“Okay, before you do anything, I can explain!”
As soon as Zoe said that, she realized that it might not have been the smartest way to begin approaching things. It wasn’t like Millie had actually done anything to accuse her of anything yet. So basically, she had just alerted the girl to the fact that she had done something ‘wrong’ even if Millie hadn’t even been sure of that yet.
To her credit, Millie composed herself quickly. She remained where she was, meeting Zoe’s...
2024-04-12 00:18:01 +0000 UTC
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Zoe had to admit that she was more curious about what an Oath entailed than what the lich’s Godfather-esque offer would be. Did the System have a feature that enforced some kind of magical, unbreakable contract? While she wouldn’t be surprised by that in and of itself, she would find it odd that she hadn’t already encountered it already.
The reality of it turned out too be less exciting but perhaps a bit more interesting. As the lich went over the terms of the Oath, Zoe quickly su...
2024-04-11 00:18:01 +0000 UTC
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Zoe immediately decided that she was going to keep the true origins of her demonic ascension—and likewise, her initial relationship with Basil—concealed for as long as she could. Sure, it was the total opposite of her initial plan, but to Zoe, plans were more like guidelines. In any case, her latest resolution wasn’t because she thought it would be more strategic—it wasn’t—or that she might be in immediate danger—she was.
She just thought it would be funny.
In any ca...
2024-04-10 00:18:01 +0000 UTC
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to Zoe’s frustration, she had to wait for reinforcements to arrive. At least, that’s how Basil put it. She suspected that he just meant the Lich.
At first, she had wondered why the cultist could possibly need any help when he had the paladin completely restrained by a colossal monster straight out of a Lovecraft story. It soon became clear, however, that the creature wasn’t a mere puppet. Zoe surmised that when Basil had to repeatedly coax it into remaining above the surface and n...
2024-04-09 00:18:01 +0000 UTC
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The other two just stared at her. Zoe was starting to get a little bit uncomfortable, and it wasn’t the kind of fear she was used to. Not really the survival kind. Damn, am I actually feeling social anxiety right now? That’s kind of hilarious.
But also, the paladin was undoubtedly getting increasingly father away. Any time spent not pursuing her was time wasted—and it would likely put Zoe in a significantly worse position here if she were left alone without a prize to cap...
2024-04-06 00:18:01 +0000 UTC
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As Zoe slipped back out into the area between the cathedral and the—what. sacrifice chamber? She realized that she still hadn’t identified the source of the demonic mana. It seemed like it was just sort of rising up from the entire room with the altar and skeletons with no particular source.
Given that it also seemed fairly faint and stale, for lack of a better word, that most likely meant that it was just a general malaise that had seeped into the space over time. This implied that...
2024-04-05 00:18:01 +0000 UTC
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It took Zoe embarrassingly long to finally think about Millie again. Ah shit. She hoped that the girl was okay. The best outcome would probably be that the child had been left back in the cavern that had formerly been the sloth den. After all, Zoe knew that she was generally capable of taking care of herself in the wilderness.
The other two possibilities were that she had also been taken into this ruined place as well, or that she had died. Honestly, none of them seem espec...
2024-04-04 00:20:45 +0000 UTC
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While Zoe didn’t waste any time in hurrying down the colorfully-lit hallway, she couldn’t help but marvel at the architecture. She had to force herself to not slow down and study the torches and abstract carvings in closer detail.
Still, she paid as much attention to the space itself as to her pursuit of the paladin. She was kind of starting to regret not paying attention to the large mosaic—mural?—that had overlooked the fountain in the chamber where they had first arrived.
...
2024-04-04 00:18:01 +0000 UTC
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Zoe landed hard, but she didn’t wait around before struggling back up to her feet. Stumbling around in a full circle, she quickly took stock of the current situation. Given that she could actually breathe again and physics wasn’t hell-bent on crushing her from all directions, she stopped channeling {Kinetic Enhancement}. She continued fueling {Corrupt Wound}, of course. She was still pretty injured. Her ‘respite’ from the disastrous combat hadn’t been very long at all.
The fir...
2024-04-02 00:18:01 +0000 UTC
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As it turned out, being violently dragged deep down underwater was a lot less terrifying when you weren’t afraid of drowning.
Granted, there was nothing to indicate that Zoe didn’t need air, even if she no longer needed food—and with just a single point of mana, she wouldn’t be left with many options. But whether it was a result of her radically altered biology or just the effects of her prior adventures, Zoe didn’t really panic at all.
As the already dim light of the ca...
2024-03-30 00:18:01 +0000 UTC
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Zoe quickly made the caring, selfless decision to go ahead and ditch the child.
Honestly, if her opponent were some kind of child-eating monster, then she would stick around and defend both of them—or so she told herself. But after all, a paladin wasn’t actually a child-eating monster. Probably.
Of course, that still left the problem of escaping—even on her own. Not a moment after she touched down, Zoe dashed to the side to avoid being impaled by a white-hot spear f...
2024-03-29 00:18:01 +0000 UTC
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Zoe wasn’t quite sure what her plan should actually be at this moment. And unfortunately, a dozen or so meters wasn’t nearly enough distance to give her time to come up with anything well thought-out with both of their speeds.
Neither made any additional moves or changed their course as they closed in. The only time either deviated from a perfectly straight charge was to briefly duck under a lashing tentacle or two. In fact, within those precious few seconds Zoe deliberately chose t...
2024-03-28 00:18:01 +0000 UTC
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The entrance to the den turned out to be annoyingly long. Zoe felt as if she had been walking for at least a couple of minutes and she was still no closer to the source of the gently wafting, animalistic life mana.
It didn’t help that the passages were extremely uneven and twisted. The ground was anything but level—in fact, it was a bit of a stretch to even call any part of the tunnels ‘ground.’ The sides rapidly narrowed and widened at random, varying between relatively wide ch...
2024-03-27 00:18:00 +0000 UTC
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To say that Zoe wasn’t particularly thrilled with the development would be a bit of an understatement. Even if the paladin wasn’t after her specifically—which might actually be likely—it was still quite a complication.
In the case that the paladin was not truly following her, the reasonable conclusion was that they were also headed towards the village that Millie said had been taken over by infernal cultists and turned into a base of operations of sorts. Under that assu...
2024-03-26 00:18:01 +0000 UTC
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He didn’t expect her to reach him so quickly. In fact, he hadn’t even expected that she would make the first move. And then the speed with which she flew towards him was truly astounding—
But ultimately it didn’t matter. His shield flared to life just in time to repel her fierce assault, no doubt inflicting grievous injuries on her at the same time. His shield was no doubt his most powerful ability—early on, in the first days after his ascension, he had been disap...
2024-03-23 00:18:01 +0000 UTC
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It really was steep, even from the very beginning. Zoe was amazed that any trees could actually grow on it, let alone so many of them. In any case, such was the extreme degree of the incline that she had to effectively crawl using her hands as well, even despite the increased grip of her talons.
Millie clung to her back the whole way. Zoe just had to trust her to stay on and not slip off. If she did, Zoe wasn’t sure she would be able to do anything to catch her quickly enough.
F...
2024-03-22 00:18:00 +0000 UTC
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“I’m fine, really.”
Millie didn’t seem particularly convinced by Zoe’s claim, but she didn’t say anything else and seemed content to let the subject drop. After Zoe had recovered from her initial nausea and cleared her head a bit, she had spent about half a minute studying the products of her regurgitation. Whatever is actually in this stuff, it probably isn’t very healthy for most people. Or things.
Curiously, it didn’t have much of a taste, either when s...
2024-03-21 00:18:00 +0000 UTC
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Truth be told, Zoe was coming to enjoy Millie’s company more than she had Lily and Andric’s. Of course, she was still going to track down those two at some point. She wasn’t sure when, but she couldn’t let them get away without her giving them a piece of her mind and getting some closure.
Also, if someone else killed them, she was going to be really annoyed. They were—ostensibly—on her side, and Zoe didn’t like people killing people who were on her side. It was like someon...
2024-03-20 00:18:01 +0000 UTC
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At first, Millie didn’t even appear to notice that anything was happening. Zoe considered that to be a good sign—especially since her burns were rapidly smoothing out and fading away. Of course, Millie soon noticed as well, and that’s when she began freaking out again.
After it was all done, Millie took to completely ignoring Zoe. For her part, Zoe suspected that the girl wasn’t actually particularly upset with her, but rather she was just obstinately acting that way in order to...
2024-03-19 00:18:00 +0000 UTC
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It didn't take Zoe very long to find a maned sloth. In fact, it was the first sloth she found at all. Even better, it seemed to be a particularly fine specimen—large, fluffy, and well-groomed. Amusingly, it actually had the poor sense to attack her first instead of trying to flee.
Not that it would matter either way. Zoe was far faster—and bigger and stronger too, which was what allowed her to grab the sloth around the neck with her claws. It tried to pry itself from her grip, but s...
2024-03-16 00:18:01 +0000 UTC
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It was starting to get dark. The sun had dipped below the horizon—or at the very least, it was obscured by the surrounding mountains. They had continued following the river upstream at a moderate pace, alternating between active conversations and long stretches of silence.
During that time, Zoe had leveled up {Meditation}, bringing it up to level nineteen. The trick to her breakthrough, like many before, was challenging herself to maintain the ability while doing something else at the...
2024-03-15 00:18:01 +0000 UTC
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It didn’t actually take very long for Zoe to formulate a response to the girl’s question, because both her knowledge and opinion on infernal cultists were pretty simple. “I can’t say I’m a fan of them.”
“Wait, does that mean you’ve encountered them before?” The girl seemed pretty surprised at that. In any case, she almost sounded hopeful—or perhaps Zoe was reading too deep into it.
“Unfortunately, yes,” Zoe admitted. For a few seconds, the girl waited for h...
2024-03-14 00:18:01 +0000 UTC
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Now that Zoe was only pursuing a small child instead of hunting down trained killers, moving through the branches of the jungle canopy was even more relaxing. She was pretty sure she wasn’t very far behind now. Even though Zoe had only been in pursuit for a couple minutes at most, she felt that it wouldn’t be much longer before she caught up to the kid.
The question of what to do then was something she kept forcing herself to think about and then inevitably avoiding. Her mi...
2024-03-13 00:18:00 +0000 UTC
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It was rather disappointing that the very first people Zoe encountered appeared to be some manner of murderous bandits.
Not inclined to repeat her initial arrival in her new world as she had not too many days prior, Zoe retreated back behind a cluster of large boulders next to a wider section of the river. Why does everyone I meet have to be completely awful?
It had only been several hours since she had left the wreck of the airship that her would-be captors had used to e...
2024-03-12 00:18:01 +0000 UTC
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To Zoe’s surprise, her new status was actually shorter than it had been the last time she looked at it.
Zoe Blackwell
Demon of Corruption / ??? - 34
Growth Mage
Abilities: - {Corrupted Spirit Shield - 2, Onyx} - {Instinct - 2, Onyx} - {Predator’s Eyes - 1, Onyx} - {Devour - 4, Onyx} - {Corrupt Wound - 1, Onyx} - {Kinetic Manipulation - 14, Bronze} - {Kinetic Enhancement - 7, Silver} - {Kinetic Dash...
2024-03-09 01:18:01 +0000 UTC
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Zoe just ran straight towards the guy. She didn’t even bother doing any kind of evasive maneuvers. She didn’t dash, either—she was saving that for when she would likely have to abruptly react.
Her opponent didn’t just stand there and let her rush him, of course. But instead of preparing an attack or some kind of defense, he just tore open a rift and hopped through it, disappearing. Well that’s pretty annoying.
Fortunately, it didn’t take Zoe very long to pinpo...
2024-03-08 01:18:01 +0000 UTC
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Chapter 67
Zoe was getting pretty tired of dying. She had long since lost count of the number of times she had failed to defeat her copy. She was pretty sure she had now been fighting for longer than she had previously been alive.
It didn’t help that the terrain kept changing. It was never the same two time in a row, though that wasn’t to say there weren’t similarities. Even with settings spanning from deep, murky grottos to floating fields of asteroid-like rocks, you star...
2024-03-07 01:18:01 +0000 UTC
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To her surprise, Zoe wasn’t in an arena. Looking around, she realized that the exterior stone wall of the structure was right behind her. Open earth and sky stretched out in every other direction. It felt kind of strange — why would there be a Coliseum-like structure in the middle of nowhere?
Deciding not to bother making sense of it, Zoe set off in the other direction. A gloomily shaded treeline stretched out across a stretch of meadow. A gently winding path led her through the yel...
2024-02-17 01:18:01 +0000 UTC
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{You have gained multiple levels! You are now —}
Shut up.
Zoe didn't have time for that. She had taken out the archer, yes, but now that the first moves had been made, the battle was on in earnest. Activating {Kinetic Dash}, Zoe dodged a flurry of attacks from all directions. While she managed to escape unscathed, she had no idea how she was going to approach this.
One at a time, I guess.
Deciding that it would take too long to try ...
2024-02-16 01:18:00 +0000 UTC
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Stumbling her way up through the trapdoor into the storage room and back out into the dining area of the cafe, Zoe took a good long moment to let the accumulated rage really build up before launching herself at her clone.
The lava was only the beginning. She had dived through acid lakes, waded through what she was pretty sure was a nuclear swamp, dug her way out of an avalanche, trudged through a blizzard… yeah, Zoe was pretty sure she had survived every kind of natural disas...
2024-02-14 01:18:01 +0000 UTC
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