Setting a Routine

Your progress is steady for the next few weeks. You receive a steady stream of players, but make sure to throw enough fights, allowing the occasional spell to hit you, then turning incorporeal as another member of a party is about hit you before melting into the shadows with some dramatic screaming and leaving behind a random piece of loot from the players you do kill. Not for the first time, you thank your strange benefactor for dramatically increasing your intelligence as you make yourself seem challenging while not attracting the attention of the higher levels whom Madi informs you rarely, if ever, return to Livenvale - the small elven city where most player's begin and where Madi's little church issues the quest to enter your part of the Hollow Roots.

When you're not fighting heroes, you are using your growing control of the shadows and your little wispy minion to dig through the walls of your chamber, expanding it and collecting more and more materials. So far, you have managed to find veins of iron, brass, and tin that regularly respawn after you have depleted them, giving you the resources to craft better tools for your tendrils to wield as they dig through the earth. It turns out you have an inexplicable gift when it comes to crafting, and you soon start creating various tools and trinkets that you have a disguised Madi take to the nearby village of Oscar's Den, where she sells them and uses the profits to purchase anything the two of you think you need.

Madi spends more and more time in your chambers, only staying above ground long enough to throw off suspicion before retreating once more. Every time she enters, you watch her take a deep breath as your influence settles over her and her stats are boosted. She has yet to explain why, but you've come to the conclusion that, for some reason, Madi is incapable of leveling up herself - steadfastly remaining level five despite the fact that she had to gather at least some experience when on her own - and enjoys the feeling of power it gives her, small though it may be relative to you or the players whom she leads into your clutches. This, at least, works to her advantage when luring other players to you, as her low, static level makes her seem less likely to betray party members even after their third or fourth time being led to you like sheep to a slaughter. The two of you are careful, however. The rapid growth rate of your Intelligence helping to curb any arrogance on your part.

The players aren't the only thing you have to worry about, however. Every once in a while, during times in which Madi bitterly states most players have to go back to their 'real' lives - whatever that means - you and she cautiously explore outside of your humble, yet growing, abode. It takes a little while to break the habit of automatically attacking every monster she sees, but it still does little to the tide of fellow monsters that rush to their deaths at your hands as they mindlessly seek hers. Most of your time exploring is spent within the familiar tunnels Madi informed you are known as the Hollow Roots where her prayer-based magic, paltry though it is, has slightly more of an effect.

"I don't see why I'm the one doing this," she says one day during your explorations while fighting a trio of skeletons. You feel slightly less guilty about fighting the undead, as, unlike other monsters, they generally yearn for the peace from which they had been ripped. "It's not like I can level up after all."

"This isn't about increasing your stats," you reply as she fires a little bolt of light at the nearest skeleton, knocking its skull off and making it crumple to the ground. "It's about training your mind."

"What's that even mean?" She grunts in frustration, barely dodging the edge of another skeleton's rusted blade. "How am I supposed to increase my Intelligence fighting these things if I'm always going to be capped?!" You can hear the frustration and insecurity cracking her voice as she screams and swings her staff at the skeleton rather than cast another spell. Unfortunately, she overextends, and trips falling in a heap as yet more skeletons rise from the earth. At this point, you step forward manifesting a pair of blades out of the shadows and dispatch the skeletons with ease before turning to where Madi is fighting against tears on the ground.

It's an opening, you remind yourself. That's the only reason why you are kneeling before her and placing two long, sharp fingers under her chin and lifting her head to look you in the eye. Putting one of the fingers of your other hand on her lips and producing your _Dark Ichor _for her to suckle, healing her various bumps, scrapes, and bruises, is simply a part of your conditioning her into your little pet player. Subtly encouraging her to look up at you with those wide, expressive blue eyes and enjoy it is only to further your goal of slowly corrupting her and many others away from Anari's cursed light.

"Your power will come from me," you say softly. "But how you use it is still up to you. You remember that mage you brought with you the first time you worked for me?" Madi nods, her face glowing red as you swirl your finger around her mouth, continuing to trickle ichor, the fingers under her chin scratching her back and forth just barely hard enough to do one or two damage before quickly being healed. "He probably had a higher Intelligence stat than you and the rest of your little gifts to me combined, and yet he was the one who recklessly blasted through my door and fell right into my trap." Your fingers leave her chin and wrap around her neck to continue their scratching at her nape, and Madi quivers, eyelids drooping and mewling around your softly pumping fingers as the rest of them wrap around the front of her neck, applying just the slightest pressure, but she keeps staring hazily into the unblinking balls of light within your featureless face as you rise to your feet, pulling her up with you. "That proved that your Intelligence has no bearing on your actions. You do not become smarter as you level up." Well, you did. Every time you leveled up, new ideas and plans would surface in your mind as you found flaws in your old ones that would make you cringe. Analyzing information and situations became easier with every level, and your memory and creativity, in particular, soared.

"You receive a portion of my power," you rumbled, bringing Madi's whimpering face even closer to your own as you once again tended to the seeds of her understanding of the relationship between the both of you. Symbiotic though it may be, you were, in no way, equals. Players' pride knew no limits. It was yet another thing about them that disgusted you. "I will not have you using it with anything but expertise and proficiency, understand?"

"Y-yesh. . ." Madi whimpered around your fingers.

You knew you could never convince them to consider you as an equal, no matter how many of them you killed. That was fine with you, though. You weren't interested in convincing them of anything. Instead, you planned on having them convince themselves that it was you who was above them. And it all started with adorable little thing trapped by your gaze as much as by the hands around her neck, panting and mewling desperately as you leaned down to whisper in her ear.

"Good girl."