Status: Sol Nightguard
General Level 1
[Bound to the Fallen] Level 2
Str: 35
Dex: 10
Vit: 40
Int: 10
Wis: 10
General Skills:
-
Class Skills:
-
“There you go, spacer boy,” Vespera said as Elyra helped me out of the hole in the ground. “Now you won’t die the moment someone looks too hard at you.”
The mismatch between my Strength and Dexterity almost made me faceplant into the ground when I propelled myself out of the hole way too fast, and was unable to catch myself. Elyra helped stabilize me while Vespera snickered.
“Don’t go flying into space, comet,” she said, winking at me.
Now I was the one blushing. Not my fault she was barely wearing anything, and I could see—
“I’m still salty I didn’t get any skills or stats,” she said all too quickly.
She had felt my emotions through the bond, I realized. She winked at me, then turned around and began swinging her arms around, jumping up and down and summoning her claws of darkness again.
“I do feel stronger, though…” she mused. “Do you feel it to, Elyra?”
The angel summoned her own energy and shot a beam of light towards the far end of the cave, before nodding. “I do feel it.”
“Nice, now… where is that—little shit!” Vespera cursed.
I reacted immediately, looking everywhere in search of a new threat. But then, when she continued, I realized that she was actually pissed off at the System.
“Why is my status like that? It can’t be!”
“What’s wrong?” I asked, dumbfounded.
While Vespera kept cursing, Elyra fiddled with her System windows. “Here, I should be able to use the bond to show it to you.”
Status: Elyra Nightguard
General Level —
[Bound to the Fallen] Level 2
“That’s it?” I asked.
Vespera snickered. “My question exactly.”
“It seems to be this way,” Elyra added with a shrug.
“So, we got screwed,” Vespera said venomously. “Even though we are Great Races again, all we get is this. No General Level and Skills, no Class Skills, and no stats.” She used her fingers to count off all the reasons she was annoyed at the System.
Elyra shook her head, which made the demon deflate.
“I’m not mad… I’m grateful, really. Especially towards you, spacer boy. I guess it’s not all bad. At least we do grow stronger when we level up the Class.”
“In the end, that is all that counts.” Elyra said. “We are not alone anymore, Vespera. We are together. We complement each other. Sol still has his levels, and I believe he will be offered General Skills again.”
Vespera huffed, a hint of annoyance returning. “But he didn’t get offered a Class Skill either.”
“The System mentioned a lack of energy, did it not?” the angel said calmly. “But, I believe it had a plan when it upgraded our bond and gave us our Class. How else would you explain the long time it spent thinking?”
“Pah,” Vespera grumbled.
She was acting annoyed, but I could see that she was visibly more relaxed now.
My stomach chose that moment to rumble audibly, making it known to all just how famished I was. As if on cue, Vespera’s stomach grumbled too, and she looked at the dead monsters all around. Elyra’s eyes widened.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“You cannot be thinking…” the angel began.
This time, however, instead of using the bond to complete her sentence, Vespera grinned. “Oh yes, I am. Can you make a fire with your light?”
It turned out that while she couldn’t make flames, she could still use her light to cook the monster. Sitting in the brightest corner of the cave, right below what few orange crystals still worked, she slowly user her light to heat up a flat rock while Vespera and I tried to figure out how to skin a Skitterpede.
The process was positively disgusting, but we were too hungry to care. Eventually, even Elyra stopped protesting, and when the smell of its sizzling flesh reached her nose her stomach rumbled loud enough for all of us to hear. We shared a good laugh, waiting for the monster to slowly cook and enjoying each other’s presence. Thanks to the bond, the silence was never oppressive, because we could all feel the others in a corner of our minds, without the need for words.
???
After eating, a blinking notification alerted me that I had gained a level. While strange, it was a pleasant surprise and I was in no position to complain. At least, until I noticed a certain lack of General Skill points.
General level up!
General Level 1 → 2
+1 to all stats.
Vespera laughed. “There goes your theory, angel! No skills.”
There was no anger in her voice, and a smile tugged at the corner of her lips, revealing the tips of her fangs. I almost lost myself in the sight. She saw my gaze, and grinned at me for a split second. Then she got up and started pacing, her tail swinging back and forth behind her. It was the first time I noticed it, and the sight was nothing short of hypnotic.
Meanwhile, she laughed while pretending to cry. “We are fucked, Sol! No skills for any of us? Are you for real?”
I thought about it, then shrugged. She made a face, and I grinned. “So what? My old world had no magic at all. No skills, no levels and no stats, Vespera. I’m used to it.”
“You are the only one who is, spacer boy.”
“I know. But trust me, we will be fine.”
She scoffed. “Your world was barbaric, that’s what.”
“Barbaric, yes,” I admitted. “But also incredibly advanced. Now, in the stories, people like me would use their knowledge to grow their magic by leaps and bound. That’s not realistic, of course. It’s not like I can show Elyra a wave equation and her light magic suddenly gets better. I don’t even remember what a wave equation looks like. I was just a hauler who liked to geek out on things from time to time. But… maybe, in time, we might find a way to use my old knowledge.”
“Knowledge, sure. Of barbarism,” Vespera teased.
I liked it when she teased me, and she knew it. But it didn’t mean I was unarmed.
“Speaks the demon who was trapped in a prison unable to die for fifteen thousand years,” I said.
“Well, well, well, you got me there. Good comeback.”
Elyra chuckled softly and then tried to hide it behind her hand, failing miserably. Vespera looked at her, mouth agape, before sighing. “Ah well, if even the angel laughs, then perhaps we are not so fucked after all. And who knows, maybe the System will cough something up if we entice it some more? Maybe with some power?”
After we were done eating, we decided that we deserved some rest. We had food and water—there was a stream nearby—and all the time in the world. We could take it easy. It was just us, alone and in a cave, but thanks to magic and stats it didn’t feel uncomfortable.
I sipped some of the lukewarm water we had boiled with Elyra’s light, held in a container of Vespera’s darkness, and thought that maybe access to cool water that was safe to drink might qualify as a reason to hurry out of these caves. Plus, bathing in the river was uncomfortable.
And Vespera was still mostly naked. She didn’t seem to mind, and I knew why.
“I guess we can say that biological functions have all resumed,” she said after seeing Elyra return from the river. She had scrubbed off most of the monster blood that had stuck to her skin, but her clothes were ruined.
Elyra wrinkled her nose, clearly bothered by that. “Yes, even the most bothersome ones.”
“If you need to go, angel, remember to go downstream. Don’t contaminate our water source.”
Elyra looked at Vespera for a long moment, and through the bond I could pinpoint the exact moment she understood what the demon had meant.
“I did not mean that!” she said.
We laughed while she stared at us with righteous anger.
“I was talking about hunger, and pain,” she explained in a hurry. “Well, there is also that, I guess. But it’s not all bad…”
She looked at me, blushed and then looked away. Right, I had forgotten that I was bare-chested. Too much of my mind was busy trying not to think about the fact that Vespera was more naked than I was.
“Bah,” Vespera snapped. “Angels, am I right? Just the sight of some chiseled abs is enough… actually, it’s not a bad sight at all. Was that the Green you talked about?”
I blinked. “What? My abs? No, I think it was the weeks of digging and lifting heavy stones, actually. And not having a lot to eat helped me shed some weight.”
“Well,” Vespera licked her lips. Then, in one fluid motion, she got up and pulled both me and Elyra up as well. “Come on, spacer man. If we stay here we are just going to get ambushed by monsters again. I can hear skittering everywhere.”
“Alright,” I said. I guess it was time to go, after all. “There is a tunnel where I felt some fresh air. It might lead back up towards the surface.”
“Good for me,” she said.
Elyra nodded, and we set off. The tunnel was dark and damp, but its slightly upwards slope gave us hope. Elyra’s wings and halo provided more than enough light to see, although Vespera was feeling left out and soon decided to help by making her horns and tail glow a deep red.
I felt it slap against the back of my knee with every step we took. Entirely on accident, according to the demon it was attached to, but I couldn’t help but look at it.
It moved hypnotically. Attached to the base of her spine, it was long and pitch black, thin and surprisingly nimble. Its surface had an almost oily texture that made me wonder how it would feel to the touch. My hands moved on their own, and I touched it without even realizing what I was doing. It was oddly cold, but also very soft and rubbery.
Vespera moaned softly when I put some more pressure on it, and she missed a step.
It made me realize what I was doing, and I let go immediately. The tail remained in the air, suspended as if unsure. Perhaps disappointed that I had let go. A moment later it dropped down towards the ground in a fluid wave motion. I could see by how it twitched that Vespera was quite worked up, and through the bond I felt a kind of heat and desire that almost overwhelmed me.
“I didn’t tell you to stop, you know…” she whispered in my ear.
[3 soft nsfw paragraphs are available on and ]
…
…
…
…
She fell into step with Elyra, catching up with her and pretending nothing had happened.
Already I was planning how to get my revenge. Already, I knew that I would fail. I was a new man compared to the old Sol the space hauler, but my level was still way too low to handle someone like Vespera. And she knew it.
