036 – Manifold

Day 2

I did a swoop over the gnoll fortress before I caught back up with my party. On my return trip, Gabriel explained what I had seen.

A demon of general rank or similar had claimed Mammon tower and linked his essence to the profane space. Embodying and strengthening its profanity meant growing his own power.

This one had chosen a place of greed so he’d grow by fostering greed. And the symbolism, combined with the draconic association with kobolds, indicated that he had embodied greed physically, too. We had a fucking dragon in New York.

I had examined the kobolds and demons.

[Mammon-Touched Kobold – Level 7

??? Demon – Level 20]

I knew that Fate couldn’t have a hand in this. What the demons did wasn’t controlled by some outside force. They were real people with real ambitions and goals.

But it was far too good an opportunity to get Jamie his own Certified Threat trait. And Stephen had just the right tool to give us the edge we’d need to pull this off.

The others were patrolling the streets toward the fortress. The goal was for them to gather some combat experience before the real assault. My goal had been to scout opportunities to make that happen.

Had I succeeded? Yes.

Were the targets far tougher than what I’d been looking for? Also, yes.

When I found them, I tried to circle within the 20-foot radius of the Oath buff, to get a feel for its range. But it was too small an area for me to stay in, at least in flight, so I unceremoniously tumbled onto the road behind them.

[“Kreee!”] I wrote in chat.

Stephen was armed with the katana that I had kept in my inventory and Ash with a quarterstaff. I really hoped by the end of this day they’d get something better suited.

Their faces wore various stages of amusement.

“Welcome back, Eve,” Ash said.

“What’s your Agility at right now?” Jamie asked.

[“18. Now wipe that smirk off your face. If your buff had a longer range I wouldn’t need to try and stay this close.”]

“Do you need that buff right now?”

[“No, what I need is to get used to the range so I don’t suddenly weaken myself in combat when I leave it.”]

“You didn’t come back solely to nag at me. What did you find?”

[“A literal golden opportunity.”]

#

Fortunately, the demons had no idea what to expect of Earth’s birds, so they weren’t too bothered by one who constantly kept scouting their position to guide her allies on a path to intercept their return to Mammon tower.

Since the demons had very little interest in helping the kobolds with the heavy cart, their trip was slow and we had plenty of time to find the right spot.

I really couldn’t blame him for snaring me with optimization when I was the one who came up with this idea.

Jamie and I were waiting in a garage, me in Nightmare Unicorn shape, Jamie on my back, lance in hand, enjoying the comfort of my spectral tackle. I should have seen this coming when his fancy shield was in the shape of a cavalry shield.

Ash and Stephen were hiding in the entrance of a home further up the street. Two stories up, on a balcony, Liz was hiding, levitating one of Stephen’s “potions” over the road. This one was a Volatile Potion. Not suitable for drinking, its description read a lot like a fantasy concussive grenade.

She waited until the convoy was right next to their house.

[“Run!”] came her signal in chat. I charged out of the garage and activated Focused Fury.

A second later, before the demons or kobolds could even react to me, the potion dropped in their midst. Even a hundred feet down the road, my ears rang from the explosion. I had almost missed the experience after a whole day without explosions tearing at my eardrums.

The first demon never knew what hit it. I thundered down the road. A luckless and stunned kobold fell to my hooves, and Jamie channeled one of his Smites through the lance.

He didn’t just pierce through that demon; he tore through it. His lance sheared through the body like a hot knife through butter.

I skittered to a halt, dismissed the spectral tackle, while Jamie rolled off my back, the lance discarded for the sword.

With a second left on the other demon’s Dazed debuff, I activated Desecration of the Damned and drove my horn into his shoulder, upgrading the buff to [Stunned] and its duration to 10 seconds.

“Go, go, go,” Jamie shouted as he and I carved a path through the kobolds.

On his call Ash and Stephen charged out of the building straight for the level 20 demon. They were level 6 and 7.

But even with a mundane katana and a glorified piece of wood, ten seconds were a very long time when those weapons were applied to a defenseless foe. Especially with a telekineticist peppering it with knives.

We guarded the two against the kobolds. Any damage they managed to get in was healed by the others’ kills.

In less than a minute they were all dead. They had both gained two levels, putting Ash at 8 and Stephen at 9. Liz joined us. She’d gained only one, also putting her at 9.

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“Can’t believe that worked,” she said.

I stood there, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Was this how we won this? Guerilla warfare?

[“We need to hurry. Let’s loot and run. That explosion was loud, who knows what kind of attention that attracts.”]

I put my right front hoof on the demon who died to Jamie’s smite and selected the loot option. I’d gotten some kind of cane. There’d be time to examine later.

[“Jamie, bring the other demon’s corpse. Still gotta eat that heart.”]

I continued looting some of the kobolds and put one of the more intact ones in my own inventory. Every shape mattered. The other three, who hadn’t reached level 10 yet, went for the cart, though there didn’t seem to be much of value there. At least not by post-apocalypse standards.

“You were right. I did get a task completion for that. More than one even,” Jamie said.

“Same here, the moment Liz dropped the potion I got my first,” Stephen said. He hadn’t said much yet. He wasn’t used to that kind of violence yet.

“Yup, also got one when that thing went off, and one when the demon fell,” Liz said.

“I only got one when I killed the demon,” Ash said, a bit disappointed. “I think I got the last hit in.”

[“We’ll find an opportunity to get you more Tasks, too.”] I wrote. Eventually the system had to reward me with the ability to speak in any shape, right?

I, too, had gotten a Task Reward. I had already peeked at it. Participate as the Mount in a combined Charge Attack. Hmpf.

#

Our return trip was unexpectedly interrupted when Liz spotted gargoyles. They seemed to scout the area around our assault and we decided to take cover rather than expose ourselves, or worse, lead them back to the fire station.

We’d gotten lucky to get the drop on them like that. But now they knew what humans were capable of and they wouldn’t be caught like that again.