By the time Ashfall disappeared behind the dense wall of black-barked trees, I had already decided that whoever invented long-distance travel before cars deserved to be resurrected specifically so I could kill them again.
.....
According to Lyra, the merchant settlement was only half a day’s journey east of Ashfall, sitting along one of the larger trade roads connecting the smaller settlements scattered throughout this portion of the Demon Frontier. Velessa had apparently made the trip often enough that Lyra considered the distance insignificant.
Lyra was also insane.
We had been walking for nearly two hours, and Seraphina naturally looked perfectly fine. She moved beside me with that infuriatingly effortless stride of hers, the Consecrated Aurelian Longsword hanging from her hip while the morning breeze occasionally disturbed strands of pale blonde hair around her face.
The clothes we’d scavenged for her weren’t particularly impressive, but after the Tear had repaired her body and awakened considerably more of her Fallen Seraph bloodline, she somehow managed to make secondhand clothing look annoyingly good as her body filled out the outfit.
My attention inevitably drifted lower, following the curve of her waist before settling on the generous shape of her ass beneath her trousers. Apparently nobody had informed Seraphina’s body that the clothes weren’t designed to be flattering.
She continued walking without turning her head, although the slight tightening of her jaw told me she’d noticed exactly where my attention had gone.
"Stop staring at my ass," Seraphina said, her voice carrying the exhausted irritation of someone who had apparently been tolerating me for far too long.
"I wasn’t," I replied with as much innocence as I could manufacture, dragging my gaze toward the road before she could catch me doing precisely what she’d accused me of.
"You’ve been staring at it for the last thirty seconds." Seraphina finally glanced sideways at me, one pale eyebrow rising as if daring me to construct an excuse stupid enough to entertain her.
I gestured vaguely toward the packed trail stretching beneath our boots. "Maybe I’m watching the road."
Her eyes moved deliberately toward the path several yards ahead of us before returning to me. "The road is in front of us."
"Then somebody designed it poorly."
The corner of Seraphina’s mouth twitched before she suppressed the reaction, replacing it with the familiar withering glare I’d grown strangely fond of.
Unfortunately for her, that expression had lost some of its intimidation after I’d learned exactly what noises she could make under considerably different circumstances.
The memory brought a slow smile to my face.
Seraphina caught it almost immediately.
Her suspicion deepened as a faint trace of color touched her cheeks. "Whatever you’re thinking, stop."
"I didn’t say anything," I protested, spreading my hands while continuing down the trail.
"You didn’t have to." She increased her pace just enough to move half a step ahead of me, although unlike the Seraphina of several days ago, she didn’t put any real distance between us.
That was the part that had changed.
The insults and threats remained reassuringly familiar, but the invisible boundary Seraphina had maintained between us was steadily disappearing.
Our shoulders occasionally brushed while we walked, and she no longer reacted as though accidental contact required immediate purification. Every so often, I caught her watching me when she thought my attention was elsewhere.
Repeatedly insisting that she hated me had become considerably more difficult after voluntarily dropping to her knees.
I wisely kept that observation to myself and summoned the translucent interface that had been lingering at the edge of my thoughts since we left Ashfall.
[Name: Kira]
[Race: Lesser Succubus]
[Level: 7]
[Strength: 14]
[Vitality: 22]
[Agility: 22]
[Magic: 41]
[Spirit: 41]
[Holy Resistance: 20%]
[Divine Resistance: 10%]
[Evolution Progress: 35%]
The numbers were still ridiculous.
Less than a week ago, I’d woken up with seven Strength, fourteen Magic, twenty-three terrified residents, thirteen silver coins, and the horrifying realization that I’d been reincarnated into the disposable tutorial dungeon of my own trashy novel.
Now my Magic and Spirit were both forty-one. I could summon corrupted divine fire, manifest wings made from the same blasphemous energy, and had somehow survived fighting something more than seven times my Level.
There was, however, one particular line beneath my Status that had been bothering me ever since the Sepulcher.
[Fallen Seraph Bloodline Fragments: 19]
I’d received the first two after restoring Seraphina’s destroyed mana channels. Another seventeen had appeared after she drank the Tear of the First Saint.
At the time, I’d been considerably more interested in the enormous increase to my Magic and Spirit and the sudden ability to grow wings.
In hindsight, repeatedly accepting something called a Bloodline Fragment without bothering to learn what it actually did probably wasn’t one of my better decisions.
"System," I said while stepping around an exposed root. "What exactly is a Bloodline Fragment?"
Seraphina glanced toward me but continued walking, accustomed enough to my conversations with the system that she no longer immediately questioned my sanity.
[Bloodline Fragments are concentrated evolutionary records obtained through significant Investment Returns.]
I stared at the explanation for several seconds, waiting for something useful to follow.
Nothing did.
"That explanation somehow managed to contain more words than useful information." I frowned at the translucent window. "Explain it like I’m an idiot."
The System responded immediately.
[Bloodline Fragments contain portions of the hereditary and evolutionary information belonging to another bloodline.]
That was considerably better.
Before I could formulate another question, a second notification appeared beneath the first.
[Acquiring 100 compatible Bloodline Fragments will satisfy the primary requirement for Bloodline Integration.]
My boots stopped against the packed earth.
Seraphina continued several steps before realizing I was no longer beside her. She turned, blonde hair sliding across one shoulder as her expression shifted from impatience to mild concern.
"What happened?" she asked, retracing one of those steps.
"Hold on." I raised one finger while keeping my attention fixed on the words floating in front of me. "System, what exactly happens during Bloodline Integration? Am I going to turn into Seraphina?"
Seraphina’s concern disappeared so quickly it was almost impressive. Her eyebrows rose as she stared at me in open disbelief.
"Excuse me?"
[Negative.]
[Foreign Bloodline Integration does not replace the Host’s primary species.]
[Primary Species: Succubus.]
[Compatible integrated bloodlines may influence future evolutions and grant access to bloodline-specific characteristics, abilities, and evolutionary pathways.]
For several seconds, I simply stared.
Nineteen out of one hundred.
I was already almost one-fifth of the way toward integrating the Fallen Seraph bloodline into whatever the hell my Succubus evolution was becoming.
That sounded simultaneously incredible and precisely the sort of thing that would eventually result in me becoming some blasphemous creature that got an entire religion founded specifically to kill me.
I slowly raised my eyes from the translucent window and looked at Seraphina. Unless the System intended to provide me with another conveniently imprisoned future Saintess, every one of those nineteen fragments had come from the increasingly suspicious blonde standing in front of me.
Seraphina endured my stare for several seconds before folding her arms beneath her breasts. Her pale blue eyes narrowed as suspicion steadily replaced confusion.
"Why are you staring at me like that?"
"Apparently I’m collecting you," I answered, unable to keep the amusement from creeping into my voice.
Her expression immediately soured. "I have absolutely no idea what that means, but whatever you’re doing, stop."
"I don’t think I can." I started walking again, stepping around her before the confusion on her face could transform into violence. "Pieces of your Fallen Seraph bloodline are being incorporated into me."
Seraphina fell into step beside me, staring at me with an expression somewhere between disbelief and disgust. "You somehow managed to make that explanation worse."
"I’m being serious."
"That’s the part concerning me." She pinched the bridge of her nose and released a long, exhausted breath. "Why does everything involving you eventually become disturbing?"
"I’m a Succubus."
"That stopped being an adequate excuse several disasters ago."
Her complaint earned a quiet laugh from me, but my amusement faded when I focused on the more important implication. If nineteen fragments represented nineteen percent of a complete Fallen Seraph bloodline, I needed to understand what caused the System to award them in the first place.
"How do I obtain more fragments?" I asked, directing the question toward the translucent interface floating alongside me.
[Bloodline Fragments may be generated through qualifying Investment Returns involving significant advancement of an Investment Target’s bloodline, potential, capabilities, or canonical fate.]
That tracked with what had already happened.
Restoring Seraphina’s mana channels had taken her from a crippled prisoner to a functioning Holy Acolyte again. The Tear had awakened her Fallen Seraph bloodline from five percent to thirty-two percent while raising her Current Potential from A to S.
Both investments had fundamentally changed what Seraphina could eventually become.
An unpleasantly exploitable possibility immediately occurred to me.
"Can I just keep giving Seraphina expensive shit?"
[No.]
The answer appeared so quickly that I frowned.
"Wow. You didn’t even think about that one."
A small, vindictive smile appeared on Seraphina’s face as she watched me glare at empty air. "I’m beginning to like your system."
"Nobody asked you."
[Repeated, trivial, or non-transformative investments do not qualify for significant Investment Returns.]
I reread the explanation as we continued along the trail.
Food hadn’t produced fragments. Training hadn’t produced fragments. Neither had the various smaller things I’d done for Seraphina since restoring her mana channels.
Sex definitely hadn’t produced fragments either, despite producing a rather impressive quantity of something else.
The distinction was useful. Intimacy allowed my body to absorb mana because that was simply part of being a Succubus.
Investments were something entirely different. If I wanted the ridiculous rewards I’d received from Seraphina to continue, I couldn’t simply bury her beneath expensive relics until the System surrendered.
I had to actually change something.
My gaze drifted toward another line.
[Evolution Progress: 35%]
Thirty-five percent toward becoming something other than a Lesser Succubus, and I still had absolutely no fucking idea what happened when that number reached one hundred.
Several questions immediately crowded into my head.
I dismissed the interface before I could spend the entire journey interrogating it.
’One mystery at a time.’