Chapter 950 - Inside of you there are two demons

Sofia felt a sharp pain as though the skull she just stabbed was her own. Her thoughts became muddled. Instincts that were not her own, like that of a feral beast, clawed at her sanity, reshaped her thoughts into gratuitous violence and bloodlust.

She felt it was not too bad, she already had to deal with similar intrusive thoughts with the [Avatar of Zeus], this was a lot more pronounced, but it could be toned off in the same way she was used to.

Managing to triumph over it first, she hugged Pareth from behind, who was still shaking uncontrollably, clearly fighting off against the same inner demons. She whispered into his ears.

“Focus on your body. Stay still. Let the thoughts flow, do not suppress them. Only stop your body from acting on them. Let emotions pass. They repeat. Let them become background noise. You cannot move. Feel your mana flowing as it normally does. The thoughts will die out.”

Pareth followed her guidance. After several minutes, his shaking finally receded, and Sofia felt great changes flowing through them both. Their joint specialization contorted, squirmed like a parasite fleeing from its host, now that the mental trial was done, physical agony followed as their blueprint slowly wriggled into shape.

When it finally ended twelve hours later, Pareth was lying on the bed, staring listlessly at the ceiling, while Sofia had rolled on the floor and gotten entangled in a now shredded carpet.

Her vision blurry, Sofia checked the new line that had appeared at the very end of her first specialisation.

[Eclipse Skeleton]:

…

When fighting together, Pareth and the Saintomancer are [Astrally Aligned].

[Astrally Aligned]:

Phase through and are immune to each other’s attacks.

Can tap into each other’s mana and stamina.

Certain transformation states are shared.

Nice.

Sofia passed out.

It took them both a full day to recover, Bookie watching over them like he was the actual adult in the room.

Still a bit tired, Sofia and Pareth finally got to really check out the skill, sitting on the torn remains of the carpet.

“I would say it was worth this whole ordeal. There are a lot of good things in these few words.”

Pareth nodded, seeming quite impressed.

“We’re going to need to test the limits of ‘fighting together’. Being able to attack through each other is quite practical. If you’re in front of me and someone teleports behind you can just strike back toward me and get them. You won’t get hindered by my other spells either which is really nice. And now you can death-hug someone on the stop for me to bolt them. No need to get protection from my attacks anymore at all.”

Pareth made a few gestures in response.

“The graveyard Nymphs pulling you in battle, you mean? Good question. We will have to try, but I guess it should still work? It would be strange for them to be categorised as an attack. I’m assuming I could still reshape your bones as well. I can right now, but I don’t think the effect is active currently.”

Eager to find out, Sofia and Pareth directly moved to Zangdar to have a quiet place to test things, while Bookie followed them just to go check up on Rem.

The first thing was the range and activation. It was as simple as getting mentally in a fighting mindset and being in range of one another. In this case after some testing, said range was 365 meters, which almost certainly just meant within Sofia’s field aura, the same range as [Runelord].

They could still touch each other, but as written in the skill, attacks would just pass through each other, as though hitting nothing. Sofia’s explosive bolts could pierce through armor and bones without triggering and continue their flight into the void, and his sword could cut through a bone pole behind her without harming her at all. It also worked for the other, non-damaging spells, like Sofia being excluded from [Gravity well]’s pull, or the graveyard nymphs being unable to grab onto Pareth. After some testing, it was possible to counteract that at the expense of added focus to make the spell actually connect.

The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

They also confirmed that second order effects from the skills were treated the same as the main skill to a rather forgiving extent, Pareth being unaffected by the explosive bolts’ explosion, shockwave and heat.

They flew back up toward the gardens, having conducted the tests just under Zangdar to avoid collateral damage.

“It’s a pretty nice feeling tapping into an undead’s infinite stamina. I can just ignore the stat now, and you can also… Well not ignore mana, but you could afford to learn much more expensive spells that you currently can, my mana still gets spent fast now, but even just by the next filter, it will start to start to hit the critical mass where I have really too much, I think.”

While Pareth seemed to generally agree with the sentiment that he could afford more costly spells in the future, he still had to put a hand on Sofia’s shoulder and shake his head at her thinking she would have more than enough by the next filter. More than enough to supply him without impacting her much was a given, but for her own use? He struggled to believe that.

Sofia raised an eyebrow and ignored him.

“And lastly… The transformation thing. I don’t think your draconic shapeshifting works, since you’re downsized but I’m still the same. Do we try my demon form?”

Pareth shrugged.

As Sofia morphed, Pareth changed with her. Demonic flesh grew on his bones, tendons, muscles, horns, scales. A hole carved through his chest, Pareth looked like a genuine Apostle of Sorrow. A masculine, massive and muscular variant of Sofia’s own, more svelte and aerodynamic demon form.

“Holy fuck, you’re huge.”

Pareth looked at his own clawed hands, opening and closing them with some awkwardness. It wasn’t his first time in an actual body, having lived that in the forbidden moon’s toybox, but it still felt a bit awkward, especially with the added tail thicker than his already huge arms.

“How do you feel? Stronger?” Sofia asked.

Pareth was uncertain. He had to summon his sword and swing it a few times to come to a conclusion. He was stronger, faster and more reactive, Sofia also noticed that his mana absorption from the air was a bit better than usual. In short, he inherited the Demon of Sorrow’s physique. But it stopped there, when they checked for the demonic spells, he did not have any of them.

“Hey at least now you have a face. A fucked up demon face like mine, but that’s a first!”

Pareth tried to make some kind of facial expression, but on the demon face it was unreadable even for Sofia who shared similar features.

“Well you tried. Still can’t speak either, right?”

Pareth opened his mouth. No sounds came out.

“It was worth a try.”

Returning to her human form, Sofia watched Pareth’s demonic body melt into a mist of mana seeping back into his bones, and he was back to normal.

“Since it’s like this, I’m assuming I would get your racial benefit of temporarily growing from underworld water? You might even get some of the [Avatar of Zeus] effects, too. Nothing world changing but we can fight together better now. I’m glad I picked this. Oh! And I have some great news, as well! Concerning your skills.”

Pareth was immediately intrigued.

“Bookie talked things through with Nex, You will be getting class skills through keywords like me from now on!”

Pareth’s jaw opened slightly, he looked like he didn’t know whether to rejoice or be worried. His skull turning, he glanced at the Abereth currently hovering over Sofia’s bed.

“It will be fine! Oh, and also also! Because your system access was fucked up until now, and you couldn’t get skills, he said you were already scheduled to get five free skill fusion tickets, and that he was going to connect you to the Key so you can also use the titles! The slight caveats are that you can only use the titles I have unlocked, we cannot both use the same one, and we will be sharing the 24 hours title switch cooldown, but still! Apparently it should work as long as I have the dagger and you’re close enough or able to teleport to me. So almost always.”

Pareth seemed surprised that Nex was able to or willing to do that, but this time Sofia was the one shrugging. “The admin does admin things. I am really really not going to complain about us getting compensated for the system’s mess. Zerei is going to receive some compensation as well for the whole mandatory scribe update killing her thing, even if it ended well.”

Sofia had been surprised that Bookie had brought up the topic with Nex and that Nex had any understanding of the event at all, considering Aphenoreth was involved, but it seemed that Nex being on her case in particular had helped him dig up all sorts of issues.

Having an admin present really changes a lot, huh…

After trying out their new ability, Sofia and Pareth planned the coming weeks together. Now the goal was simple: level up as fast as possible to be stronger for the Phageid invasion.

They had a very short list of things to do, for once.

Pareth was going with Astelia on a shopping trip to collect all kinds of shields to include into his master shield; while Sofia was going to finish off the priming of Edrazeketh’s Gluttony ring, which only lacked two godly remains. The ring in itself they had decided was probably going to go to Pareth, who was starting to lack proper magical equipment, and could benefit both from the huge damage bonus and the ability to travel to and from divine realms, which Sofia could now already do through [Roaming free].

After that, they would level up, get familiarized with their new skills, finish handling some matters with Ser’Extra, enchant Sofia’s golden arm, review and maybe update Bookie’s page roaster, and finally head straight to the sixth trial.

Oh right, I still need to eat that parasite thing first… Uegh. Fine, I’ll do it…