Chapter 661 – Shadows and Stars

Chapter 661 – Shadows and Stars

‘Huh, they can adapt pretty quickly,’ John thought, as he followed the request and walked towards the north. ‘Seeing as the Midnight Forest wasn’t a thing what... an hour ago?’ The entire updating thing had, of course, taken quite a while and it was shortly before actual midnight now. It actually seemed like he wouldn’t get his birthday orgy on his birthday. He had no one but himself to blame for that though, given that he was the one who suddenly introduced the Tier 3 Guild Hall upgrade into the schedule.

The Gamer’s theory was that whatever Siena wanted had been originally organized for the Newman Shire. Scarlett had followed the presentation from a distance, informed everyone what was going on, and they had quickly relocated their efforts to the new environment. It hadn’t even occurred to him that any of his actions may ruin any surprises they had planned with the Guild Hall layout in mind. This would have been the time to feel bad, if they hadn’t been able to fix it. Instead, he just felt proud to be surrounded by such capable women.

The Guild Hall was emptying more and more with every minute that passed. The Buildings were shut down, everyone had been given vacation days, so there wasn’t even a night shift that kept a few lights burning. Only the ships that carried the visitors of the island for the night glinted in the distant Harbour. Across the water, there were more lights, artificial glitters that interrupted the sacredness of the night.

John took the steps out of the Commercial district and the orderly, dark outlines of the Storefronts were slowly replaced with the random arrangement of trees that he had placed without much thought. On the stone path cutting apart Newman Shire and the Midnight Forest, he stopped. He pulled out his smartphone, sent Siena a message. A second artificial light cut into the natural darkness, leaning against the base of a tree. John wandered over, picked up Siena’s phone, then put both of them into his Inventory.

If this was her game, he didn’t want to introduce more illumination into this quiet shade. Between the trees, he saw two glowing orbs of sulphuric yellow appear just for a few seconds. Their sudden disappearance followed the words, “Come, John,” in the nightmare elemental’s sweetest, most seductive tone. It sounded like temptation and rang with the slightest level of nervousness.

Given such an invitation, he would not resist. In the quiet of the night, he stepped off the stone path and into the forest. The trees that had just been around him previously now surrounded him. Their wide trunks didn’t have anything menacing. On the contrary, the windless quiet was deeply soothing after such a busy day, happy or not.

With every step he took, the light changed. It didn’t get darker or lighter, it just changed. He soon realized that it was the light of the city around that was blocked out by the Fairy Lantern, compensated by the growing light of the stars. He couldn’t see the Building itself; it was further west than where his steps carried him.

Just as the light changed, the quiet of the forest was underlined by a slowly growing melody, fiddled gracefully on a violin. Siena was guiding him with the sound of the instrument. Often, he caught her eyes in the darkness. Sometimes, a note of her curves in the starlight that fell through the thick ceiling of canopies. He always kept his eyes focused on the world around him, looking for her.

All the while, the melody continued to beckon him. It was wonderfully soft, had no hard edges, was just a continuous stream of notes that echoed through the trees. Despite being from a source that could not appear in nature in its specific design, the sounds of the violin seemed to belong in this environment. The shadow spirit had mastered the instrument in its entirety.

Eventually, the forest opened up into a small glade. Its westside was dominated by one of the small, black mountains John had put there to give the midnight theme more power. Otherwise, it seemed to be a simple gap in the mechanic that had placed the trees there. In the middle of the glade stood a bed. It wasn’t particularly large or otherwise impressive, but it did look comfortable. It was obviously there for the occasion, so John walked over, took off his shoes, and then laid down. His head rested on the sole cushion provided, no blanket was to be seen.

The moon was eclipsed.

That was the first thing he noticed. Likely influenced by the Fairy Lantern, the moon had turned into a thin ring of intense silver in the sky. Around it, the stars were impossibly bright and numerous. All light pollution had been removed. It wasn’t even the sky he knew. The stars clustered around the black spot that was the moon; he recognized no formation within their spread-out beauty. He stretched out his arm, wondering if he could take the moon and forge a perfect ring from it. The violin faded.

His raised hand was soon taken, surrounded by slender fingers. Quietly, Siena lowered it back down to his chest, as she laid down next to him. When he tried to turn, she gently pushed his turning head in the opposite direction. Following her silent wish, he continued to look at the sky.

“It has been difficult between you and me,” the shadow spirit whispered in his ear. She embraced him, became the blanket that was missing. Even though he knew her nature and her body radiated no heat, he felt secure and warm. “Because I am not a creature of niceties. I want the sick and twisted to die. I want those who don’t help themselves to stop complaining and do whatever is necessary to be free of whatever holds them down. Stabbing and torture and, yes, some hypocrisy are perfectly fine tools for me. You, your goals aren’t that different. You weighed your values and your tools differently and that... that made all the difference.”

Given willingly, John experienced little pain in the process. It wasn’t how things were supposed to go, a twisting of his powers, ceding ground to a force only half subjected to it. His fingers dug more intensely into her thighs than he would have liked as the SEP was drawn from him completely. Until the last moment, her hand lay on his.

Her skin unravelled into an unsteady mass of absolute dark. The area was so completely lightless that it seemed two-dimensional. Unlike other elemental upgrades, however, John could still realize the outline of a person in that darkness. She didn’t just turn into a large pillar of elemental power, like the others.

His hands, still touching that darkness, felt the raw torrent of magic her transformation unleashed. The kickback he got was less than pleasant, however, so he pulled them back. His pants were fine though, likely due to the Schattengarn used in its creation.

The Mandala Sphere, so far having followed him on the mental equivalent of auto-pilot, flew around, so John had a better view of what was happening. After about thirty seconds, the darkness consolidated again. It retook the outline of Siena, curves that awaited their finalization but were unmistakable already. The wavering black went still, then began to peel off and tumble into the air, fragment by fragment.

It started at her feet. They were still shaped like high heels, with said heels remaining so pointy that John had no idea how she balanced on them. They now had a midnight blue colour, sprinkled with silver dots, something that slowly changed into purple. It was like the path of the night itself was running up her legs, from the starry midnight around her ankles to the purple minutes before the sliver of the sun cladding her meaty thighs. Shortly before the legs flowed into her wide hips and shapely ass, this purple mass ended in an ever-swirling border.

The colour of her skin was slightly changed, the light blue now having a silver, rather than grey, undertone. It made it look a little less dangerous, a little more elegant. The shape of her narrow waist and bodacious chest was unchanged, something John was quite happy with.

Her arms were like her legs, the purple of a day that had just ended flowing into the night and it’s stars, star-like constellations, interconnected with thin silver lines, starting above the wrist and covering the back of her hand. Long claws of a translucent dark blue ended her fingers like a crystallized night sky. Her face came into view, somehow looking rejuvenated, despite John being unable to find any faults with it before. The fullness of her lips, the shape of her nose, the swing of her jawbones, it was all just better, despite being the same.

The darkness peeled away from her eyes, revealing the change inside them. Her scleras were now pitch black, but silver lines ran through them like drawn constellations, all running to the silver-white of her iris, with the slit pupil. What remained of the shaping energy bundled together into her hair. Longer than before, now going all the way down to her butt, it had gotten a bit darker, from pink to proper purple, and was just as silky smooth as ever.

He marvelled at her for several moments. Not much had changed in totality. That’s what he thought, at least, before he realized that part of the darkness still lingered on her lower back. Unravelling, it revealed a very long, prehensile tail, shaded like her arms and legs. It decreased in thickness over the length, starting about as wide as her arm at the elbow and ending at the size of a finger. Were it not for the elongated, spade-shaped attachment on it, fanning things out. Along the rim, the same blue crystal of her claws run, making it clear that this appendage could also cut, if Siena wished it so.

“You seem less stealthy than before,” John had to say, “with all the glowing silver bits...” It could turn out to be a potential problem, even if it looked wonderful.

“I don’t feel less stealthy,” Siena giggled, the cutting crystal dissolving, before she grabbed him by the collar and kissed him. If the moonless night could have had a taste, sweet, cool and addicting, this would have been it. He met her tongue with his own, could feel her fangs. “All I feel,” she whispered between kisses, “is more. More power, more possibilities – more you.”

John had to agree that she looked like more in everything. Even that tail was attractive to him, did it invoke a certain level of succubus iconography. Although it was much larger than the representation of the average demon in media. “I’ll fully trust you on all of that,” he said with a smirk. “Now, not to be too much of a narcissist, but... I was promised a reward and I think I deserve it as well.”

Siena laughed, her every word a sultry sigh, even if she spoke at a normal level. “You, of all men I have ever met, are the only one who ever deserves that.” Her body slid backwards, her hard nipples and soft breasts dragging over his chest, until she was no longer straddling his hips, but instead kneeling between his parted legs. Graciously, she reached for his pants.