“Well, Lilith, I think we found our next test subject.” Zoe hadn’t been climbing for long. She could still see the top of the chasm where she’d tied the rope, but it wouldn’t be much longer before her view was blocked off by jutting stones and hanging vines. The air was alive with the sounds of running water and chirping insects, with both life and death abundant. Zoe wasn’t sure which category the mushroom man below her fell into.

  Identify!

  [FUNGAL GHOUL]

  Rank F | Level 12

  It could have been a Human, once, but then it went and sprouted mushrooms. He may be a fun-guy, but those mushrooms aren’t the kind you want to eat.

  -Alignment-

  > Infernal (Passion)

  > Blight

  -Strengths-

  > Vitality

  > Infectious Wounds

  -Weaknesses-

  > Fire

  > Hallow

  …

  Identify has reached level 5!

  The information Zoe got from the identification was largely overshadowed by her skill leveling up. It’s about time. That particular skill had refused to increase in level for quite some time, no matter how hard Zoe went around using it on everything. According to Lilith, identify was infamous for being slow to level. Zoe theorized she got so many levels in it right away only because she used it on rare and possibly powerful ancient statues and ritual altars.

  Regardless, the information the system provided on the mushroom man was helpful. It was near identical to the description she got for the frozen ghouls back in the aptly named frozen wastes. That being said, she wasn’t a fan of the lame ‘fun guy’ joke. The pun didn’t even make sense in the local language, relying entirely on her translating it back to English.

  Anyway, it’s convenient that it’s vulnerable to fire. Zoe’s other main combat abilities revolved around blood, something which ghouls sorely lacked. But before she went and blasted the unsuspecting monster to ash, Zoe wanted to try something else. She hadn’t forgotten her plan to experiment with the life ray skill, and ghouls counted as undead.

  Zoe had positioned herself on a rocky outcropping directly over the fungal monster. She had been peering down at it from the ledge this whole time, and its behavior hadn’t changed much. It rooted around the mossy ground on its hands and knees, digging for what she thought were worms in the layer of moss and dirt. It should be an easy target.

  Life Ray!

  Just like every other time Zoe tried activating the skill, a steady stream of mana vanished from her soul to form an invisible beam of magic. Unlike the other times, it didn’t dissipate harmlessly against her target.

  The ghoul went rigid upon being struck by her skill. Within seconds, layers of fungal tissue sloughed off its misshapen frame in a way reminiscent of a burning marshmallow. Only, it was far nastier. It wasn’t long before the monster was utterly melted. There was nothing left but a revolting pile of dark sludge. Then the smell hit her.

  “Oh, oh god that’s awful.” Zoe coughed several times as she retreated out of the danger zone and cleared her lungs. It was the sickly sweet smell of a dumpster on a hot day, mixed with a musty scent she didn’t want to place. “Damn that’s foul.”

  “What did you expect?” Lilith asked. “We just made a hundred pounds of mushroom go through weeks of decomposition in a matter of seconds.”

  Zoe eyed the goop pile with suspicion. Wait, so what specifically happened? She had a feeling life ray would do something interesting against undead, but a life-attuned skill making the tissue of an undead monster rot was too many layers of inversion for her to follow.

  “Well,” Lilith hedged, “I’m pretty sure our skill disrupted the magic holding it all together. A giant dose of life magic can’t be good for a monster whose entire core is attuned to death.”

  Zoe frowned. That made enough sense, but why did that make it rot instead of something simpler like just falling apart? Also, if it was undead, what was up with the fungal growths all over it? Mushrooms sprouting out of a corpse wasn’t surprising, but mushrooms were living things according to Zoe’s understanding.

  If the ghoul was an undead monster full of death magic, maybe that had something to do with keeping all the mushroom bits from getting killed by its own nature. After all, death magic made corpses move around, so it wasn’t a stretch to imagine it could do something to keep dying tissues functional. If that were the case, then overriding its death mana with my own life magic would have destroyed the effect, and all of the accumulated ‘debt’ would instantly come due. It must have been in a constant state of killing pieces of itself and delaying the damage.

  Zoe was making a lot of claims here with little way to prove them, but she felt like she was on to something. Either way, it proved life ray was effective against monsters like this. The system seemed to agree.

  Life Ray has reached level 2!

  Life Ray has reached level 3!

  You have leveled up! You are now level 32.

  +15 stat points

  +1% core progression

  Zoe grinned. The skill gains weren’t unexpected, but the additional level was a welcome surprise. The extra fifteen stat points brought her total reserve to an impressive 120. That was exactly on par with how much she had in Durability. Zoe was no expert, but she felt comfortable claiming that having as many stat points to spend as she had in one of her existing attributes was no common feat. She’d checked her whole status recently, but she went ahead and looked over just the stats portion again.

  -Stats and Bindings-

  Power 233

  Perception 142

  Acuity 125

  Durability 120

  Vitality (Blood) 257

  Leaning back against the soft surface of a moss covered boulder, Zoe chewed her lip. She had the explicit goal of advancing to Rank E, and that meant making decisions about what direction to take her ‘build.’ And yet, despite having everything she needed to both rank up and upgrade her second class, she felt like she was at an impasse. While having some points always in reserve wasn’t a bad idea, 120 was a little ridiculous. But how should she continue to distribute them?

  Rather than tackle the difficult question, she avoided it by switching to another aspect of her advancement she needed to decide on—the remainder of her elemental bindings. She already awakened her Vitality stat with the blood element. Unfortunately, none of her other stats came with such a blatantly obvious way forward.

  The first step was to see where her current options stood. Zoe had several more awakening gems and even more elemental mana crystals stashed in her inventory.

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  /Misc Valuables/Magic Crystals/

  /Mana Crystals

  > Cold

  > Fire

  > Ice

  > Light

  > Metal

  > Shadow

  > Stone

  > Water

  > Wind

  > Wood

  > Empty x6

  /Awakening Gems

  > Cold

  > Ice

  > Shadow

  > Empty x4

  Zoe certainly wasn’t lacking for options. And while she’d like to get familiar with using each of them before she committed to anything, there wasn’t a high likelihood of that happening. Aside from picking things that sounded like they fit, her other major resource was something she wasn’t looking forward to using.

  Hey, Lilith. Got any ideas here?

  A menacing wave of gleeful excitement resonated through Zoe’s mindspace. She was beginning to regret asking.

  “Do I have any ideas here? Yeah, I’d say that I do. We’re going to use one of the empty awakening gems to make a hellfire awakening gem, which we’ll bind to Power. Then we’ll bind shadow to both Perception and Acuity. We’re lucky we already have both a shadow awakening gem and a mana crystal we can use on one of the empty gems. Then we’ll bind either blood or stone to Durability, or maybe ice. We can easily make another blood awakening gem with our existing skills.

  Zoe mulled over Lilith’s plan. While the authoritative tone the demon took on was irritating, the plan sounded reasonable enough. Zoe still didn’t trust her mental tag-along, but she did trust that Lilith would want her to choose the best options for her advancement. A part of Zoe worried that the demon still intended to take control over her body at some point—but if that were the case, setting her up with a solid build was in both of their best interests.

  There were a few parts of the plan Zoe wasn’t entirely sold on, but she could go ahead and finish up the others. She would start with the easiest one first—she already had one shadow awakening gem ready to go.

  You are eligible to awaken the element: Shadow. Do you wish to proceed?

  Yes. A new system prompt appeared as soon as Zoe confirmed it.

  4 core stats are eligible for elemental awakening:

  Perception

  Power

  Acuity

  Durability

  Choose a core stat with which to awaken the element: Shadow.

  Zoe mentally selected Perception. Yet another prompt came up checking that she was sure she wanted to proceed. Zoe didn’t hesitate.

  Your Perception has awakened to Shadow.

  Like the first time Zoe awakened an element, the sensation was barely perceptible, being little more than a faint ripple through her core. Despite the claimed significance of the process, it had taken Zoe a bit of time to notice a difference in her existing blood-related skills after binding the element to her Vitality. That being said, the boosts became apparent during her unexpected prison escape.

  If Zoe had to put forth a guess, she would expect awakening shadow for Perception would have its most obvious impact on her mirage skill. Being intended to hide her from sight with murky, distorted shadows, the skill had a natural association.

  A quick test confirmed the theory. It was still the same skill, but the activation was smoother, the cost of sustaining it far lower, and the shimmering distortion obscuring her body felt more tangible. I would be concerned about that messing with it as an effective camouflage… but something tells me it won’t have the same effect on me as it has on other people.

  There were more potential skills to test, but Zoe set those aside to work on her next task—creating a hellfire awakening gem.

  It was tempting to use the fire mana crystal that was already in her inventory. It would be easy, but Zoe didn’t wait this long to advance just to save five minutes taking the quicker route. Even if Lilith hadn’t given her a longwinded lecture a few weeks back, it wouldn’t have taken Zoe long to understand that hellfire was not the same as ordinary fire.

  Having seen her flames burn the very spirits animating the skeletal miners an hour or so back was a potent reminder. Hellfire was powerful, rare, and an element that she both already used and already had an affinity for as a demon.

  Under Lilith’s careful instruction, Zoe withdrew both an empty awakening gem and empty mana crystal from her inventory. While it wasn’t uncommon to imbue an awakening gem with an element directly, Zoe wanted to practice the process first. Mana crystals were cheaper, more plentiful, and less useful to her right now.

  Zoe turned the golfball-sized, asymmetrically faceted crystal over in her hands. It was dark and clear, thought the cyan glow of the underground moss gave it an eerie sparkle.

  According to her handy, living guide to being a demon, all she had to do was draw upon one of her hellfire skills but stop right before activating it. From there she’d attempt to let the unreleased energy trickle into the crystal. Too much or too fast, and it could break, but too little and the skill would collapse before it could fill the mana crystal properly.

  Well there’s no better way to learn than by doing. Crystal in hand, Zoe activated hellfire blast.

  Or, she almost activated it. Restraining the skill from taking form was a frustrating challenge. Canceling it was one thing, but keeping the power thrumming under her touch was like trying to balance a pencil on the tip of her finger. It wanted to slide one way or the other, but the process would only work if she could keep it sustained right in the middle.

  Zoe stopped keeping count after the fifth time the skill sputtered out. On the upside, not once had she screwed up in the other direction. That was a desired result of her caution. She figured it was better to waste a bit of time playing it safe than to send a blast of unconstrained hellfire straight into her lap.

  When a dull cherry glow began to take form in the heart of the dark, glassy gem, Zoe’s intense focus distracted her from noticing. By the time the dull glow blossomed into a sparkling ember, Zoe had gotten the balance stable enough that she didn’t have to worry about screwing it up. She must have been grinning like a maniac, and the still-dim crimson glow lighting her features from below must have made quite the spooky sight.

  The intensity of the trapped mana continued to grow. Zoe was just seconds away from filling the crystal—she could feel it. It was at this point that an ear-piercing screech announced the arrival of a most unwelcome guest. Zoe’s concentration shattered, and so did the crystal.

  From there, several things happened in quick succession. A swarm of glittering silver bats dive bombed Zoe’s position, the ruptured crystal released a blooming sphere of hellfire a meter and a half wide, and Zoe herself released a string of rude expletives.

  Zoe’s physiological resistance to hellfire stacked with her acquired magic resistance trait to lessen the damage done by sitting in the epicenter of an explosion of magic fire. That being said, hellfire resistant wasn’t the same thing as hellfire proof. Zoe’s skin, hair, and clothing weren’t left unscathed—that’s where the healing would come in. Well, except for the clothes. Zoe didn’t think you could heal yourself out of a fashion disaster.

  Rejuvenate!

  A wave of refreshing energy washed through Zoe’s body, taking away the brunt of the pain that her bloodshaper trait wasn’t already handling. Zoe’s all-in-one blood magic trait, combined with her high Vitality to give her a degree of natural regeneration that was clearly beyond, well, natural.

  A little sloughed off skin and crispy hair wasn’t worth the mana cost of a full-blown mending touch.

  It was with great annoyance that Zoe realized she wasn’t the only one to survive the explosion. Three shrieking cave bats were still wheeling just overhead, though the crimson lingering crimson flames made them easy enough to track. The fire continued to eat at the monsters as Zoe watched, distracting them enough that she didn’t have to worry about getting bitten.

  If I died of rabies just to get bitten by another bat and die of rabies again just a month into my new life… Healing skills in this world could probably handle normal rabies, but it would be just my luck to wind up catching a case of magic super-rabies.

  The flaming bats died rather unceremoniously. Climbing over to where the bodies had landed, Zoe studied their shiny, metallic forms. The hellfire had eaten large holes through their membranous wings and stained much of their bodies with blackened soot. That being said, it did a lot less total damage than it did to the much larger skeletons. They looked as if they were quite literally made of metal.

  Even though they were dead and incinerated, Zoe wasn’t too keen on touching them. It was at this point Zoe realized prior experience might have given her a disproportionate degree of caution around bats—not that she could blame herself.

  So instead, Zoe looked around for a stick. Not finding one, she opted to create her own. None of Zoe’s skills were well-suited to creating solid objects, unlike that noble girl Lily’s ice magic. So Zoe improvised, first creating a tendril of blood with her aptly named blood whip skill and then drawing from her bloodshaper trait to solidify it into a crystalline spike.

  Yep, these guys are definitely made out of metal. If the appearance and durability wasn’t enough evidence, the hardness and density certainly was. Zoe was amazed they could fly around, with how heavy their small bodies were.

  After confirming that nothing else was poised to attack her, Zoe retreated into a mossy alcove tucked further back against the chasm wall. Hanging vines helped to obscure the entrance, providing a greater degree of camouflage.

  Zoe withdrew an empty awakening gem from her inventory. Aside from being larger, the gem wasn’t too different from a mana crystal. In the faint cyan light of the caverns, Zoe could only make out that the faceted edges seemed to also extend inside the material, creating the impression of a bottomless fractal geometry.

  I may have failed and broken the previous mana crystal, but that was only because I got distracted by a literal attack. It would have worked if I was left alone for just a few more seconds.

  Zoe looked down at the gem. She still wasn’t sold on the choices Lilith picked out for Acuity and Durability—but hellfire was a shoo in for Power. Zoe took one last look to double-check her surroundings, and then she once again activated hellfire blast.

  It was time to complete her third binding.

  As I said, I'm not networking for shoutouts.