Fight. Level. Survive.

While capable of truly extraordinary things, the Gods and the Demons could not reproduce. The universe began with 15 immortals, and it would end with no more than 15 immortals.

Unbeknownst to the Gods, the Demons discovered that while they could not procreate with each other to create more Demons, they found that having relations with mortals would lead to the birth of something entirely different.

And so Demi Demons were born.

Demi Demons are half demon, half human. While not immortal, they do have far longer life spans and possess incredible powers passed down to them by their demonic parents.

Demi Demons are rare but come in several forms, some quite indistinguishable from other species.

Excerpt from ‘The G Word’ Chapter 3 - Demi Demons

Chapter 25 - The Trials

Updated: Mandatory Quest. Nice knowing ya.

Objective: This horrifying psycho bitch has challenged you to a fight. All you need to do is scratch her, and you and Mayry get to walk away. Until she returns in a year, kills you and eats me like it’s Taco Tuesday at Fat Camp. Don’t fuck this up. - Complete

Reward - You get to live!! (For another year)

Mason blinked away the notification. He lay exhausted on the hard floor with 13 HP left out of his max 270. His head pounded from lack of Mana, he could barely move from lack of Stamina, and his severe lack of HP made every inch of his body ache.

Checking his potion countdown timer, he saw there were still 10 minutes before he could take a health potion. He… was just gonna… take a short… nap…

He closed his eyes, just about to drift off, when he wrinkled his nose, sniffing, is that smoke? “Oh, what fucking now!”

*DING*

Quest Received! We didn’t start the fire!

I will give one guess as to who is trapped in the fire… yep, It’s Mayry.

Reward – you get to save the damsel in distress…? Isn’t that reward enough?

Accept? Y/N

“For fuck sake Mayry.”

Forcing himself to his feet, he staggered towards the farmhouse next to the windmill. There were no flames visible yet, but there was a lot of smoke coming out of the building’s windows.

*DING*

Status effect: Affliction ‘Overexertion’ has been added – You will lose a stamina point per minute. Once it reaches 0, you will lose consciousness. Mana, Health and Stamina will no longer refill on their own until you sleep.

Checking his menu, he saw he only had 7 Stamina left, with 8 minutes now left on the potion cool down.

Why couldn’t anything ever go his way?

Aching all over and feeling like he had just been beaten up by Jackie Chan, Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris all at once, he pushed his failing body a little faster.

Making it to the house, he shot a weak Magic Missile at the door, breaking it open and making his headache worsen. Checking his menu, he saw he was down to 11 HP, 5 Stamina and 4 Mana.

He really hoped Basilisk skin was fireproof. Otherwise, the heat was gonna drain his remaining HP fast.

As long as he didn’t have to waste extra Stamina by exerting himself more than he already was, he thought he would have enough Stamina to find Mayry and get her out.

He looked around the house franticly, searching for Mayry. He noticed the smoke was mostly coming from under a suspiciously placed rug. Kicking it away, he revealed a trap door which led to some stairs. He took a few steps and then half fell down the rest of them, only managing to steady himself towards the bottom.

He was in a cellar, he couldn’t see much due to the smoke, but his Perception was high enough that he saw a big wooden door. From the other side of the door, he heard one loud THUMP, then quiet sobbing.

By this point, he was almost completely out of Stamina, and the fall down the stairs had also lost him a few more HP. Gathering up his last wisps of strength, he kicked the door in.

He must have had more strength than he had thought because, with that one strike, the door was blown off its hinges.

And there she was. Mayry. She looked a little worse for wear, but she was alive.

His stamina bar showed him he had less than a minute before he passed out. He lifted and carried her out of the room, up the stairs and outside.

He offered her a health potion and preceded to pass out the moment it left his hands.

========================

He woke up feeling slightly less like shit. He found himself once again thrown over Mayrys should like a man-sized sack of potatoes. Damn, was she strong, Back on earth, he doubted he could carry his weight for more than a few minutes, but she was just plodding along, seemingly without breaking a sweat.

He checked his notifications.

Notification 1/2

Status effect: Affliction ‘Overexertion’ has been removed

Notification 2/2

Quest Update! We didn’t start the fire!

Objective complete!

Somehow she noticed he was awake, “If you’re staring at my ass again, so help me, Mason, I will carry you back to that house and set you on fire myself.”

She set him down slightly more gently this time.

He just stood there, staring at her expectantly.

“What?” Mayry said, annoyed.

Attempting a joke, Mason asked, “Well? Aren’t you going to thank me for being your knight in shining armour?”

She hesitated, “Oh… yeah. I am grateful, but I’ve just carried your fatass 3 and a half miles after being held captive by two people I, up until recently, thought were myths!”

Mason looked scared, “There were two of them? Did they hurt you? I’m so sorry! I didn’t know you had been taken until a few hours ago. I was in that cave for longer than I thought I would be.”

Sighing, she said. “They didn’t hurt me, Mason. It’s just, I’ve never been that scared before. I really thought I was going to die, and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it.” She started to tear up. “Thank you for rescuing me, really.”

Surprised at her being so open with him, Mason just stood there trying, failing to think of something to say to comfort her. After a few moments of awkward silence, he just wrapped her in a hug, which she seemed to appreciate.

Mason got out his Trunk and opened the lid gesturing for Mayry to enter.

He stepped in after her, and they both sat on the floor.

They exchanged stories of what happened. Mason went first.

She was the best kind of audience. She laughed when he mentioned feeling guilty about inflicting the spider with depression; she gasped when the Crack Hen appeared and sat transfixed when Mason told a somewhat embellished version of their fight.

He also quite enjoyed it when she went on a 15-minute rant when he told her about his encounter with Malika at the town walls.

Then came his summoning of the giant gorilla, which she seemed fascinated by. She made him promise to let her watch the next time he summoned something.

He glossed over his interactions with Nays and the fact he almost didn’t see her code.

When his story got to the Armourer, she looked at him like she was only now seeing what he was wearing. “You look ridiculous.”

Mason gave her a grin and pulled the set of armour the blacksmith had made for her.

She looked at the bundle of clothes snarling, “There is no way I’m wearing that.”

5 minutes later, after Mason had been kicked out of his own trunk, he returned to see Mayry wearing the armour.

Staring at her for a full five seconds, he asked, “What the fuck, Mayry!”

“What!” she replied, laughing at his expression.

Dramatically Mason said, “Why is it that I can look like an idiot wearing this, and you look fucking amazing? Oh, the world is a cruel, cruel place.”

“It does look rather good on me, doesn’t it? And I feel so strong!”

After a bit more back and forth, Mason continued the story.

He explained how he left the town while invisible and ran all the way there, tripping the rune array and losing his abilities.

When he got to Gael offering him the deal, he paused.

“She said that if I scratched her, she’d let us both go, and after I got the shit kicked out of me, I managed to scratch her. After all that, she still set the house on fire, knowing you were in there?”

Mayry’s eyes went wide, “Yeah! The fire! She must just be a sore loser….”

Mason gave her an odd look but let it drop.

He told her the rest of the story, including that she would be coming back for him in a year.

“I need to get stronger. She was so far above me she might as well of been a “ he stopped himself from saying God at the last second. “-a demon. It was insane. I threw everything I had at her and only barely scratched her.” He stared at his hands in a trance as if wishing they could have done more.

Mayry spoke up, “We have a year. I’ll help you. It will be okay. We’ll get those fuckers.”

Mayry’s story was shorter, she told him about being taken, being forced to write the note, and her first two failed escape attempts. She didn’t mention the final one as she didn’t want to admit she had done something so dumb.

Mason found what she had overheard intriguing. He took out the book and showed it to Mayry.

The title just said, ‘The Trials’.

Mason started flicking through the thick book when Mayry spoke up and said, “we should probably get back to town. We can look through the book once we’re both rested up and back to 100%.”

“I’m kind of Sparksfords number 1 most wanted man at the moment. Your father wants my head on a platter. Maybe you should tell him I didn’t kidnap slash murder you?”

She smiled at him. “Where’s the fun in that?” Mason kicked her foot. “Oh, fine. You’re no fun.”

She got up and headed towards the trunk exit.

As she left, she pointed a finger at him and said. “Stay. In. The. Trunk. I’ll be back once everyone has agreed to stop hunting you. Don’t read the book without me!”

“Okay! Okay! Jheeze.”

Mayry left, leaving Mason to sit in his trunk and do nothing.

He opened the book.

Reading the introduction, the book seemed to be a handbook for an event called ‘The Trials’.

The wording was odd, but from what he could tell, every couple hundred years or so, The 12 factions of Ganehfrel send two of their best fighters to this world, what they refer to as ‘the neutral world’, to gain power and kill each other.

These factions seemed to of found a way to control Chaos Magic, as each of these warriors had a similar system to Mason.

It looked like the point of the trials was for each warrior to become as powerful as possible to cement power for their specific faction and kill the other factions’ warriors, making them weaker.

Killing someone with a system who had a high enough level seemed to gain the killer a significant amount of XP points.

These warriors could sense people who possessed a system. That must have been how Gael had found him.

What he didn’t understand was how he got caught up in this in the first place. He certainly wasn’t from Ganehfrel and, as far as he knew, didn’t sign up for any trial.

There were three differences between him and the trial ‘Others’. Firstly, his system seemed to have merged with his personality, whereas from what he could tell, the participants of the trials all had the same system. Secondly, he couldn’t find a single mention of quests, and lastly, while the ‘Others’ seemed to start with higher stats, they didn’t seem to have any skills when starting out and only got looting and storage powers if they got offered them in their version of skill selection.

‘The Others’ of the past were just people from previous trials who had made a big enough impact to be remembered in the myths and legends of this world.

The rules in the handbook did mention not killing locals, but it also made it clear that this was not a rule they enforced very often.

*DING*

Quest Updated One quest or the 'Other.'

Objective Complete - The others are just like you. Kind of….

Reward –

1. A page of your System guide has been unlocked.

2. Skill Unlock Absorb (???) - Read the unlocked System guide page to learn more.