With a burst of wind above the canopy, Logan apparated into a divebomb onto the sleeping vaskt. While its eyes let it see foes when it was awake, they did little to aid it in hearing sounds from afar.

Drawing two daggers, Logan drove them into some of the centre eyes of the vaskt. Blood gushed up and across Logan’s clothing, the vaskt jumping in alert and hissing out in pain. Logan kicked off the head of the beast, flipped, and dove two more daggers into its other centre eyes before warping out.

Appearing atop a nearby tree, Logan saw the huge spider swings its massive legs around. Pelts of elemental energies hit the spider but seemingly were battered away from its thick limbs, similarly the bolts from Marcus were deflected.

Bringing an arm back, Logan had it wreathed in fire as he chanted, “Flame Shot”, before thrusting it forward and letting loose a stream of orange death at the spider. However, its sight gave it the information to dodge to the side and avoid the blast, even with how large it was.

The fiery burst was followed by chains of gold that erupted from the floor to grapple the vaskt’s hind legs. Wrapping around two, the spider was able to bring up the two closest and stomp onto the magical bindings, destroying them.

Jumping off the tree, Logan threw out two more salvos, only for the spider to hit them with its front legs. Its black skin shined against the heat and light, showing off its Iron Hide skill that made its legs akin to weapons or shields. The spells did no damage, but what was the cutoff for this defence?

Sliding across the ground, Logan flung his arms diagonally downwards and upwards in a cross-action twice, chanting, “Flame Skystrike”, four times as embers appeared in the sky and near the ground to try and hit a flanking spot on the spider. Sadly, with eight limbs, it was able to bash away the attempts.

In retaliation, the vaskt shook its body before jostling forwards to release countless hairs toward Logan. Warping to the canopies, Logan was just barely able to dodge most of the attack, while some still reached him through leaves and branches.

Loud thuds could be heard below as several trees were cut to shreds from the barrage, the hair piercing through several trunks. There was little hope that a Wall altered spell would grant much protection against that.

Following the ranged assault, the vaskt jumped skyward to meet Logan in the falling canopies. Logan twirled and landed his legs on the tips of the front two of the spider, though seeing two more reach around to him had the Spellthief warp away to the floor to escape a dangerous grapple.

A crash landing shook the muddy forest floor, but the team were more than able to keep their footing. A yellow light graced Logan’s back as Marcus cast a Heal from afar at his ally.

With a massive wave of its body, the vaskt made a sweeping bludgeon with three of its limbs, Logan ducking over the first two and flipping horizontally to dodge the third. With a mutter of, “Haste”, Logan’s body blurred with speed as he drew up his artefact blade, the frozen lord edge, and a Bowen dagger as he started to stab out.

With this speed, he could hit each spider leg that came at him, though he had to redirect its mass to the side as he was nowhere near its power. The vaskt had to sway its body more than usual, compensating for its central vision being impaired from Logan’s Dastardly Backstab skill making sure the eyes were blinded.

Each scratch dealt to those legs was another nick on its durability, or at least that’s what Logan hoped.

Keeping its attention, Logan was able to open up a weak point for Marcus as he caused a spike of earth to shoot upwards below its stomach, piercing deep into its abdomen.

It let out a low hiss as it shook all over, causing Logan to warp away before another torrent of hair cut the forest to smithereens. Marcus and the elementals took heavier hits than the Spellthief, even causing a few of them to dissipate before Marcus healed them back into existence.

“This’d be easier if we had someone with Severing Slash”, Logan cursed in his head.

That skill would certainly help, since as the name made clear, it was suited to severing parts from a target.

“Invisibility”, Logan called out as he leapt from his cover, his body blurring to nothingness.

Running across the messy grass floor, Logan flanked the vaskt, jumped up, and chanted, “Flame—”, but was cut off as the vaskt swung a leg upwards. Twirling in the air he avoided the strike but had to defer to a, “Shot”, instead of a Grasp.

With his hand still aimed at the vaskt, he spoke, “Air Blast”, pushing a burst of wind from his palm and sending him upwards to avoid another leg.

Shooting another burst he flew over the large spider and aimed for another, “Flame—”, redirecting his position with a blast of air from the other hand, “Shot”, to blast the spider once again.

Warping into his centre, Logan apparated on the ground as he became visible at the spider’s hind but warped again as the spider bashed a leg into the ground. Now airborne he shot another blast of Flame at the spider for it to block it with another leg.

Teleporting to the side he shot, redirected his body with a boost of air and shot between the legs that were battering attacks from above, landing a solid hit into its back.

With no more Air Blast charges left, Logan teleported a total of four more times, with a Flame Shot each, getting deflected by legs at each strike. This did allow some elemental attacks and bolts from afar to hit the vaskt, but they did little to damage it.

The vaskt was close to death though, and being preoccupied with its eyes and legs targeting Logan, Marcus was able to pull up his golden chains from the floor to wrap around four of the vaskt’s legs, immobilising half of its arsenal.

Pulling up, the spider was able to dislodge two of its legs, before another casting of Chain Guard pulled it back down.

“Flame Skystrike, Flame Second Skystrike”, Logan intoned, waving his arms diagonally as he created a small barrage of fire below the spider and a larger mass above as they both struck its body.

Landing on the floor with a slide, Logan looked up at the spider as its huge body crashed to the floor, smouldering and unmoving.

“Thanks for that assistance”, Logan shouted sincerely.

“Had to find an opening, sorry it took a bit”, Marcus shouted back as he and the elementals moved to the body.

Climbing atop the carcass, Logan pulled out his newly bought expert skinning knife to dig out the vaskt’s head. Inside, past the eyes, he found a large glowing red mass that hummed slightly after death. Cutting that out he obtained the vaskt eye nucleus, which on its own could be sold for 30 silver, bought for 60 and above.

Separating the legs from the body, Logan had a common nucleus and eight shoddy vaskt legs. Luck was not on his side for the quality of these components, but the nucleus didn’t care too much for its quality when making the potion.

“Got it all fine?”

“Yeah.”

“You warped around a lot, got enough left to take us back to Gauntlet?”

Logan thought for a second before replying, “Used my rings and signatures, but got enough spellforce to see me through.”

Out of the 28 MP, Logan had 11 left.

“Think we got enough time for you to make this potion of yours?”

“We’ll have to see”, Logan replied with a smile as he placed a hand on Marcus’s shoulder and dismissed his elementals.

Taking a stop at the G-Hall, Logan handed 3 gold to Marcus for his share. At this point, they were of a similar mind for splitting pay halfway. Passing the markets, Logan picked up the rest of the ingredients needed for the Identification potion.

With his elementals resummoned for Marcus to train against, Logan started to brew.

Several hours passed as the room was lit by Logan’s Light Ally. A vial shifted from green to red in the Spellthief’s hand. Eyes blinked within the liquid as if it were an ooze-type monster trying to escape.

Uncorking the lid, Logan downed it. A bubbling mass formed in his throat before long, itching it to no end. Flowing to his face, bumps formed and rolled around until reaching Logan’s eyes. Closing them instinctively, Logan saw red eyes staring at him within his eyelids, teeth morphing through the monstrous glare as they ate at his.

Blood gushed from his closed eyes, dripping across two more creases beneath them that were closer to his ears. Opening his eyes, Logan saw red for a few blinks before his vision cleared.

Red dots coloured the floorboards and gave Logan a hint of fear, but those fears washed away as he found no lasting issues from his “transformation”. A window floated at the side of his vision that confirmed the potion had enhanced his skill.

“No pain no gain”, Logan thought to himself as he sat back down.

Calling Marcus into his room, Logan explained the new skill progression and then utilized them. “Identify”, he mentally commanded, the creases beneath his eyes opening wide to show another set of green eyes with red sclera with small hexagonal black lines across them.

Logan’s mind had a jump of information, being able to see two copies at once reminded him of being drunk, if not for it settling a few seconds thereafter as if he were always able to do this.

Along with the normal Identification information, Logan was treated to Marcus’s current resistances and reductions.

Marcus flinched a little at seeing the new look of his friend but was sure there were no evil intentions behind those eyes.

“Looking ever more the Demon there, Logan”, Marcus chuckled.

“I’ll have to look into hiding these”, Logan replied as he went to touch the new eyes but stopped midway, blinking all four together, “If not just because they are unsettling, they let others know I am scanning them.”

“Can you use the normal skill still, without the vaskt eyes?”

Logan mentally commanded to not use his new skills before accessing Identification again, this time his second eyes stayed shut. Sadly it didn’t show Marcus’s new statistics, which Logan explained.

“I suppose monsters won’t care, but we do a lot of hunter work, it’d be useful against the higher-rank traitors”, Marcus calculated.

“Ain’t that the truth, I’ll ask my alchemist friend”, Logan replied as he double-checked Marcus’s status, “You hit rank 13 by the way”, he smiled.

Placing the bonus point yet again into Wisdom, the pair chatted and read for the rest of the night.

Waking to the day of the congress meeting, Logan went to rub his eyes, all four, before realising the creases had disappeared in the night. It must have been an effect of his Regeneration. The second eyes did rip open after all, it was a nice side-effect of his skills working together.

With the hidden secondary oculars, Logan would be able to secret away his breadth of skills, at least until he could find a way to hide them from people he wasn’t aiming to kill. For whatever vain ideals the Spellthief had, it would mean he didn’t have lines under his eyes at all times.

Reminding his allies, Logan summoned up his elementals and hired them out to adventurers so that they didn’t stagnate while he was away.

A typical congress session lasted between two to seven days, depending on the topics at hand and if any court sessions were required to find the legitimacy of claims. There was bound to be a half-day at least dedicated to the issues surrounding the Ice King. As a vote-submitter, Logan was invited to the counter of Armin Eventa.

Instead of his usual Spellthief Garb, Logan made sure to dress in clean robes and formal attire underneath. A long grey cloak with an estate design on the back, in the middle of which was the Eventa surname. Underneath was a black and white suit piece, similar to what he had to wear on Earth, just a bit more “old style” than he was used to.

Teleporting to the Eventa estate, Logan was greeted by Armin, his son Castore, and his wife, Orell. She was rather short, at least for this world, at around 5’ tall with a strip of black hair dangling down her back from a tied bun.

Climbing into a carriage, the four moved off to the royal sector of Gauntlet. Buildings got taller and more pristine, as did the guardsman and magic at hand to protect them. Several tall poles had stone sat within them that hummed every so often, Logan easily telling they were using Clean and Light Ally micks to make the sector even better to look at.

Exiting the carriage, the Eventa team walked up to the large congress hall, far bigger than any other building that Logan had seen thus far, outside of the royal castle. Now was the time for deep discussions about the events of the world.

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