Chương 49: [1.49] The Bouncing Terror (Part 2)

Gelic tore down from the sky in a rampage, skewering the first Malignant disguised as a pile of refuse with an icicle. She expected to stop there, maybe have Flutter activate, maybe take some reduced impact damage. What Gelic did not expect was for Multi-Bounce to continue. After the Stab and Plunge of Airstrike ended, back up she went. But her work wasn't done, still three more of the buggers to go, so she quickly triggered the skills once more. Airstrike, Airstrike, Airstrike! [Airstrike Lv. 3, Plunge Lv. 3, Jump Good Lv. 3] [Might, Creativity, Competence increased] [Balletic, Destruction Attunement notably increased] [4 Malignants defeated. Gained 71 Essence] Must have been pretty low level if that's all she got, but what was to be expected of literal trash? Her instincts and senses immediately kicked in again, leading her on once more. [Malignant Tracker Lv. 2, Hunting Nose Lv. 2] [Lucidity notably increased] [Gnostic Attunement notably increased] Unexpectedly, the next stop was a familiar place, the same lakeside where she'd done trash pickup. She was already getting haunting flashbacks just by sight. Well, the shore wasn't actually her destination, but the water itself. She actually had to do a flyby and double-back bounce to find the Malignants, since they were so well-disguised. They were actually in the lake, floating on the top of the water, looking a little like lilypads.

Did Malignants somewhat adapt to their environment? She'd seen plenty that didn't look like they belonged to anything or anywhere, but first the trashbags, and now the water plants? Maybe the boxer thing at the construction site meant to mimic the strong workers, and the rocks at the playground were similar in shape to the playground equipment where they hid, and to, well, all the rocks around.

It was an interesting theory; not a super helpful one at the moment, but something that would hopefully help her identify them in the future. For these plant-like floaty things bobbing in the water, Airstrike would undoubtedly subdue them, as well. There were only three, and Scrying Eye pegged them at Lv. 4 each, but that still was mildly worrying, just because she didn't know how Multi-Bounce would react to the water. Would she still ricochet back up into the air as she just had with the trash bags?

But if it didn't go that way, splish splash, she'd be taking a bath. And she had already bathed that morning after her usual Order-mandated exercise routine. Ever since realizing that her true Puffball self was the source of her stinkiness, she'd been making sure to keep her Imp form squeaky clean. Since she was just a ball of hair, she'd taken to baths instead of showers, where she just sort of rotated around like a rotisserie chicken in the treated water.

It was a lot easier than trying to reach every inch of her rotund self with her slightly stubby arms. Point was, lake water would likely make her need a third bath afterward, and that was just too many damn baths. So she decided to try out a new tactic. Frostbite! After slowing herself down, Gelic jumped over the lake in a single bound. While moving over the arc, small spheres of spikey ice formed around her and fell down onto the Malignants like a rain of hail.

They were similar to caltrops in both design and inspiration, and thanks to the wetness of their beings, stuck to the monsters like burrs. This was a trick she couldn't do everywhere, not just because of the lack of water making the ice stick. If she left poisonous foot-impaling spikes randomly in the city, Gelic could accidentally wind up severely infecting passing pedestrians with her poison, making them either very weak, or killing them outright. She didn't want to be responsible for a plague.

Here, the water would melt the ice very quickly, which she couldn't count on elsewhere, especially in the tail end of winter. Maybe in the summer, she could spread her poison ice like pollen and not worry about the long-term implications. Yes, the ice would eventually lose its potency, but that took a while, from what she'd seen so far, especially as she got more max stacks of Toxic. [3 Malignants defeated. Gained 55 Essence] [Manifest Ice Lv. 3] [Toxic Imbuement Lv. 4] [Frostbite Lv. 3] [Might, Creativity, Malice, notably increased] [Glacial, Pestilence Attunement notably increased] This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it. Ehh, it was just three of them? She could have sworn there were more. But upon further inspection with Scrying Eye, thinking she'd missed some, the rest were just actual lilypads. Their camouflage had been very good, indeed. Which… wasn't that kinda pointless?

Normal humans couldn't see them at all, but Demons could use their special senses to peg them easily. Maybe it was just for Summoners and others with Magical Proficiency who didn't have a Bound buddy to go Malignant-hunting with. Her Malignant Tracker kicked in again, sort of. She instinctually knew that there were no more to hunt on the way to her destination, or even any in the entirety of Vulgrest.

Gelic bounced up high just to lay eyes on where the Skill was trying to direct her, but it was beyond what she could see, even high up in the air, well outside the city limits. Drat. While it was ultimately a good thing, meaning the city was well-protected and regularly culled of the infestation, it also meant that her plan of primarily levelling up through Malignant hunts was pretty much shot.

Sure, she could ask Tracker to let her know when there was a new one within Vulgrest and beat anyone else to the punch, but that would be a slow process. Assuming that there hadn't been another hunt the previous night, only seven new Malignants had appeared since then, just a few small packs per day. And they'd all been very low-leveled, not allowed to exist for long enough to become plump with Essence. That meant unless she went on some grand world extermination tour, it was not a reliable way of progressing.

Regrettably, it looked like a lot of Summoner partnerships were in her future, but she'd definitely ask Divining Ear to listen intently for more hunts, even if that took her to exotic places, the prospect of which was a little exciting, but mostly unnerving. Being forcibly taken to new cities had taken Angelica well outside of her comfort zone. Ever since graduating college, she'd well and truly embraced her hermit lifestyle, feeling safest and most relaxed in the confines of her tiny apartment.

Some would see it as a prison, but it was her haven. Even all this rejuvenated exploration of Vulgrest, the city she'd been born and raised in, was feeling like a fresh and unnerving experience. Everything was not quite how she remembered it. The fact that she was viewing it from above between giant bounces probably didn't help the perspective, and flying around it at high speed made it feel more like a playground than the place she lived. Maybe that was it. The city didn't really feel like home anymore.

Was that just because of her reclusion, or, as a Demon, was she starting to disassociate from human society? [Multi-Bounce Lv. 3] [Competence, Creativity increased] [Balletic Attunement increased] Well, as long as she could bounce above society, there was no need to fear or really interact with it. They were just meager humans, and she was a mighty Puffball Imp! Yeah, that didn't sound cool at all. Really, though, Angelica had genuinely started to accept what she'd become.

Being a Demon wasn't too bad, free from the rules and pressures imposed by her former species. Now she just had to be wary to not break any Demon laws, whatever those may be. And there was still the threat of judgment, how others would perceive her now, both her new kin and Summoners. It was a fresh start, at least, and she seemed to be making a decent impression, so far. Yet her mind still couldn't help but wonder and worry; what would her mother think? Angelica shook away the concern.

Her mother would surely never find out, never know about this side of her. The next time they met, she could just appear as her usual self, maybe even look like the ideal version of her that her mother was always picky about—perfect skin with no acne, smooth hair with no frizz, the things that were very hard to do anything about yet she constantly found herself judged for. Thinking on such matter made her want to continue her self-imposed ostracization.

But at the same time, Angelica had passed a cornerstone in her life, so maybe it wouldn't be so bad to reconnect once things had settled and she'd achieved stable income. Minor mental crisis resolved, she found that she had bounced her way to her destination. Thank goodness for Orders, or she definitely would have slammed into so many things while spacing out.

For the next part, while still under forced control by the Contract, she still wanted to be cognisant of what was happening just in case she needed to course-correct. It would be a soft landing this time, so help her Vissiem. When her big bounce had her hurling over Fioso's manor, Gelic cancelled Multi-Bounce and activated Plunge, sending her plummeting toward the ground even faster than standard falling.

She course-corrected slightly with Jump Good, since her previous angle of descent would have sent her into a bush. Then, just before the splat, Flutter kicked in, jerked her upward, and then let her down gently. It may not be as "soft" as she'd touted to herself, but she was unharmed. It would be a nice thing to have as a Combo Skill, but perhaps the DGS didn't consider basic survival strats to be Skill-worthy. [Contract Complete] [Summoner Rank: Initiate Lv. 12] Would it be a problem that she'd landed inside the gate this time, well within the radiating aura that was projecting over the grounds? The little Puffball had been given an open invitation, so intruding unannounced should be fine, right? It's not like she had Fioso or Diamen's phone numbers. Did the Demon butler, or most other Demons in general, even use phones, or was Gelic well ahead in the technical realm of Hell society? But it didn't matter, because her presence was noticed immediately.

"That was quite an entrance, Imp." Diamen was next to her a second later, as if he'd teleported to her side. Sneaky fellow. Either he was super fast, or such magics really did exist. Curse him for making her amazing bounciness feel inferior.

"I was thinking I'd need my mop to clean up the mess your corpse would make." So Demons left corpses, then? She figured they were more like Malignants, and just went poof. Otherwise, wouldn't there be a bunch of demonic bodies lying around unless there was some sort of diligent cleanup service? Or he could have just been using a figure of speech.

"The master is out, but he has instructed me to assist you any way I can. So what are you here for?" Gelic pointed up at the sky toward the emblem floating in the air that was emitting the odd haze that covered the entire estate.

"Runes."