Chapter 42.3

On reading the card, my first reaction was to scrub a very tired hand over my face and sigh.  I should have been absolutely livid.  And I would have save for one thing.

The skill was… good.  Like really fucking good.  With this one spell, Mia had nearly doubled my combat potential.

It was such an obvious pick, too!  Creating temporary minions?  I was a freaking Summoner!  It made perfect sense, but I had never even thought to ask.  I had just assumed I was limited to the slots I had.  Who knew I could double up on them with different types?

Damn it.

I felt like someone had just stolen my car to buy me a Kamov attack helicopter.  It was cool as hell, but that was beside the point!  It was the principle of the matter.

Not that I was unused to getting fucked over since I had gotten a Class.  It was practically a thematic constant by this point.  There had been bugs in the system, poorly phrased and ill-considered skill requests…

Bline’s sense of humor…

Worse, I knew I did not have much ground to stand on.  I was intimately familiar with a number of RPG systems where the player never had any choice in skills.  You gained a wizard level?  Cool.  Now you can cast Firebolt.  Have fun.

And how many times had I wished the Lady of Power would just hand me a list of skills to choose from?

Now?  With this?

I mean… I would never cast this spell on someone I actually liked, willing or otherwise. The whole forced Loyalty thing was problematic to say the least, but you could say that about practically every aspect of my Class.

Plus, the concept of destroying older minions in order to obtain stronger ones down the way was… worrisome.  Especially once paired with the knowledge that these temporary minions could not grow.  My companions and I had a tendency to become attached.

Although, with the blurb about sapience, it seemed as though this had been intended for use on animals or monsters.  That would limit its usefulness to a degree but, again with the Loyalty, I could at least depend on the creature to defend me.  Which was nice.  And I could probably train it to follow some basic commands.

But the reason I had been given this skill could not have been more obvious.  The final paragraph summed that up nicely.  ‘Named servants,’ it had said.  Not lilim.

Which was intriguing.  And not just for the obvious reasons.  What might someone like Mia be capable of if given physical form?  She was a fragment of a goddess.  That… could not be allowed.  Right?  There had to be some kind of limitation.

“How… how did you even make a spell like this, Mia?” I asked finally, my quiet question putting a sudden end to the shouting.  I had maintained my silence for quite some time by then.  “It’s so complex.  I can’t see how you could have fit it all into twenty-five Words.”

“Your mother’s shit-stained cunt, that’s how!” Mia’s disembodied voice yelled.  “I’ll use a Barbed Mucus Fish to—to… I—I… Hnn~ f-fuck!  I was only able to do it by… by—ripping a priest’s dick off and shoving it back up the bleeding hole!”

The lilim and I shared a considering look.  As one, the pair took a deep breath, slowly folded their legs underneath them, and waited as a prickly silence descended over the room.  Maybe it was how in tune with me they were becoming, or it could have simply been the natural reaction to another being’s distress, however when the threat of castration rape is on the table, we all agreed it was time to let cooler heads prevail.

“She weren’t telling fibs, then?” Jax asked me once Mia’s swearing fit had subsided.  “She really be yer Faen.  Made from the Lady and all?”

Stifling a sigh, I allowed my head to fall back and stared vacantly up along the bedpost I was leaning against.  “Yeah, I think so.  She looks just like her, anyway.”

Jax began to smooth her eyebrows while she digested this news.  However, after a few seconds, her stony expression gave way.  “Hrmph.  I suppose that settles me some.  A lord should have his servants… even if they’s slippery types.  But I ain’t seen her looks.  She’s a bonnie thing?”

“She is,” Arx affirmed from behind her.  “She doesn’t talk like the Lady, though.  Either one.”

“She ain’t got her voice, none.  That much I agree on,” Jax said thoughtfully, before turning back to me.  “Why was ye asking about them numbers, though?”

“It’s my Manic Breadth stat,” I replied with a slight lift of a shoulder.  “It limits how complex my spells can be.”

“Huh…  That anything like er… what were it…?  En… Engraver…”

“Engraving Intricacy Capacity,” Arx supplied quickly.  “EIC for short.  And I have no idea.  I’ve never heard of Manic Breadth.”

“What?  Yes, you have—painted bitch!” Mia cut in, still somewhat out of breath.  “You’ve only asked us… me about it half a hundred times.”

“No, I’ve asked you about EIC half a hundred times.  And you never once gave me a straight answer,” Arx replied indignantly.  Then she tilted her nose into the air and put on a bit of a stiff voice.  “That information is discoverable.”

Another memory edit.  And yet again, I could not see the point in it.

“Now that don’t sound nothing like the Lady,” Jax opined.

“That’s because you’ve been talking to a different Lady,” Mia informed us, offhand.  “Specifically, the one ‘of the Dungeon.’  My youngest sibling.  Formerly.  Which should have been impossible, but with your natures, She must have discovered some loophole.  And of course, She’s managed to make a total mess of it.  I’ve been trying to clean it up for hours… not that I have any idea what She’s done or really even how to begin.  Although, it would have been a lot easier had a certain someone not left me too weak to stand!”

“Sorry,” I mumbled.  “I had no idea—“

“Yes, yes.  Dreams.  I know.”  She sighed.  “Now to answer your—“

“Hold yer wheesht!  You can nay just tell a lass she’s been talking to the flaming Demon Queen fer weeks on and then skip away like a fairy.”

“I never skip.”