Bunny girl evolution 2 a.., p.27
Bunny Girl Evolution 2: A Monster Evolution LitRPG, page 27
It was at this time that he had met a third vampire named Lily. He also learned that Rose’s name had not originally been Rose. That was instead a name she had been given when she joined the “Lady’s Garden.” Nick was also a part of the Garden and had been given the name “Hyacinth.” It didn’t really fit her cactus analogy, but he didn’t dare tell her that.
Of the Garden members, Nick was the only one not under the Lady’s direct control and was therefore the only one not able to do as he pleased. He was constantly under watch, usually by Rose, and during the day, he was not allowed aboveground. Vampires didn’t do well during the day.
Fortunately, Nick still had plenty to do. He had spent the past week exploring his new skills, primarily {Aether Sense}. The description told him almost nothing, and the System refused to tell him more about it, but simply using the skill to observe his surroundings gave him a lot of information.
Everything alive had aether. No, it produced aether. Humans, insects, plants, and the burrowing rodents around all generated it from somewhere within their bodies. Over time, it slowly leaked out and dissipated shortly after leaving their bodies.
Vampires, however, did not produce aether. Nick had learned in the past that they were classified as “undead,” so he assumed that to be the reason. Even so, they still generally had three times the aether of humans or more. Why? Because they stole it from others.
While he tried to ignore it, he couldn’t help but wince when he sensed someone being dragged underground and drained of their aether. He wanted nothing more than to charge in and save them, but there was nothing he could do. He wasn’t yet confident he could handle Rose, let alone the other members of the Garden.
So, he bided his time. He trained his combat skills when he could, and studied aether when he couldn’t. He was left mostly unbothered, since Rose was his main supervisor and she didn’t talk. Oddly enough, he hadn’t seen the Lady around lately. He knew where her room was, and according to Rose, she was usually there, but it had been a week, and he still had yet to see her.
At the moment, he was sitting down and meditating, trying to figure out what else aether did. Beyond indicating whether something was alive, he couldn’t tell. He knew he produced a bit more than most people, and he knew that when he used {Absorb Aether}, he could increase the amount he had, but he didn’t know what it was used for. Occasionally, the other vampires seemed to use it, but even then, he had no idea what it was actually doing.
“The Lady has returned.”
Nick opened his eyes and looked up to see Rose standing over him, her expression as blank as ever.
“Where?”
“I’m not sure, but she is near. I expect she will be here soon.”
“I see. Thank you.”
He waited a moment to see if she had anything else to say, then closed his eyes and returned to his meditation. He wasn’t sure if he could call himself close to Rose, but she was by far his favorite person there. She was quiet and calm, and often did him unsolicited favors. More importantly, unlike the others, she didn’t seem to enjoy her position in the Garden. He was sure that if given the choice, she would run away.
Unfortunately, she didn’t have a choice. On top of boosting his stats when facing vampires, {Vampire-bane} also gave him a mental encyclopedia of vampire knowledge. Vampires who could create other vampires were called Progenitors, and vampires created by Progenitors could not rebel unless they either became stronger than them or the connection was somehow severed, which was nearly impossible without divine interference.
“She is coming,” said Rose.
Nick opened his eyes, and a few seconds later, he sensed it as well. The Lady’s aether was by far the strongest he had ever sensed, and unlike everyone else, it never seemed to drain. It was perfectly contained in her body, only exiting when she wanted it to exit. She was above ground, something that Nick knew shouldn’t have been possible, but at this point, he just assumed she was 9th tier and was allowed to break some of the rules.
Not more than a minute later, she was descending a staircase on the far side of the underground complex with a wide grin on her face.
“Hyacinth!” she called.
Nick scowled and stood up.
“I just had a wonderful conversation with your fiancée.”
“Bianca?” asked Nick, stepping forward. “Where is she?”
“Around,” said the Lady. “You needn’t worry. I won’t lay a hand on her. Yet.”
Nick could barely contain his rage.
“Anyway, how has your time in the Garden been? I’m sorry I couldn’t be around this past week.”
“Where. Is. Bianca.”
“That sounds an awful lot like a demand.”
Nick sensed her aether tense within her body, and immediately knew that he had to stop.
“Apologies, my Lady,” he said through gritted teeth. “Could you please tell me where my fiancée is?”
“Well, since you asked so nicely, I suppose I can tell you a bit,” she said, smiling as her aether relaxed. “In three weeks, the Blood Syndicate will be hosting a very special event. One in which you and your fiancée will be playing a major role. The ordinary fights can be entertaining, but we’ll be having the top brass attending, so a simple program won’t do at all. Instead, we’ll be putting on a special performance of the age-old Princess and the Dragon, retold in real time.
“I wasn’t able to find a real dragon, so we’ll have to make do with a drake, but your fiancée will make a lovely cursed princess, and I thought you would be perfect for the role of the dashing knight.”
Nick took a deep breath to keep himself from exploding before he replied.
“My Lady,” he said, his voice trembling. “Is it possible to not involve Bianca in this?”
“Unfortunately, the plans are now set in stone,” she replied with a false frown. “But don’t worry. I won’t make you do this for nothing. It’s no fun without stakes, after all. If you succeed, I will not only let your fiancée remain with you afterward, but I will even offer you a chance to escape. And I mean a true escape. No strings attached.”
Nick narrowed his eyes. He had no idea what to think of that. He obviously didn’t trust the Lady at all, but at the same time, it would be completely in character for her to do something like that.
“And you won’t come after us once we escape?”
“I would not,” she said. “I would make an oath or sign a contract, but I’m afraid I don’t do either of those things anymore, so you’ll just have to take my word for it.”
“...Thank you, my Lady.”
Nick didn’t understand why she was offering this, but on the off-chance it was real, he wasn’t about to throw it away. If he did manage to escape with Bianca, he could alert the Jelorian knights, and they would be able to come back in full force and wipe out this hideout, and hopefully the Lady with it.
“Well, I’m off to the baths,” said the Lady, turning away. “Care to join me, Hyacinth?”
“No.”
“Suit yourself,” she said. “Rose, if you would—”
She stopped midsentence and turned her head sharply to the right. Rose did the same, and even Nick could sense what had made them pause. Far in the distance, an enormous amount of aether had suddenly appeared. Nick had no idea where it was, since it was so far away, but he had a gut feeling that whatever its source, it was far more than even the Lady had.
“Looks like we’ve got a little priest running around,” said the Lady, her lips curling into a smile.
She reached over to Rose and put a hand on her shoulder. A wave of aether flew out, surrounding Rose like a skin-tight cloth, completely blocking all of the younger vampire’s aether leakage.
“Rose, go investigate. You have two hours.”
“Yes, My Lady.”
26 - Fey Curses
It was the first time she had used the divine aether since her most recent evolution, and it seemed that her now four-digit Charisma affected even that. She felt that she had finer control than before, even when just using {Suggest}. With a simple thought, she froze all the monkeys in their tracks, bringing a pleasant silence to her surroundings. She thought for a moment about what exactly she could test before settling on her newest tactic: emotional {Suggest}.
Fear! she sent to one of the monkeys.
[ You have slain Greater Giant Fanged Macaque, lvl 8 ]
Her eyes widened as the monkey’s lifeless corpse fell to the ground. Her ordinary sensation of fear had been amplified by the divine aether to the point that it gave the monkey a heart attack.
This is dangerous, she thought.
A few seconds later, she did it again.
[ You have slain Greater Giant Fanged Macaque, lvl 14 ]
Would this work on the warg?
Clearly, the divine power was making her skill so powerful that the monkeys simply dropped dead, but she wasn’t sure if that would be universal or if it was just because the monkeys were weak or something like that. Maybe they just had really low Willpower, and something more powerful would be able to resist it better. Or maybe she really did just have an instant kill ability while using divine aether.
Either way, she didn’t have much time left with it, so she set her thoughts aside and moved on to the next skill she needed to test: {Fairy Dust}. She had only tested its healing capabilities before, and that wasn’t even one of the skill’s main functions.
System, tell me what exactly it means when it says “blesses” and “curses” in the description for {Fairy Dust}, she commanded.
“I’m sorry, but we’ve recently detected a data breach from your local version of the System. Please hang tight while we work to resolve this.”
“...Oops,” she said aloud.
She had been so glad to get answers that she never considered the possibility that the System wouldn’t take kindly to being forced to give them. She worried for a few seconds whether she would get in trouble for what she did, but with no way to get answers, she had to put it out of her mind.
She turned back to the still monkeys and then flew above one of them. First, she tried the default use of reducing stats.
[ Greater Giant Fanged Macaque has been afflicted with {Cursed Fairy Dust}! The target’s stats will be reduced by 99.93% for the next thirty seconds ]
The monkey’s body went limp as all its stats were reduced to less than 1, and it fell forward. With less than 1 in Fortitude, its body wasn’t even strong enough to handle a collision with a small branch, and it died before it hit the ground.
This is overpowered.
Next, she tried a similar stat debuff, but when she released the dust, she thought about reducing its stats for as long as possible, rather than by as much as possible.
[ Greater Giant Fanged Macaque has been afflicted with {Cursed Fairy Dust}! The target’s stats will be reduced by 50% for the next 1056 days ]
The monkey seemed to deflate, its muscles seemingly no longer able to flex as hard, and it wobbled slightly on its perch, but didn’t fall. Elise was once again amazed at the sheer scale of the curse. It would be weakened for almost a full three years. Assuming, of course, that the curse didn’t lose its potency once she no longer had the divine aether. She left that monkey where it was so that she could see what happened to it after {Rune of Fate} wore off and moved on to the next one.
Now, it was time for the more interesting things. Clearly, her ability to bless and curse did not work only in temporary stat changes. With the dwarves, she had been able to lengthen their beards. Back on Earth, she had read enough fantasy to know that fey magic was varied and often nonsensical. Could she steal the monkeys’ names? That seemed more in the realm of {Fey Bargaining}. Maybe with the divine power, she could steal names. Maybe she could even do it without. She had no idea what she would do with something else’s name, but she wanted to test it. Too bad the monkeys weren’t smart enough. Unless…
On the next monkey, she dropped more {Fairy Dust}, but this time, with a blessing, and she focused hard on trying to make the blessing about making it more intelligent.
[ Greater Giant Fanged Macaque has been afflicted with {Blessed Fairy Dust}! The target’s Intelligence has increased by 50 ]
This one left Elise legitimately dumbfounded. She could increase stats?? She could just sprinkle a little dust on something and give it a permanent stat increase? There was no time limit associated with that one, so it must have been a permanent increase, then. And if she could permanently increase others’ stats, did that mean she could permanently increase her own as well?
She immediately tried dropping the dust from her wings on herself with a Fortitude buff in mind, but for some reason, the skill refused to cooperate. The dust clung to her wings like they were made of glue, refusing to fall on her. She tried harder, frustrated. She had a gut feeling that whatever was stopping her had nothing to do with the System, but rather with the one whose aether she was using.
Titania, can I please increase my Fortitude? she thought.
There was no response.
Can you at least tell me why in a dream later?
There was no response to that either, but she still hoped that her request was at least heard. With that, she turned her attention back to the now-smarter monkey. It actually wasn’t much smarter, since Intelligence affected memory and speed of perception more than anything else, but she hoped it would at least be something. She dropped more dust on it, this time thinking of letting it learn how to speak Fey like Emilia had done for her before, but she was met with disappointment.
[ Error. The target does not meet the requirements to receive this blessing. ]
It must have been because the monkey wasn’t sapient. It might have gotten a higher Intelligence, but nowhere near enough to learn that. She frowned as well as she could with her rabbit mouth, then left it to move on to the next one.
This time, she tried a physical alteration. She wasn’t entirely sure how that would work, but she had been able to make the dwarves’ beards grow. Why not more with the divine aether?
She first tried to simply lengthen its fur, and that worked magnificently. From a relatively ordinary-looking monkey, it turned into what looked like a giant puffball. Its face was still mostly visible, but its limbs were completely hidden under the thick fur, with only its long tail poking out the back. The System message told her that she had successfully applied the “blessing,” but at that level, it seemed more like a curse.
Either way, that had been a success, so she went further with the next one. This time, she thought about making its tail longer. To her surprise, not only did that work, but it also made the tail more than double in length. It had already been as long as the monkey was tall, but now it hung down a full ten feet below the branch, getting tangled in the leaves of the branch below it.
She followed that up by cursing it with a short tail, and the tail shrank back to less than half the size it had been originally. Next, she shortened its fur, and the fur receded until it looked like someone had given it a buzz cut, and its pale skin was visible in between the follicles. She tried “no hair” and “no tail” next, and while the “no hair” curse did make the hair fall out, the “no tail” one simply shortened the tail to a stub, and when she tried reapplying it to get rid of it entirely, nothing happened.
I bet I could get rid of it fully with {Fey Bargaining}.
She could sense that her time with the divine aether was running short, so she then moved on to the last set of blessing and curse tests, which were more vague and with less obvious results. She cursed one with hunger, and one with blindness. Then she blessed another with improved vision and a fourth with more robust leg muscles. The second and fourth had visible effects, with the blind monkey’s eyes turning cloudy and the other’s legs getting thicker.
The other two, she would have to see once the divine aether wore off, which she could feel would be in just a couple of seconds. With the last of it, she tested the opposite of the stat blessing she had done on the earlier one, reducing its Strength by 50. With that, the divine aether left her, and the monkeys which had been frozen by her periodic uses of {Suggest} were freed and, as usual, leapt to attack her.
The fight went much the same as all her other fights, with only minor differences caused by her experimentation. The “smarter” monkey leapt for her just as it normally would have, and she blocked it with {Suggest} just as she normally would. It reacted a bit more quickly than usual, but still not quickly enough to avoid the {Magic Missile}.
The blind monkey located her by smell, apparently, and then made its own leap at her. It was way off, and she didn’t even need to dodge it. It missed every branch on its way down and died when it hit the ground. The weakened monkey tried jumping at her, but didn’t seem to realize how weak it was, as it fell short, also crashing to the ground and dying. The strong-legged monkey was a little bit faster than usual as it leapt at her, but nothing she couldn’t handle. The one with better vision was not noticeably different.
The monkey she had cursed with hunger surprised her by leaping for one of its uncursed brethren and taking a bite out of its shoulder. A violent melee ensued, where each ended up battered and bloody. Elise didn’t get to them until she had finished dealing with the others, but when she got there, the hungry one was gnawing on the uncursed one’s severed arm. Elise put both out of their misery with a {Magic Missile} to the head.
She didn’t gain any levels from the battle, but she did gain the satisfaction of knowledge. In the past fifteen minutes since activating {Rune of Fate}, she felt like she had learned more about her skills than she had in all the time since coming to this world. The description of {Rune of Fate} seemed almost complete, and she understood the limits of her blessings and curses much better. She had learned about the existence of aether, and tied it to her existing knowledge and theories to create what she felt was a solid basic understanding of the mysterious energy.
She looked down at the carnage below, her eyes ultimately settling on the bald, nearly tailless monkey. Her satisfaction slowly gave way to horror as she let the reality of what she had just done sink in.
