Zack washed himself in a bathroom while trying to get Aoi on the phone. The phone remained black, and he could not handle the situation.
"You could get more demons," Ziri said.
Zack stared at them. There was a bicorn near the fire station, where Zack knew there were more survivors. If he saved them, he would have to rush to the haunted factory and save the teenagers there while there were other people to save.
"Your soul is much bigger," Werzelith said.
No, his soul mass was denser. His mass was fluid.
"So, were you serious about your only fans?" Zack said.
Werzelith looked away and her tail wiggled and looped. It was cute.
He needed something to talk about that wasn't the problem at hand.
"Oh, I'm sorry it's too late to sign on, but we can definitely do some scenes together," Werzelith said.
"How many contractors do you think are succubus slaves already?"
"You know about renegotiations, too. Well, so much for my plans." She stared at Ziri. This wasn't supposed to happen. Why is there an invasion at all?We were going to slowly corrupt the hearts of men and farm this universe forever."
"We had the same idea in the 606th. It led to overpopulation."
"You're colonizing this universe. Why start with Earth? You could have found a nice rock with life just starting and set up shop." Ziri smirked at Werzelith. You have already. That's why you have so many at low levels. You have already conquered parts of this universe and expanded, and it's time to harvest this soul farm. Is this even the original Earth?"
One thing about demons was that they lied and made shit up. There were contradicting histories from the same hells, much less from two different ones. Zack wasn't sure if they were from separate hells and if the tattoos could be red herrings.
He checked their levels.
Werezelith lvl30
Ziri lvl29
"Werezelith, do you have fireball yet?" Zack asked.
Fireball could be used four times an hour and automatically reset every time she leveled.
"No, I got lust storm at 30. It's the red succubi that get fireball at level 30."
Zack started to curse, then paused.
"Can you cast it on others?" Zack asked.
Lust Storm had two casts per hour without some mana-saving items. "If I rode, say, a bicorn, could you cast it as a single target?" I asked.
That would completely change the paradigm. The bicorn would turn into a Killdozer. Lust storm also deflected projectiles. The sheer hell lightning and charm afflictions were extremely useful.
"Yes, I think so," Werzelith said.
"Ziri, what was your level 30 spell, ability, or skill?" Zack asked.
"Presence Concealment, it's a spell that makes it hard to notice you. Sneaking becomes much easier, even if you're cackling the whole time," Ziri said.
Zack cackled. If he was already at level 25, all he would need was a hundred hellhounds at level 30, and he could presence conceal the kids and literally walk out of the city. Packs of Ziri's type of hellhound had the best teamwork and coordination. That was a concern if he made it to the 20s.
After the first cap, Zack needed ever more mass to get to the next level. The first nine levels were flat, then exponentially became more challenging. Between levels 20 and 21, it could cost him 2000 hours of mass. Between 25 and 26 could be ten times that cost and the price of the cap.
The prophet pulled away from his power fantasies and focused on the task.
"What would be an excellent third addition to the team? Let's say we get a bicorn for transportation. What else do we need?
Zack stared at the orange light from the portal. If he had more people, he could get something done. It wouldn't be hard to give them a basic system for contracting demons if they made that their focus. Then, they could become quite powerful.
Contracts didn't just allow humans to control demons; humans could also gain from their demons' leveling. Zack could claim a single thing from each contracted demon. Of course, in a survival scenario, what he chose was obvious.
It all depended on whether he could contract the bicorn that appeared near the fire station. Snagging that demon unleashed carelessly through the portal was his ticket to speeding through this place.
Bicorns could sink into shadows and take other demons with them. Zack would make shadow storage his claim from the bicorn.
He could hold Werzelith and Ziri in his shadow and summon them as needed. It would also allow him to take more giant demons with him until he unlocked his soul space to store them.
A few dealerships were mostly intact, even after all the chaos and planes going down in the city. He had the bare bones of a plan coming together. Zack needed to go from killing a few with Artemis to mowing down swaths of demons with a bicorn covered in a lust storm with presence concealment.
He turned the water off.
"Did you hear me?" Werzelith asked.
"No, what did you say?" Zack asked.
"We need a demon with some long-range and utility. I think a Scilla would be best. They can restrain enemies, breathe underwater, and use water magic. If you can find a bicorn, you should find one, too," Werzilith said.
Six hours had passed since the start of the invasion, and Zack felt far behind his peers. That was normal; he was a late-game asset. Still, he should be much stronger than barely scraping by.
"I can recruit only four more with the pressure I have," Zack said.
Pure contract types would have more gains from their demons. They started with two and grew as they gained more demons. Zack would only ever have one gain from contracts.
The mother of the girl about to be sacrificed was the woman who stopped his truck. He saw her crying with the little girl as he entered the gymnasium. A possessed banged on a window, and Zack snapped its neck with a pressure string.
It fell, and a large crow with steel feathers flew down and feasted.
The creature stared in and cawed.
More birds flew down to stare into the school.
"How can they see us? The glass is tinted." Clare asked.
At that moment, Zack's phone rang.
"Zack, get out of there. Ally just killed Paul, and he's headed your way." Aoi said.
The phone went dead.
Leaving the children behind wasn't an option. He needed more time.
Paul was a late-game with an early-game wife. She was a contractor focus who only got going well by day 5. Was Ally killing humanity's only defenders?
Red Scythe wasn't mentioned.
At lvl25, he was safely beyond any early game.
By that point, his power was based on the sheer number of demons under his command.
The level 25 cap could only be unlocked this early in Castle Dusk. It was a castle off the Gulf Coast filled with powerful demons. A Scilla would make reaching it easier, but he didn't know where to find one.
Zack killed the zombies one after the other with pressure. This early on, the first day, there were few soul defenses.
"I'm going to use presence concealment now, boss. Try not to lose track of yourself, as I hear that can happen." Ziri said.
Zack nodded and felt the magic fall over him as he stepped out of cover. The demon crows didn't notice him, so he squeezed the trigger and slapped the hammer with his other hand, killing six of the crows in a single go.
"Feast," their bodies erupted into bloody wounds as he gained a little more xp for Artemis.
He turned his attention to the preschool and then looked back at the abyss ogre in the distance. In five hours, it would make its way in this direction, finding humans and devouring them one holdout group after another.
Zack decided it. Before he left on his daring convoy out of the city with whatever rag-tag survivors he could find, he would avenge the people eaten. Many didn't die right away. For them, death would be a mercy.
They entered the truck and turned the lights off as they drove to the fire station. Zack drove on sidewalks and through gaps between vehicles to reach their destination. All the while, thanks to Ziri's spell, most demons ignored them.
"So, are you any stronger from our contract?" Ziri asked.
Zack shrugged.
"We gained tons of levels, and some of that should have carried over to you," Ziri looked out the window. "Boss, I want to know that we're helping you. No demon wants a weak contractor."
Zack stepped on the brake and pointed his gun at 7-foot-tall demons. A flashing traffic light overhead bathed the scene in yellow light.
A pack of wendigos ran after a teenager with abandon. He fired without thinking.
They were tall, had a ten-point rack on their heads, and were covered in blue fur. Their stomachs were sunken in revealed ribs and their backbones.
Ziri emerged from the truck with a war hammer in hand and uppercut one of the wendigos with it. Six ice shards formed, and Werzelith tackled them from behind. How did the succubus get there?
Presence concealment was active, even cast on them when they were apart.
It was hard keeping his eyes on her.
A wendigo charged him, and he shot its knee. The monster fell to the ground as blizzard winds gathered around it.
Werzelith grabbed one, and her lust storm shocked and tore at the creature. Its eyes glazed over, and it stopped struggling.
Its skin ripped away as a blast of hell lighting ripped through it.
The nearest Wendigo charged, and Zack fired. Brainmatter blasted the concrete as Zack finished them off.
The teen looked up at Zack as he approached. "Ziri, restrain that last Wendigo."
Density: 10
Pressure: 9.3
It felt good crossing the cap. 9.3 pressure wasn't a lot. It allowed nine demons to contract with him. Zack could also form a small barrier around his skin. His true power wouldn't reveal itself until after the second cap.
The hyena-type hellhound planted her foot on the back of a wendigo.
"You need power to survive. Have you ever played pokémon?"
"Wer Zeee lith," Zack stared at the smirking succubus. "What you will tell this poor girl, we're pokémon. Contracts are dangerous, and you're about to hand her a wendigo. That's like starting with a traded Mewtwo with no badges. But instead of sleeping, it eats your guts."
"How long were you here?" Zack asked.
"It's not important. We should kill this one and start her with something easier to handle—or at least something that will want her to survive. A minotaur might be dumb, but they care about their contractors." Werzelith said.
Ziri sniffed the air. "Bicorns incoming. They have sensed the death and have come to feast on fresh corpses.
"I wouldn't mind a unicorn." The girl said.
"I will not contract with a human woman." The Wendigo said.
Zack sighed. The girl also looked unwilling to contract with the things that just tried to kill her.
"Kill it," Zack ordered, and Ziri smashed the back of the demon's head with her hammer.
Bicorns were worse to control than Wendigos. They were second only to Kelpies, who liked to act friendly and drown people.
Ziri glowed green, and green auras wrapped around us as presence concealment refreshed.
The girl was unaffected.
We hid behind the truck, leaving the girl confused. Her eyes fell off of us.
From an alley, four beasts moved, one a deep red, the other white, another was a fat thing almost morbidly obese, and the last had snot running down from its nose. Zack's eyes were only on the red horse already saddled with two long black horns pointed forward. The white horse's horns pointed in opposite directions didn't look as pleasing. The other two were useless, in Zack's opinion. Who wanted a morbidly obese horse or one that looked like they could drop dead any moment? Zack did feel bad for it being covered in sores.
The morbidly obese one bit into the closest Wendigo, and like a vacuum, the body was sucked into its mouth. Zack heard the bones break as the creature chewed and went for the next demon. The red horse snorted and kicked the fat horse when it neared its meal.
When the white one bit into its meal, the flesh of the demons turned to dust, and the white horse ate the bones. The red horse opened its maw, revealing fangs. It bit into the demon and sucked the blood from its veins, heart or not.
Zack moved from behind the truck and neared the red horse. It turned its head to the side, and Zack froze. The prophet hadn't gone after any of these four before.
This was a new experience. His heart hammered in his chest.
It went back to sucking blood from a corpse while Zack closed in and put a foot in the stirrups. The green aura around him shattered, and the red bicorn turned its orange-glowing eyes on him. Zack smiled and looped his leg over and into the other stirrup.
The bicorn reared back.
Zack whooped.
The Bicorn ran and stopped suddenly. It turned suddenly, and Zack kicked it.
It started running directly for a brick wall. He dug his heels into the bicorn's sides. The prophet felt the demon horse move and shifted his body with it.
Zack lowered his body and tightened his hold on the horse. It veered, used the wall to run up it, and leaped off.
A shadow leaped up, and suddenly, they were riding out of his truck's shadow. Then it turned sharply.
Zack slapped the bicorn's flank rear, and it snorted.
He cackled. The plan was coming together.
It ran, turned, and rolled. Zack stared at the asphalt coming for him. It was going to hurt.