“Demon Lord Awakening”

"So this is how [Demonic Eyes] works. Whoa, I'm gonna get motion sickness since I'm not used to them."

Rare had unlocked the [Demonic Eyes] tree when she became a demon lord. After learning the first skill, which shares the name of the tree, [Demonic Eyes], she immediately tried it out. The skill's effect was constantly active; she gained the Demonic Eyes status after activating it, which lasted until canceled. When cast, it consumed a percentage of her maximum MP as a fixed cost, and until canceled she couldn't recover that fixed amount of MP.

Demonic Eyes made magic power visible. "Magic power" refers to MP, but in this game, just like LP, MP recovers naturally. The lore reason for this is that the air in this world is filled with mana. The explanation behind the MP stat is that every character somehow intakes mana from the air, then converts it into MP within their bodies, which is why spent MP recovers a little bit at a time.

With [Demonic Eyes], she was able to see a character's MP, as well as the mana in the air. It looked kind of like there was a pink mist enveloping everything in her field of view. Since the ability to see magic power wasn't reliant on visible light reflecting off objects, when Rare turned it on in this dimly lit cave, it kind of looked like that pink mist was itself glowing. The cave walls didn't have any mana in them, so those were the only places where the mist was thin. Therefore, in places like this cave that were dark or even pitch black, she could still indirectly "see" her surroundings. If she had to describe it to someone else, it would look kind of like a black-and-white film. However, since she had no idea what color anything was, or how much light there was, she did feel a sense of disorientation. And she was only able to see the magic power within the skill's range, there wasn't actually any mist, so her range of vision was limited. Currently, she could see far enough to cast basic long-range attack spells.

Since Rare had so much MP herself, [Demonic Eyes] painted her hands and wings in solid pink. If she really focused, she could make out the individual feathers on her wings, but surely she wouldn't normally need to see in such detail. This was sufficient for use in combat without such effort.

For Rare, the most important thing about this skill was, as stated earlier, that the [Demonic Eyes] effect didn't require light. It was entirely controlled by whether or not the skill was activated, so it could basically be always on.

In other words, even if her eyes were closed, she could still see the magic power around her. Which meant it was possible for her to fight while her eyes were closed. This essentially solved her vision problem. And since the condition for casting magic was being able to "see" your target, this should also be applicable.

Rare hadn't tested it yet, but perhaps via [Demonic Eyes], she could possibly even target magic itself with her spells. Normally, when you wanted to cancel out spells, you predicted the trajectory of the opponent's spell, then cast your own spell along that trajectory. However, perhaps it would be possible to use [Demonic Eyes] to directly cancel out spells that detonate at specific coordinates such as AOE spells.

"Hehehe… I can't wait. This will let me define the meta."

The next skills in the [Demonic Eyes] skill tree were [Enhance Demonic Eyes] and [Link Magic]. [Enhance Demonic Eyes] was very straightforward, augmenting the base skill by increasing the range of the effect and allowing her to designate specific objects to ignore. It was convenient for preventing her hands and wings from obstructing her view, and above all it allowed her to get rid of that thin pink filter generated by her eyelids that colored her entire field of view while her eyes were closed. Another benefit was that it allowed her to change the default color of pink, but she would be ignoring that setting for now. She wasn't really concerned with what color everything ended up being.

[Magic Link] was ridiculously overpowered, with a cost to match. This skill connected the activation of magic to [Demonic Eyes]; in other words, magic could be cast silently. Simply stare at a target with [Demonic Eyes] and think hard on the spell in order to cast it.

However, since it did require her to look directly at her target, it couldn't be used while her eyes were closed. She wasn't exactly shooting laser beams from her eyes, so it shouldn't have mattered if her eyes were closed, but when she tried it out with [Healing Magic], it didn't work. Compared to having to use her voice, it was indeed much less burdensome to simply open her eyes. Rare needed to make sure her half-open eyes were adjusted to the light beforehand in order to use it, though, so she would have to be extra careful about that.

Basically, if she wanted to use it, she first had to open her eyes a little bit, make sure she could stand the light, then open them fully and stare at her target, at which point her spell would be cast at that target. Something along those lines.

"That sounds pretty awesome, actually… Hehehe."

In any case, she had gotten her hands on another method of covering for her handicapped eyesight.

"Next is sunlight… Considering that I'm more or less totally fine under the shade of a tree, I should just constantly keep [Dark Curtain] active."

After becoming a demon lord, Rare was able to learn [Dark Magic], and the first skill was [Dark Curtain], which could block light in an entire area. However, it wasn't a perfect screen, it simply made the area kind of dark. Thinking back to her recent battle, it would have been easily sufficient to shield her from sunlight. Unlike [Demonic Eyes]'s fixed cost, this skill cost a small amount of MP over time to keep active, so she would have to be careful about keeping it activated for extremely long periods of time.

"So now, I have a way to effectively deal with all of my weaknesses… While I'm at it, I should grab any other demon lord-esque skills too."

First was her horn. The horn originally provided passive bonuses to [Mental Magic]- and [Ruler]-type skills, and increased her own resistance to those types of skills. However, since it was a new body part, it was possible for there to be new skills related to it, like [Horn Attack] or something.

"Hm, not a thing… Well, thinking about it logically, any physical horn attacks would basically mean I would have to do a kind of headbutt… That sounds kind of lame for a demon lord, so yeah, I'm fine with that."

So next would be her wings. They had already unlocked the [Flight] skill for her, but it looked like she unlocked other new skills from fulfilling some conditions.

"Hehehe. I've got this new [Wing Attack] skill. This has gotta be that thing where I shoot tons of feathers from my wings. That's so cool."

She excitedly purchased [Wing Attack], but her excitement faded as she read the description.

"…Oh, that's it? I definitely unlocked it after picking up [Barehanded]… But wings are supposed to be sensitive body parts, so hitting people with them seems kinda… Well, whatever, I guess."

Swans in real life could supposedly break the bones of larger animals when striking with their wings[1], so it wasn't a completely outrageous idea. In the game, her wings' power and toughness could be fortified with STR and VIT, so the recoil from using them to hit something shouldn't be that bad. Plus, Rare's wingspan, if she spread them out as far as possible, easily surpassed three meters. Since she normally folded them up and hugged them close to her body or wrapped them around her waist, they weren't too eyecatching. This made them appear much smaller than they really were, but they were more useful to her this way so she tried not to be so disappointed about it. Considering that her reach with them was as much as one-and-a-half meters if she were to use them in melee combat, she was surprised to find herself warming up to the idea.

"Ah, this isn't a one-and-done skill tree. Next is… Ohh, this is it! [Feather Bullet]!!!"

It was rather hard to imagine that [Feather Bullet] was part of the logical progression from [Barehanded] to [Wing Attack] to this, so there must have been something else that led to it being unlocked. The culprit was probably [Throw], a skill she had picked up for playing with the wolf pups; she had never seriously used it before. However, [Throw] really was an extremely versatile skill since it could be used at any time as long as you had a rock in your inventory. You obviously didn't need a skill to throw stuff, but it increased the power and accuracy of the thrown items, and it could also impart special effects to them.

"Urgh… What…?"

As soon as she learned [Feather Bullet], she felt a strange sensation on her lower back. It was something she had felt before.

"…So that's it. I've grown more wings."

The number of wings curving out before her had increased from two to four. Since they had come about from learning [Feather Bullet], that must mean that one pair was for flying while the other pair was for shooting.

"…So does that mean when I learn the next skill, [Feather Gatling], I'm going to get even more wings?"

Rare thought of waiting to learn it until after she had tested out [Feather Bullet] first, but her curiosity got the better of her.

"…Nothing happened. What the hell."

The next skill in the tree, [Discerning Feather Barrier], Rare immediately checked partially because she had already gotten this far in the tree. Its effect was "Cover your immediate surroundings with flying feathers. Discerns information on everything within the barrier. Your skills gain increased effectiveness and success rate when activated within the barrier." She would have to check on what the exact range was, but this seemed to be yet another extremely useful skill. Useful, but…

"Hrm, the name is a little concerning… 'Discerning'… I'll take it, of course, but the implications of being called 'The Discerning Demon Lord'… Hmm… Ngh…!"[2]

Along with the now-familiar itchy feeling, she grew yet another pair of wings from her back.

"…Umm, so then, now I have melee-range wings, long-range wings, and magic support wings. Crazy."

Every wing looked the same to anyone else. The only way to tell the difference between them was that their sizes differed slightly based on their positioning on her back, but that was it. Rare tried a few practice swings with her wings, but they all felt about the same when it came to attacking with them. When she tried firing a [Feather Bullet] at the wall, an arrow of light flew out from the wing she concentrated on and embedded itself into the wall, which turned out to be a feather. It seemed that any wing could be used for any of the wing-related skills.

"In any case, my combat capability, specifically physical combat, has improved. All right, let's go get revenge then."

If she didn't leave now, pretty soon one hour would have passed. Rare just wanted to avenge her loss even a single second faster; this definitely had nothing to do with wanting to avoid awkwardly meeting her soon-to-be-revived followers.

"From here, if I use [High-Speed Flight] to zip on over, I should get there in about an hour. There should be at least a few people still hanging around there I bet. Or like, I have no idea where they all came from, but I'm sure there isn't a convenient way to get back there."