of Power] and [Targeted Theft of Power] were upgrades to her [Energy Drain] ability. Now, she could not only gain stats when she drained a target, but she could chose to focus them in one area, such as [Defense]. They’d also last for a little over 10 minutes before fading.
[Theft of Boons] was similar to [Theft of Power]. With a strong enough application of [Energy Drain], such as from her cannon or sword, she could steal a target’s buffs for herself. They would only last 10 minutes if their original duration was supposed to be longer, but it was yet another significant power boost to stack atop all her others. After all, who didn’t have any boons?
[Claws: Luftschloss Mimikry] just granted her claws all applicable bonuses that her sword got when the weapon was conjured. They would gain hellfire and energy drain on a hit, and most important she could move them with her mind in a way that would count her [Magic] and [Psyche] as [Strength] for the purposes of physical force. She could also deliver a [Mighty Blow] with them.
In a related vein, [Might is Magic] would let her count all of her [Strength] as [Magic] while wielding her scythe. With the acquisition of the upgrade, she’d completed building one of the main draws of [Armament]—her balanced stats could be tilted one way or the other so that she functioned as a pure version of a brawler or spellcaster, even if she was short on upgrades in either role. Switching mid-combat only took her a split-second now, anyway.
[Wanderlust and Rammstein: Auto-Loading] just allowed her to convert the surplus [Bloodfire] stored in Wanderlust into ammunition, even when neither weapon was conjured. Given that Rammstein now had 8 shots, it would surely prove useful.
And finally, her first and only tier 3 upgrade: [Hellfire Nova II]. It was simple enough to understand: it made her gigantic explosion even stronger.
She was, to say the least, very excited.
“Come on, Dazel,” she said, scooping him off of the bed.
“Mm—ah, come on!”
“We’ve got less than an hour left,” she said, heading out into the tiny living room.
Everyone was already awake and waiting on the couch. None of them were talking much, and all of them gave her half-hearted greetings when she said good morning.
“What’s the matter, you guys?” she asked. “Aren’t you excited?”
“We’re nervous,” said Frost.
“Why be nervous? We’re level 300!”
“I’m about to find out if my family’s dead,” said Hunter.
“They’ll be fine!” she assured him. “Remember what I told you about that nice tutorial?”
“That children die,” he said tonelessly.
“Sometimes,” she said. “But most of the time, they don’t! The elves and dwarves do everything they can to help out, and your mom will get the option of warping into the same zone as your sister.”
Hunter’s swords were leaning up against the couch beside him, and he ran a thumb across the hilt of one. “I need more assurance than just that.”
“I just want the timer to be finished,” said Kylie. “I don’t like the waiting.”
“Don’t worry,” said Ashtoreth, checking and seeing that they had just under 50 minutes. “It won’t be long now.”
Frost made space for her on the couch, and she sidled in beside him.
“Just a little bit of waiting.”
“And then we’re going home,” Frost said, his face somewhat stunned.
“Yeah,” said Hunter. “Hard to believe it, after all this time.”
“Back,” Kylie said, sounding hesitant. “Back to Earth.”
Dazel curled up on her lap to go to sleep.
“So…” Ashtoreth began. “You guys want to play a game or something while we wait?”
