Dark Fate, Chapter 236

Chapter 236 – Close Call

Your forces have gained XP while under your orders. With Admiral, King, and [Mutual Might], you gain XP. Amount reduced due to actions being taken in another star system. Amount reduced due to not having direct involvement in actions. Amount reduced due to creatures being lower in Tier than you.

You have gained 2,312,000 XP.

You have leveled up!

You are now Level 10.

You have 8208400/6105000 XP to reach Level 11.

You have leveled up!

You are now Level 12.

You have leveled up!

You are now Level 13.

…

You have leveled up!

You are now level 28.

You have 8208400/8256000 XP to reach Level 29.

+380 CHA, +285 INT, +190 WIS, +190 STR, +95 CON

76 Attribute Points to spend.

38 Skill points to spend.

The timing was truly horrible. I enjoyed leveling up as much as the next guy, but the problem of gaining hundreds of stat points at once was only amplified when you were in the middle of a rather energetic carnal exchange. It was only my enhanced reaction time that kept things from fun and playful choking to crushing poor Aura Moonchild’s throat.

Well, not only my enhanced reaction time. It didn’t escape my notice that Lilith had reached up from behind her mother and pressed my elbows out just enough to loosen my grip in the moment before the levels hit. I had wondered why she insisted on joining us tonight. Lilith was Aura’s daughter from another timeline, and this timeline’s version of her had already been born. While incubi and succubi families were not bound by human morality, as a rule, Aura was still coming to terms with her daughter from another timeline thinking of her in a sexual way, most likely because her abilities as a Diviner letting her glimpse truths she would rather avoid. Obviously, the Seer had seen something, and decided it was worth making her mother uncomfortable to save her from needing to be resurrected.

The rush of levels also had the effect of ruining my self-control in other areas than just ensuring I didn’t choke the woman too much. The golden glow of leveling up brought me to a climax deep inside her, before darkness returned to my room in the palace. I rolled off of Aura, gasping as my brain tried to catch up to everything, while Lilith remained entwined with her mother, her fingers, tongue, and hands continuing where I’d left off in driving the woman wild, though her eyes met mine.

“The third planet has fallen, then,” she said, and it was not a question.

I nodded, breathless, before rolling back up on one elbow to look at the two women. “You knew?”

Lilith shook her head, as one finger gently brushed Aura’s clit. “Your profession is one of the ones that makes any kind of divination or prophecy unreliable, Daddy. You are anchored in time, shielded from it, and can manipulate it in some ways, for yourself and others. That is no small thing. My visions of you have not been exact since you rose in Tier. However, when I saw you bring Mother to dinner, the possibilities collapsed into a handful, with this the most likely.”

Aura took a moment to catch her breath, despite how the succubus was toying with her. After all, a Tier 1 human trying to keep up in bed with a Tier 2 and a Tier 3, when those higher tiers were sex demons? It was going to wear her out. She moaned softly, before looking back at Lilith. “So, that explains why you wanted to join us. But why did you do that thing with your tongue, before?”

Lilith giggled at that. “Because you were too tense when I got in bed with you. And you relaxed really fast after I started eating out your asshole, yes?”

“That’s probably the most ‘Lilith’ thing I’ve heard you say in weeks,” Aura grumbled, before snarking, “I just can’t wait for younger you to start talking and be the same way. Really.”

I just chuckled, and said, “If you’ll excuse me, ladies, I have nineteen levels worth of skills to pick.”

“Nineteen? When you’re already in Tier 3?” Aura gasped. “How much XP does a level take at those levels?”

“I’m at 8,208,400 of 8,256,000 XP needed to hit level 29 in the Tier. Got just over 2.3 million XP from that. More than the last couple. Which means that something happened. There were more killings, and more danger, than the original intelligence reports let on.”

Lilith shook her head. “The Incux, for all their flaws, are not idiots, Daddy. After losing two of their main cattle worlds, it wasn’t unthinkable that they would try to reinforce the last one. Which means the goal of shaking up the war and giving the Commonwealth a chance to stabilize things has probably already been successful. The cattle worlds don’t provide all the food for the Incux, of course, but those systems were what allowed them to make sustained expansion, rather than building feeder farms which could grow enough low-tier bugs that they could easily replace losses.”

“Fair point,” I nodded as I through all my spare attribute points into DEX. My body’s reaction time was already lagging behind my mind’s, so using the points to shore up weaknesses was a good idea. “Now, let’s see what I have for skills.”

Opening the full list of available skills showed me that I wasn’t lacking for choices. In fact, I had way more skills open to me than I could possibly pick. Even just the new ones were not going to be an easy choice.

New Available Skills:

Note: Your available skills are based on your Race, Class, Profession, and activities.

Racial Skills:

Ruinstrike – Weapon and spell attacks deal 5x more damage to objects, structures, constructs, and magical effects.

Binding Seed – Can imbue semen with a [Slave Brand] effect, marking the recipient as his Slave.

Gateway of the Abyss – Can open portals to the different layers of the Abyss. (Costs 2 points to take)

Strip Purity – Condemn Celestial creatures to a mortal form. (Costs 2 points to take)

Voice of Command – CHA is doubled for purposes of social skills such as Diplomacy, Intimidation, Bargaining, or Seduction. CHA is tripled for those skills if the target is attracted to the current race and sex they perceive you as. (Costs 2 points to take)

Cult of Personality – Those sworn to your service gain a bonus to all attributes equal to 5% of your CHA score. (Costs 2 points to take)

Aura of Supremacy – Allies within line of sight ignore damage equal to your CHA on all weapon attacks (including natural weapons) and spell attacks, unless it is Holy damage. (Costs 2 points to take)

Aura of Dominance – Allies within line of sight deal extra profane damage equal to your CHA on all weapon attacks (including natural weapons) and spell attacks. (Costs 2 points to take)

Class Skills:

Enchant Soulgem (Constitution) – Enchant a soulgem to give a constant bonus to the owner’s CON. (Costs 2 points to take)

Soulgrip – Your melee attacks have (Your Level - Target’s Level, minimum 1)% chance of extracting the target’s soul (if it has one), regardless of damage dealt. (Costs 2 points to take)

Soul Armor – By implanting a soulshard in a creature’s body, render them immune to soul-affecting effects below your Tier. Target automatically fails to resist your soul-affecting effects. (Costs 2 points to take)

Soulsight – Able to see souls, even when hidden by illusions. May be able to discern effects the soul is under. (Costs 2 points to take)

Soultrap – Take a soul captured in the soulcage or otherwise under your power, and trap it in another vessel, allowing others to utilize its power. (Costs 2 points to take)

Soulswap – While touching two willing or helpless vessels containing souls (including living beings), switch the souls in those vessels. Souls retain their Classes and Professions, but gain the Tier, Level, and Race of their new body. (Costs 2 points to take)

Siphon Soul – Drain the essence of a soul in the Soulcage, converting it into Skill Points. (Costs 2 points to take)

Enchant Soul – Enchant a willing or helpless creature’s soul, giving them a permanent boost to one mental attribute, at the cost of binding their will to yours. (Costs 2 points to take)

Profession Skills:

Demon Lord’s Mastery – All subordinates of the Demon Lord ignore Defense less than the Demon Lord’s CHA while defending his realm.

Demon Lord’s Power – All subordinates of the Demon Lord ignore damage less than the Demon Lord’s CHA while defending his realm.

Halt – Freeze one creature in time. Cost depends on Creature’s ability scores and defenses. (Costs 2 points to take)

Timestop – Freeze time temporarily, during which only you can move. Cannot damage any creatures or objects while time is stopped. Cannot regenerate HP or MP while time is stopped. (Costs 2 points to take)

View Timelines – View the alternate timelines of a target creature or place. (Costs 2 points to take)

Timelapse – Advance or reverse the effects of time on a target creature, aging or youthening them. Cannot revive the fallen or age a target past their death. (Costs 2 points to take)

Fracture – Target a creature and fracture their timeline. Creates a clone of the creature from an alternate reality of your choosing. Both target and clone have their attributes halved for the duration, but cannot be killed except by their double. The Fracture ends when either the target or clone is slain by the other. (Costs 2 points to take)

Collapse – Target a creature and collapse their timeline with one or more others, forcing them to live through the memories of each. (Costs 2 points to take)

General Skills:

Bestowal – You are able to bestow Titles upon those you deem worthy. The cost of bestowal depends on the power of the Title given, and the creature’s deeds, as recognized by the System.

The new General Skill, [Bestowal] was interesting. I got the feeling that I only unlocked that skill because of how I had responded to the new Soulforger, and using the weight of my title to give her a second name. That kind of deal had power beyond the base ‘game mechanics’, which made it insanely valuable. Sure, the System gave out titles, but as a ruler, it made sense that some of my decrees from here on in were looking to help things along. Obvious pick there.

Turning to the Racial Skills, [Ruinstrike], [Gateway of the Abyss], [Voice of Command], [Cult of Personality], [Aura of Supremacy], and [Aura of Dominance] were all clear winners. The first two gave me a way to massively hurt many of the things I couldn’t just seduce, while [Voice of Command] made me even better at basically everything involving Charisma skills. [Cult of Personality] gave everyone sworn to me (which was pretty much every citizen of the Ceresan Empire) a boost of 146 to all stats, while the auras gave all my allies in line of sight protection from 2922 damage on every attack while making their attacks deal that much extra damage. Well worth bringing my points down to 26.

Looking at the Soulcager skills, well, they were all insanely good, but a few of them looked as though they built off each other. First, I needed [Enchant Soulgem (Constitution)] to complete the set. The reason it cost more than the others was obvious. Getting more HP was generally more useful to anyone than a Rogue gaining INT or a Barbarian getting CHA.

[Enchant Soul] would be nice, someday, but I already had plenty of buffs. Grabbing [Soulgrip], [Soul Armor], [Soulsight], [Soul Trap], and [Soul Swap] were all insanely good, since it would basically let me snatch up people who annoyed me, and shove their souls into barnyard animals, or inanimate objects, and so on. Oh, and the [Siphon Soul] skill which would let me go soul vampire on my enemies, turning their souls to skill points so I could get even more of these powerful skills. Bringing the total down to 12 skill points left was worth it for all of that.

Which just left the Profession skills. And oh, this choice was going to hurt. Everything that had been added was absolute quality, as one expected of a Tier 3 profession that was so rare. None of them were bad choices, but I couldn’t get them all, yet. Maybe after I ate a few souls.

[Demon Lord’s Mastery] and [Demon Lord’s Power] were obvious. They gave all my minions, throughout the Empire a significant boost to their offensive and defensive capabilities, and it stacked with everything else! When defending Ceresan soil, even a Tier 1 civilian with a butcher’s knife would be able to stand their ground against a Tier 2 warrior type in full kit, at least for a while. Considering that usually all they’d accomplish is becoming a smear on the ground, that was impressive in and of itself.

[Timestop] was such a cheating skill on the surface of it, that I was sure the MP cost to stop time was going to be a bitch, especially since you couldn’t just use it to patiently regenerate to full MP and HP between every attack. Of course, the fact that you couldn’t just stop time and slit someone’s throat was nice, but there was a lot one could do without damaging anyone or anything in the slightest, but would still ruin their day.

On the other hand, [Timelapse] was a nasty piece of work. Sure, you couldn’t youthen someone before they were born, or age them until their bones had turned to dust, but you didn’t need to do that when you turned them into a day-old infant or an ancient crone that was a stiff breeze from death. That could be a fight-ender on its own, depending on how it was used.

[View Timelines], [Fracture], and [Collapse] were another trio of skills that worked perfectly together. Watch someone’s timelines to see the ones I wanted, and then either [Fracture] the Hero so their villainous clone emerged, or [Collapse] all the timelines in which they failed, watched everyone die, and begged for death before the end into them, and torture them with it. Hell, even just using [Fracture] to half a warrior’s attributes, and replace them with the timeline where they were a lazy clerk who never hit level 10? That was going to be brutal, if the hero didn’t know that killing their ‘innocent’ reflection would reverse things.

Lilith smirked as I told the pair about my choices, and why. “Daddy, looks like you’re trying to break into the Seer market, too! Maybe you should try giving yourself the title?”