Reborn as the First Boss, Chapter 54

Chapter 54 – Thoughts for the Future

“All right, something has clearly fucked with the dungeon,” Astruth said, bitterly. “That boss was way too strong for his level. What gives?”

We had just finished the sixth floor of the dungeon. Problem was, the boss of the sixth floor, Inspector Specter, was supposed to be level 16, but instead, he had been level 20. If this pattern continued, then it was likely, but the time we got down to the fifteenth floor, that the monsters we were facing were going to be in their high thirties or early forties. And that was only if the curve didn’t get worse.

“If I had to guess,” Jewell said, “then there’s a Boss in the dungeon, and everything has shifted to accommodate their new strength. We don’t really know how dungeons work, after all. So something influencing the dungeon is certainly possible.”

“At least the bosses haven’t had any new abilities that we couldn’t predict from their previous forms, or their current classes and professions,” I said, sighing. “But we can’t count on that in the future. We can take a moment to rest, here, but I’d like to get a bit further before we stop for the night. Everyone check your gear. And if you’ve leveled, pick something that will help us.”

Fortunately, between my Spellshooter and Healing Dagger, I was able to deal with the incorporeal undead pretty easily, since those creatures tended to have little HP, in exchange for being tough to hit. Still, Astruth was not alone in his concern for what was happening here. The problem, as I saw it, was that, if there was a Boss in the dungeon, then there was a good chance that they wouldn’t sit idle here forever. At the very least, the undead sent against the cordon would grow stronger, until they were able to break through. And since this dungeon was on the border of my lands, that was a problem.

Of course, dealing with undead who were all higher-leveled than they ought to have been wasn’t entirely without benefit to us. The loot they dropped was of higher quality, so while none of us had upgrades, yet, they would certainly sell well when we got back to the fence in town. More importantly, so far, is the fact that we were getting a solid chunk of XP each fight. While Inpector Spectre had been tough, he’d given us 5000 XP on his own, pushing us over the threshold to level 23.

After level 20 in a Tier, the rate of new racial, class, and profession skills appearing slowed to getting two options for each group every 5 levels, it seemed. Of course, most of the skills that were offered at these levels were more expensive, since they were far more powerful than the normal skills. The two main schools of thought were to either save up most of your skill points, in order to buy more of the big-ticket items, or to diversify your toolkit by searching for more general skills. For instance, picking up [Swimming] before you were headed on an ocean voyage made a lot of sense, and a group where multiple people had [Survival] would be better prepared in case their Ranger or Druid got badly wounded, and was unable to forage for food as they hurried back to town. Just for a couple examples.

At any rate, I had six skill points to spend, and I didn’t see any reason not to spend them. However, just because I had points to spend, didn’t mean I was going to waste them. I might get more skill points than normal people, and the [Skill Stealing Ritual] gave me the opportunity to acquire more, but that didn’t mean I should be careless in my choices.

Given my status as Baroness, and how I was currently traveling, I needed a to pick skills that provided me the most benefit for the cost they imposed. I needed skills that could either be used in my Alis persona, or that could be easily used when I took a different guise. I didn’t see myself going and picking on weaklings, and I was more of a seductress than a rapist, so [Sensual Violation] and [Unholy Violation] didn’t really work for me. [Aerial Defender] was useless, since I was almost never flying in combat, and so on. A lot of the choices I still had open to me were still open because they didn’t fit my style. Others, like [Magic Touch (Healing Hand)] were nice, but were already covered by the fact that I could cast healing magic, which was generally more efficient than the courtesan ability, with the exception that [Magic Touch (Healing Hand)] would work even if I was unable to cast spells for some reason.

Racial Skills (Greater Succubus):

Addictive Fluids – Gain the ability to infuse MP into your bodily fluids. Ingesting those fluids causes euphoria in creatures, which can lead to addiction. (Costs 2 Skill Points)

Deny Release – Curse a target, making them unable to achieve climax while the curse lasts.

Class Skills (Mind Sorceress):

Mental Intrusion – When you successfully penetrate a creature’s mind, you can create a personal gap in their defenses, giving you a +25% bonus to future mental attacks and manipulation.

Class Skills (Spellshooter):

Profession Skills (Courtesan):

Magic Touch (Replenish Stamina) – The Courtesan is able to imbue magic into her touch, spending MP to restore a creature’s SP. For every (CHA) MP spent, the target gains (CHA*100) SP. Cannot be used on the same target more than 1/hour.

General Skills:

Survival – Allows you to have a better chance foraging for food, finding shelter, and other tasks necessary for surviving in the wilds.

Still, there were some easy picks. First on the list was [Survival]. Yes, I wasn’t the only one in my group who had it, but no one wanted to rely on just one person for everything critical. Plus, if I spent more time in my adventurer persona, skills like that would help with my cover.

Next up was [Magic Touch (Replenish Stamina)]. Sensual Recharge allowed me to recover MP and HP through sex, but it did nothing to recover my stamina, and it didn’t help those around me, either. This wasn’t likely to be an issue in combat, but it was definitely something that could be useful while traveling, or enjoying my evenings.

[Mental Intrusion] was a bit of insurance. So far, I had dealt with anyone I was manipulating with my Mind Sorceress abilities in a rather direct and brutal fashion. After all, I was using a somewhat light touch in my Barony, relying on my (admittedly overwhelmingly cheaty) Charisma and skills to do my manipulation, rather than risk using magic on people I needed to deal with on a continuing basis. And if I didn’t need to deal with them later, why leave them alive? But, if there was a case where I needed to leave someone alive, and manipulate them later, then [Mental Intrusion] would help me do it.

That kind of forward thinking is also why I decided to bite the bullet and drop my last three skill points on [Addictive Fluids] and [Deny Release]. Those two skills, working together, would be perfect for manipulating someone in the long term. Whether I would have cause to use them was anyone’s guess, but I figured that, as a political figure, I was much more likely to make use of them than something like [Shapeshifter’s Weapons] and [Magic Touch (Poison)], both of which required me to be familiar with the weapons and poisons I’d be mimicking. Actually, the poison one was completely useless, because I was immune to poison entirely, meaning that the poison couldn’t affect me enough for me to ‘learn’ it.

On the other hand, I could see some potential in making someone addicted to my fluids, and then tapping them with the curse that permanently cuts off their ability to climax. Done right, they would always be chasing that high, and just never managing to get there. [Addictive Fluids] was a lure, to keep people loyal when I couldn’t enslave them directly, while [Deny Release] was a punishment, or perhaps a means of coercing information from someone. At any rate, both skills could be more useful as I stepped into the political realm.

“Mistress, look at this!” Angelina’s voice broke my chain of thought. Turning to where the Healer was busy looking through the loot, I saw her holding up a Grimoire. It was obvious just from looking at the leather-bound tome that it was no mere book. After all, normal books didn’t have titles that glowed in the color of blood on their covers, and they certainly weren’t written in the Demonic tongue.

“Let me see that,” I said, gently taking the book from her. Grimoires generally came in three types. The first was a creation of a mortal hand, where someone literally wrote down a book of spells, rituals, and lore. Those were never a part of dungeon loot, however, since dungeon loot was always created by the Voice of the World. No, if you found a grimoire in a dungeon, then it was either an instruction manual allowing a reader with the proper skills to learn the spells and rituals inside, or it was a tool, containing a single ritual or spell within it. So long as you had magical training, you could use those grimoires to cast the spell or ritual inside with a minimum of prep work, perhaps the creation of a circle at the most, since the grimoire did most of the work in channeling magic into the spell. Unlike scrolls, these grimoires could be reused, but they never had a cooldown period of less than a day, and were usually at least a week.

This grimoire appeared to be one of the instruction manuals. Learning a spell or ritual from the grimoire would add it to your spells known, and cause it to disappear from the book, meaning that, when all the entries were gone, the grimoire would be just another empty tome. The grimoire was titled [Sacraments of the Dark Night], and it was enchanted, so that the words within were completely invisible unless you either had demonic blood in your veins, or you performed a blood rite to bind the book to you, and also knew how to read demonic. Of course, most of the people who would be wanting to read this grimoire would easily fall into those two categories.

The nice thing about this kind of grimoire was that you could pick and choose which of the spells or rituals contained within you wanted to learn. Some would ask why you would ever want to not know more magic, but the answer to that was simple, really. Sometimes it was possible to know too much, and that knowledge could pervert you. For instance, just knowing that if you sacrificed a lover, you could gain untold power would be a constant temptation. Even if you fought off the temptation, there was always the chance that it would ruin your relationships anyway, as you pulled away from loved ones, to keep from seeing them as ‘materials’. All because you knew too much.

Contents:

Communion of Tongues

Abjuration of Omens

Ghostly Evocation of Forbidden Chains

Inverted Working of the Bloodstained Pits

Golden Ritual of the Spirit

Souls’ Invocation of Torture

Dreaming Lady’s Enchantment of Damnation

Lady’s Transfiguration of the Ghostly Sword

Incantation of Annihilation

Lady’s Forbidden Sacrament of Beastly Power

Ten entries in the book. Often, they were found with only three or four, though the stories told of one legendary grimoire that came with over twenty. Those stories also say that the legendary grimoire was what allowed the Demon Emperor to rise to power. So, this grimoire was obviously pretty nice, as a piece of loot. Too nice for a dungeon like this. Another confirmation that something had changed.

I took a breath, and slipped the grimoire into my inventory for safekeeping. “I’ll take the time to study this, when we are safely bedded down for the night. For now, let us try and get past the seventh floor’s Treasure Room before we break for supper.”