Name: Trey Bon

Level 5

Class: None

It had been two days since Trey and his escapee followers had made their way out of Negaizer. The stairway out of the prison had led upwards, seemingly for miles, until they found themselves in a cave. The cave had then led out into another barren wasteland.

With Farthom to navigate, Trey was just along for the ride… but the group looked to him as the shotcaller. From what he had been told, the culn had domesticated some type of small drake that they used in their armies. Trey didn’t want to be spotted from the air, so he was constantly on the lookout and had their group keep near rocky crevices and places that had some sort of cover whenever they could. There was even one instance where they came upon two gigantic, grey dragons fighting one another in the sky - shooting bolts of lightning and fire at one another before disappearing over a nearby mountain.

According to Farthom, there was a very big difference between drakes and dragons. Drakes weren’t usually very intelligent and were smaller, weaker cousins of dragons. Meanwhile, dragons were very intelligent and vastly more powerful. Pointing out how big those two monstrous dragons had been, Fathom pointed out that no drake would ever reach that size.

For miles out in any direction, semi-flat wasteland could be seen with boulders littering the charred ground. Crevices were also frequently strewn about, snaking their long deep cracks randomly to create pits or ledges that occasionally made traveling difficult. Once in a while, giant holes were seen in clusters... but they didn’t seem to be caves. Trey wasn’t sure what they were, but to be on the safe side he and the others avoided them completely.

Eventually their traveling took a turn for the worse. In the not-so-far distance, a series of mountains stood climbing into the sky to point up toward the two red moons; and an active volcano stood amongst them to their right with lava gushing down the slopes while creating rivers of fire and molten rock. The air was thick with occasional clouds of black sand that battered the travelers as they made their way toward the mountains in front of them. Purple patches of small shrubs were seen every once in a while, but they were few and far between. Just looking around made Trey wonder how anything survived here at all. And that night for the very first time, as darkness descended, Trey saw thick rain clouds with lightning blazing violently in the distance… Unfortunately the storm clouds were directly in their path, and the bad weather was heading their way.

When it finally hit them, it was the most violent storm Trey had ever witnessed. The wind blew so hard that it nearly knocked some of the smaller travelers off their feet and the people had to cling to each other to keep them down. A black torrent of mixed rain and soot whipped, soaked and pummeled the travelers violently. Lightning struck close by, and then again soon after, and to top it all off it began to violently hail.

Amidst the berating storm and thunderclaps, Trey yelled back loudly and pointed to a cave entrance against an outcropping of rock. “LET’S MOVE INTO THE CAVE!”

“I CAN’T HEAR WHAT YOU’RE SAYING!” screamed Farthom as he tried to shield his tiny granddaughter Inis from the storm with her head buried against his chest. Trey motioned and pointed again and Farthom seemed to understand. It took them another five minutes to get there but eventually the entire group had made it inside a large opening in the mountain. Quite a few of them had minor injuries that they attended too and they had lost some of their food rations in the storm, but they divided some of it amongst themselves and did the best they could to get comfortable.

“Well, at least I got somewhat cleaned up…” Trey moaned and shook his hair about like a dog. It was starting to grow longer as he hadn’t had a hair cut in two months now and the wavy locks were just barely beginning to curl. He sat down next to Farthom and Inis, taking some strange yellow fruit that looked like a cross between an apple and a lemon. Biting into it, it was very sweet... and he savored the flavor before swallowing with a satisfied look on his face.

Inis said something to Farthom and glanced curiously Trey’s way.

“She wants to know if you like eating fruit or demons more!” asked Farthom with a laugh.

Trey turned to look down at Inis with a grin. “Tell her I like to eat little girls the most.”

Farthom chuckled and turned to tell Inis. Inis frowned and stuck her tongue out at both of the men who just laughed even harder. From across the room, Trey caught an attractive brunette looking his way. She was outfitted in a short-cut linen skirt and long tan legs sitting with some of her friends across the cave wall. When caught his galnce, she blushed and looked to the floor sheepishly.

“She’s hot,” said Trey nodding her way. “What’s her name?”

Farthom shrugged and smiled slyly. “Why don’t you go ask?”

“Can’t speak her language.”

“Oh yeah.”

“That, and she probably thinks I’m a monster. I did some pretty disgusting things back there, eating those demons in front of y’all.” Trey chuckled and bit into his fruit again. “Maybe I should get you to teach me how to speak… whatever it is. What language do you all speak?”

Farthom swallowed some of his food after chewing and stated: “The language they all speak is the Human tongue, which is why I was surprised you didn’t know it and thought you to be a demon at first.”

“Huh. Ok well why don’t you teach me. I’d be in your debt.” Trey exhaled an exaggerated sigh and stretched his arms out.

The old man scoffed. “I am in a life debt to you if you get us out of here Trey. You will never be in MY debt. But yes I can definitely teach you the language. Should we start now?”

Trey raised one eyebrow and bit into the fruit one last time before putting it down and swallowing again. “I really don’t know what this life debt business is about but we can talk about that later. Yes though, let’s start now. And thanks. I sincerely appreciate it.”

The time spent trying to undertake this learning of a new language was for the mostpart a flop. 3 hours later and Trey was seriously struggling. He hadn’t expected to learn it overnight, but he was getting almost nowhere.

“This language is difficult. This is why I cheated my way through Spanish class in highschool.” Trey stated with a snort and an irritated look on his face. The old man snickered and he patted his sleeping granddaughter’s head as she lay on his lap.

“What a bad pupil you are Trey.”

“Oh shut up!” Trey laughed. “I’ll have you know I was one of the top students at my school! Even if I did cheat through one class!” He looked outside and it had grown dark, the storm was still going quite strong and it didn’t look like it would end anytime soon… not that they were going to travel in the middle of the night anyways. They had used flint and steel from one of the storage rooms they looted earlier to light a couple small fires with some of the shrubs they had collected along the way. It was quite cold, and most of the people had gathered around the fires or huddled against one another for warmth.

“Let’s take a break, I have to go take a leak.” Trey stood to his feet and took off his shirt. It was still damp from earlier and was only serving to make him colder. He threw the cloak down too and began walking to the back end of the first cave chamber where people had been relieving themselves. On his way he caught the brunette looking his way again, her eyes scanned his toned body and he winked with a soft smile as he passed. She smiled back and waved, causing him to grin even more widely as he continued forward to his destination.

Perhaps he still had it. Perhaps people didn’t care about his scar as much as he’d thought. But who was he kidding? It was hideous, that much was obvious. Maybe she’d overlook it though. Many of the girls back home overlooked it after realizing who he was. However, was that really how he wanted to go about things now? Using his position as this group's impromptu savior to hit on chicks wasn’t necessarily a thing his mother would have approved of.

Regardless, in his own personal experiences with women… they fell in love with what you were, not who you were. Perhaps that was cynical, but after all… one of the reasons Amanda had cheated on him was because he wasn’t ‘successful’ enough. It’d been a bogus reason, he’d had more than enough money, but he’d also partially attributed it to her manic episodes.

If only she’d known what he really did for a living. Then she’d have left him far earlier than she actually had.

His lips began to tremble as he remembered the last time he’d seen Amanda and wiped a tear away before it could fully form. Clearing his throat and blinking his eyes a couple times, he tried his best to calm down and instead think of the hot brunette he’d just passed by. If not anything else, it would serve as a good distraction.

“I wonder what her name is…” muttered Trey thoughtfully as he pulled down his pants and stood to relieve himself against a wall. Maybe she wouldn’t mind if he just went for it and sat down next to her. Or would that be creepy? Too forward? And what would he say? It’s not like he could speak her language yet. But maybe she’d think that’s sexy. Who knew, women were like aliens. Then he thought back to Rachel, the redheaded rebound he’d been seeing. She was probably back in Dallas, and he kind of missed her over the top compliments - yeah… But he didn’t really know her all that well anyways. She was really hot, but they’d just started seeing one another before he was sent to this damnable place.

He sighed loudly and began to wonder what his family was up to. He got emotional every time he thought of them. They were definitely freaking out by now, especially his mom… but his brothers would be too. He hoped his father missed him, but he really couldn’t be sure that was the case.

He just wished he’d lived up to his father’s expectations, that he’d made his dad proud before he’d left them all behind. Now that he was gone, his regrets were at high tide. Maybe, just maybe, if he’d been the person his father had wanted him to be…

‘Master, I do not mean to interrupt but I believe I heard something from deeper in the cave.’ Sithis pinged a location to Trey’s left, indicating a passageway that let further in and twisted downwards. It was a lot further back than any of the group had ventured thus far.

Trey calmed himself down and wiped the tears from his face. He sniffled once and exhaled. He looked down to his white -old ring, twisted it around his finger twice and looked back up to the passage. “I didn’t hear anything. Are you sure Sithis? It may just be the storm. It’s pretty loud out there.”

‘I would not have mentioned it if I wasn’t nearly certain of it. I think we need to investigate, it would not be wise to stay here if hostiles are nearby.’ Sithis pinged the location again in Trey’s vision. Then he pinged it repeatedly in quick succession after Trey was unresponsive.

“ALRIGHT, alright, chill out my dude,” Trey threw up his hands and grinned. He was already in a better mood. “No need to freak the fuck out, Jesus Christ!”

Sithis let out a deep guttural laugh and they began to move forward. Trey crouched into a sneaking position when they were a few feet into the passage, and soon a brilliant green glowing moss could be seen lining the walls, ceiling and floor of the passageway. Pools of crystal clear water littered the ground with stalactites and stalagmites jutting about into the rooms. Trey had passed quite a ways in, with four large rooms cleared and was about to turn back, when he heard a shriek. Next thing he knew, a large boom sounded from the next room over. The stagnant pools shook nearby with the force and drops of water sprinkled down onto Trey’s head from the ceiling. Deep guttural growls were heard and the sounds of a brawl reached Trey’s ears.

Trey unsheathed his claws, mask, and sword before his sleek body crept its way forward to peer into the next area.

“NO! NO! GO BACK! VOR TEREK DON MONITH!” a small, hairless, sleek, pitch black monkey the size of a house cat was screaming at the top of its lungs with a strange high-pitched voice as it shot out a firebolt and scathed the side of its opponent. Trey recognized some of the language as Ancient Demon, but was unable to decipher the rest.

The opponent was a wolf creature that stood to be larger than a grizzly bear. It had short black fur with a yellow stripe down its snout and back, and it was devouring another one of the monkeys’ corpses. It threw up the corpse into the air, ignoring the blast of fire that grazed its shoulder and quickly snatched the corpse back, only to swallow the thing whole. Blood was strewn across the cavern floor, and one other of the great beasts lay dead near the center of the large cavern room. Green moss illuminated the scene with a multitude, potentially twenty or more, of dead hairless monkey-like creatures littering the ground. Their corpses were torn to shreds, with limbs or heads missing to lay in pools of their own fluids.

“STOP!” shrieked the monkey as it scrambled up the side of a wall and tried to fit itself into a small crevice. The wolf creature eyed its prey and snarled, its yellow eyes menacing. Blood dripped from its jaws and it slowly inched its way forward to pounce.

A chaos ball exploding into the brute’s musculature and Trey sent the giant wolf flying back to slam into a nearby cave wall. The impact caused it to yelp, and pieces of the wall broke off to fall onto it from the explosion. As it got up from the rubble, it glared at its new opponent with large fangs bared to growl and its right side completely shredded.

Trey’s fangs drew back to smile from ear to ear in response and he let out a low growl too. The wolf seemed confused at first, but it snapped out of it and soon charged the man with a howl. When it was within twenty feet, Trey brought his arm back and threw his sword as hard as he could to spin with a vertical motion and slam into the chest of the great beast, felling it to the ground.

It was time to see what his primary skill for the new ‘Aspect of the Devil: Mask’ could do. He’d noticed it described when he’d first acquired the evolution, but hadn’t been able to put it to the test just yet and had only used the attribute as either armor or a means to consume things faster.

Trey’s chest puffed out, streaks of cinder climbing from his chest up to his neck. He opened his mouth, and with his ‘Aspect of the Devil: Mask’ he let out a torrent of hellfire to bathe the charging animal in blood-red flames. The attack lasted for a couple seconds before Trey was forced to stop with a new cooldown timer appearing, and upon ending the attack he saw he had entirely burned the wolf to a crisp. It lay charred against the glowing red stone underneath and heat rose into the air to shimmer in waves. He raised an eyebrow, rather impressed with himself at the feat and having used his new ability for the first time and noticed that no mana had been consumed during the attack. The cave immediately behind the corpse was much the same. Trey walked forward, eyed his sword which was also glowing a hot red. He pursed his lips and wagged a finger at it.

“Yeah… remind me to be careful using that ability from now on.”

“You have gained XP.”

Trey turned and gave a hard stare towards the creature stuck in the crevice above him. It was struggling to get free, and had wedged itself into too tight of a space. It was becoming frantic as he approached and the efforts were doubled when he got near.

“You need some help?” asked Trey as he walked over to get a better look at the thing. It stopped wiggling around and looked back at him quizzically. It definitely wasn’t a monkey when he studied it up close like this, but he had never seen anything like it. Upon further examination he assumed the tiny thing was actually a small demon of some sort. It had two slits in its tiny black face for nostrils but no nose, pointy ears upon its bald shiny head, no fingernails but it did have pointy ends to its fingers that were similar to Trey’s own claws - only smaller. White glowing eyes with no pupils reminded Trey of the gargoyle from back at Drahst Pillar. The rest of its body was wedged between the rocks. Trying to identify it, Trey got the following prompt:

Name: Oblivion Imp

Race: Oblivion Imp, Lesser Demon

Class: N/A

Level: 3

HP: 89/94

MP: 28/130

SP: 41/66

DP: ???

“You you speak demon? How ugly human speak demon?” the sleek little black creature spouted.

“Hey!” exclaimed Trey as he pointed a finger at the creature. “The fuck is that!? I just saved your life, you puny little shit!”

“Me had it worked out and me win. No human help.” The tiny demon struggled to free itself again and huffed as it did. It was quite a sight to see and Trey could tell that Sithis was very amused.

Another five minutes passed where Trey stood with folded arms, staring up at the little shit a couple feet above him. “You sure you don’t want help?”

The demon huffed loudly and gave another few attempts at pulling itself out of the crevice before squealing in rage and pounding the rock with its tiny fists. Eventually it gave up and slumped over to look down at the man. “Why you help me me?”

Trey shrugged and smiled, closed his eyes and looked down to shake his head before looking back up. “Well, I don’t know, I guess. You seemed like you needed help, so I helped. Pretty simple.”

The demon looked back at Trey quizzically. “Imps are are not liked. We we don’t have friends. You friend friend? Why. Me no powerful. Hellhounds eat us.” The Imp looked over at his comrades’ corpses. “Other imps gone. Me know not what do.”

Trey gave a sad smile. He reached up, being careful not to scare the imp, and with a reassuring smile pulled on the torso of the small creature. He could feel the tiny creature’s heartbeat pick up but the imp didn’t move to stop him. Eventually with a good amount of slow monotonous effort, Trey was able to dislodge it. Afterwards he slowly placed the creature on the ground in front of him.

The imp stood to its full height and was slightly larger than Trey had thought it to be at first, it was still the size of a house cat but maybe a very large one. The imp had a long black tail that was the length of the rest of its body, and was humanoid in form. It had no genitalia so Trey couldn’t tell if it was male or female.

The pitch-black little imp tilted its head and looked up to Trey before quickly scurrying up Trey’s leg to eventually sit on his shoulder, and stared him in the face. Trey let the imp do so without moving aside, looking back at the small creature.

It was kind of cute.

“What’s your name?” asked Trey curiously.

The imp scratched its head before putting its hand on Trey’s hair to feel it. “Me is me. No name.”

Trey pushed his lips to one side in thought. “What should I call you then?”

The imp didn’t respond but continued to play with Trey’s hair. Eventually it stopped and scurried down to reach the floor again and sit in front of him. “What you mean human?”

Trey bent down and sat on the floor in front of the creature. “Well, you said you don’t know what to do with the other imps being dead. I was thinking you could come with us if you’d like. And if you do, you’d need a name. It’d be easier to communicate with you that way.”

The imp seemed startled, and soon began running around in small circles as if pacing back and forth while trying to solve a problem. It eventually stopped back in its original position and patted the floor a couple of times. “Why why?”

The two looked at each other intently while Trey tried to figure out how the tiny thing could live in a place like this cave, but shaking his head while at a loss and figuring that this place was likely more livable than the outside world... he came back to reality.

“I mean… You don’t have a family right? Maybe we can be friends?” Trey smiled widely, leaning back on his arms and kicking his feet out to watch the smoldering corpse of the hellhound not far off. His sword was still over there, glowing a dull red and it would likely take time for it to cool down enough that he could touch it again.

The imp paused for a time and considered things again. It looked him over suspiciously and darted a glance at the corpses of his old comrades. For a brief second the imp looked seriously upset, then reached out a hand towards Trey as if to shake. “You you save me. Me grateful you. You take me me. Me show you great treasure if you be summoner, and you has ability. Treasure says so.”

Trey’s eyebrows raised at the word ‘treasure’ but he continued to sit silently until the little imp came up to Trey and lightly touched Trey’s hand with its own. Out of the air a prompt screen appeared.

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“Oblivion Imp wishes to make a pact with you, but requires the Warlock or Infernal Summoner class to do so. Based upon your actions and recent events, you have just qualified for the Infernal Summoner class: this class is a rare casting class that emphasizes the domination of demonic, fallen, and enslaved minions. The Infernal Summoner class is very smilar to the Warlock class, but lacks the personal damage bonuses in favor of multiple minions. Please see the following for maximum caps on abilities:

- Infernal Summoner

o 20 spells

o 1 sacred art

o 1 miracle

o Enables demonic, fallen, and enslaved class minions

Other classes previously offered are still available. If you wish to accept any of these classes please refer to your status page, select the class, and press ‘accept.’ Choosing a class will unlock skill trees that would otherwise be unavailable, and add additional stats or traits correlating with your choice. Otherwise you may remain as you are and choose at another time. Be warned, though classes are not permanent choices if you switch off your original class to pick another one it results in a reduction of total levels by half and results in a 1 month wait period prior to choosing the new class. So choose wisely.”

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Trey’s eyebrows raised at the prompt and he rubbed his chin, pleased with the new information. He looked at the imp and smirked as it waited expectantly for him to continue. Quickly pulling up his status page he scrolled over it. Coming down to the ‘classes’ section, he saw the following:

Class: None

Available Class Options: Dark Paladin, Warlock, Infernal Summoner

The basic details were repeated when he focused on each of the options again and the general gist of it all was that the Dark Paladin class would open up magics and skill trees related primarily to defense and buffs, the Warlock would focus primarily on damage output, while the infernal summoner was a focused pet class. It didn’t tell him anything beyond that and he wasn’t sure if picking Infernal Summoner would distract from damage output that he could dish out himself.

He put some serious thought into this and was certainly tempted by the most recent offer. But the more he went on with this experience beyond Earth, the more he was coming to believe this actually was some sort of fucked up death game just as the ‘All Spirit’ had announced. He’d played games on Earth that had summoner classes and usually the minions were rather weak, easily killed off by assassins and the like. Though the more he looked at this little guy the more his heart tugged at the strings.

Would taking the Warlock job benefit him more? He could still have the imp as a minion with that class too, and it stated that the Warlock job was heavily focused on personal damage output. However, the Infernal Summoner class would allow for many minions instead of just one.

He didn’t know which was better, but the idea of having minions was seriously appealing as he thought about it longer. So what if the games from back home had seriously weak versions of summoner classes? This wasn't anything like those games, so the comparison was ridiculous. It was settled, he wanted minions. That was that. This meant that Dark Paladin was out, and Trey took a random uninformed chance on which of the two other magic-based classes was the better option.

“Fuck it. I accept the class and the pact.” He dismissed his misgivings and promptly selected ‘Infernal Summoner’ from the list.

Hopefully he hadn't chosen wrong, but even if he had - he'd still be able to change classes later.