Sacrifices To Jupiter IX
"This is unthinkable!" She brings her hand up her forehead, ahhing theatrically. "Do you even realize what this means?!"
What a drama queen.
Do I realize, she asks? Of course I do.
I'm full well aware that I'm fucked in every way. I don't know what that everyway is, though.
"You have one of your four primary attributes crippled! Fifty percent! That basically means that if you were to have C-rank luck without the gift, now you'd have D-rank, and if you were to have S-rank—an A-rank! From here on out, you'll always have your luck one rank lower!" Mari shoots me a barrage of useless nagging, shouting, her saliva falling all over my impeccable, beautifully handsome robe.
What a fucking bitch.
I push her away. "Who cares? I presume other Archdemons got the same two gifts too."
Mari stammers, flapping her hands like a newborn bird, one leg waving and the other holding on to the ground.
She barely refrains from falling. Regaining her balance, she shoots me a glance an underpaid prostitute would make.
"That's different! Luck is your primary cultivation path!"
Cultivation this, cultivation that. I keep hearing it.
"What's the deal about cultivation?" I ask, adjusting my supersexy hat.
The three horns I have are a real annoyance. At least they're almost horizontal.
If they were to be vertical, I'd have to cut my horns so that I could wear my dear hat.
"I already explained it, no?!" Mari scratches her head, biting her lip. "Mana, Aura, Wise, Life. Aura and wise work the same for both people and demons."
"Mana, I've explained," she says. "Also, the higher your mana attribute, the bigger reservoir of mana you have. For you, Murk, to be exact."
"Aura is what you coat your body with to strengthen it, to pierce through the rocks with your palm and cut through the trees with your fingers," Mari explains, punching through the air. If there were to be a boxing machine, she'd score a hundred. Out of a thousand.
"Wise is to better connect with the elementals, or well, particles. Not only does it help to regenerate your mana faster, but also better establish a connection with the spirits," Mari states, stepping right and left and left and right to warm herself from the cold and humid air. "Basically, to better connect with the world as a whole. To become one with it."
"Finally!" She thrusts a finger through the light fog. "The fourth attribute is what you cultivate! For us, people, it's life. For demons, it varies, as I've already told a million times!"
"For you!" Mari approaches, fingering my chest, back and forth. "It's luck! In your case, the lack thereof!"
I grab her hand, pressing it so hard that the crack of her bones resounds.
"L-l-l—" she whispers in a broken voice, flinching, shaking and tilting her head. "Let go! Let go! Let—"
I let go.
She lets out a sigh.
Stupid fucking children.
"I asked you a simple question," I tell her in an asking manner.
"What is cultivation? You said that to cultivate, one needs to absorb cores, but what is cultivation exactly, to begin with?" I ask, relaxing my eyes, askingly.
Mari pats her reddened hand, tears welling in her sapphire, softer than the skies eyes. "You almost broke it…"
"SO?!" I ask her again, asking in a way that tells her if she doesn't answer, I'm not going to ask once more. Just how many times do I have to ask?
"Cultivation?! What is?!" I ASK. I ask. I ask…
Patience. Not again. The more I indulge my anger, the more wrathful I become.
It's like alcohol. Better not to start altogether since, after taking a sip, it becomes much harder to refrain. Any addiction, for that matter, works this way.
Mari shoots me a glare, her naturally downturned eyes downing even further, her brows cursing me.
Yeah. Fuck patience. Fuck this kid. Benevolence may know no bounds. But so does the malevolence—
"Refinement of one's soul, or in your case, essence. Cultivation is about transcending mortal limitations by comprehending the Dao. The core of existence," she says, puffing on her hand. "Besides bloodline, strength defines everything in Nova. If one lacks in their cultivation, they are the weak, at the mercy of the strong."
"There are various elementals inside the core one absorbs to cultivate. We devour their experience. We people cultivate life, so for us, it's life elementals present in it. Then, our attributes improve."
She raises four fingers, lowering them as she counts,
"For wizards, mana and wise."
"For warriors it's aura and life."
"For warlocks then wise and life."
"Finally, for wanderers, mana and aura."
"But that's, again, for us, humans. Demons gain experience, or well, cultivate, differently," she says, her eyes lit. "You have essence, not souls. So you can basically do whatever you want. You're not constrained by formulaic approaches and classes. You choose which attribute to improve by yourselves after absorbing the required elementals."
I nod halfheartedly, pinching my robe. Ahh, the material is so comfy.
What did she say again?
"I envy you, you know?" Mari glances at me with puffed lips. "I always wanted to become a warrior, or someone who fights in close combat, but instead, I was forced to become a wizard just because I was born a human."
Warrior? This girl? No, no way.
I watch her dubiously. Is this how parents who want their child to become a doctor or a lawyer, but their dumbass child chooses to become an actor or a model or a young entrepreneur who sells Viagra on social media for the elderly, feel?
"Why did you choose healing as your skill, then?" I ask her, raising a brow. "That doesn't make any sense if you want to fight."
"You serious?" she ohhs, peeking up at me in the dark. As though I'm a baby who'd usually ask why roses are red and violets are blue, but this time I instead inquired about what cancer is and how people get it.
"Because I could only choose a single skill, and healing seemed the most handy. Plus, I had a bargain on this one, couldn't be helped," she says, pressing her lips between her fingers. "At each rank, you get one additional skill slot, or the way the system calls them, a gift slot. That is why you have eight skill slots."
She points at my status.
Chandra |Archdemon |SS||
Murk |E|
Aura |E|
Wise |E|
Luck |F|*
Gifts:
—The Devil's Wrath |E|*
—The Hero's Curse |A|
—Reverse Plot Armor |S|
—...
—...
—...
—...
—...
Title:
—Villain |F|
—...
—...
—...
"Followingly, you get one additional title slot every two ranks," she explains, raising four fingers once more. "F, D, B, S. That is also the reason why those ranks are considered special. D is proportionally stronger than E, more so than, say, C is stronger than D."
"Are titles really that important?" I ask, chewing on the taste of blood in my gums.
"Of course they are! If gifts are what we call active skills, titles are passive skills. They're always in effect and require no nothing to use!" she nags, waving her finger left and right like a teacher would before a bad student. "But that's the part I don't understand…"
"Your two gifts, The Hero's Curse and Reverse Plot Armor, are more fit to be titles than gifts since they are passive. That's the lucky part, I guess…"
"What's lucky about it?" I prompt her to continue, flicking my fingers.
"Titles are hard to remove. Gifts, on the other hand…" she whispers, lifting a hand up to her chin, thinking. "Still, I've never heard of anyone removing a gift of A-rank, much less S-rank. Though I presume not many had a need to. Gifts are usually a good thing, after all."
Finally, some good news. There is some hope for the future, at least.
"I always wondered how demons end up losing with so much preparation done…" she mutters. "No wonder…"
Now that's interesting.
"Millennium war—I remember you saying something along those lines. Who do I have to fight against, and why? Do you know the reason I was brought to this world in the first place? Fuck, is this place Earth to begin with? You mentioned Latin and Japanese, and we're speaking in English, so I would assume it's related in one way or another," I pose my demands, toying with the scarlet strands of my long hair.
"Earth? That what? Like the ground we stand on?" she asks in confusion, looking at me like I invented the word. "Every thousand years, demons and heroes are chosen. They're called outlanders. Since each time, they come from different worlds. Last time it was Terrarium. I don't know why, and I doubt anyone besides the gods or constellations really knows why."
"Constellations?" I ask, annoyed, frowning.
Why do new words keep popping out of nowhere?
"Each god has three constellations serving them. So, four to three, and we get twelve constellations in total, each corresponding to a month," she does the math in my stead.
"Anyway, back to the matter at hand," she says noddingly, raising a finger. "The war is really long and arduous and has many stages, which are really irrelevant to the present. For now, we're in act zero, and that's all you have to worry about."
Act Zero? I remember this from before I was reincarnated. But there were chapters and phases, no acts.
"That is," she continues, her voice blitzing through the shadowy room. "Before act one, before heroes come, you Archdemons have to compete amongst yourselves for the title of The Demon King."