I saw the huge monster approach in the dim light of the tunnel, its features appearing one after the other as it came inside the cone of light Elyra was projecting with her magic.
"I am low on mana, Sol," she said, preparing to fight nonetheless.
Vespera chuckled nervously. "Don't worry, angel, you're not the only one."
There was no pause or standoff. The monster did not stop to roar or screech at us, nor did it hesitate for a moment. It threw itself at Vespera, the demon ready to face the huge mass of chitin and ugly flesh that was as big as the whole tunnel. She became a blur of motion, dashing and dodging, slicing with her claws of darkness and deflecting blows that rained on her like hammer strikes.
It was quickly evident that this monster was in a whole other league compared to the smaller ones, though. Not only was it too big to properly dodge, making it impossible to circle around it, but it hit with so much strength that Vespera's arms began to shake after barely a couple of hits. She was tired, and her strength was fading quickly.
An opening. I saw her dash into the monster's range, weaving around its many legs that tried to skewer her with their reinforced tips. She dodged most of them, sliced a couple clean off, but some managed to get past her defenses. That's when the light disappeared for a moment, replaced by another source much closer to her. A shield: liquid glass crisscrossed with geometric lines and circles.
It lasted barely a second but it was enough to rebuff the attack and let the demon get out. She didn't, though, at least not before making the monster pay. I could feel her anger through the bond, and I imagined her saying, "How dare you almost hit me?" in her usual snappy tone, full of indignation.
She struck it right where it was most vulnerable, in the belly between armor plates, and a shower of dense blood covered her from head to toe. She dashed out, but the sleek fluid made her slip. Another shield caught her, but it flickered and died.
Behind me, Elyra fell to her knees, spent.
"Shit," I muttered.
The demon was on the ground, doing her best to right herself and failing. I dashed in, catching the monster's swipes with my arm, redirecting the savage strikes that gouged deep into my flesh. Meanwhile, I tried to push through the bond, recalling the sensation of mana flowing through it that we felt when we meditated together in the garden of the demolished house and then later when Vespera pushed her whole mana pool into my System skill.
Something clicked. Elyra gasped, surprise washing over us. I tried to urge her to act, and she did. Another shield appeared, her magic drawing deep from my limited mana pool. There wasn't much there to draw upon, unfortunately, but it did last long enough for me to turn around and catch two of the Skitterpede's many offending appendages with my bare hands.
I pulled. It was time to show this monster what a lopsided Str and Vit build could do. No, it was time to show myself what I could do. I was tired of watching from the sidelines.
The monster was huge. It was heavy. I have no idea how I managed to pull it off balance, but I did. It leaned forward, no doubt deciding to try to crush me, using my own momentum to kill me. I caught it, snapping its limbs.
Below me, Vespera looked up and grinned.
"My turn, spacer boy."
Wicked blades of darkness appeared as she too drew upon the bond to gather the last dregs of my mana. I let her, opening myself up to her in a way I never did before. I felt something change, but it was no time to dwell on it.
She must have felt it too, because the way she pulled from me changed and suddenly, she was not only fast but also strong. It was just a tiny moment, during which my legs almost buckled, but it allowed her to slice clean through the chitin she had failed to penetrate before. Then she was out, leaving a gash as long as the whole monster's body that spilled gooey yellow blood, viscera and severed body parts. Strength returned to me, and I pushed the monster away.
It was still alive, but unable to muster its strength to contest me, and it toppled over to the ground. It writhed and contorted itself, its death throes lasting longer than I thought they would with all the damage it had sustained. Behind me, the girls were both utterly spent.
I wasn't. My build was suited for fights of attrition and endurance. I walked over to the monster, and put it out of its misery.
You have defeated a level 41 [Skitterpede].
Class level up!
[Bound to the Fallen] Level 2 → 3
+30 Vit, +25 Str
"Wait a minute," I heard Vespera say between heaves of air. "What the heavens? No skills, no nothing? Spacer boy, this is not fair!"
"It is just like last time," Elyra replied. "It seems that we are left to fend for—"
You have found a way to share mana and attributes. Your bond has deepened.
+1 Class skill point.
Insufficient energy.
Vespera cursed. "Shit, it happened again. Use the slime cores, quick!"
I ran to the backpack, which had been thrown to the side right before the fight and now lay discarded on the ground like a deflated empty balloon. I thrust my hand inside and immediately consumed all the cores. The System window stopped blinking, but the error message remained.
Along with it, however, came a new feeling. "The System feels a core nearby," I said.
"Are you sure?" asked Elyra.
"Don't fuck with us, Sol."
"The Skitterpede," I said. "The big ones must have a core."
The demon threw herself at the dead monster, heedless of her injuries. She began to tear at the flesh, using what little mana she had regenerated to manifest a single blade of dark murkiness. It was thin and weak, but I felt her pull at my attributes to make up with Strength what she couldn't do with magic. Elyra soon joined her, and the sight of the angel covered in stinky monster blood, her head almost wholly inside the corpse while she dug with hurry, only her glassy wings poking out (and her perfect little butt) was so unusual it made me pause.
"I have it," she declared before I could pull her out and take her place.
She climbed out of the monster, dripping goo from her short auburn hair and even her wings, holding a large sphere aloft like a prize. Vespera patted her on the back.
"Good girl," she said.
Elyra blushed so hard she almost caught fire. She squirmed in place, the praise almost enough to break her. I felt it all through the bond, of course, as did Vespera. She smiled seductively.
"Well, someone likes being called a good girl~"
The angel squirmed again, her wings twitching. She was still dripping monster gunk. "Stop," she pleaded.
She was almost sad when Vespera actually did as asked. I filed that information away for later.
"Well, what are you waiting for?" the demon snapped at me, as if she hadn't been the one wasting time messing with Elyra. "Use the core!"
I glared at her long enough to crack her stern facade and then snatched the core. It was a rough gemstone that glowed with power, its color yellow-green.
Energy source [Skitterpede Soul Crystal - Level 41] detected.
Consume?
I pressed yes, and a new window appeared before me.
[Bound to the Fallen] Class Skills available:
Resonance Castling
Paradoxical Mending
Aspect Manifestation
I dismissed the window as soon as I was sure it wasn't going to vanish on me.
"I was still reading them!" Vespera complained.
"Later," I said. "You're injured. Come here."
Fishing a healing potion from the backpack, I literally forced the demon to drink it.
"Pweh," she hissed. "It tastes gross and… it burns!"
"That would be the potion sickness kicking in," I explained calmly.
"Why do my hands hurt twice as much, Sol?" she whined, slowly growing worried.
Elyra smirked. "That would be because you were a bad girl and punched rocks bare-handed."
"What's that got to do with this?"
"Sol healed your hands with a topical application of the potion, remember?"
Vespera inhaled. "Wipe that smug grin off your face, angel. You're not being a good girl yourself right now."
Elyra gasped, blushed, and fell silent.
"Vespera…" I said with a sigh. "Don't tease her so much."
She looked at me. I stared her down.
"What about your injuries?" she asked.
"All healed," I declared.
"But they were deep."
"High vitality. See?" I said as I showed her my arms. There were no traces, not even scars.
"The cuts weren't that deep, then."
"83 Vitality," I said.
"Damn," she replied.
Through this whole exchange, Elyra was looking at us dumbfounded. Then the demon broke into laughter, with me following soon after. The angel resisted for a few moments, but then finally succumbed to the emotions flowing through the bond, and we all shared a good laugh.
"Cm'here," the demon said, grabbing her and pulling her into a hug. A gooey one, since they were still covered in monster innards. "You are a good girl, Elyra."
She squirmed again. Still gooey. Yuck. They must have noticed my face or felt my disgust through the now deeper bond because they both turned towards me and grinned.
What followed was a chase that I lost on purpose (I swear) and that left all of us covered in a sticky mess we could only clean much later, when the girls had recovered enough mana to cast a full body spell with their respective magics. Good times.
"It really wasn't good girl behavior, Elyra," I said after we caught our breaths.
"But… Vespera said…" She looked at me with teary eyes. "Was I a bad girl, Sol?"
Her voice was pure honey but I knew it was laced with something else. Poison, no doubt. My eyes narrowed. "Where did you learn all these tricks? I swear up until yesterday you were just a pure little angel."
"Well," she said, her finger drawing little circles on my hand. It would have been rather sensual if not for the goo. "A pure little angel would never have gone down on you like I did last night—"
"Okay! Anyway!" I cut her off before she could get all worked up. I knew Vespera was thoroughly enjoying this, even encouraging it through the bond, and I wasn't going to give her the win so easily. "We leveled up, right? Do you two feel any different?"
Vespera was the first to reply, getting up and stretching her body. "I do, actually."
"Me too," Elyra followed. "I feel more powerful."
"Right?" the demon smirked. "But more powerful how?"
The angel hummed. "It is hard to say."
Snapping her fingers, she manifested a ball of raw magic. Order, light, purity. Vespera did the same. Chaos, darkness, corruption. They were bigger than the balls they manifested before, and the power they radiated was… deeper, for lack of a better word.
"I suppose we will need to experiment," Vespera concluded.
"We should also keep working on our bond," Elyra added.
The demon raised an eyebrow. "Oh?"
"Not for that. I mean, also, but it is not what I meant. Sol was offered skills because our bond deepened, was he not?"
"That's right," I said. "Which means that not only do we need to be mindful of always having cores in case we level up, but now, we also need to make sure we work on the bond before we level the class or we might lose a skill point."
"And class levels are not easy to come by, it seems," Vespera said. "I wonder what tier our class is. What do you think? A-tier? S-tier?"
There were little stars in her eyes. I chuckled at seeing her so worked up.
"Who knows?" I mused.
"I mean, that asshole Buck at the guild got a D-tier class and leveled it a few times in a single day! And he is a drunk who can barely stand! That would make our class at least A-tier, I say."
"Not only are you a troublemaker," Elyra muttered. "You are also megalomaniac."
Vespera grinned. "Not just a megalomaniac. I'm your megalomaniac."