NOVEL NEXT Chapter 398 - Annoying Contingency
Messages delivered and having reached a new city, Jason was in a good position. Except for one little detail. In all of the questioning and the various methods the city had used to confirm his words, they of course tripped a few wards and the cult found out about it. Now, the city wasn't going to face any major backlash from that besides what was already going to happen.
The diviners, scryers, and the various arcanists who took a look aren't going to have any problems either. After all, just like the cultists had some nice wards up, so too did the city. In fact, Jason wasn't going to have too much trouble either as that protection spilled over onto him to a degree.
However, that didn't mean complete protection. As long as he was in the city, things weren't going to happen. Once far enough from the city, though? A contingency powered by a bit more blood than he would prefer to think about was going to bring down the fury of the infinite abyss on him.
And by fury, what that actually means is a System regulated amount of demons will be dumped on his head. That is why it cost so much blood to set up. The cult basically had to plan for the worst and pumped in enough to summon one of the Marilith's direct subordinates.
This meant if the contingency hooked onto someone strong enough, that demon would have been brought in to deal with them. For Jason, though? The System would likely limit things to a few of the more leveled Quasits or a ton of Dretchs. Even a Vrock would be much too high a level, at least from the System's perspective. Sure, it would likely be quite a few Quasits being called in, but when comparing the cost to summon something in the sixth break to a few Quasits, the difference in cost is monumental.
Worse, from Jason's perspective is the fact that all that excess blood doesn't go to waste. Sure, for the cultists it is wasted, but the Marilith gains all the energy released from sacrifice anyway, even if a weaker demon ends up summoned. Not that Jason could do anything about this so all he can do is make sure that when he is far enough away, he isn't around anyone else.
Good news for him is that this puts him back on track. After all, there aren't many people in a danger zone. Though Jason hopes that the contingency triggers in the middle of nowhere instead of in an actual danger zone. Not that Jason has any control over. Even the diviners couldn't delve that secret. Which makes a decent chunk of sense, seeing as demons are one of the representatives of true chaos as a force in the world.
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Chaos wouldn't be that serious of a problem if you could just time sight it. Even Celestial Archons can't do it unless over a rank above the demon and there certainly wasn't something like that hanging around the city. Sure, there was a temple or two in the city that could summon a celestial, but it wouldn't be of a higher rank than a Marilith. Though even if they could, they wouldn't use the summoning like that. Instead, they would save it to face off against the Marilith.
Jason however was fine with this outcome. He even turned down an offer of assistance. This was partly because if he did accept help, the System would throw more enemies at him when the summoning happened. Though mostly it was because he didn't want to deal with the people they were going to saddle him with. The thought was nice, but he didn't need a handful of knights in full plate clanking around behind him.
Not that he blamed the city for what they were offering. They had more than enough troubles and while a knight was good at tanking, that wasn't what the city needed. It could be worse of course, they could have offered normal foot soldiers.
Though as Jason thinks about it, the foot soldiers might have been the better choice. The foot soldiers that Jason had seen were all at the third bottleneck and so only slightly more powerful than him. Well, by normal reckoning, they were a good bit stronger than him, but he liked to exceed expectations. That meant that while they would cause more demons to spawn in, they wouldn't be of higher quality. Still, using a bunch of foot soldiers as demon bait wasn't exactly his opinion of a good time.
So Jason was once again back on track, heading towards another monster ridden location. A little further away than not, but when the demons start to pop into existence from cloying clouds of brimstone smoke. He isn't certain why sulfur is used for this sort of theatrics, but that isn't important right now.
Jason is in an open field on a nice wide road and the demons are appearing all around him. Five big puffs of the yellow smoke and twenty smaller puffs. As the smoke is clearing, Jason takes the lead and punches through the nearest cloud. From out of the smoke, a small flies out. The putrid wingless near impoid creature leaking a noxious gas smashes against the ground, head now angled in an awkward angle that isn't conducive to life and so the Dretches body fades away as the material is reclaimed by the Abyss.
Those smoke clouds might have blocked Jason's sight, but they also blocked the Dretch's sight as well and allowed Jason's assassin title to kick in. He hadn't known exactly where the demon had been so it was almost a lucky shot. Not completely a lucky shot though, as Jason had figured the demon was going to be in the center of the sulfur cloud, so he aimed just a bit above there. This was his only free shot though as the Quasits realized the clouds were putting them at a disadvantage and so they dropped the act and the clouds vanished.