“Hold the fuck on,” I replied. “You’re a Dokalfar. You worship Justice?”

“Certainly not,” she said, as though it was a dirty word. “I’m Neutral.”

“Then you should know I’m helping your people in Kalabri.”

“I don’t have any people in Kalabri,” she said, walking around me and running her dark purple fingers slowly across my abdomen.

“Sure you do. Queen Danivra and me, we’re like best friends,” I said trying not to think about how close to my waistline her fingers trailed.

She took my mind off any kind of arousal in the next moment when she suddenly, viciously, and very repeatedly, stabbed me in the side with a purple glowing dagger. Shaped more like a needle, it met hardly any resistance as it slid in and out of my body.

As I coughed up blood from my pierced lungs and drew in horrible sounding breaths that were accompanied by a whistling gurgling sound. She crouched down in front of me to look in my eyes. Her face had turned feral as she shanked me three more times in the throat. I almost hated my Constitution at that moment. I could have quite happily died from the pain and suffering. Then she suddenly stopped. The extreme hatred that had spread across her face had melted away just as quickly as it had appeared, and she smiled as I half drowned in blood.

“I have no love for my kin. Not least the Queen of Helvien. For even uttering those words, I think I’ll have your tongue out.”

I tried to clamp my mouth shut, which was easier said than done as my lungs were still trying to evacuate the blood. So I tried to concentrate on healing instead. Of course I couldn’t with the chains of inhibiting.

“You just worked it out didn’t you?” She laughed, a light friendly sound. “No healing for the big bad seed of Creation.”

She was right, unless I was free. I was done for. I’m sure she’d keep me alive, but in what state I didn’t dare think about. I pulled together all my composure to speak.

“Do… you have to talk while… torture me?” I asked. “You’re doing my fucking head in.”

“You like smart talking, don’t you. Yes, I definitely think we need to get that tongue out as soon as possible.”

She reached for my face, lightning fast. Grabbing hold of my cheeks and squeezing with surprising force. “Come out, come out, wherever you are, juicy pink worm,” she said talking to my mouth as if I wasn’t there anymore.

There were a few things she hadn’t considered, though. The first thing was that the guards who’d chained me up were pretty fucking stupid, or just didn’t consider me enough of a threat and failed to understand the basics of handcuffs.

You see, the thing with handcuffs is that they only really work on a prisoner with hands. I yanked my stump from the opening with relative ease and swung it around at Karelia. She blocked easily, stabbing her knife into my wounded arm with satisfaction as she dodged the blow from my uninjured demon arm.

If I’d swung a fist, her impressive demonstration of agility would have saved her bacon. However, she’d not accounted for the five and a half foot long hundred and seventy pound cleaver that had appeared in my hand. It cut clean through her arm and deep into the side of her grinning head. I only made it three quarters of the way through her skull, but that had been more than enough to kill her outright. She clearly hadn’t invested heavily into her Constitution.

Hacking up blood and partially blinded from where it had gone in my eyes, I did a vertical sit up and hacked at the chains, hoping I didn’t hit feet In my current state, though speed was of the essence and I would have given up a few toes to get out of those chains as the guards panicked at the lock. It took me two attempts, but I dropped to the floor in a heavy thump just in time as the guards ran in. They each received a spicy ball to the face.

The one hit with the dark spicy ball went down screaming. The second guard was barely injured from the golden ball and still tried to get in the cell to sort me out. The stupid fucker had as little Intelligence as Karelia had Constitution. I quickly built a dark spicy ball and for a moment even considered adding a small amount of Ethereal energy to it, but discounted that just as quickly and smashed the dark ball of power in his face, dropping him as the second guard tried to rise.

“Can’t be having that,” I told him, hurling the cleaver. It spun a couple of times through the air and embedded deep into his forehead. With that done, I saw the body of the non-cleared guard twitch a little. Raising the cleaver about to finish him off, I stopped. Once he was dead, I would level up. A level would reset any Neuma fatigue I had and the amount of healing I had to do would be Neuma heavy.

I popped my head out through the opening of the cell. Looking left and right down the long medieval looking prison corridor. Listening carefully, all I heard was the sound of dripping water and groaning from the other cells.

As it seemed no one was coming, I focused on the wounds in my side first. They were causing me the most difficulty with the basic things like breathing.

Flooding the area with Neuma, it took less than a minute to heal up and after a few deep breaths to clear the old pipes of blood I was good to go again.

Turning my attention to my stump, I got to work on regrowing it. I couldn’t regrow it back in its human form, which saddened me more than I could say. I bloody loved that hand.

Bringing a tendril of dark Neuma from my core and down the right side of my body, right next to the golden Neuma I began to force grow my right hand, it seemed to be taking an age and I wondered if using Ethereal energy would speed up the process. It was a throw away thought that ended up niggling at me. No one would sense it if it remained inside my body, would they? I asked myself.

True to form, I did it anyway. Focusing on my core as I actually saw the thin tendril appearing from nowhere just above my core. A tendril of both purest white yet also multicolored at the same time. As if my mind saw two different things from the same observation. It followed my will at speed, twisting and entwining first around the dark tendril and then around the golden meridian all the way around until it came to the end of my regrowing hand. Once there, as I’d hoped, the growth increased rapidly, swelling what had started as a pit demon's hand into something altogether different. It appeared blurry in my eyes. The thread of Ethereal power then contracted around the golden meridian and the tendril of darkness causing me to stagger, feeling suddenly queasy. As I held onto the bars of the cell, with my left hand, the arm I’d been healing hung now completely limp.

“Clive! What’s wrong?” came Sania’s voice. Strange that she hadn’t communicated through my torture, but did now, I thought woozily.

“’m okay… jus’ a minute,” I replied, strained. Suddenly, everything snapped back into focus.

Congratulations. You have discovered:

1/6

By combining your opposing Neuma channels and binding them with Ethereal energy, you have created the first part of your Immortal shell.

Conversion recharge 30 days.

Complete the Conversion to reach a new Stage of Ethereal Spirit

An immortal shell is indestructible by any mortal means. Only the divine can cause Damage to an Immortal shell.

(Beware, there are more than just gods that carry divinity in the universe)

I looked down at my arm. The entire thing from shoulder to fingertip looked as though it was made of white crystal, yet even in the dark down here, I could see the telltale multi-colored hues as the light played over it. While it was definitely cool as fuck and a total surprise, and I was overjoyed with the development, I was infuriated that it stood out like a sore, bloody thumb. As if I wasn’t enough of a freak already, I now had one demon arm and one friggin crystal arm. I looked like something out of Ben 10. Why couldn’t I have just had a normal human arm? I complained internally.

My arm began to tingle, and as if by magic it turned into a normal looking human arm. “Well, would you look at that?” I said out loud. I was just about to think, why didn’t I have a bazooka as an arm, but stopped myself short, just in case. I needed to get the hell out of here.

Remembering Sania had contacted me, I replied properly, now. “All good Sania! Better than ever. Sorry for scaring you. I’ll be leaving the capital of Delosha very soon.”

“You’re free?” She asked, amazed.

“As good as,” I replied. “Gotta go. Speak once I’m safe.”

“Okay, good luck and give em hell…”

I looked down on the still rasping guard. “Are you still not dead yet?” His face was badly damaged from the last spicy ball I’d thrown at him, and he was barely conscious, though he did seem to be healing at a remarkable rate. I fixed that with a couple of well-placed blows to the skull with my cleaver before.

Congratulations. You defeated a Level 68 Dokala. You have been awarded 680 Experience Points

Plus 10 bonus Experience Points for every level your opponent was above your own. +30 Experience Points.

Congratulations. You defeated a Level 65 Human. You have been awarded 650 Experience Points

Congratulations. You defeated a Level 66 human. You have been awarded 660 Experience Points

Plus 10 bonus Experience Points for every level your opponent was above your own. +10 Experience Points.

Total Experience Points: 2010

Congratulations you have leveled up: Level 66

You have 20 points to use.

For a moment, I was confused at how the hell I was level 66 and had twenty points before I remembered all of the notifications I dismissed immediately after being dragged through the portal. Still, I wasn’t about to complain as I hastily mulled over my choices. Feeling a lot of uncertainty about what to choose and knowing I had to hurry the hell up. I pumped ten points into Intelligence. The required epiphany didn’t come. Turns out there were no good ideas to escape Nova Hasia except to move as hard and as fast as I could. The only suggestion my extra intelligence could make was to put the last ten points into Constitution and hope for the best. So that’s what I did:

Level 66

Physical statistics:

Strength: 70

The capacity to exert and resist force.

Dexterity: 28

Skill and ease in hand-based activity.

Agility: 76

How effectively the body can move into a range of different positions.

Speed: 70

Rate at which the body can move.

Stamina: 58

Period over which the body can effectively sustain prolonged activity.

Constitution: 218

The ability to withstand physical punishment.

Mental Statistics:

Intelligence: 55

Knowledge and its application

Charisma: 38

Charm, coerce, inspire.

Perception: 66

Awareness of surroundings

Spiritual Statistics:

Ethereal Awareness: 0

Attunement with the Gods and spirits of Gulithea. (Necessary for Ethereally supplied magical ability.)

Internal Connection: 55

Attunement with oneself. (Necessary for cultivation of one’s own inner power)

Singularity: 25

Innate understanding of universal essence (Neuma). Will increase with personal level. (Cannot be leveled by other means.)

World sense: 8.12% Knowledge of Gulithea.

Experience Points to next level: 70/3300

After allocating the points, I looked around the dungeon, really taking it in for the first time. There were no windows in the cells, but as I slowly moved down the central corridor past the other cells, I noticed grills in the ceiling. Some of the inhabitants tried to speak to me, others threatened me, yet most sat and stared dejectedly. I kept moving along until I came to a door with a light behind it. Peering through the peep door, I saw a number of grills along the back wall with natural light streaming through it. I also saw about ten guards. They were all lower level than the two who had been assigned to watch me, but there were more of them.

They still hadn’t noticed me, but they would in a second as it was time to make my entrance. I opted for a golden spicy ball to get through the door followed by a dark one for more murderous purposes.

Building the golden ball in my right hand I stopped suddenly. Remembering things had changed I now stood holding a very small but very much Ethereal in nature spicy ball. It was built now, so I would have to use it and damn the consequences. I shot it at the door, which disintegrated in its wake.

I ran into the now burning carnage filled room. Most of the guards were dead but those who remained upright were hit with a dark energy spicy ball or slashed with my cleaver, which in my right hand was now coated in Ethereal energy.

As the last of the guards died, I blasted a hole through the grill with dark power. And failed dramatically to create an opening. The only thing for it was another ball of Ethereal power. Though I rued drawing so much attention to myself.

This time the bricks, Mortar and iron cars along with whatever energy had been protecting them from attack, now exploded outward in a mighty shower. I had a brief pang of guilt about killing passers-by, but shelved it. I needed to escape.