A Dragon Idol's Reincarnation Tale

Sitting around a small campfire while enjoying some stew, I was translating everything Kramps was telling me to Vifi, keeping her informed just as Kramps wanted. Considering what he just told me, allowing her to hear about her ancestors—the archdemons—seemed warranted to me, and even if it wasn’t interesting to Vifi, I thought she should know about it, at least.

She hadn’t chosen her Job evolution yet, so she might be antsy about choosing one soon.

“That’s how it already works,” I said.

While it was possible for artisans and day workers to gain experience without killing anything through Quests—usually work-related requests, in this case—the amount they could get from them was enough to maybe bring them up to level 15 at a convenient pace. The point was that it was hard for the average person to become strong.

After all, the whole leveling and Job systems were balanced around the fact you could only become stronger if you fought and killed others. Being an adventurer, soldier, or any combat profession was the way to go.

Kramps continued.

Considering Grimnir’s blessed benefits were mostly focused on his smithing and runesmithing abilities, I could see that being one of the reasons.

“Ha, the first otherworldly ritual of its kind, and the gods are panicking to find a way to combat it? In a way, I can’t help but feel proud of that. Hard conditions to fulfill, so it had to result in that much. You need a proper demonic connection to the Edjurl gods, after all,” Vifi explained. “Two have been enacted, as you know. The first was to summon those brats—accidentally also Saori—by sacrificing the life of our previous prince of lust. The second used the prince of envy’s life. Wanna guess the requirement?”

“Considering you only listed those two, I presume you need a prince of sin for it?”

“Almost correct. You need pure demon blood. Do you remember the black-liquid potions my fellow soldiers and a few Edjurian sympathizers ingested to change their figures? The former gaining more strength with a skin change, while the latter usefully morphs into more grotesque forms? That’s the means the princes of sin use to make their blood as pure as possible for the rituals,” she said. “Only works with a prince of sin, though, and you need an unholy amount of mana to even begin the ritual! You need the prince’s heir to be ready to fully inherit their prince’s blood as well, so Bole’Taria doesn’t just lose one of their major fighters for years to concoct new blood for the process.”“… I’m starting to get really curious about this. Do you mind bringing me up to speed with this?” I asked. With Vifi fully on our side, I believed I was allowed to ask this now.

And I was right.

“Sure. Princes of sins are created by injected pure demon blood into the vessel, which allows them to not only use their demonic powers at a higher degree of efficiency, but also allows them to access the archdemon’s sin abilities. Satan and Satanael for wrath demonkin, as a reminder.” Vifi then pointed at her chest before pulling her gambeson down a bit to show a small scar. “However, pure demon blood is deadly for your body, unless you train to accept it. Through the creation of sin crystals, sin heirs are created by putting one of them into our bodies and that allows us to adapt to the demon blood over time; but, as I said, that requires a lot of time. You need the sin heir to be ready, otherwise the process would fail without a doubt.”

“And you pried yours out to pay Ghorush to save your apprentice, right.”

She nodded. “The first, and only, batch of pure demon blood was made 600 years ago, and none have been synthesized ever since. I don’t know how long it would take, but with the prince of envy’s dramatic self-offering, Bole’Taria has effectively lost their prince of envy until Lord Sloth can create more blood. That means, they must extract the blood from the remains of Master Envy.”

“By ‘Master Envy’ you mean the archdemon of envy,” I replied, which she confirmed, prompting me to tilt my head. “Then … how did they create princes of lust? Klea’s body was beaten up by Belzac until Aurena destroyed it all when she was imprisoned.”

“… She fucked around. A lot,” Vifi stated with the most deadpan expression ever, causing me to gasp awkwardly. “Okay, maybe a bit too dramatic, but it isn’t hard to think how it happened. The sin of lust’s powers involve creating blood and flesh through demonic energy. Save up some of the bits of flesh from whenever Mistress Klea was fighting people and your descendants might be able to scavenge enough for some blood. The important part is that the pure blood was only made once for each sin. You just need enough and to ensure that your princes of sins don’t just randomly die without choosing an heir. Easy, right?”

Kramps praised, even sending me an image of him clapping. I knew he was trying to congratulate me for my party’s achievement, but seeing that giant black dragon slow clap was a surreal sight. Almost like he was sarcastic … although, he wasn’t.