Riza was feeling stronger than ever. After the last level up, her essence regeneration had increased to 6.3 per second, up from the 5.5 previously.

One level resulted in a 0.8 point increase corresponding to roughly 2 levels from [Animate Critter] which she could maintain without draining essence.

In fact, with a bit of maths, if she levelled up 10 more times, she’d be able to maintain the skill at the strongest power indefinitely. Unfortunately, she could only level up 7 times, resulting in a max level of 29 with [Remnant Memories].

Certainly nothing to scoff at.

The biggest problem was actually levelling up, however. She didn’t know the numbers yet but it’d take multiple greater demons--who were still a threat with how low her health was--for one level.

The number of beast demons would be at least a dozen.

Riza hadn’t given it much thought before--with how often they got attacked, levelling seemed inevitable--but at higher levels, the rate was really slowing down. If she wanted to wait and grind until level 23, it’d take days and potentially weeks.

Currently, all the ground entrances to the entrance hall were being observed by a weak spider while Riza sat and thought for a bit, wondering what to do next.

Her main priority was and still continued to be leaving the place but with the wealth of potential she had suddenly been exposed to, perhaps she could make her stay here a bit more consequential?

Riza’s mind drifted back to their encounter with the humanoid demon. She eyed where the corpse was obscured in the fog, the present Spidey’s giving her a panoramic view of the area.

In the kitchen, where it had emerged, she sensed a familiar presence. They had run away, tired and ragged, but maybe they should go back?

“Hey, Lefie,” Riza softly asked. “Want to try increasing your level cap?”

The room was eerily quiet. Compared to the frantic fight not that long ago, the desolate stillness was disconcerting.

Lefie held Riza’s hand strongly as they walked--unnecessary now that both could see but still, she held her hand.

Riza’s pet spider scouted ahead of them, courting the walls of the cafeteria and quickly darting to the other side where a large door opened up before returning, the coast apparently clear.

Next, it leapt up onto the counter segregating the kitchen from the cafeteria, deftly avoiding piled pots and pans as it jumped down onto the floor.

Lefie could hear Riza’s sudden intake of breath, the hand squeezing for a second before returning to that firm, reassuring grip.

Together, Riza led the way, clambering up and over the counter as Lefie followed, taking care not to kick anything over.

Down on the other side, and entering the kitchen proper, Lefie lifted her head up and froze, her eyes meeting a hideous monstrosity: a bulbous bag of flesh, pulsating as it sat and squirmed. Uneven and disgusting, cracks, cuts, and bent metallic plates lined the wall, snaking out from where the demon was embedded in it.

But it’s appearance wasn’t why Lefie froze. It was the sudden, dread-inducing knowledge that it saw her.

As soon as her eyes made contact with the multitude of eyes protruding from the flesh at obscene angles, she knew instinctively that the demon could see her. The sensation was almost preternatural.

She could feel the sudden tug her taut arm gave Riza but was frozen solid by the unnerving sensation, fear at being seen overwhelming her.

Riza was nudging her. The first attempt barely registered in her conscious mind but they grew more insistent, eventually barely pulling Lefie out of her daze.

“Let’s leave,” She said quietly but firmly, twisting to go even as her feet refused to move.

“You sure?”

“Yes!” Lefie said, urgency involuntarily injected into her voice.

With Riza pulling her away, her feet were finally able to move from under her.

As they both clambered over the counter and landed back in the cafeteria and out of eyesight from the demon, Lefie collapsed, her legs feeling incredibly weak as she took in large breath after large breath as she stared at the ground.

Quickly, Riza dropped to her knees besides her, hand on her back as she looked on in worry.

“What’s wrong?” She asked.

“It’s-it’s,” Lefie struggled to articulate. She shook her head, sitting back on her haunches, closing her eyes, and summoning a ball of water above her which promptly drenched her.

A secondary ball of water quenched her dry mouth.

She opened her eyes, emotions calmer and feeling ready to speak.

“The demon. The eye demon. It had hundreds of eyes and as soon as I saw it, they all turned towards me. I felt it inside my head. An intense feeling of being watched.

“It’s like that feeling during nights where you’re all alone and you hear a noise. You know it’s just the wind but you can’t get out the worry that there might be something out there. Watching you.

“Except, I knew it was watching me. I-I don’t know. I was paralysed by fear,” Lefie explained in a huff, voice weak with residual traces of fear.

“Sorry,” She gave her final word on the matter.

Riza didn’t say anything at the start, instead just gently rubbing Lefie’s back.

“That’s… Strange. And a bit worrying. Did you feel threatened? Or was it just fear?” She asked. The familiar matter-of-fact way of speaking, of looking at things, helped make the teenager feel just a tad bit better.

“I-Maybe? A bit of both. I don’t know,” Lefie replied, not happy with being unable to adequately answer the question.

She struggled to her feet, eager to move on from this place.

Riza stood up as well, the spider running up to her feet like an enthusiastic dog.

“Let’s go.”

Lefie had seemed a bit out of it, unusually disturbed by the strange eye demon. The way she described what she had felt was completely alien to Riza; she saw the demon through the senses of Spidey but it was just like any other demon in that regard.

Maybe that’s it? You have to physically see it with your own eyes? She’d been keeping her eyes closed whenever she had a spider alive otherwise the simultaneous stimulation threatened to overwhelm her.

Learning to walk gracefully had been a challenge at first, seeing her body move from someone else’s eyes, essentially, but she got used to it strangely quickly.

They had made their way back to the entrance, which had quickly become their pseudo-base. It was large and open, with multiple openings and tunnels. That, in itself, was a downside, opening them up to multiple avenues of attack.

However, it also seemed to be the furthest away from wherever the demons spawned from. All encounters had the demons running into the entry hall, not out of it.

That, as well as being a sort of nexus for the bunker made it appealing in Riza’s mind as their mainstay location.

Not to mention security in familiarity. She had stayed there long enough that she could navigate reasonably well even without spiders, if push came to shove.

They had been recuperating there for a good few minutes, Lefie not wanting to let go of Riza like a limpet, while Riza kept watch, stationing incredibly weak spiders at every entrance.

While there was some expectation, now that she actually had [Alteration Mastery], the extent of which it broadened the versatility of her skills was incredible. No longer was everything a hammer.

Managing all the different stimuli was difficult. Outside of levels, there were still things that needed to be trained. Improved. A human mind was incapable of true parallel processing and so, Riza had to periodically switch between each Spidey in turn, taking a few seconds to acclimate and then register everything in view before transferring her vision once more.

That, in combination with orders to return once they caught any sight of demons constituted Riza’s spy network.

Now that I’m thinking about it, I wonder if there’s a skill that could help with that. Maybe a boon? It seems odd for the skill to allow you to sense through multiple summons at once even when the mind physically can’t handle that.

A quick search didn’t return anything but Riza felt like there were some trees that may have something, either hidden or higher tier than she had access to.

The first one was the Ka skill tree.

Ka

0th Tier

[Meditate+] -Learned

Regeneration is multipled by 3 while one sense is subdued absolutely

[Concentrate] (1/10)

Subdue emotions while simple processing speed is multiplied by 1.2

Cost: 1 st/sec

1st Tier

[Ruminate] (1/10)

Multiply complex processing speed by 1.02

Cost: 5 st/sec

Ruminate and concentrate are halfway there already. They’d allow me to switch between Spideys’ perspectives faster and faster. Fast enough speed and it’d be like I’m watching through all of their proverbial eyes at once.

A skill that allows for true multitasking is a feasible ka skill.

Next was the psyche tree.

Psyche

0th Tier

[Message] (1/10)

Telepathically send a [Message] to someone of up to 20 words. They can send a [Message] back.

10m range

Cost: 5 es

[Detect Truth] (1/10)

Enhance your ability to detect truths

Cost: 1 es/sec

Not as relevant to what I’m looking for as ka is but I wouldn’t rule it out. The name of the tree alone suggests future skills mess with the mind and [Detect Truth] enhances the faculties of your mind, just like a parallel processing skill would.

She filed away both skills in her mind, ready to be considered upon her next level up.

As they were relaxing, Riza absentmindedly stroking Lefie’s arm like she was a cat, a Spidey came scuttling towards them quickly, skidding on the smooth metal, coming to a stop before them.

Immediately, Riza stiffened, gently removing Lefie from her side as she withdrew her knife in caution.

“What’s happened? What’s he seen?” Lefie asked.

“Not sure. Wasn’t looking through his eyes at the time.”

“I’m feeling better now. I can fight,” Lefie firmly insisted. Riza didn’t respond verbally but nodded at her, beginning to walk towards the tunnel which Spidey 6 had been watching.

When she arrived, however, there was nothing there. Whatever demon Spidey 6 had seen must’ve run past rather than down the tunnel.

It was the only explanation Riza could think of but it didn’t set her at ease; there was a demon, or group of demons, nearby and she wanted to be ready for that.

The best she could do, outside of traipsing into the tunnel to search for the hostile party herself, was repeating her orders to Spidey and returning to where she was, unable to relax.

It didn’t take long until another Spidey-- Spidey 3, this time--came scuttling back towards her.

Another spider, the same situation. The demons were as elusive as ghosts and this new situation had Riza on edge for the next ten, fifteen minutes. Only after adequate time had passed did she allow herself to let her guard down again.

The next incident was a fortuitous one; she was able to see what exactly was setting off her spiders.

Perhaps expectedly, it was spiders themselves. A small rush of them came running through the tunnels, as Riza had experienced multiple times before. However, this time, they slowed down upon approach to the intersection, a single spider separating and approaching Riza’s Spidey.

Once her zombie demon ran off to find her, however, the hostile spider didn’t follow and instead rejoined the swarm, running off down the tunnel again.

Riza’s senses shot back into her when Spidey 3 arrived, Lefie noticing her abrupt change in demeanour.

“Have you seen something?” She asked, barely keeping the enthusiasm out of her voice.

“Spiders but they’re reacting strangely. One split off to make contact with Spidey but then rejoined the group. They didn’t seem interested in finding us. I’m not sure if this is what was happening with the other spiders,” Riza deftly explained.

“What are we going to do? Follow them?”

Riza didn’t say anything for a minute.

“I don’t know. Their behaviour’s odd and that’s worrying. You want to follow them?” Lefie nodded eagerly.

“Yes! We can get you levelled up,” She said playfully, treating the situation with far more levity than Riza was.

Why am I so worried? Lefie doesn’t seem scared.

It’s just so atypical behaviour. Something must have prompted this change. A new demon? It’s that unknown that’s worrying.

What about if there were two humanoid demons? We’re not strong enough to take on that yet.

It’s simply too risky. We’ve got plenty of avenues to run here.

“No, no. It’s too risky. We’ll stay here and wait.”

“Ahhh. Well, if you say so.”

Lefie’s deflated expression threatened to spur a change in opinion in Riza but she fought against that instinct.

It’s better this way. Only play with known variables. Keeps things in control. Easier to keep her safe.

Riza sent Spidey 3 back to his position as she settled herself back down, Lefie starting to reminisce on the cuisine she was missing.