Rebirth of the Nephilim

“You know, I think you’re kind of cute,” Sabina said as she tilted her head from one side to another. “Maybe not cuddly, but definitely pretty. I mean, maybe you are cuddly? Having all those extra legs means you probably give great hugs, unless you aren’t soft, but you don’t look like you would be sharp, so you might be cuddly.”

“Only you would call a giant spider ‘cuddly,’ Sabina,” Sorcha shook her head in disbelief.

“I like… The way… She looks…”

“See!” Sabina pointed excitedly at Alex. “She understands!”

“Why do you like Meli’s spider form?” Sorcha asked the Demon with one fist resting on her hip.

“More limbs… Are more efficient… Better Design…”

“Well… She’s not wrong…” the half-elf shrugged.

Jadis and the majority of her lovers were gathered in Lyssandria’s temple once more. With the sun having set, she had flown back to the small temple with Sorcha and Meli in tow, expecting that everyone else would be waiting for them. While most of them had finished their business for the day and had returned to their temporary lodgings, Aila and Severina had not yet returned from the senate. Jadis wasn’t worried about the two since Wilhelm, Lucia, and Rein were with them, but she was curious about what could have caused the delay. Likely they had been surrounded by a multitude of senators who wanted to talk to them for one reason or another. While she knew that they were both powerful women and could handle themselves both in a debate and a fight, she couldn’t stop a small part of herself from feeling anxious.

In an effort to distract herself as much as cover important topics with the others, Jadis had brought up Meli’s tertiary class and its strange transformation abilities. While the group had developed the routine of always discussing everyone’s status sheets, not everyone was yet familiar with the Dryad’s full kit. Jadis and Aila had gone over everything with Meli, and Eir, Alex, and Severina had been read in as well during some quiet moments, but the others had simply not had a chance to go over the full spread of her abilities due to their often busy and chaotic schedule. Since they had time, they started a review session which eventually involved a rather detailed analysis of the Dryad’s druidic transformations, though initially it was just about her status sheet in general.

Meli’s base status sheet, not including any of the power ups that Jadis and her lovers offered, wasn’t super impressive, in all honesty. She was far from weak, and her power relied on spells that buffed her physical capabilities, but she wasn’t exactly an example of extreme stats.

Meli of Μοναξιά Grove

Race: Dryad

Primary Class: Wildwood Strider (41)

Secondary Class: Cloistered Animist (19)

Tertiary Class: Nephilim Powered Druid (4)

Combined Level Rating: 64

Health: 200/200

Magic: 240/240

Attributes

Strength: 10

Dexterity: 5

Agility: 96

Vitality: 20

Fortitude: 25

Endurance: 50

Arcane: 0

Divine: 60

Eldritch: 0

Focus: 24

Resilience: 25

Will: 5

   Of course, when compared to just the regular everyman off the street, Meli was still far and above any of their capabilities, even without her spells. Still, the before and after of Meli’s stats once Lewd Lover’s Bond, Paladin of Jadis’ Boldness, Exhibitionistic Accession, and Vital Overflow were applied was stark.

Meli of Μοναξιά Grove

Race: Dryad

Primary Class: Wildwood Strider (41)

Secondary Class: Cloistered Animist (19)

Tertiary Class: Nephilim Powered Druid (4)

Combined Level Rating: 64

Health: 650/650

Magic: 240/240

Attributes

Strength: 10

Dexterity: 5

Agility: 548

Vitality: 20

Fortitude: 25

Endurance: 50

Arcane: 0

Divine: 90

Eldritch: 0

Focus: 24

Resilience: 25

Will: 64

   Stat improvements regardless, the Dryad’s true power came from the various skills and spells that her three classes offered her.

Meli’s primary class was called Wildwood Strider and it was by far the highest level at forty-one. Strider classes in general were meant for speed, and the Wildwood variety was no different in that regard. Specialized for someone who spent their time in the wildernesses of the world, Wildwood Strider also had offered some combat capabilities, though in truth it wasn’t intended to be a martial class. Meli’s choices had evolved her path to be about as geared towards fighting as anyone with a Strider type class could expect to be, though, and the abilities that she possessed showed that she was far from helpless.

Roam at Will

Passive Skill. Your movement on land is greatly improved, allowing you to bypass obstacles that would otherwise slow you down. These benefits are increased when moving through untamed wildernesses or similar environments.

Strider’s Fleetness

Passive Skill. Increases the Agility and Endurance attributes by 5 points.

Strider’s Swiftness

Passive Skill. Increases the Agility attribute by 7 points.

Tracking I

Passive Skill. Provides a minor boost to your ability to follow tracks and other clues left by creatures.

Prodigious Leap

Active Skill. Double the distance of your next jump, increased to three times if you have a ten-foot running start. Cost – 20 stamina.

Animal Allies

Passive Skill. Wild beasts are more likely to come to your defense when you are under attack. The chance of aid is increased depending on your connection to the beast. This skill is negated if you initiate an attack on a wild beast.

Strider’s Alacrity

Passive Skill. Increases the Agility and Vitality attributes by 5 points.

Feral Claws

Active Skill. Transform your fingers into natural claw weapons that have increased sharpness and durability. Cost – 10 stamina. Duration – 5 minutes.

Nature Walk

Passive Skill. Blend into the background when walking in wilderness environments. Sprinting or similar large and fast movements will cause your cover to break.  This skill has no effect in civilized environments or when you have no visual concealment.

Swipe Strike

Active Skill. Slash a target with your claws. Damage dealt is increased by 0.5 of your Agility attribute. Cost – 5 stamina.

Rove Unhindered

Passive Skill. The speed at which you move is increased by 0.25 of your Agility attribute so long as you are not wearing medium or heavy armor. Spells that would hinder your movement are always treated as though they are half as effective on you, unless otherwise overridden by the spell’s description.

Wildwood Strider’s Defense

Passive Skill. Increases the Agility, Fortitude, and Resilience attributes by 7 points.

Tracking II

Passive Skill. Provides a lesser boost to your ability to follow tracks and other clues left by creatures.

Lesser Agility Improvement II

Passive Skill. Increases Agility by 10 points.

Barbed Claws

Passive Skill. Modifies your Feral Claws to have a greater chance of inflicting excessive bleeding on targets you wound. Does not affect targets with no blood.

Wildwood Strider’s Unfettered Endurance

Passive Skill. Multiplies the Endurance attribute by 1.25.

Wildwood Strider’s Swiftness

Passive Skill. Increases the Agility attribute by 10 points.

Strider’s Steadiness

Passive Skill. Increases the Strength and Endurance attributes by 5 points.

Bloom of Blood

Active Skill. Double strike your target with both sets of claws at once, dealing increased damage. If the target is already bleeding, deal double damage. Cost – 50 stamina.

Magical Allies

Passive Skill. Wild magic beasts are more likely to come to your defense when you are under attack. The chance of aid is increased depending on your connection to the magic beast. This skill is negated if you initiate an attack on a wild magic beast.

Jadis personally found Wildwood Strider to be an interesting class, though not one that she would have considered taking herself. The passive ability to befriend animals, or even magic beasts, was fascinating though, and Jadis wondered if an enchantment could be made to mimic the effect. Both Meli and Sabina had informed her that yes, it was possible, though such enchantments were generally considered to be a rather high tier on the scale of what was able to be crafted.

Meli’s secondary class, Cloistered Animist, was far more interesting, at least to Jadis, in that it offered the individual two distinct paths to travel from the very start, and the choice made with the first skill affected practically all the skills that would be offered to the class in the future.

Animists were those who used spells to empower an animal companion. There were several different varieties, all of them exceedingly uncommon as the class type was a rare one, though Cloistered Animist was one of the more unusual among its peers. Unlike the others, which offered specializations such as animals versus magic beasts, one companion over several, or elemental alignments, Cloistered Animist gave the individual the choice of either bonding with a single animal companion, or forgoing having a companion and empowering oneself. In Meli’s case, she had chosen to focus on herself.

Focal Animation

Passive Skill. Gain the ability to cast physical enhancement spells that are powered by your Divine attribute. Choose whether your spells will affect you or a companion beast. Once this choice is made, it cannot be changed. Increase the Divine Attribute by 20 points.

Minor Attribute Suffusion

Active Spell. Increase one of your physical attributes by 20 points. Only one instance of this spell can be active at a time. Cost – 20 magic. Duration – 20 minutes.

Animist’s Reservoir

Passive Skill. Increase the Focus attribute by 10 points.

Villthyrial’s Fervor

Passive Skill. Increase the Divine attribute by 10 points.

Magic Claw

Active Spell. Add Divine damage to your claws equal to 0.2 of your Divine attribute. Cost – 25 magic. Duration – 5 minutes.

Vital Surge

Active Spell. Increase your health pool by 100 points. Cost – 10 magic. Duration – 10 minutes.

Animist’s Agile Growth

Active Spell. Increase your Agility attribute by 100 points. Cost – 50 magic. Duration – 10 minutes.

Hardened Bark

Active Spell. The next attack that strikes you has its damage decreased by 0.5 of your Divine attribute. Cost – 40 magic. Duration – 1 hour.

Animist’s Grace

Increases the Divine and Focus attributes by 7 points.

Cloistered Animist’s Cultivation

Passive Skill. Temporarily increase your magic pool capacity by ten points for every hour spent in meditation, up to a maximum number of hours equal to your Divine attribute. Once the temporary magic points are used, they do not replenish until the proper meditation form has been performed. The magic points will expire if not used within 30 days.

The list of skills showed that Meli was reliant on magic to boost her physical stats, rather than directly attacking her enemies with spells. If she had chosen to have a beast of some kind as her companion, Meli would have been empowering that creature with similar status boosts, but the Dryad’s choice had been to focus on herself. When Jadis had asked why, Meli had explained that while she enjoyed the company of animals, magical or otherwise, she had never developed a strong bond with any one creature, at least not to the point that she would have wanted to keep them at her side until death.

When Jadis had joked that if they had met earlier in their lives, she might have been able to fill the role of Meli’s animist companion, the Dryad had given the idea far more serious consideration that she had expected.

Meli’s tertiary class, the one which she had gambled so confidently on under the possibility of starting a physical relationship with Jadis, was called Nephilim Powered Druid. The class was strikingly similar to Aila’s Nephilim Powered Arcanist, both in naming convention and the fact that Arcanists and Druids were both rare and largely undocumented due to the infrequency of individuals unlocking them. Meli herself had some decent knowledge concerning the druid class because her father was one, though the details of his class were obviously different from anything powered by a Nephilim.

Druids were considered to be a hybrid class between an animist and a priest of Villthyrial. Animists empowered companions and Villthyrial Priests performed nature-related miracles such as the healing and growth of flora and fauna, or transformations of the user into beast forms. Druids typically couldn’t heal the way a priest could, nor did they have the same kind of extreme empowerment spells that an animist would have, but they were nature-based spell casters who used the Divine attribute for their magic. The biggest difference between a druid and a priest was that druids usually used active spells, while priests performed rituals. While there were more details that Meli could provide on the archetypical druid class, the main point of interest was that they were frequently not capable of transformations. Some could, but in Meli’s limited experience, most druid spells were more focused on plants and acting on the environment, rather than enhancing the self.

Perhaps because of her animist class choices, Meli’s tertiary class did not fall into the mold of the typical druid.

Beastly Body

Active Spell. Gain the body of a magic beast of your choice that you can transform into at will. Also gain a resource called Nephilim Points which you can spend to empower your beast body. Each Nephilim you bring to orgasm adds one point to your total number of points. You can hold 10 Nephilim points maximum. Base body cost – 0 points. Attribute Enhanced body – 2 points. Attribute and Skill enhanced body – 5 points. Attribute, Skill, and Form enhanced body – 10 points.

Nephilim Transfusion

Passive Skill. Restore your Stamina via the seed of Nephilim. Each dram of seed absorbed into your body will restore 1 point of stamina. Cannot exceed maximum stamina capacity.

Admittedly, Meli only had four levels in her new class and thus she only had two skills to compare to her memories of her father and other druids, but the first spell made available to her seemed like a fair weathervane to judge by.

All of the discussion regarding Meli’s unique druid class and the bizarre, sex-powered spell that it had given her, had naturally brought the discussion around to the form she had chosen for her transformations. The fact that she could become a giant spider was a point of contention among the group.

“What k—kind of spider, ah, are you supposed to be?” Thea asked as she openly examined Meli’s eight-legged shape. “This is a magic beast?”

“I chose to imitate a Flora Asterion. I believe imperials would call them giant flower spiders. Rather than weaving webs, they are known for their speed and agility as hunters in the northern forests of Larista and Parusyat. I thought an asterion form would complement my abilities.”

Jadis didn’t know enough about giant flower spiders to comment on whether it was a good fit for Meli’s skills and talents, but she did sit on Sabina’s side of the fence. In her opinion, the flora asterion was oddly cute.

While Meli’s new form was large, it was also compact. She probably weighed somewhere around five hundred pounds, yet she didn’t take up as much room as expected thanks to how her legs naturally arched. Rather than looking like a giant orb weaver or a tarantula, the Dryad’s transformed shape was similar to a jumping spider. With large, forward-facing eyes and wide pedipalps, there was something strangely charming about the way Meli looked in her spider form. The effect was enhanced by the beautiful colors and imitation flowers that covered her bulbous abdomen. She almost looked like she was carrying a bed of pink, purple, and white orchids on her back, though all of it was actually a part of her body. Aside from the false flowers, Meli’s transformed body was a mix of greens with white and purple highlights, while her eyes were the same orange as she had in her natural form.

Jadis supposed it helped that Meli’s spider legs didn’t have any hair. They were all smooth and had an almost rubbery texture, which made them look more like the stalks or leaves of a weirdly-shaped plant than the limbs of an arachnid.

“An asterion spider?” Jay repeated thoughtfully. “Interesting name…”

“No, asterion or spider. Not both,” Kerr corrected absently as she ate a bowl of the soup that Alex had cooked for the group. “Asterion means venomous spider in old Parusyatian.”

“Oh,” Jay blinked at the explanation. “Alright. Well, it sounds a lot like Asteria, the name of the fallen Nephilim Nation.”

“That is because asterion is derived from the name Asteria.”

Turning to look at the other side of the room, Jay focused on Eir. The elf had been quietly eating her own bowl of soup, mostly staying out of the discussion. She had been extremely busy all day using her spells to cleanse as many people of disease as she could. While it wasn’t a physically taxing job, constantly running out of magic and having it replenished by Alex, only to run out again repeatedly, was draining on the saint. If they weren’t waiting on Aila and Severina to return, Jadis was certain that Eir would have fallen asleep from exhaustion already.

Smiling at Jay’s attention, the elf tiredly motioned with one hand towards the ceiling of the room they were in.

“Asteria, the ancient nation of the Nephilim, bred the giant flower spiders for their silk. While the Last Bastion of the Nephilim fell, many of the creatures that they had used as livestock survived. Over time, the spiders of Asteria became known as asterion.”

“Huh. Learn something new every day,” Kerr mumbled before tossing back the last of her soup.

“You know, that makes this even more ironic,” Jay laughed as she raised her hands to her sides and looked at Meli. “A Nephilim and an asterion, together again after a couple of thousand years.”

“I am not actually an asterion,” Meli pointed out while rubbing her pedipalps together. “I am a Dryad. This is just a spell.”

“…right. I know.”

“I think your new s—spider form is very pretty,” Thea said into the silence a moment later. “I like it.”

“Thank you,” Meli responded, fully turning her body around to look directly at Thea since she had no neck. “I think you are attractive as well. You have an especially admirable bottom.”

As Thea blushed and Kerr guffawed with laughter, the sound of a door opening caught Jay’s notice. Glancing over, she saw both Aila and Severina enter the room. Seeing the utterly exhausted looks on their faces, Jadis woke her other two selves up from the nest of cushions she had made with a sleeping Hope while Jay went to greet them.

“Rough day?” Jay asked while leaning down to give Aila a kiss.

“I never want to live in a republic,” the redhead said with deadpan seriousness after she reciprocated the kiss.

“Why not?” Jay asked before turning to give Severina a kiss.

“Because at least in an empire, we have only two hardheaded aristocrats vying to be emperor,” Severina answered for Aila, “instead of two hundred obstinate fools trying for that same role.”