Chương 36: Chapter 20: I Got Many Skills

POV: The Dark Lord, Milo Miles I was sitting on the wooden floor, slumped against the wall of the hut, staring through the open bathroom door at the Mooncleaver propped inside. A while after Evelisse and her party left, I got the pings I was usually a little excited for. This time I opened the HUD with my stomach already turning. Terror Level 25. I could guess what it meant.

I had told Nyx everything from the clearing; the huge monster with a pair of scythes for arms, the headless body of a woman I had dragged out of some random village. Nyx did not blink.

"So? It's just one death," she had said. She had identified the thing too; a Mantis Beast, one of the more bloodthirsty creatures out here. It should not have shown up in this forest at all, which was suspicious. But it could track scent, she said, and once it had a familiar one, it would hunt down anything similar. For fun. So when the pings came in, I felt my stomach drop. My fear had turned real. A lot of people had probably died.

Maybe most of the faces I had seen the day I visited the village, including the man who had come at me with a pitchfork, were gone now. The least I could do was to bury Shauna in that same clearing, which I did. Nyx was in her room, mind-linked with Greg, reporting the saboteur business. That douche, I think Evelisse called him Ywain, was a bad sign. I did not expect another isekai'd human out here. It explained the strength, and how he had shrugged off attacks that should've floored him.

He was probably blessed with a genius-brain, high starting level, or a cheat skill. Knowing my luck, probably even all three. Then I remembered what he had said right before Nyx saved my frozen ass.

"My god and I will reform the world." In hindsight, he had been pretty chatty about it. Befitting a generic villain. Although, to be fair, all that taunting and monologuing had handed me free information. His god, huh. So, like, his version of Greg? And why does Lycora need reforming in the first place? Questions stacking on questions, and not one answer in sight. Then the door beside me opened.

Nyx looked around, found me slumped against the wall, looked at my face, and I could've sworn her expression softened, just slightly.

"Relax, pig-brained pacifist. It's all good. Terror Level went up," she said.

"Nyx. I told you. Someone died because of this. Probably a lot of someones, in that village, because of that monster."

"And I told you, that's what Dark Lords do." She stretched.

"Thanks to it, Greg won't be nagging me for the next few days."

"Well, but—""Stop being so fragile, Milo. Something good happened. Good for you, good for Lycora." She ticked it off on her fingers.

"A few deaths to keep the rest of the world breathing? That's a bargain. Plus, it saves me from getting fired." She really is a demon, I thought. Which didn't make her wrong since what she had said made sense, when you looked at the grand scheme of things. I sighed.

"What about the saboteur? Did Greg say anything?"

"He'll investigate. He's got a few guesses on who's behind it, but no proof, so he can't go pointing fingers."

"Did you tell him about the Mantis Beast too?"

"Yeah. He said he didn't send anything after Luke."

"Could a stray one have just wandered out here?"

"Odds are slim." She shrugged.

"Has to be someone else's handiwork. All we can do is wait on Greg. What's your Terror Level now?"

"Uh. Twenty-five?"

"Good." She cracked her knuckles.

"I was about to beat you up over the hut getting wrecked again." Why is that my fault? I thought. I made one hole. The other one's on you. You were the one wrestling Ywain in here. I was outside.

"Let's head out," she said.

"Time for an upgrade." We went outside. Nyx snapped her fingers, and the hut reshaped itself into something like a medieval cottage. Still a single floor, but a serious step up. There was even a chimney. She darted back inside, snapped again, and a sticker of her own face, chibi-style with a smug expression, popped into existence. She slapped it on a wall. Oh. So it's a sticker. Wondered how she printed it out.

"This room's mine," she said. I took the place in properly. A living room, now: a wooden table in the middle with three wooden chairs around, a fireplace across from it, a rug. Miles better than the bare box we had had before. The bathroom was still outside in its usual spot, Mooncleaver and all. Beside Nyx's room was another door. I opened it. Single bed, wardrobe, low cabinet. Then I opened Nyx's door. Double bed. Wardrobe. A window. Two low cabinets. Nearly twice the size of mine. … Whatever.

Fighting Nyx over the room was not a battle worth the bruises. This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. I headed back out. Luke was in her Cerberus form, asleep in the yard.

"What about Luke?" I asked.

"What about her?"

"She just stays outside? Like this?"

"Why not? She's a Cerberus, Milo. Not a house pet." Fair. I had figured that since she could take a human form, she could sleep indoors—Nyx did have that double bed going spare—but apparently not. Things were going fine, I supposed. From a Dark Lord's angle. Nicer house, higher Terror Level, more skills. Skills. I pulled up the skill window. SKILLS PASSIVE Mental Link, Intimidating Aura [Level Up], Flight, Affection Sight OFFENSIVE Sleep Gas, Telekinesis [Level Up], Sensory Distortion, New Skill Available!

DEFENSIVE Smokescreen, Purgatory Shield SUMMONS New Summon Available! A whole pile of new toys.

"Ugh, I'm hungry," came Nyx's voice from inside.

"Then send Luke to fetch food," I called back.

"Milly Village should've left some." She went out to do it, grumbling the whole way. I turned back to the skills. Now that I thought about it, I had never actually checked what Affection Sight did. Affection Sight When you look at someone, you can see their current affection status. … What? This changes the entire genre. We're a romcom now? Have we always been a romcom? If I'd found this sooner, I could've pointed it at Evelisse and read exactly how she felt. The whole plan would've been so much easier.

Not that it mattered now. I scrolled on. For a ten-level jump, the rest did not look like much. I genuinely could not work out how the system decided these unlocks. I looked at the new offensive skill. Infernal Flame Blasts purple flame onto the enemy until the user deems it sufficient. Only holy elements can cleanse it. Cooldown: 60 seconds. My first real offensive skill, and from the description, it was busted. Long cooldown or not, that might be enough to put down most non-holy enemies on its own.

Next, the new Summon. Honestly, I had been hoping for something broken on Luke's level. A hydra. A manticore. A dragon. Bonus points if it could also turn into a pretty girl. Skeleton Summons a skeleton that obeys instructions. That sounded… boring. Still, first summon I'd ever had, so a small spark of excitement won out. I gave it a go—raised my arm toward the dirt, pictured the skill, and a purple magic circle bloomed on the ground. A skeleton rose out of it, slow, and stood there. Utterly ordinary.

Like a science-class model, only whiter. I told it to dance. It did. It wobbled in place, limbs flailing in every direction at once. Right. I told it to go find firewood instead. I could've sworn it nodded before tromping off into the trees. Could I summon a second one? I tried. Nothing. One was the cap. I remembered Intimidating Aura and Telekinesis had changed too, so I pulled the window back up—both at Level 2, sure enough.

The descriptions did not say what was different, so I figured I would find out the hard way when it came up. I sat down on the ground.

"Uggh, I'm famished. What's taking Luke so long?" Nyx groaned, dropping onto the dirt beside me, knees drawn up to her chest. That was… new. Maybe the Terror Level bump had her in a good mood. I still couldn't shake the unease about the deaths. Directly or not, I was part of why they happened. However, a cheerful Nyx was a rare animal, and she hadn't exactly been generous with tutorials beyond telling me to go kill things. Now's the time for a few questions, even at the risk of a beating.

I used Affection Sight on her. Below her face, a single word floated. Annoyed. If she read as annoyed now, what had been her status when she was visibly furious with me? Hostile? Anyway, this was one of my few openings.

"Uh, Nyx. While we wait on the food, can I ask you a couple things?"

"Make it quick. I'm hungry." You can't even eat right now, I didn't say.

"Is there a way to look at the balance? Like, a balance chart for the whole world?"

"No. Greg handles that."

"Has a side ever tipped too far? I mean, if the Dark Lord were super competent, the world would be rubble in no time."

"That's somebody else's job. Greg just drops a person in. If the Hero's incompetent, it means the other one isn't doing their job, which is using the natives properly."

"There's another person?"

"Yeah. The god the people of Lycora worship. They call him Luminaryn." …Okay. So the local god is just another guy with a KPI.

"But this…god. Isn't he supposed to have been watching over Lycora for, I don't know, centuries?"

"Right. That's why the name sticks. Luminaryn. One person's responsible, but if they get sacked or quit, the next one takes the name." So it's a shared account, handed down. This world-balance stuff was clearly above my pay grade, and there was no reason for us to track it. Greg and whoever's logged into the Luminaryn account were running the show. I was lining up another question when Luke came back, and Nyx shot off me toward the food basket like she had been launched.

By coincidence, my skeleton trudged out of the trees right then, arms full of firewood.

"Ooh, your first summon, huh? Not a bad use for it, for a shallow brain like yours," Nyx said while looking through the content of the food baskets. I prepped the food. Of course it fell to me. Nyx just sat and announced what she wanted. Once my Terror Level got high enough, this power dynamic was getting renegotiated. For now, I made skewers off some wood. Same spread as yesterday; plenty of meat, fruit, some vegetables, a few waterskins.

"Hey, Nyx."

"Yeah?" she said around a piece of beef. She was oddly pleasant with good food in her.

"How do I go from here? I've terrorized, what, three villages? I can't keep leaning on the same handful nearby, right? But if I range too far, where am I even supposed to sleep? Out in the forest like some kind of homeless person?"

"Oh. Right. Didn't tell you about that." You don't tell me about anything, demon. She swallowed, picked up another skewer, chewed. This was taking a while.

"You'll need to do some traveling," she said at last. She snapped her fingers, and a parchment map blinked into existence. Then it dropped to the ground, because she was too busy gnawing meat to catch it.

"Pick it up, pig-brain." So. Adventure time?