Chương 5: Chapter 4 - Select Your Skill, NOW

The System notifications floated in front of me like a red banner in front of a bull. For as long as I had used the System, I had saved up both stat and skill points and then allocated a batch of them at once. That was how I had nine floating skill points in the first place. With a murderous glare, I allocated the five stat points into Endurance. Next screen popped up. [PLEASE CHOOSE YOUR MAIN CLASS] [BERSERKER x PATH OF THE DEVIL x VOID MAGE] [THE UNCHOSEN CLASSES WILL BE FROZEN] What did it mean, frozen?

I had plans with the whole multiclass thing. I absolutely planned to go to 50 at both berserker and devil, and take the capstone passives there. Once again, I tried to dismiss or postpone it. To no avail. Great, because I couldn't drive with this floating in front of my eyes. I tried to close and reopen my eyes. I saw the screens even with eyes closed. All right, fine, you junky piece of shit, give me a preview of the classes. Nothing. I needed to see what the classes had in them.

I mostly remembered the old skill tree, but with how bricked this update was, I wasn't sure the new skills matched the old ones. But I wasn't getting any preview. Well, fuck. The next time I got system intervention off cooldown, I was going to give the administrator a piece of my mind about this update. Actually, I used to have a system agent. I tried to focus on him. Nothing. Obviously. Fucking piece of shit! I kicked a car parked next to me. It flipped, rolled over twice, and crashed into the burning building.

Fine. Path of the devil had the worst type of bullshit, so I selected it. [PLEASE CHOOSE YOUR NEXT SKILL] [CURSE IMMUNITY x CORRUPTIVE BREATH x SOUL ADAPTATION] At least the skills had a little question mark for preview. I focused on that. Passive: Curse immunity Cost: None Activation: Automatic Effect: Immunity to curses and hostile buffs.

Active skill: CORRUPTIVE BREATH Costs: 700, 000 mana Activation: 3x per day Effect: Breathe out a cone of lingering, corruptive breath, that twists and demonifies all targets in the area of effect. Active skill: Soul Adaptation Cost: None Activation: 12 hour ritual Effect: Adapt a target soul to a new conditional circumstance. I glowered at the options. I had never seen a curse in my life, or anyone afflicted by one, so that was completely useless. Next up, seven hundred thousand mana cost. Cute.

I had five, and blood magic let me pay in life instead, but my life pool was barely over a million, and I wasn't spending over half of it on a single spell, so I was never casting this. Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site. And finally, a 12 hour ritual to adapt a target soul to… what the fuck was a conditional circumstance? It didn't have any further hints or explanations. It was probably some Void or spiritual planes related bullshit.

It might even be overpowered in the right circumstances, but I had no idea what they would be. With a sigh, I selected Curse Immunity. [NEW PASSIVE OBTAINED: CURSE IMMUNITY] [SPECIAL STATUS OBTAINED: AURA OF INSTABILITY] The screens vanished. Aura of… what? I didn't pick that. More importantly, where were my nine floating skill points? I drew an even sharper breath. If I didn't get them on the update, and also not upon a level up, then how was I getting to them?

Knowing damn well what the answer was, I got into my car. I texted V,'Location's fully swept. And on fire. Needs a cleanup. I'm sending over their shipping logs. They should be enough to track their source.'

'Excellent. I will submit the evidence for review, and send the cleanup crew forthwith.' I frowned. Who used forthwith in a DM? Well, that was going to answer itself, eventually. Regretting I didn't take any booze from the bar, I drove home with the windows down, letting the cold air keep me awake. The Delaware countryside rolled past, empty fields and bare trees under a grey sky. It looked the same as always. Nothing had changed out here.

The kaiju attacks happened in coastal cities, where the monsters could emerge from the deep and find something worth destroying. Out here, it was just silence and farmland. And apparently, an occasional rogue kaiju. I pulled up to the cottage around nine. Kallisto's metal house loomed beside it, all sharp angles and inhuman architecture. The ground shook as I got out of the car, a deep rumble that I felt in my teeth. She was still drilling. I parked at the usual spot near the cottage, and entered her house.

The cellar now had an elevator, which I called, and used to go what felt like thirty floors straight downwards. Once again, she stood by the edge of the platform next to the hole with a pad of paper in her hands. The shaft dropped into darkness, the walls smooth as glass where her power had carved through rock and soil and whatever else lay beneath. Another anime played on the screen that the metal arm kept carrying around her.

"You're back," she said without looking up.

"How did the tryouts go?"

"I passed."

"Nice. So, you'll be a soldier now?" She wrote something on her paper. From what I understood, she wrote in infernal runes, which weren't exactly legible for me.

"I've finally found an underground river, so now I just need to drill deep enough to get to some magma. Problem is that we seem to be at a place with no volcanic activity, so I'll have to dig deeper than I planned to."

"Yeah, something like a soldier." I smiled, though that she didn't even look at me not-so-subtly told me how excited she was about it.

"Isn't the digging dangerous?"

"Shouldn't be. I'll just dig about a sixty miles deep hole. Or a bit more until I get close enough to the magma. Then, I'll build the facility, which I'll need to blueprint still. Then, I'll make a path for the river to supply it with water, which will evaporate by the magma's heat, and spin the turbines that will generate me all the electricity I need. I'll just direct the steam to where the river used to lead, so it will still go there."

"That's a really big project."

"Yes. At least they've got time to make more anime episodes for me to watch while I work on this." I watched her for a moment. She was completely absorbed, her attention focused on whatever calculations she was running in her head. I might as well have been furniture.

"I need to move into the training barracks tomorrow," I said.

"I came back to pack."

"Mm-hmm."

"It's in Philadelphia. I'll be there for a while."

"That's nice." She still hadn't looked up. I stood there for another few seconds, waiting for something. I didn't know what. Some acknowledgment that I was leaving, maybe. Some indication that it mattered. Nothing came.

"Okay," I said.

"I'll be upstairs."

"Have fun." I took the elevator back up, walked the stairs up to the bedroom and started packing. It didn't take long. I packed five suits, four lower tier ones and one high-end one. I folded them into a suitcase along with shirts, ties, and the few casual clothes I'd accumulated. The next part was going to be trickier. From underneath the bed, I pulled out the case with my glaive, the actual weapon I used for serious combat. With the case, the whole thing weighted over two hundred and fifty pounds.

That was always fun to move around. Finally, I found my gauntlets, and put them into the suit I was going to wear tomorrow. I carried everything down to my car. I had to put down the back seats to fit the glaive case in. With everything prepared, I ordered a takeout. Only two places delivered to here, so I had them on a quick dial, and all their drivers knew the path to me by memory by now. I ordered two pizzas, Mexicana for me and Neapoli for Kallisto.

While I knew she didn't need to eat, I also knew that she sometimes did when the mood struck her to. I ate the pizza alone, after it arrived, took a shower, and went to sleep. I woke up alone in the bed. Not that Kallisto didn't stop by though. She woke me up in the middle of the night, we had sex, and I fell asleep again. No sign of her here now, only the eaten Neapoli pizza was evidence that she passed through. I wasn't even sure what to think about it. I mean, I knew what happened.

Some decent hentai rolled up on her playlist, she got horny, and came to play with her favorite flesh dildo, me. Once she got the edge off, she returned to the drilling, because that was the number one priority. I took another shower, put on a fresh suit, and went to check on Kallisto. I found her in the same position. She was still staring at her pad, just about thirty floors deeper into the ground. A different anime played on the screen, but the rumbling had stopped.

She was probably recalculating something in her head.

"I'm heading out," I said.

"Okay."

"I'll text you when I get settled."

"Sure." I waited another moment. She finally glanced up, her eyes meeting mine for the first time since I'd arrived.

"What?" she asked.

"Ready to hand over your soul?"

"No… nothing. Just... I'll see you around." She smiled, that perfect angelic smile that could make anyone's heart skip a beat.

"Don't die. You're more entertaining when you struggle."

"I'll try." I took the elevator back up, got into my car, and drove back to Philadelphia.