This vision had definitely been on the shorter side, and compared to his last one where Villy got smacked around by Valdemar, it was also far less valuable. Then again, that vision had consumed two charges of the skill and allowed him to see two future Primordials duking it out, with a focus on more than one of the Malefic Viper skills.Jake was teleported back into the dungeon as expected and was excited to get to his new skill, but he noticed something was off. Draskil was staring at him weirdly, and Irin was flying over together with Reika and Bastilla. Reika looked surprised more than anything, while Irin and Bastilla looked utterly dumbfounded.As he was still wondering what was up, Reika poked him mentally and informed him, "Whatever you just did released a wave of a presence or something… It was yours, but different… I think they know you are the Chosen of the Malefic Viper."His brain took a while to process what she had just said before it clicked. Oh… fuck.Path of the Heret

It ended up taking Reika another few hours to reach a point where she felt confident letting the three of them roam free. Draskil hadn’t really taken that much convincing when it came down to it—something Reika partially explained away as a consequence of coming from the newly integrated universe.Bastilla and Irin were much harder to reach, as they had grown up with the system and the status quo, making the idea of ignoring someone being a Chosen an entirely foreign concept to them. Reika ended up giving a lot of examples of Earth and anecdotes relating to Jake to assure them that he really wasn’t the type of Chosen they assumed him to be.Irin seemed to have the takeaway that she had just found the opportunity of a lifetime. Draskil seemed competitive, and Bastilla was… Yeah, Bastilla was still rather shellshocked and seemed to not really get the situation outside of "keep it a secret; that is what the Malefic One and his Chosen want."Reika just hoped that, with time, she could hav

Jake was no expert in friendships. He would never claim to be. But what he did know was that the scalekin called Nella was definitely not a friend of Meira. Now, while Jake did want to just barge in and raise hell, he chose to listen to Izil and act with thought. At the very least, he should give them a chance to explain themselves.The door was already ajar, and they soon detected Jake as he got closer. It was almost comical how the facial expression of the scalekin changed when she detected Jake and Izil coming. Rather than a sneer, she adopted a neutral smile, trying to look like less of a bitch."My Lord," Meira greeted once he entered. He had seen her running back and forth collecting books, and yet she didn’t carry even a hint of discontent."Ah,” Nella said, “good to meet you⁠—""Shut the fuck up," Jake said the moment she started speaking. His aura flared for a moment with killing intent as Izil took a step back along with Nella. The only one of the newcomers who stayed unaffe

So, some good and some bad news. On the good side, Jake had now figured out how to put other people in a coma that they didn’t seem to wake up from by themselves, even after three days. On the bad side, Jake had now put someone into a coma and didn’t really know a way to wake them up.Izil had been "sleeping it off" on the couch for a full three days, and Jake’s initial assessment of it only taking a few hours tops for her to wake up had been a little off. In his defense, he had kind of gone in with the assumption that Izil had some kind of innate poison resistance like everyone else seemed to, but Meira made it clear Izil never worked with poisons at all. She had come to the Order to learn about poisons exactly because she lacked knowledge in that area. So, yeah, pretty big oopsie there.The type of poison he had infused was inspired by the ethtoxin he had killed the big blue mushroom under Haven with—the kind that was incredibly hard to detect and eliminate. So hard to eliminate tha

The last times Jake went shopping, he had either gone to the vampire place—because he also wanted to sell stuff—or gone with Villy to get new clothes. All other shopping after that had been done by Meira for a few reasons. First of all, it saved Jake time. Second, Meira was incredibly insistent on doing it, as she was almost desperate to prove herself useful—something that had gotten better recently—and lastly… Jake had no idea where the hell to go shopping in the first place. Like, he had some ideas, and he could just go where he’d gone last time with Villy, but he didn’t feel confident. The problem was that the place he and the Viper went was fucking huge, and Jake really didn’t want to wander around for hours on end to try and find what he was looking for. Could he ask someone for directions? Probably, but that was also something Jake really didn’t wanna do. Asking strangers for directions sucked.So dragging Meira along and buying some equipment for her was just killing two birds