5 Making Progress

Recently the Silent Desert region hasn't been so silent, rumours say that a fog of death has recently started travelling the area, devouring all of the Minor Ghosts it comes across, leaving nothing in its wake. Not too much attention has been brought to the matter as of yet, however as one of the main feeding grounds for the Succubus and Incubus race, it was but a matter of time until they noticed that their food supply has lowered.

A group of three demons from a nearby tribe are currently travelling the outer edges of the Silent Desert, looking for any trace of this so called fog of death, a red skinned young looking Incubus with two small curved horns extending to the sky on his forehead and two large bat like wings folded flat against his back is currently returning after scouting towards the north, "I see nothing towards the north other than the usual stray Minor Ghosts and endless expanses of sand, Mistress." he says as he turns towards the only female of the group.

"Aren, I don't recall giving you permission to speak so casually to the Mistress, remember your place!" shouted the other male of the group, a larger more muscular Incubus, with pale grey skin and one of his horns chipped off towards the end, a noticeable feature of his being a scar running from the top of his left eye towards his chin.

The only female of the three, a scantily dressed Succubus, with long red hair which cascades down her slender back, falling past her small bat like wings and ending towards her curved, arrow tipped tail, turned to the quarreling duo and sternly spoke out. "Durke, firstly I don't remember you having authority over young Aren, secondly I've told you both to call me by name while we are on a mission, the elders need to know why our food supply is dwindling recently and it's our job to find out why."

"Yes Eleanora, it is as you say, I just couldn't stand to see you suffer any disrespect." said Durke, lowering his head in shame from being reprimanded.

"Y..Yes Miss E..Eleanora." Stuttered Aren with a deeper shade of red than normal appearing on his cheeks.

Meanwhile, as this party of three searches for the fog of death in the north of the Silent Desert, the so called fog of death has already traveled towards the south-east in search of even more prey to devour.

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*DING* Level 4 Minor Ghost killed, Exp + 20

*DING* Level Up, Level 5 Reached, Evolution Available

Damn that was a hard fight, it was my fourth time fighting this beast, the first I had to buy a random teleport because it was too quick to escape from, I still ended up in this desert though, the second time I had run away again but I managed to use telekinesis to help outrun it, I get shivers thinking back to how my HP hit 8/60, whereas the third ended in mutual destruction and we both decided to stop fighting before one of us died. However I got the last laugh in the end, all it took was a little patience and a lot of grinding, luckily grinding was my middle name back when I played games as a human, nothing was more fun than watching your character grow stronger, now instead of a character I'm the one growing stronger and the feeling is great!

Recapping the last 2 years of my life, that's right, years, the hardest part of being stranded in this deserted wasteland is the sheer size of it, with only a small amount of ghosts being found within any set distance of each other, add that to my abysmal speed and you have a recipe for boredom and time wasting. Between level 2 and now I managed to hunt down and kill twenty nine level 1, nine level 2, four level 3 and one level 4 Minor Ghost bringing the total to 43. Finding them all took the most amount of time, out of the 2 years I would say a week, if that, was spent actually fighting, the rest I was travelling and training my skills. After struggling to find any ghosts for a while I actually spent 1000SP on the skill 'Mana Detection', this helped a lot as ghosts are made of Mana and so this gave me a general direction to travel in.

But finally, I've finally reached level 5, I've had a feeling that every time I level up my body condenses more and more, almost as if trying to fill a bucket with water, only once I reached level 4, the bucket felt full. So I wondered, what would happen if I kept pouring in water? And I finally know the answer, evolution. I sort of had an idea that something like this would happen because of the prefix 'Minor' in front of my race, but to see it confirmed by Ezra is so comforting. I can't explain it but since my first kill 2 years ago, I've had a thirst to get stronger, almost as if my life depended on it, so I trained, and I fought through so many near death instances that I started losing my fear towards death, since then I've found it easier to win, and I learned that holding back from giving it my all during a life or death battle could be the deciding factor to getting me killed.

But I made it, through all the close shaves and lucky moments I managed to reach my goal, now for the fruits of my labour, "Ezra, show me my status".

*DING* Showing Status to Host

- Name: Unknown (Fog of Death)

- Race: Spirit (Ghost - Minor)

- Age: 6 years

- Level 5 (+1) - Experience (0/0)

- Health (HP): 70/80 (+50)

- Mana (MP): 220/230 (+80)

- Strength (STR): 5 (+3)

- Endurance (END): 8 (+3, +2)

- Agility (AGI): 8 (+3)

- Intelligence (INT): 23 (+3, +5)

- Wisdom (WIS): 27 (+3, +5) - Mana Regen (Per Minute): 2.7

- System Points (SP): 0 (-100, -1000)

*DING* Max level reached for Minor Ghost, Evolution available, please choose:

- Ghost (Soul)

- Ghost (Death)

- *Shade (Minor)

What the hell is with that name? Oh well, it doesn't really affect me, also the extra endurance, intelligence and wisdom increases are the proof of the pain I went through from training hard in these last 2 years, I feel like I've come a long way and have no regrets with any of my decisions. So I guess it's time to evolve huh, and I even have three choices, Ghost I can understand as me going from a minor variant to a regular ghost, and I imagine the Soul, or Death options are which element I will specialize in. But what's a shade? Do I really want to stay as a minor variant of something? And why is there a star next to it? "Ezra?"

*DING* "The star symbolizes a special route earned through one or more of your actions, you have earned this one from killing another Minor Ghost after losing to it repeatedly as well as meeting the affinity requirements. The Shade is a creature of the Nether Realm which is often associated with evil and retribution, hence earning it from getting your revenge against a foe, they also have the affinities of Dark, Death and Soul, the same as the ones you currently have, Also due to being a minor variant, it offers more room for growth.

Well I'm not sure about the whole evil aspect as I am just me, matter what race I am. So I guess the choice is an obvious one, I choose to become a Ghos... just kidding, Shade it is!