Aqua Regalia [Monster Progression LitRPG]

A timeless moment passed in silent consideration.

The scroll felt disgusting to look at. It lay coiled on the ground like a pile of entrails. Funny that; it was meant to be a historical work, and it reminded Cas of a history lesson.

In ancient times, on Earth, it was customary – before the start of an important battle – to tear the intestines out of a goat and throw them on the ground. A seer would look at the pattern then formed and divine if the gods were in their favor.

A needlessly cruel act, when you consider that reading tea-leaves was available as an alternative method of charlatanerie.

But Cas was beginning to understand, now, why they sacrificed a goat.

War could be a terrifying thing. Death was the mother of all fears, after all. And, in the face of death, it was hard to believe that gods would save you on a whim.

A suitably valuable sacrifice was necessary; and, given all the things there were to sacrifice, what could be more valuable than life?

Surely, killing a living creature, splaying its guts out, surely that would capture fate's attention? Surely, offering up something so precious would tip the scales in your favor.

It had to.

After all, what was the alternative? That death was just random? That a brilliant, intelligent woman could be killed in her sleep because… what? Of a simple misunderstanding? Because of a mere lack of knowledge? No… no…

There had to be good reasons for everything.

Cas understood perfectly, now, why they'd sacrificed the goat.

That didn't mean she believed in it.

Cas was well aware that the universe was heartless, that humans had a tendency to find patterns where none existed, that this tendency was especially strong during tragedy…. That knowledge was coming back to bite her, now.

In a way, she was glad for it. The pain that she felt was well deserved.

Sacrificing goats wouldn't do anything. It was too late for that, now.

Cas felt the weighted end of the scroll slip from her hand. It landed in the dirt, but she was looking up at the night sky; she tried to measure the stars and let the terror of distance engulf her. She Conflagrated, and the agony became torturous. Her Conflagrated mind was more sensitive; it added layers to her misery. It was a heap of self-awareness, stacking feelings of such detail and poignancy that it was beyond her human mind to do anything but buckle under.

She felt tears streaming down her cheeks.

Sara – the snobbish, witty, intelligent, moody, secretive woman – who'd done so much for Cas and asked nothing in return...

Sara was dead, now.

Cas never even learned that little, pointless secret of hers -- why she had become a mercinary.

As Cas's mind grew, so did her capacity for insight. At the same time, her capacity for self deception diminished to nothingness.

Cas had tried. She had tried to prove herself wrong. She hated this conclusion, and had attacked it from every front, hacking it apart -- looking inside for any signs that might reveal it to be a sham.

But her Conflagrated mind was merciless to optimism, and it answered readily every argument she could muster.

If mind control was possible, why not just take control of both of us?

I was in the form of [Killer of Omens] at the time. I had no brain to control.

She tried disproving herself.

Why not have Sara kill me directly, then? Why go through all this?

Who knows what the limitations of mind control are. Sara was able to act out when sufficiently insulted. All we know is that it made her lie.

Why do this?

The target is the boy.

No. Cas clarified. Why do this to me. Why go through the trouble?

For fun.

An intensely painful feeling overcame Cas at that answer. Sheer malevolence built like nothing she'd ever felt before. It wanted release but Cas didn't let it go. She cherished it, because it made sense, because it hurt her, because it gave her the strength to do what needed to be done.

And then she felt something break inside of herself.

[Skill level increase: Aura 5 -> 6]

[Armor: +1]

[Con: +7]

[Str: +2]

[Wis: +2]

[Int: +3]

[Cha: +1]

[Magic Affinity: +0]

--

[Proficiency: Increased]

[Shroud of Fate: 9E+203]

Cas felt herself take a deep breath, her first in minutes.

Yeah… Cas gathered. That tracked.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Cas held nothing back.

Her Conflagration reached a new peak of intensity; heart beats like cannon shots thundered in her ears; feet drove like falling anvils into the soft dirt, leaving impact prints like craters behind.

Cas ran effortlessly over the clear space, sprinting through the yardage in a wide arc that brought her to the back of the tent.

She could have run faster. She wanted to, but thinking ten steps ahead often meant taking a step back, and Cas's new mind could do that analysis on the fly.

So Cas went for the considered approach. She chose her vector carefully, striding silently around until the rear of the tent came into view. The tent blocked Aura sensing, and Cas couldn't see anything inside – but that worked both ways, and she could ambush the occupants.

Cas flew forward with abandon. Her dagger tore through the tent fabric. Her body followed it in a rushing dive, shooting through the tent in an eyeblink.

Cas had only guessed where Boore-Saa would be, but she had guessed correctly – her weapon shot forward like a bullet, but for a moment it hung like an eye-dropper over the demoness's most vital organ.

Boore-Saa finished her dodge before Cas had even entered the tent. The blade flashed over her shoulder, her body slipping out of Cas's tenuous tackle.

Cas shot through the other side of the tent, face dragging a through the dirt for several meters.

Cas landed, scrambled to turn around.

Boore-Saa was already standing, eyes wide like saucers. "What!?" she asked, "Also: Ho-"

Cas answered with another dagger-lunge. Boore-Saa side-stepped fast enough that her body blurred. Cas tore back through the tent which, by now, was a pile of tatters and rope.

As Cas shot through the collapsing structure, she spared a glance at Sara's body.

Her conflagrated mind snatched every detail of that flashing instant. Sara was alive!

Sara was indeed alive, and awake, and very much confused as she roused up, hopping to a stand, her liner wrapped around her waist like a potato-sack. She looked around, eventually finding Cas at the end of another face-trench.

"Cas!?" She yelled with some disappointment.

"SAAARAAAAA!"

Cas twisted out of the dirt, burning with the greatest jubilation she'd ever felt.

And that was no exaggeration. This was the happiest Cas had felt, ever, period. It felt so good that her body even felt lighter, noticeably lighter in fact.

[Skill level increase Aura 6 -> 7]

[Armor: +2]

[Movement: +1]

[Con: +9]

[Str: +1]

[Wis: +2]

[Int: +3]

[Cha: +1]

[Magic Affinity: +0]

[Proficiency: Increased]

[Shroud of Fate: 9E+208]

But none of that mattered now! Sara was alive. The burning weight of shame vanished like fog in the light of Sara's beautiful, wonderful, still alive face.

Meanwhile, Sara's beautiful, wonderful face looked over Cas with an expression that was hardly readable through the steel-plated sleeping mask which covered the upper portion of her face. Her voice carried the disappointment across, however: "Cas! What do you think you're doing?"

"Sara!" Cas pleaded, leaping up into a low crouch. "No time to ask questions, but please hurry. We need to kill her right now, she's controlling your mind!"

Cas pointed Boore-Saa, who held her hands up like Sara's stare was a loaded pistol.

"Sara!" Boore-Saa explained. "Help me! The other human's gone crazy!"

Sara, trampling over Cas's most fervent expectations, didn't immediately pounce on Boore-Saa. Instead, she looked over at her with that unreadable, flat plate which covered her eyes. She seemed to be considering their arguments, and by the pace of the silence it seemed she was liking the sound of Boore-Saa's more. Although, Cas was able to sense some resistance in Sara's attitude. Obviously, she was fighting a losing battle against the mental coercion set upon her by that demonic witch!

Cas didn't wait to see what she'd do after, already in a head-long rush to stab at Boore-Saa.

Boore-Saa screamed and ran away, and Cas pursued, her own yells of frustration fading with distance as they disappeared into the forest.

Sara looked around at her surroundings. Quickly remembering, she lifted a hand to cast a bubble of silence over Kesel's tent behind her. Turning in a series of potato-sack hops, Sara saw that she had managed to cast the bubble of silence perfectly over the boy's tent, just a few inches shy of the boy himself, who was standing in the moon-light, looking upon the scene with shocked eyes.

Sara sighed the most futile of sighs.

"Idiots."

A fortunate overgrowth of trees presented a barrier to Boore-Saa's retreat. It slowed her down just enough for Cas to catch up and miss repeatedly with her blade, stabbing her dagger through air and wood and stone whenever the demoness evaded.

Cas was no longer heartbroken, but she was filled with terrible wrath.

'Mind control my friend will you? Try and kill her will you!' She performed another over-committed thrust, lodging her weapon hilt-deep in an ancient oak. A knot in the wood caught the blade, and it delayed Cas's retrieval of it enough that Boore-Saa managed to get a firm grasp on Cas's wrist.

"Just wait!" She pleaded.

Cas flicked the blade to her off hand. Shifting her feet, she struck forward, unraveling her entire body like a viper. The warped figure of her blade screamed past Boore-Saa, just deadly inches away from grazing the demoness's cheek.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Like this, they danced in mortal combat, blade against claw, wit matching wit, as Cas engaged in terrible, heroic combat with the monster of all her fears…

At least, that's how it felt to Cas in the moment.

Truth be told, seen from a higher camera angle, the fight kind of sucked.

Cas's attacks were so telegraphed and amateurish that Boore-Saa was always ten steps ahead, and Boore-Saa was so much faster that she didn't even need to be.

This, along with Cas's tireless constitution, turned the contest into a never-ending game of miss-the-pinăta, on Cas's part. Eventually she found herself letting out screams of frustration with every dagger stab. She was hardly bothering to aim, anymore.

Boore-Saa ducked her towering frame under a high slash, dancing back two steps so that the next lunge just barely lacked the range to reach her throat.

"My, you are keeping up rather well," she teased, having regained some of her bravado. "I imagine you're using Conflagration to maintain even this level of speed. I do wonder how long you'll be able to keep that up, though," she taunted with a smug look.

Cas answered very slowly, and very dryly. "Four days."

The smile quickly wiped itself from the demonesses face and – further comment – she turned around and ran.

This time, her escape route was better picked, and Cas found herself steadily losing ground. Within minutes, she was a mile ahead and nearly out of sight.

Cas melted, bounding out of her own body on darting wings.

[Transformation: Killer of Omens]

[Mass: -106]

[Armor: -17]
[Movement: +71]

[Con: +0]
[Str: -30]

[Wis: -29]
[Int: -34]
[Cha: +61]

The limit on her flight mass was higher, now, Cas noticed, surging up on powerful wingbeats powered by a jolly aura. Her body felt lighter despite the gain in weight. She easily managed to carry her dagger, and even her clothes, in a tight bundle in the core of her body. Her boots, she sadly had to abandon with the rest of the dead weight.

Cas rose into the air, dimming her aura signature into nothingness.

Her conflagration canceled itself with the transformation. She was calmer, now, soaring at incredible speeds with hardly a wing-flap.

Cas observed as the demoness tore through the forest. She was following a flat game trail that cut a straight line through the woods.

That was good for speed, but bad for predictability.

Racing forward, Cas overtook the demoness, flying several miles ahead and swooping down to an inviting bend in the road. She landed like a chemical reaction, leaf litter, detritus and even a few bushes fell prey to her caustic nature.

Taking up detritus, shrubbery, and some unfortunate ground beetles who had burrowed in the wrong place, she consumed everything, watching her mass rise until it hit that magic limit that read "250".

Carefully, she tried to create the ant acid she needed.

[Transmutation Failed]
[Alchemy 101 at Insufficient level to break Plant-Animal barrier]

[Minimum Required Level: 30]

Cas rolled her crystal eye. Figures.

No matter.

She tensed herself, and her mass coalesced into a tall sphere. Something flashed; a human body appeared in the warbling mass, floating there in a curled position.

Immediately, it dissolved into mush an instant after being born.

Cas was surprised at how easily she managed the task, feeling almost nothing at using her body so disposably.

But, there was little room in her heart for surprise at the moment. She still had the demon to consider. Besides, worthy goals needed a little self sacrifice.

The materials a human body provided weren't ideal, but Cas found them easier to work with as she created her little weapon.

A compact sphere wrapped with muscles and a hardened shell lay at the edge of the road. Inside, a dense atmosphere of hot acid raged against the confines which – just for now – kept it at bay.

Cas extricated twenty pounds of herself from the caustic solution.

Greedily, she searched for more detritus to use, to create more acid bombs with.

[Mass limit reached].

The message played as she attempted to take in more leaf-litter.

Cas looked back at the explosive slime clone she'd created.

Did the mass limit include her clones as well?

After ten miles, Boore-Saa's sprint turned into more of a casual jog.

Occasionally, she looked over her shoulder for any familiar aura signatures. It was just as she checked her back like that that, from the front:

Cas, fully human, leapt out of the tree line with a scream and a dream.

—

And truly, it was a far-fetched dream, to think that she could land a hit on Boore-Saa, even with all the surprise in the world.

Boore-Saa leaned back from the flying blade, watching it pass like the minute hand of a clock. Cas had, again, over extended heself. Would she ever learn? Boore-Saa hopped to a ready stance as Cas landed with her feet out of position.

She's here!
She's not faster than us.
Probably flew.

Boore-Saa's third thought remembered Cas had displayed that ability during their last combat.

Cas, sliding in the dirt and scrambling to get into something resembling a steady stance, did something unexpected.

Sold earth smeared like wet clay under the force of Cas's superpowered leaps, and she found herself constantly unsteady whenever she tried anything too extravagant.

Still, she was adapting.

Feeling her feet skate out in front of her, Cas caught herself on a hand, throwing her dagger blade backward.

Boore-Saa stepped aside of that,, running straight into the path of Cas's tackle. Cas gripped hard around the demon's torso, trying to bring keep her on the ground or at least in position as her slime clone saw them come into view and….

Boomf!

A wall of air slammed everything. A sudden, dense cloud of fog billowed into place, streaming over them like a full body shot of wind pellets. The toxic gas streamed over skin and hair and clothes, condensing into caustic droplets wherever it ran against a solid object.

Cas, in the midst of this, eyes shut, breath held… felt some light tingling at the edges of her skin. The teargas felt like an ocean mist as it caressed against her. Daring to open her eyes, Cas noticed that the leaf-litter was discoloring, turning black underneath the torment of the chemical burns. But, as for how the gas was affecting Cas… nothing.

Boore-Saa, meanwhile, experienced it as less than nothing. She threw Cas off, slamming her up against a tree top, and continued her retreat.

Boore-Saa redoubled her pace, both of body and mind.

She can still fly.
She's probably going to do that again.
Four days of this?
Why is she so mad at me, anyway?

The next ambush was expected, and Cas had apparently given up on the dagger play. Boore-Saa ran into a clearing and four, concentrated streams of poison sprayed at her from opposing corners.

These streams liquid and boiling hot. One of them – presumably under Cas's direct control – even managed to aim directly into Boore-Saa's eyes.

Boore-Saa wiped it away, not even bothering to dodge as she looked out for actual threats. Seeing none, she crossed the clearing and ran away.

This continued for several more iterations, things getting more predictable with each subsequent ambush. Although, credit to her, Cas had managed to surprise Boore-Saa once, as she jumped out of a puddle of muck and… missed with her dagger again. Old habits, and all that.

Several miles passed like this, and Boore-Saa, though unharmed, was beginning to tire of this marathon.

Cas jumped out holding a wooden spear. The tip of it held some caustic liquid which smelled like poison.

Boore-Saa let the flurry of rushing thrusts pass by her.

Dodge right, dodge left, step back.

Clearing exit is to the left, make her go right.
Why is she so mad at me?

Boore-Saa feinted right, and Cas followed the bait. She tried to look at Cas's face for any hint. The girl seemed truly angry about something.

Duck, step back, rush forward.
Clearing exit is half-blocked, drive her back and switch positions.
She said something about mind control earlier.

Boore-Saa caught the spear haft and lashed out a kick, catching Cas in the sternum, hitting hard enough to lift the girl off her feet, driving the wind from her sails.

Cas hunched over breathless, stumbling back a half-step. That was all Boore-Saa needed, and she smoothly made her escape.

Now without the minor distraction of combat, Boore Saa's thoughts were left unburdened for more strategic matters such as:

Seriously, why is she so mad at me?

And the separate tracks worked rather beautifully together, over the next few minutes, to consider all the evidence and exhaust all possibilities. She even conflagrated.

Eventually, the three tracks converged into an ecological disaster of a conclusion.

Just in time, too, as Boore-Saa came to sire of the next ambush.

Except, this time, it wasn't an ambush.

Cas was standing out in the open for once, looking at Boore-Saa with a dark and vengeful expression. Her clothes were a blanched mess of mud stains and stress tears. Quite the look. Though, Boore-Saa had to admit, she had chosen quite a beautiful location for what appeared to be their final stand off.

It was an open clearing, with high three tops rimming the open sky and a fresh layer of leaf-litter that covered the entire floor, turning the moonlight brilliant as a plaid patchwork of colors refracted into Boore-Saa's camera flash eyes and magically enhanced dark vision.

Boore-Saa's four thoughts had catalogued Cas's fighting style over the past few miles. Invariably, the scale of Cas's bombs and poison sprays diminished whenever she was in human form. Perhaps a total mass limit of some sort? Or maybe she couldn't split her attention as well. Whatever the reason, Boore-Saa didn't pay as much attention to her surroundings approached the human.

"Hello." Boore-Saa smiled cautiously. "I… understand how you must be feeling at the moment. I would like to apologize sincerely, for any distress I may have caused."

Cas didn't respond.

"However," the demon continued. "I have to ask that you stop attacking me. I've sworn not to harm or act against you, but I'm not one to put up with abuse," speaking with patent exasperation.

"Oh?" Cas flipped out her dagger like a switchblade. "What are you going to do about it?"

Boore-Saa held up a hand painted with fire. "The same thing I did the last time we fought, except hotter."

Cas laughed. "What happened to that 'not harming me' nonsense?"

"You seem able to handle it," Boore-Saa noted. "I'm not against hobbling you until I can get away.".

Maybe she could talk some sense into the girl once she'd burned her down to size. She loved talking down to humans, after all, a two foot tall slime would do just as well.

Still, something of her worry returned, once she noticed that Cas – instead of expressing any worry at the sight of the fire – actually smiled and rushed forward.

So far, not one of Cas's attacks had come anywhere close to harming the demon.

Acid clouds barely stung. Poison sprays did nothing. She was severely outmatched in a physical contest, and – through it all – her mass limit stood as a stalwart road-block to any potential of progress. It was obvious that Cas needed more, but there was only so much carnage to be had from 200 pounds worth of acid.

Then she came upon an idea, back from her time in the village.

Fire powder was a common sight in any apothecaries hut, and it was particularly prevalent in Korrivenna's. At first glance, it was unassuming: a light, dry powder with an earthy smell. It felt like flour in the hand. The catch was in the name, however. She remembered the searing heat -- singing her from several dozen yards away -- when Korivenna lit a kiln with it.

It was created by drying the sap of the Jinjbl root… a rare and sun-shy plant which was hard to come by in a desert, and would be impossible to find here – thousands of miles beyond its home range.

As rare and out of reach as the Jinjibl plant was, however, it was – in the end – a plant. It was made of plant parts, had plant biology, and it managed to synthesize the flammable sap using those basic ingredients.

None of those ingredients were hard to come by in a forest cluttered with leaf litter.

And Cas had learned all the plant's secrets long ago.

Moreover, her stuff – unconcerned with needing to create a metabolically useful sap – was pure powder. It was light and airy, and it filtered into the air like pollen whenever she dumped a batch of it onto the ground.

That was the second advantage of fire powder.

Because it was a solid, fire powder could be stored.

In that way, Cas could ignore her mass limit, because once the products she created were dumped overboard, she was free to take in more material, to create more powder.

And Cas's had spent the preceding ten minutes doing nothing else.

The clearing was absolutely caked in fire powder, tons of it, and Boore-Saa had walked right into the center of her little powder keg.

The demon's footsteps disturbed the carpet of leaf-cover Cas had raked over the clearing. Small wafts of powder floated up from the spaces between the leaves.

Boore-Saa might have noticed the artificial nature of this section of detritus, given enough time, but Cas didn't give her that time. She rushed her.

Dark clouds of fire-powder burst up behind her racing footsteps.

Apparently, that, the demoness noticed, and her eyes went wide, and she pulled back her flaming hand.

And then Cas did the most unexpected thing.

At the last moment, Cas dropped her blade, lunging forward, and gripped Boore-Saa's flaming wrist with both arms. Hugging the limb against her chest, Cas dropped her body, slamming the flaming hand into the ground.

Despite her confidence that she would survive, it was a moment of tense anticipation for Cas, as that flaming limb impacted into the powder, just inches from her face.

That moment seemed to last forever, but eternity quickly passed, and the clearing burned like the end of days.

The whole earth roared, and a chorus of flames sprang into up, filling the air with the senseless noise of some great monster.

The explosion hit Cas like a stiff summer breeze. She felt her hair blowing upward as the massive column of flame blew her by. The heat blew upward with enough intensity that she briefly rose into the air along with it. Intense currents swirled through the flame, lifting fresh powder from the forest floor to feed the ever growing conflagration, growing hotter and hotter, screaming louder and louder until…

The flame burned away, and Cas fell a few inches onto glowing ash.

She was screaming, she realized this only when her coughing forced her to stop, as clouds of hot charcoal wafted up around her.

Her hands formed a death grip on Boore-Saa's wrist, holding on to the demoness for dear life, refusing to release the one stable thing in a burning universe. The solid ground felt suddenly comforting underneath her chest, as if her the whole earth were a supportive freind.

Boore-Saa was hunched over Cas's prone figure, looking down at her with a mirthful expression, the sort that her older sister used whenever she'd tricked Cas into believing something ridiculous. Besides this ill concealed mirth, the demoness was otherwise unaffected.

Taking a deep breath as fresh oxygen bore down on cool winds, Cas looked at her self and realized that she was similarly unscathed.

She hadn't healed. Rather, the flames hadn't affected her in the first place. Even her clothes were fine beyond some singed cuffs and a hole in one of her socks. The fire hadn't even felt all that hot.

What?

Just then, a series of rapid footsteps intruded on the clearing from the rear.

Wrenching her neck, Cas saw Sara running with a panicked look on her face.

"Cas!" she screamed, looking at the scene with relieved exhasperation.

"Sara!"

The sight of the woman reminded Cas of her original mission, and she quickly rushed forward, head-butting straight into the invisible surface of an air-shield.

The face of the air-shield resisted her progress towards the demon.

Cas turned her aura hostile, and the air-shield broke, and a thousand psi exploded in her face. Cas launched back, skittering across the ash, coming to a collapse at Sara's feet.

Cas sat up, rubbing her head. Strange, the air shield had hurt more than bouncing across the ground.

"Isn't rock supposed to be harder than air?" she asked through a temporary concussion.

"If only either were as hard as your head," Came Sara's fervent reply. Cas looked up to see the woman glaring down at her. "Try that again, and I won't be so kind."

Cas glared down helplessly. "You're still under her control."

"I'm not being mind-controlled you…you incorrigible buffoon!"

Sara looked almost guilty at using such words; certainly, such extreme of language had been enough to get Cas's attention.

"But," Cas denied, "but the scroll."

"You mean this scroll?" Sara held up the roll in her hand, letting it unfurl and encasing it in her aura. As the aura lit up the parchment, a crystal eye embedded in the spine of the scroll glowed, and words flowed across the parchment like ink over water. Even some very detailed drawings appeared amidst the shelves of paragraphs.

A demon was pictured, bowing graciously to a human king in the presence of a noble assemblage.

The same demon was pictured, in dramatic posture, standing aside with shame faced restraint as the king slew an arch demon general.

Another dramatized scene followed, of the demon attending the King's funeral, standing in shadow as the procession of attendants stood around the linen wrapped body.

"Oh…" Cas said. "It's a magic scroll."

"Yes?" Sara said obviously. "And It's not a cheap item, Cas. I don't appreciate you throwing it in the dirt like you're playing horse shoes. And what's all this about attacking Boore-Saa? Something about mind control you said? Did you even pay attention at all…"

Sara's voice fell to the background, as Cas felt the weight of embarrassment fall over her senses.

Slowly, she turned back.

She feared that Boore-Saa had already run away, but a small part of her also hoped she'd never have to face the demon again.

That small part of her was majorly disappointed as Boore-Saa appeared in her sights.

The demoness was still standing in the same place, spectating with some pleasure Cas's 'talking too'.

Cas remembered Boore-Saa's words of last night.

–

"Ha!" Boore-Saa laughed suddenly for reasons Cas couldn't understand. "You were Conflagrating when you came up with that idea, weren't you? Admit it? You know ideas can become crazy if you do it too much?"

...

"Also: opinion: Cas, I think you're too skeptical"

–

In particular, she wondered if Boore-Saa wasn't right on that last count.

After all, this was the fourth time in Cas's life that overt skepticism had led to a pyrotechnic disaster, and the largest so far.

Cas wondered, also, if demons accepted cash payments as apologies. Certainly, the clown girl had been willing too.