It took three days for Zeke to completely recover from the battle against the crucified dwarf. It wasn’t that he had been terribly injured. Rather, the combination of exhaustion and the effects of so much corrosive mana running through him had left him almost completely unable to function. In a pinch, he could have brought some of his power to bear, but with what was coming, he knew he needed to be at the top of his game. So, he rested and healed, but he also worked diligently to implement his latest skill design.

And now, he was finished.

“If you’re doing this because of me, just know that it’s not necessary,” said Eveline. On the second day after the battle, she’d finally managed to project a visible representation of her body. It was misty and a little blurry, but other than that, she looked much the same as she had before the confrontation on the top floor of the Spear of Desolation – which was to say that she presented herself as a precocious-looking child wearing a simple, white robe reminiscent of a Greek toga. When Zeke had asked about the form, she’d merely said that it felt natural, and he’d dropped the subject. After all, he didn’t care what she looked like.

“So you say,” he responded, running his hand through his wet hair before leaning back against the smooth rock of the Crimson Spring. He was already healed, but the waters were still soothing enough that he was loathe to leave them behind. “No offense, but you’re not exactly an impartial source here. For all I know, you’ve been lying through your teeth the whole time.”

Of course, that wasn’t necessarily true. One thing that he’d discovered soon after she’d taken up residence in his mind was that, if he concentrated, he could sense her emotions. Her thoughts were still a mystery – unless she gave them voice, either mentally or aloud – but he felt reasonably certain that if she were outright lying, he would know. Minor deceptions were a different story altogether, though.

To distract himself from thoughts of his unwanted visitor, Zeke focused on his status. He’d looked at it a few times over the past couple of days, but he still found the act strangely calming.

Name

Ezekiel Blackwood

Class

Arcane Colossus

Level

40

Race

Cambion (F)

Attunement

Earth (E), Demon (E)

Alignment

Unchosen

Titles

n/a

Path

Force (F), Runecraft (F)

Strength (S+)

42

Agility (C)

20

Dexterity (B)

20

Endurance (S+)

40

Vitality (C)

12

Intelligence (A)

22

Wisdom (S)

24

Resistances

Fire

Ice

Water

Earth

Wind

Nature

Arcane

Poison

Disease

S+

D

E

S+

E

D

B

C

D

Since coming to Mal’canus, Zeke’s strength and endurance had exploded, climbing by ten points each. His intelligence and wisdom had experience lesser, but still impressive, growth as well. And the ten free points he’d gained, he had allocated into shoring up his weaknesses in agility, dexterity, and vitality. Zeke knew he would never keep up with someone who truly excelled in those areas, but with his own advantages, he felt he could handle anything an enemy might throw at him.

More importantly, gaining level forty had given him the ability to create a new skill. Unlike the first time, when the Framework had practically held his hand while creating [Colossal Legion], Zeke had been forced to do most of the work himself. Fortunately, that first experience functioned as great training, and he’d managed to create a design that he thought would do what he wanted it to do.

Even Eveline had helped a little. She was no runecrafter, but she was familiar enough with skill runes that she could steer him clear of some of the more dangerous pitfalls. Or maybe she’d simply conjured those issues from thin air so she could seem more valuable.

“I wouldn’t stoop to that level,” she said primly. “If I wanted you to screw everything up, I would just remain silent while you blundered your way into a situation you couldn’t overcome. But that’s not what I want. We’re linked, Ezekiel, and –”

He raised a hand, saying, “Enough. I don’t need to hear it again. For now, I’m choosing to accept that you’re not trying to kill me. That’s going to have to be enough.”

She sighed dramatically and tilted her little head to the ceiling. The cave which housed the Crimson Spring looked like a natural formation, so the ceiling was rough with jagged stone. The walls were similar, though the floors were subtly tiled. A few kobolds stood at attention nearby, waiting for Zeke to give voice to any need that may arise.

That situation presented a wholly different issue. The kobolds had gotten settled in well enough, with Silik leading the way and organizing the population. However, the lizard-like people revered Zeke to a degree that made him incredibly uncomfortable. He couldn’t even walk through the tower without an escort of legionnaires, the levels of which exceeded his by a significant margin.

“I had people once,” Eveline said, her voice uncharacteristically somber.

“What?”

“Before. It’s all…I don’t know. I don’t remember much from then,” she said. “But that was…the reason I ended up where I was had to do with me protecting my people. I can’t remember any of them, though. I don’t even know what they looked like. Demons aren’t known for self-sacrifice, you know. We’re too self-interested. Too focused on our own climb. Weaker demons are there to be dominated. Any protection offered by the powerful is transactional. But I gave up my freedom so my people could live. I know that in my heart. So, what does that say about me? What kind of demon would make such a choice?”

Zeke had no idea how to answer that question. He thought he knew Eveline – at least a little – but he certainly didn’t know her well enough to give her the answers she craved. She seemed to understand that, and a moment later, she disappeared. He could still feel her in his mind, but without the visual representation, it was easy to ignore her presence.

Which was good, because he had work to do.

With a sigh, Zeke climbed out of the pool and took a towel from one of the kobolds. Its claws had ripped a couple of holes in the cloth, but it was still a nice gesture. It probably would have been much easier to simply summon a towel from his spatial storage, but the kobold attendants insisted on being useful. And given that they couldn’t even leave the tower at present – the demonic atmosphere was lethal to them – letting them wait on him was the least onerous way to make them feel as if they were doing something.

After drying off, Zeke dressed himself in simple clothing and retreated to the teleporter that would take him to his residence. Once there, he quickly crossed the grounds and headed inside the manor, soon finding himself in the room he’d set aside for meditation. It was a bare space with blank walls, with only a single chair as decoration. Anything else might be a distraction.

He sat down and took a few minutes to clear his mind. Once, he’d made the error of trying to fiddle with skill runes while distracted, and that had resulted in a corrupted skill that had left him looking like a monster. He didn’t intend to ever make that mistake again. So, over the next few minutes, he focused on his breathing as he cleared his mind of extraneous thoughts.

Once that was done, Zeke embraced his runecrafting path and summoned his Will. With it flowing through him, he could see the skill he wanted to build. It was a complex thing of thousands of interconnected layers and mind-bending structure. However, with his Will suffusing his mind, he could see it all completely clearly. He’d prepared so well that actually creating the skill boiled down to simply fitting everything together in the proper order.

Of course, it was far more complicated than that. Even creating the glyphs and symbols that comprised the rune required a significant amount of concentration and Will, and holding them in place while he built the rest of the rune around each piece grew progressively more stressful the longer he held it together.

It also took far longer than that simplistic description suggested. There weren’t just thousands of glyphs. There were millions. And putting them all together in the proper order was the work of weeks, rather than hours. While he worked, Zeke was vaguely aware of the wave’s descent. Even in the tower, he could feel a subtle increase in the ambient energy, though it lacked the corrosive nature of demonic mana. Instead, the tower had purified and diluted it. Eveline assured Zeke that the tower was perfectly capable of enduring the wave, and he was inclined to believe her, if for no other reason than because he didn’t have much of a choice in the matter. The wave was inevitable, and there just wasn’t enough time to escape the demon realm before it fell. The only option was to put the Crimson Tower’s defenses to the test.

And it performed admirably well, as far as Zeke could discern.

At least it wasn’t flooded with crazed demons, which Zeke counted as a win. In any case, he couldn’t concern himself with something he didn’t control. Instead, he focused his entire mind on the task at hand. And slowly but surely, he built his new rune. Finally, three weeks after he’d begun, he completed the process.

Even though he’d expected it, the notification surprised him when it flashed across his mind.

Congratulations! You have constructed your second skill [Bulwark of the Triumvirate].

That certainly wasn’t the name he’d expected. In fact, he’d tried to build a simple name into the structure of the rune, but it seemed that the Framework didn’t approve of his lacking creativity. Still, he couldn’t say he disliked it, especially when he read the description:

[Bulwark of the Triumvirate] (E) – The mind is the last bastion of the self, and as such, it should be protected at all costs. Utilizing a trickle of three forms of mana, create a mental barrier to protect your mind from intrusion. Upgradeable.

“Congratulations,” said Eveline, obviously having read the description as well. “Did you intend to use all three forms of mana? Or was that the great Oppressor guiding your hand?”

“Little of both,” Zeke admitted. He’d hoped to utilize his twin attunements, but the addition of pure mana made a certain amount of sense. Some of that logic was based on how [Cambion’s Awakening] utilized unattuned mana, which might have been a bit of a leap. However, he still felt it was an accurate assessment.

“The Oppressor does love his angels,” she muttered. Then, before Zeke could protest that he was no angel, she said, “Go ahead. Let’s see if it works.”

Zeke nodded, then embraced the skill. A tiny surge of pure mana flowed into the rune, followed by a trickle that came from his connection to the earth. He was never truly cut off from his first attunement, but at times – like within the Spear of Desolation – it had been too weak of a flow to power his skills. However, the requirements for his newest skill were so low that even that thin connection was enough.

The same could be said for the demonic mana that flowed into him from the air, and a moment later, [Bulwark of the Triumvirate] activated for the very first time.

And Zeke felt nothing.

“Well, that was anticlimactic,” he said, mentally poking at the skill. It had erected an invisible cage around his mind, and when he touched it, he felt the trio of powers rushing through it. The earth attunement gave it structure. The demonic mana gave it power. And the pure mana tied it all together and provided stability. Without any one of them, it would collapse, but with all three, the cage functioned like a well-oiled machine.

And then he felt something pressing against it. At first, it was only a nudge, but the pressure quickly escalated until Zeke felt like some great behemoth was knocking on his door. [Bulwark of the Triumvirate] flared, dragging extra mana into the skill. It blazed in his mind, repelling the force. Suddenly, the pressure ceased, and Zeke was about to take a deep breath when something hammered into his defenses with unprecedented force.

Once.

Twice.

Three times. The mental bulwark held, but Zeke could feel it shake with every attack. More, it had begun to drag torrents of mana from the various sources, and he knew that, eventually, his pure mana would run dry. When that happened, the skill would collapse, and he would be defenseless against whatever had attacked him.

Over and over, the attacks unceasingly continued. Zeke gritted his teeth as he searched for his attacker, but he saw nothing. The wave was still ongoing, so it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility that something had –

“Let me in!” screamed Eveline, suddenly manifesting in front of his face. She looked ragged and battered, with rips and bruises all over her small torso. Her hair had been ripped out in chunks, and she looked more transparent than ever.

And she was missing everything below her waist.

Well, not everything. Her intestines hung free, practically dragging the ground, and illusory blood pooled beneath her.

“What the –”

“It ripped me in half!” she screamed. “Please! Let. Me. In!”

Each word was punctuated by another attack, but Zeke could feel them getting weaker. Eveline’s form flickered, and Zeke saw tears running down her cherubic cheeks. Suddenly, another form was there. A tall woman that could only be called a succubus. She had red skin, dainty horns, and a body – at least the top half of one – that, in any other situation, would have made Zeke look twice.

It might’ve been a leap of logic, but Zeke knew he was looking at Eveline’s true form.

And she was in clear agony. Pleadingly, she begged, “Please, Ezekiel…I don’t…I don’t want to die…”

In that moment, Zeke knew he held the demoness’s life in his hands. If he chose to maintain the skill, she would die. He knew it as well as she did. He could be free of her, then and there, and all it would cost was the death of someone who’d never done anything but help him. Sure, he knew she was a demon, and as such, trusting her was folly. However, that didn’t mean she deserved to die.

He'd killed hundreds, if not thousands, of demons in the past, but they’d all attacked him first. Or they’d killed others. Either way, he’d never killed anyone unprovoked. And the idea of doing so now, especially with someone who’d been his companion for quite some time, made him nauseous.

He pushed that aside.

If he let her live, he suspected that he would one day regret it. If he trusted her, she would probably betray him. Just like Abby.

But as he looked at Eveline slowly dissipating into motes of mana, Zeke couldn’t bring himself to kill her. Not in cold blood. He would regret doing that even more than if she betrayed his trust.

So, he dropped the skill.

Eveline fell to the floor, panting as her illusory body reformed.

“I thought you said I couldn’t keep you out,” Zeke said.

She glared at him, then replied, “I was clearly wrong. That…skill, it shouldn’t be possible.”

“Yeah. I seem to do the impossible a lot these days. What happened? Why did you look like you’d been torn in two?” he asked.

“Part of me is out here. Part is in there,” she said, weakly gesturing to his head. “When the barrier went up, I was…cut off from the rest of me.”

“I see. Is that going to happen every time I use the skill?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Not if I’m ready for it,” Eveline answered. She still hadn’t resumed her old appearance. Instead, she remained in her succubus form, wearing a simple, yet elegant black dress. Her feet were bare, and she wore no jewelry.

“Good. I don’t want to cut you in half again,” Zeke said. Then, he added, “I’m going to sleep for a little while. Then, when I get up, we’re heading back to the Eternal Realm.”