The Final Task

John didn’t know how much time he had spent filling out the papers. All he knew was that once he finally finished the last one, his hand cramped like never before. He had truly tried to answer each one to the best of his ability, even the ones where he had no idea where to start. For those he just guessed. After he set his pencil down on the desk, he used his not sore hand to fish his phone out of his pocket to check the time. Which currently read only 23 minutes past midnight.

The Hell?! Okay, there’s gotta be some sort of time fuckery going on here, ‘cause I know for sure it’s been longer than 23 minutes! John thought to himself. Although he hadn’t kept track of how much time had passed, from the moment he arrived at Ashcroft, he estimated that maybe three hours had gone by in total. Which meant that, if his math was correct, time would have been just under eight times faster inside this Barrier. But when he looked at his phone again, he noticed something else. Interestingly enough, it did still have a signal.

But just how difficult is something like that? Can I make my own Barriers’ time flow differently if I level up that skill more? On top of that, he doubted that this was the limit of what Wentworth could do. After all, it wouldn’t have made sense for her to use her full strength on something so relatively trivial to her as this.

What would her max be then? 15 times, 20, 30, 100? How would that affect your aging if you stayed here for too long? Wouldn’t people eventually notice you aging faster than you should have normally? he asked himself. Hmm, could make sense, since I don’t think anyone actually knows how old she really is. Well, I guess that’s a problem that could be solved anyway through magic. If they got magical birth control, then I suppose magical skin care isn’t that far of a stretch. 

John grabbed the stack of papers as he stood up. He hit them against the desk in order to straighten them and line them up. Wentworth hadn’t given him any more instructions, but he figured that she would want him to bring the test to her once he finished. With the test papers now in hand, John walked over to the door of her office and knocked. He heard the sound of a click come from the other side. He grabbed the handle, and turned it to let himself in.

Indeed, his previous theory of it just being a copy of her normal office had been correct. Instead of the other possibility of it being the version of her office he been in last time. That still left the question of how this Barrier’s office affected her “true” one. But that was something for later. 

For as John went further inside, he noticed that the room’s lights were off, which made it difficult for him to see at first. There was only the light of the candles on the floor, and as his eyes adjusted, he saw that the desk had been pushed to the side along with all the other furniture. In the middle of the room was a hexagram drawn on the floor with chalk. Transparent crystals were placed on every other edge, and blue, lit candles on the edges in between them. And gagged and tied down in the middle, its belly slashed open, was a demon.

It was small, only maybe two or three feet tall at most if it stood up. Its skin was a violet shade of red, and it had two pairs of red eyes. Its arms and legs were skinny, while its torso was fat and bulging. Blood had puddled on the floor under and around it. A line of intestines and other organs were hanging out of its body and touching the ground.

The smell of blood mixed with gasses, and they produced a horrible stench. To the side of the demon was a pair of leathery, bat-like wings. And as it continued to writhe and struggle against the rope, John was able to see parts of its back, with two bloody stumps showing where its wings had once been. And the person who stood behind this gory scene was Miss Wentworth herself.

“Ah, Mr. Newman. Seems you have finished. Feel free to leave those papers by there for a moment,” she instructed as she nodded slightly to the shelf that had been pushed to the wall next to him. He tentatively did as she had told him, although he didn’t let his eyes leave the tied down demon for a moment. 

Though it wasn’t exactly the same, the demon looked uncomfortable similar to the one John had killed. Their looks were close enough for those suppressed memories to rise to the surface of his mind. His throat constricted and tightened as every breath he took became progressively more shallow and rapid. His heart rate started to accelerate in his chest, and the rush of blood in his ears became more and more obvious.  When he tried to swallow, he found he was unable to get the saliva down easily.

“Now then, Mr. Newman. We already know that within your soul is the essence of a demon. You claim that this originated from you surviving a demon commiting suicide by making itself explode. And that in your so called character sheet there is a bar that tracks how much demonic energy you have absorbed. I believe it to be imperative for us to see how exactly you can further absorb this energy. Whether the **** of a demon is enough, if it needs to be in the form of another explosion, or if perhaps you need to absorb that essense more directly, by drinking its bodily fluids or consuming its flesh. So, Mr. Newman, your next and final task will be to slay this demon yourself in the name of answering that question,” she told him. Her eyes were cold like ice, and her face rigid. John knew in his heart of hearts that she meant business and that there would be no way out of this for him.

As he tried to swallow down his saliva once more, John cast Soul Weapon. His translucent, red scythe seemed to gleam terribly in the candle light. He slowly took one step at a time towards the demon and raised his weapon up high. When he was close enough, he closed his eyes, and swung it down towards its intended target.

Critical hit! Vital area pierced!
36 damage
+40 xp

+12 demonic xp!

Soul Weapon lvl up
Lvl 1 → lvl 2
Conjuring cost has been reduced to 18 MP. Upkeep cost has been reduced to 0.45 MP per second.
Damage formula has been increased to 6 + (INT x 0.35) + (STR x 0.75)