Chương 67: Chapter 60 - Keep yourself hydrated

The walk home took some effort. The tequila and the blood loss had formed a coalition government, and their first joint policy was that walking straight was strictly prohibited. I reached my building with a quarter of the bottle left. Reasonably responsible of me. I stumbled through the door, and locked it behind myself as much as I could. With a bit of a struggle, I closed all the windows and the blinds. Now, some extra security. But who? Siegfried would be the best, but he cost too much mana.

Astarielle would never let me hear the end of being used for a guardian dog. Yushi would invite Cassandra over and find it hilarious. And worms were great, but not for this. Ashy! She popped into existence in a pink flash, mid-stretch, wearing an outfit that could technically be described as clothing.

"Nice! Nighttime summon! Are we fighting something? Please say we're fighting something cool!"

"Much better." I gestured at the room in general with the bottle.

"You get a guard duty."

"A guard duty? Against what?"

"An evil vampire lying bitch." I chuckled and picked up the crate with supplies for Yushi's shrine.

"I'll go to sleep, you turn into sword, switch to silver, and when the vampire comes in, you cut her in half." I stumbled, crashing onto the bed, clutching the crate. She narrowed her eyes.

"Is she scary? This sounds scary."

"Don't worry. You've got it." I kicked off my shoes, tucking myself into the bed.

"All right. No one gets past me!" She switched into the sword form, and turned to silver. She floated to me.

"But what if she's nice? What if she brings snacks? I love snacks."

"Then cut her in two and take them from her corpse." I closed my eyes, focusing on my soul chamber. My consciousness collapsed inwards, taking me to the soul chamber, together with the crate. I appeared in the old house. My mind cleared a bit as it wasn't in the drunken body anymore. I walked to the room with Yushi's bindings. I unwrapped the crate. Temple wax. Ofuda paper. A coil of purified shimenawa rope. A silver spirit bell. Three dried white chrysanthemums. A sealed jar of incense ash.

Everything that was supposed to be there. I pulled on my connection to Yushi, and started arranging the items around the shrine as the connection guided me to. Yushi materialized upside down in a puff of icy mist before I said a word, fan already spread.

"Ku ku ku... Damian-sama comes to Yushi in the dead of night, drunk, arms full of gifts. Yushi has read this manga. It ends in either marriage or murder."

"In my case, that type of story ends in murder." She went still. She swiftly righted herself, floated a slow circle around the pile, and for once, the fan came down. Her eyes went wide, moving from the rope to the bell to the flowers, like she was counting them over and over and the number kept coming out right.

"You brought everything. That pleases Yushi." I finished setting up the shrine. All looked good. The binding rune writing appeared around the shrine, revealing engraving slots. Yushi came with pre-selected quick summon, quick unsummon, decreased mana cost, decreased maintenance cost, and increased movement speed. Not bad. An advanced engraving spot appeared, too. This one was empty. I focused on it.

Three options popped up: Localized appearance: Assumes appearance appropriate for the given area Advanced haunting: Dramatically empowers the haunting ability Expert jump scares: Increases jump scare efficiency by 67 % Wow. These were all completely useless. I glanced at Yushi.

"Which upgrade do you want?"

"The third one. Nothing makes the heart beat like a good jump scare." Ha ha ha… no. I selected advanced haunting.

"Nice try." Yushi giggled.

"It was worthy of an attempt. I appreciate the upgrades, Damian-sama."

"Always a pleasure." I unsummoned her. I left her chamber and walked to Elsha's. The blood pool lay deathly still underneath her statue. I sat down and pulled up the system skill tree. Level thirty-six, so I had some points to spare. The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. With a breeze of a sweet scent, Elsha appeared behind me. She sat down, leaning against my side.

"Looking for the best skill to please me with?"

"I need to stop Cassandra from mind-controlling me. There has to be something on the skill tree to help me with that." She smiled, her horns almost poking into my face.

"That's pretty far. See at demonologist, level fifty node." I looked there. Demonic resistance: your magical resistance gains scaling by your highest stat. Cool, but I had nothing from that tree. And fifty was pretty damn far from thirty-six.

"There has to be something better," I said.

"Well, willpower gives magic resistance. And there's a level seventy node at anti-mage." I looked at that. Mind shell. Immune to all mind-affecting effects. Level seventy was even further.

"I can't spend my entire build just to resist Cassandra."

"See the enchanter level fifty and level sixty nodes." I checked them out. The first one made intelligence give double scaling to resist pierce. The second one turned immunity into a resist. I sighed.

"Cassandra has both of these. She's somewhere around level 95, and is stacking intelligence, so she has like 4000 of it." I rubbed my face with my palm. Okay, I wasn't resisting her mind-control. Not through the System.

"How do I stop her then? Also, how the Hell do you know her build?" A sweet chuckle escaped Elsha.

"Cassandra and I go way back. She was my apprentice back then. Back when she wasn't the lying, unfaithful, treacherous bitch that she is today. I've kept my tabs on her, but anyway, stack as much charisma as you can. The hotter she finds you, the less likely she's to kill you." Argh, fuck, I needed a new mentor. Someone sane. Someone less biased.

"And you didn't consider it important to mention anything of this to me when I started flirting with Cassandra?"

"I considered it important to tell you nothing. You would never go for it if you knew anything, so I made sure Astarielle or Ashy wouldn't accidentally tell you anything, even if they knew, which they don't. Also, endurance helps with blood generation, so it'll help you recover faster after she drinks you."

"Your advice is invaluable, Elsha."

"I know." She giggled, visibly pleased.

"Call me whenever you need life-altering advice. I am always happy to guide my apprentice." I glared at her from the corner of my eye.

"Is this about Cassandra and Hutriel?"

"She left me for him." She clicked her tongue.

"So, it's only just that you, my dearest apprentice, will avenge me and break them up. I will have the entire Hell celebrate for a week after the divorce papers get signed." She burst into pink petals, which vanished. Of course she had a personal angle to it. Ah, well. I had to go with my original build, and figure out how to handle Cassandra later. And no, I was not putting points into making myself more fun to drink from. Better blood regeneration meant she could drink more from me and more often.

Not a chance I would ever spend points on that. Now, I had enough points to take the level 35 Soulcarver passive, Inspiring presence, which increased all summon stats by half of my main stats, and to multiclass. The passive scaled from charisma, so I needed to stack that. Void mage was the best class for that. Not that I planned to take any active skills, but the level twenty passive was too good to pass up. I allocated all the skill points, and locked it in.

As I put a point into the Inspiring Presence passive, my vision shifted. I saw an army of monsters, of undead and kaiju and spirits that sieged a castle. I floated next to the blonde angel with six wings, who lounged on clouds in the army's center. Her voice spoke into my mind.

'Many mistake leadership for micromanagement. One does lead an army by telling the soldiers what to do. They know that. It's what one employs generals for. And the tacticians, the strategists, the advisors, the entire chain of command. Those are best left to do what they are good at. What one can do, and should do, is to participate. For nothing inspires the common soldiers like their highest leader sharing the battlefield with them.' The vision shifted back to reality.

I went over my build: Level 36 Unallocated stat points: 0 Unallocated skill points: 4 Strength: 10 Dexterity: 10 Endurance: 10 Intelligence: 10 Willpower: 95 Charisma: 371. 5 (482. 95 for effects) Speed: 30 Classes: Soulcarver (36) – Chain Re-summon, Advanced Engraving, Natural Commander (+ 30 % charisma for passive effects), Inspiring Presence (50 % of main stat granted to summons as all stats) Voidmage (20) – Infinite mastery (+ 50 % to main stat) Necromancer (5) – Endless Horde (Zero mana cost penalty for multiple summons) All right. Now, all my summons were going to get +241. 5 to all stats. That should make a ton of difference.

Even the worms should be pretty strong with over 240 strength, dexterity, endurance, and speed. At the end of the day, if I could kill Peace, free Sarah, and stop the artificial goddess, Mefista, from being created, it was going to be a success. That Cassandra had my balls in a vice was a cost I had to pay, for now. I slept through the night, and woke up with a bit of a headache. My skull throbbed on the standard tequila frequency.

And when I pushed myself up on one elbow, the room tilted a full second longer than any hangover had a right to. The ceiling fan, which I had never once turned on, now had a new accessory. Ashy hung tied up from it, hogtied with wrists and ankles behind her back with leather ropes, a ball gag in her mouth and a blindfold over her face. Well, Cassandra didn't bring snacks. I got up, my head lightly spinning at the move. A water bottle stood on my table. Really, she drank me twice per night?

I walked to Ashy, removed the blindfold and unlocked the ball gag.

"You all right?"

"No! I mean, yes! For now." She blushed, cheeks catching pink, and looked away.

"I tried to fight her. I really did. I swear! But she caught me with some invisible force juju and I couldn't move. I couldn't even speak!"

"It's all right." I loosened the ropes, and unsummoned her. I grabbed the water bottle and drank half of it in one go. Not because she told me to. But I did clearly need any blood regeneration I could get. Fuck. I took a shower, dressed up, picked up my phone, and fought the temptation to text Cassandra through the app. That was a safe way to communicate. But I was not pressing the Message my owner button. Not for this. Now, we were going to climb in two days from now. Until then, I had to spend absolutely no mana.

Also, I had to avoid Cassandra and Hutriel. So, I headed to the main mosque. People from the Sands frequented it as the main social gathering spot. And it felt like the last place Cassandra would enjoy walking into. As I was passing through the door, my phone buzzed. New notification from Cassandra's app:'Going to practice kneeling and bowing? An excellent choice <3' I put my phone on silent.