Gestation by John Gold (love books to read .txt) 📗

shame to throw out simple things without attribute bonuses, so I just break them down and collect the metal. Everything weighs less that way. I can fit up to a hundred kilograms in my bag, and I need to get all the way to the ninth circle of Hell. Breaking down cheap items is the only option I have.

Oh, and there’s the next imp!

My stealth jumps up quickly, leaving me invisible to six imps as I kill everyone else who shows up. The area around me is covered in blood, which I use as part of the ritual to raise the dead. It disappears after twenty-four hours. I have to keep going, constantly changing my experiments, and I’ve taken to going everywhere in stealth mode. I can still make a good five meters a second. Boosting it is a great idea.

Three weeks go by.

∞ ∞ ∞

Demonification: 100%

Your mental and physical bodies have completely restructured to match this world’s order.

Passive ability unlocked: Undecuple consciousness

You can no longer unlock any more streams of consciousness.

Note: If you accept this ability, you will lose 100 intellect and wisdom. Those points will go toward creating your mental body and the energy channels your eleventh stream of consciousness needs.

Accept: Yes/No

Passive ability unlocked: Demon possession, complete

You can select a demon appearance. Demons look the way they do based on how they behaved in life. Using this ability no longer costs health.

∞ ∞ ∞

Now that I’m completely demonified and empowered, my skin has become ashen white, and there’s a bone mask with a barely-visible nose in place of my face. I have no mouth, and tiny slits where my eyes should be. Somehow, I can breathe, though I feel creeped out. All of my underwear, my hair, my fingernails, my toenails, and my sexual markers are gone. My ears stick out and are covered with a whitish film, the same that covers the rest of me. Only my hands are covered in blood.

I squeeze a fist and memorize the feeling. It’s like my hand is wearing a glove. The imp eye and eleven streams of consciousness are perfect for my new look. I feel better, too, my muscles looser and a certain lightness flooding my body. When I boost my body, my skin still gets darker. I wish I had a mirror. I must look terrifying.

The next five days are spent running up my intellect and wisdom to a hundred. The imps defend themselves heroically, but they don’t stand a chance. I also work on my smithing by making throwing spikes. I can’t do much else without tools. The spikes are all used in rituals, seeing as how I have nothing better to do than kill the creatures around me.

Some of the rings I destroy give me gems, and I just stick them in the glowing spikes. As soon as they cool off, I add a destruction rune with my blood. The second set of ten becomes vampires. The third and fourth are for healing. One kills, the other sucks health and gives it to me, and the third heals. I read about that in one of the books, where a blood magic ritual partially combines magic and a sacrifice. The mage heals the victim, prolonging their suffering, and gives mana in exchange for health. The book recommended using daggers, though I can’t make them.

I’m finally ready to head down. On the way, I’m supposed to come across the fortress of the local lord. It creates the aura I no longer pay attention to, though its power should be magnified in its immediate vicinity. These are the moments I prepared the spikes for.

After an eighteen-hour run in stealth mode toward the center of the circle, I’ve picked up some interesting information. The closer I am, the stronger the aura is. That tells me when I’m going in the right direction. The monsters I come across are stronger, too, and I start to see worms. There are a lot of them around one particular crater in the sand. Setting myself up on a nearby cliff, I look over to see if that’s the way down.

∞ ∞ ∞

Damage taken: 1500 (ignored: 934)

1367/2000

Resistance to physical damage: +0.01%

Physical damage ignored up to 968/second

I’ve been taking increased damage from the aura of pain and suffering for the past two hours, meaning that I’m going the right way and should be coming across that fortress soon.

I peek over a cleft in the cliff. There should be an easy way down. But as I get started, I realize that something’s wrong. The hit to the face I take tells me exactly what that is.

Demons, Sand Scout, Level 214

I dodge the next blow, and the scout is dead ten seconds later.

Yeah…I need to work on my perception. He was right there and I didn’t notice him. He even had natural camouflage. I noticed him changing color to blend in with the cliff. The fact that I was already halfway into the cleft in the cliff, not to mention the spike in the scout’s throat, ensured that the alarm wasn’t raised.

Last time, I used the worms to boost my perception. It’s time for that again. I can work on my resistance at the same time.

The worms crawl out of their holes and meander around in a circle. Another one pops out, though he’s killed by another scout. It looks like they’re hunting, too, or maybe there’s some kind of cold war on. A different worm eats that scout, preoccupied as he is with his kill, after sneaking up behind him. A second later, and there’s no scout. Just two very happy worms going back to their crawling.

Some time later, I notice a whole squad of scouts. The worms eat half of them; the rest make a run for the cliffs. That leaves me to keep running further in, having gotten used to the local aura and boosted my perception to 100. I think this is just a nest of worms, not the fortress.

∞ ∞ ∞

Damage taken: 2500 (ignored: 1534)

1077/2000

Resistance to physical damage: