Chapter 9: Chapter 9: Nighttime Deliberations

A barrage of system notifications flashed into existence before Jadis’ eyes the moment she thought to check her status menu. Each one demanded acknowledgement before disappearing, allowing the next to pop into existence. She blinked rapidly, shaking her head at the sudden influx of mental menu screens.

“Don’t get me wrong, D. I am thrilled to be leveling up, but I am just a tiny bit fucking exhausted at the moment. Give me a minute to breathe, will ya?” Jadis panted, hands on knees as she slowly came down from the adrenaline high of fighting the two demons. Both bodies were still wedged into the half-opened door of her commandeered hut.

Looking between her selves, she was bleeding from multiple open wounds and one of her necks was badly bruised from the attempted strangulation. Her feet were also bleeding, having been cut during her pell-mell dash through the forest and back to her base. Aches and pains were making themselves known all over her bodies. She was, frankly, a mess times two.

Taking advantage of her forethought, Jadis used the jars of water she’d collected earlier to quickly wash off her wounds, dousing them in alcohol and wrapping them up with the remaining cloth she’d scavenged. By the time she was done, the sun was dipping low in the sky, the western mountains already casting the valley in deep shadows.

Not sure of what else to do with them, Jadis pushed and dragged the bodies of the bone thieves out of her doorway and into the woods, taking them at least a hundred yards away from her hut. She kept careful watch of her surroundings as she did so, fully expecting more of the vicious creatures to come running out of the encroaching darkness. The tension of expecting another attack didn’t leave her until after she’d returned to the hut, gone back to the water source to refill her jars, and returned to the hut again, barricading the door.

Alone with herself in the dark of the completely shut off hut, Jadis sat on the floor, leaning shoulder to shoulder with her double.

“God, I wish I had a bed right now…”

“I’d settle for a blanket. Anything soft to sit on, really.”

She groused to herself, bodies aching from the fight, but a subtle glow of satisfaction was also warming her chest. She’d killed those demons. Two of them, at once. No, it hadn’t gone perfectly as planned, but her plan of catching them in a chokepoint had worked. Even better, her on-the-fly idea of using herself as bait while her other self waited in ambush had also worked. Being able to coordinate attacks against her enemies in perfect synchrony was a massive boon. She had no idea what kinds of classes were standard out in the wide world of Oros, but she was fairly certain Mirror Knight was a top tier choice. She was immensely glad she had chosen it now that it had proven its worth so many times over.

“Well, for all I know, most people get classes that turn them into unstoppable juggernauts or all-powerful wizards and I’m just fucking about with my dingy little weirdo class.”

She shook her head at the thought. “Nah. My class is the best class ever. I’m going to continue to believe that, for my own sanity, until proven otherwise.”

“Speaking of my class,” she nodded in agreement to her self-aggrandizing plan, “Should probably take a look at my level ups and all that.”

Jadis grinned, happy to see the results of her hard work so instantly displayed before her. She concentrated and her status menu appeared.

Jadis winced seeing her health so low. She hadn’t dropped below fifty percent yet, but it had dropped by around forty points compared to what it had been at the start of the day. Considering she’d only regained a single point over one night’s sleep, she didn’t like to see how quickly her health was being used up.

From her level up notifications, she saw that she had gained one attribute point to spend on whichever attributes she wanted. She almost immediately put it into vitality, considering how much it had helped her before, but stopped herself from making a hasty decision. Her notifications had said she’d earned new skills to choose from as well. She concentrated on her skills menu, eager to see what she had available.

Her vision filled with a large screen, a list of options laid out for her.

“Okay, interesting, we’ve got some options here…” she mumbled, examining the screen that was thankfully unaffected by the lack of light in her hut. “Might as well check them each one at a time?”

“Yeah, makes sense,” she agreed with herself. “I’m curious about the last one, though. Is that a pun?”

“Probably is. I doubt the gods who set up a game-like magic system for a whole world to operate on would be above making puns.”

Checking the skills one at a time, Jadis read through their descriptions, examining and judging their use as best she could.

“That seems useful,” she said, looking over the first skill. By the description, it seemed like a means to quickly increase the number of points she had in a particular attribute. Though she’d only gone up five levels, she’d already established a pattern. So far, it looked like every even number level was giving her a single free attribute point to spend however she saw fit, while every odd numbered level was giving her the option to choose a skill. If she chose Minor Attribute Improvement, she could increase a stat by three points, something that would take six levels to do otherwise.

“Minor Attribute Improvement is a definite ‘maybe’. Increasing my base stats could make a huge difference. Then again, maybe the number of points I get to spend per level goes up at higher levels. Better keep reading.”

Crushing Blow sounded like an amazing skill. Only problem she had was in the cost.

“What the hell is stamina? I mean, nothing on my menu says anything about stamina!” She threw up her hands in frustration.

“Maybe it’s a hidden value…?” she guessed, annoyed at the lack of clear instructions. “Considering I don’t have a clue how much stamina I have or what attribute governs it, I think I’ll pass on this one.”

“That could be useful,” she mused. “I mean, a passive bonus to damage is great, though the lack of specifics on what a ‘small increase’ is does make it hard to choose.”

“And, what about the future?” Jadis pointed at her two clubs that she’d left propped on the wall by the door. “Those are killer and all, but I’m kinda hoping to get some real weapons at some point. This skill would become completely useless the moment I get an actual weapon.”

“Yeah, I’m right. Pass.” Jadis nodded her head. “I get the feeling these skills are kind dependent on what actions I’ve taken in combat so far, though. Kind of like the class options, I guess?”

“Probably true,” she agreed, moving on to the next skill on the list.

“Magic!” Jadis cried out excitedly. She had been hoping her class would allow her to cast spells of some kind. She didn’t mind being a melee fighter at all. In fact, the more she fought, the more she found herself enjoying the burn of her straining muscles and the thrill of crushing her opponents in direct combat. Still, magic was cool.

“Look at that cost, though,” she said, shaking her head. “I’ve got ten magic total. This spell needs fifty to cast it once.”

“Yeah, that’s pretty bullshit,” Jadis said with disappointment. “Well, I could put a free attribute point into Focus, pretty sure that’s what governs my magic pool, then select a Minor Attribute Improvement to increase Focus by another three. Then I’ll have enough mana to cast the Light Illusion spell. But is it worth it?”

“I’m kind of already built towards melee with my high strength,” Jadis debated with herself. “If I sink all my resources into a spell, it’s got to be worth not increasing the power of the stats I already have a natural investment in.”

“It could be super useful to create an illusion of myself though, for bait purposes. Less chance of something going wrong, better ambushes…”

“But how often can I cast it? I’ve got no idea how quickly magic replenishes. What if its just as slow as health?”

“Yeesh, good point, me.” Jadis ceded the argument against going down a magic-centric path. “Let’s avoid picking spells for now, unless one comes up that’s not exorbitantly expensive like Light Illusion is.”

She moved on to the last skill available, the one she suspected of punnery.

“Fuck yeah!” Jadis high fived herself upon reading the skill description. “First choice made; I am absolutely taking Knight’s Rest.”

First skill choice definitively made, Jadis reviewed her short list for her second skill.

“Minor Attribute Improvement is the only other skill I feel confident is useful in all situations for me, especially if I use it for strength or vitality. It’s kind of a toss up between those two, since I’m not as certain the of the effect of the other attributes. Actually, I’m curious to see it used on an attribute like strength. I’ve seen what can happen when I put a point in vitality. What’ll happen if I put points in something like strength? I bet I can get to superhero strong, eventually.”

“But…” Jadis drew out the word, second guessing herself. “Crushing Blow could be amazing, what with all the bone crushing I’ve been doing in the past twenty-four hours. It might be worth the risk. I could even experiment with what the description means by stamina by practicing with it, right?”

The decision was tough. Jadis had hemmed and hawed for a few minutes, indecisiveness holding her back. Whenever she’d played RPGs in the past, she’d never been overly cautious with what build choices she made, just experimenting with what was available and making it work as best she could.

The choice she made here wasn’t for a game, though. What she chose had very real consequences for her immediate and distant future.

With a dual grunt of frustration, Jadis made a concerted effort to push aside her second-guessing. “Hell with it. I’ll take the attribute improvement. I want to see what’ll happen when I put it in strength.”

Caution thrown to the metaphorical wind, Jadis confirmed her skill choices and felt a subtle shift ripple through her body. Her hands checked her bodies for any sign of change, noting no obvious differences.

Flexing one bicep, she wasn’t sure if it was more defined or not.

“Feels a little harder, maybe?” She said, uncertainty coloring her voice as she squeezed the already well-defined muscle.

“Eh, maybe, maybe not,” she tilted her head side to side. “Maybe three points isn’t all that much? It did call it a minor improvement.”

“Yeah, true.” She nodded her head. “Or, here’s a thought, it doesn't affect how my muscles look? I mean, that’d be great, actually. If I put a bunch of points into strength and end up looking like Steroid Stacy or some shit like that I’ll be kind of pissed.”

“Well, whatever the case, I know one stat that had an immediate affect and I’m using it now.”

Jadis concentrated on her menu and spent her free attribute point on vitality, bring her health pool up by another ten. A slight relief to her pains washed over her with the change. She couldn’t help but marvel at the magic of Oros, entranced by the idea that she had actually just made herself healthier with a mere thought.

Satisfied with the choices, Jadis ran a final critical eye over her main menu and skill menu.

She smiled to see her progress. “Level five in only two days! Not bad in my opinion.”

“Not bad at all,” Jadis said with a yawn, both her bodies yawning and stretching at the same time in the same way. “I bet there’s a bunch of adventurers out there who would laugh at me for being such a scrub and not hitting level ten on day one, though.”

Jadis laughed at her own self-deprecation, then rubbed her empty stomach. “I’m fucking exhausted, but we should probably eat, right?”

“We?” She answered her own question with a startled blink. “The fuck am I saying?”

She had actually forgotten for a second that she had been talking to herself, not a second person. Maybe she had been doing a little too much talking to her mirror body for the past while. She didn’t want the people she hoped to eventually find to think she was a crazy person, holding conversations with her own double.

“Yeah, I’m not crazy at all…” she murmured, staring at herself from her seat on the floor while she also got up and walked over to where she’d stored the jars of food and water. She watched herself bend over, giving her a great view of her barely clothed ass.

“Not crazy in the slightest,” she said sardonically, straightening up and bringing her dinner back to herself.

The jar this time was filled with some kind of pickled root vegetable, vaguely akin to a beet but with an odd horseradish-like tang. She didn’t love the flavor, but finished the jar between her two forms anyway, drinking her fill of water.

“I really hope Knight’s Rest makes a difference,” Jadis murmured, one body laying out flat across the floor, stretching out as best she could in the small hut.

“I guess I’ll find out in the morning,” she answered, keeping watch in the dark while half of her drifted off into exhausted slumber.

A somber silence fell over the place Jadis had claimed as a home. The gentle creak of pines swaying in a mountain breeze was the lullaby that lulled her into complete unconsciousness, second set of eyes too weary to remain vigilant. As her thoughts drifted off into slumber, she wondered what adventure waited for her in the morning.

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