I will admit to a polite curiosity. The snippets I have heard about her past absolutely spawned more questions. I knew she worked with a mercenary company. Fought a demon invasion, won, and then went hunting other demons across the continent. Then something fundamentally catastrophic happened in the Technacoast. Angelica wasn't always a lone warrior. She was traveling with others, one being her brother, Antonio. I saw Angelica and her brother fighting through Rachel's eyes with the Commune Skill. The clash caused a large part of the city to collapse. There was also the fact everyone kept calling her the Chosen One. Let's not forget people treated her like a rockstar at the Mandir. Hell, I was a Titan Spawn, but she was the one folks left offerings and gifts to.

Like I said. I was curious, but the things I knew all pointed to there being a lot of painful memories in the mix. Angelica had actively shut down talk about her past multiple times as well. I may not be the sharpest tack in the box, but I could pick up on those context clues.

I considered my answer. The others did not.

Sunit leaned forward, resting her elbow on the table, "Yes, please tell us."

"Yeah alright," Brunhilda said. "This should be interesting."

Brand was a bit more measured in his response, "I will certainly listen, but why tell us now?"

Angelica looked a little uncomfortable, she wasn't thrilled with an audience, "It's more relevant now that we are near the tower. Also Doug asked me about my future plans…" She trailed off.

"So… you decided to talk about the past?" Brunhilda prompted.

"It's connected," Angelica insisted, after that she considered for a moment, "But what ties them together is complicated."

"That is the present," Brand chipped in, "It is notoriously hard to summarize."

Angelica eyed him. He simply smiled back, somehow appearing to be polite and helpful rather than smug and obtuse.

I cut off the peanut gallery, "Yes, I would like to hear whatever you are willing to tell me."

Toad set a note book down on the table, "Proceed."

I elbowed him.

He elbowed me back hard and spoke to Angelica, "Whenever you are ready."

Angelica snorted and shook her head. I could tell she was listening to something Celeste was telling her. Eventually she started talking. "Most of it is pretty standard stuff. I was the second child of four. My dad was and still is the mayor of a small town, called Hardground. It was mostly an inland farming community. My mom helped build the place up to a trade hub. It is in a spot that connects to the swampland, the mountains and a road to Mainport. She negotiated a deal and partnered with Whitbread Shipping and by the time my baby brother, Hector was born, we were rich." She paused and looked at me to see if I had any questions.

"I am still following," I confirmed. None of the names made any sense, but that didn't really matter. This was about her.

"Things were pretty great until I turned six," Angelica saw the question, "years old. A North American Murder Log, it's like an alligator mob, got into our yard." Angelica considered, "The thing snuck up on Hector, Diego and me. It bit Hector. It got him by the arm. I can still hear that screaming. I basically panicked and with a rock bashed the things head over and over again. Diego grabbed Hector and pulled. I killed the thing eventually. We saved Hector, but not his arm."

"That's when things got messy," Angelica said. "Mom and Dad freaked the fuck out. Mobs were in town. Everyone almost missed that I had killed the thing. That mob is Rare Scale. We were little kids. Logically it should have eaten all of us…"

"But you're Heroic Scale," I observed.

"And everybody in town knew it then. Even as a kid I was one of the strongest fighters for miles. My parents argued a lot because of that. Since my older brother Tony, who was Epic Scale, was already part of the town guard, it was decided I would be trained to fight as well. Before I knew I was level ten. I was a local legend. I didn't handle that well. For a while there I was an entitled, uppity little shit." Angelica drummed her fingers on the table.

After the silence got uncomfortable, Brunhilda said, "Who'd you hurt?"

Angelica flinched a little but answered, "My mom. I broke her arm." She pantomimed moving her arm like she was trying to swat a grasping hand away. She paused, "I was seven… I can't even remember what we were fighting about. I can hear the crack though." She sighed, "My mom is only Uncommon Scale, and my Dad is Rare Scale. I was too much for them to handle. Tony kept me on the rails mostly, but I needed structure and a reality check. That's how Tony and I got signed up with Granny Mabel's adventuring company."

Angelica laughed, "I thought I was gonna walk in there and show everyone how awesome I was. Bobby Mabel kicked my ass to the curb. It was a harsh lesson. I needed that. Long story short, they taught me a lot about doing the work and not being an asshole."

"Tony and I weren't really adventurers. We were convoy guards. Mostly making sure the roads between Hardground and Mainport were clear and safe. It was boring, until it wasn't. Anyways, when I was sixteen we found a demon. That was rough, but we also found that they were trying to smuggle a corrupted artifact up into the hills. We sent word to the others and went to investigate. The next four weeks were us fighting demons throughout the hills and the Dark below."

Angelica grew more serious, "Demons construct those towers to create Hellgates. They can collect energy from the suffering of others. The leader, a twisted bastard calling himself Faust, had laid the foundation for an inverted tower that would reach into the deep. They had taken people off the roads, mostly young people trying to get to Mainport. Our first fight didn't go that well. I guess it is more accurate to say things were fine until we cornered him. Faust tossed Tony, Meg, Barns, and me through the veil. It was some trick of the tower. We had to fight our way back to the hellgate from the other side." Angelica balled her hands into fists, "We all made it out, but… not the same. Being on the other side of the veil for that long, it does things to people. We were all Marked for Death."

"That explains why healing magic doesn't work right on you, but how are you still alive?" Brunhilda asked.

"Dedicated HP regen training. My mom was religious about it before I became an adventurer." Angelica answered. "Also, Marked for Death puts you on a timer, but um… you can reset it. You just have to kill someone. I have been feeding the mark demons. Clearing out that first portal racked up ten years. We spent the majority of that time hunting down all the demons we could find in the Fantasy Kingdom which put even more time on the clock. Trouble is the more you feed the mark, the higher the scale it needs to give you more time."

Things were quiet for a long time after that.

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"Not to derail your story, but what scale does the mark need and how much time do you have?" I asked. My voice was calm, but something cold and terrible knotted inside my stomach. Even as I waited for the answer my mind focused on one thing. Wilson was a profound, and unyielding asshole. The son of bitch knew this from the start. He has been laughing and smiling about it the whole time.

"I have about five months. Killing the Demon of Frost should give me another six." Angelica explained. She went quiet again. Finally she added almost in a whisper, "After, I don't know where any other demons are."

Willpower Check… Successful

Emotional state maintained.

Ah shit. It had been a while since something forced a willpower check. In the quiet that followed, I slid my hand closer to hers. I bumped my hand against her clenched fist. After a moment she opened her hand and rested it on mine.

Toad was still locked in on his priorities, "I am sorry for your situation, but you made it sound like there was something important you wanted to tell us that would have some direct impact on the upcoming battle."

Angelica grip tightened on my hand, "Yeah, so demons of Heroic Scale and higher can possess people of lower Scale. They take control of people and use them as a weapon to kill people and destroy morale."

"Oh, shit," Toad said looking up from his notes.

"Is there any defense against that?" Philip asked.

Angelica demonstrating her lack of poker face grimaced, "Uh be higher scale. Otherwise, you need to win a mental roll against their Possession Skill. Tony was a Spellblade and he couldn't break free from Herschel."

"There are means of preventing possession and warding off evil," Sunit said. When everyone looked at him he hedged his words, "They limited."

"Faith," Philip said.

"In the quiet gods," Sunit nodded.

"That cannot be mass produced," Toad scribbled a note.

"How does that work?" I asked.

Sunit smiled a little meekly, "There are two schools of thought. The first, demonic players' powers are based on the system, and the system took our beliefs into itself and embedded weakness into demonic players based on the world's theologies."

"Similar ideas have been proposed about angelic players, " Angelica added. "Although that one is based on how Judeo-Christian angels seem to be in general."

"So not all angels are nice people?" I asked.

After getting an answer from Celeste, Angelica held up a hand and tipped it side to side, "Eh. They seemed to be more opposed to the demonic players throughout history rather than upper case Good. Recently they have been very quiet. Before most of them disappeared they were pretty vocal that they have a systematic urge to follow a bunch of moral rules. The weird thing is those rules didn't match from one angel to the next. They could vary drastically."

That was a little disappointing, and concerning. Celeste had shown herself multiple times to be a profoundly just and kind person. I had hoped there were hundreds more like her. The other angels being missing was ominous as well. Then again, if most demons were operating in secret, it would make sense their opposition would hide away as well.

"What is the second school of thought?" I asked Sunit.

He shrugged, "That the quiet gods protect their followers from evil."

"What about Lola?" I asked. I wasn't going to go down that road. It raised a lot of questions about people who didn't get protection, and probably wouldn't be helpful.

"Goddess Lola acts more directly. She grants me physical powers to strike at the heart of the demons but that power does not grant immunity to spiritual attacks." He explained.

Philip frowned, "Are there any other details you can provide about possession? He almost pleaded for Angelica to give him some good news.

She didn't have any for him, "The demon doesn't take any damage while in a host. They can also immediately possess a new host after their current host is killed. The worst bit is the possessed host gets a buff to their physical attributes. So when they use your loved ones to attack you, your loved ones are a lot stronger."

One of the first things Angelica told me was that she killed Herschel. At the time I had thought she was proud of it. I could see now, she had been trying to gauge my response. She suspected I was somehow related to the demons. They made her kill her friends and brother. No wonder she almost stabbed me. I am not going to pretend I don't have family trauma. Frankly comparing trauma for anything other than an attempt at empathy is fuckin' stupid. That said, Angelica wins… or I guess loses. Here word choices matter: your loved ones. Even now she couldn't actually say it. I understood that.

Everything she had said up till now replayed in my head. Her stories focused on her mistakes and glossed over any achievements. Angelica couldn't see the lives she saved. She was haunted by the people she couldn't protect. Until now I had just let Angelica squeeze my hand. Just trying to be there. I turned my hand over and held hers.

Like I said, comparing trauma is not smart.

"How many Heroic Scale demons are at this tower?" Brand asked.

"I don't know," Angelica admitted. She clearly had a quick exchange with Celeste, "I doubt there would be more than five, but this is a hellgate, one that has stood for nearly two centuries. For all we know there might be a devil there."

"The Devils aren't at the tower," I said. When everyone looked at me I continued, "While on the other side of the veil, I saw that one is on the east coast up north, and the other seems to be in South America."

"That's good," Brunhilda said.

"But their power can reach continents," I continued

"That's bad," Brunhilda said

"But they are scared of the Titan," I added.

"That's good," Brunhilda said, more hopeful.

"But we can't rely on him," I pointed out.

"That's bad," Brunhilda said.

"But I do have Mental Resistance, and the ability to make pacts," I realized.

"That's good," Brunhilda said.

"But I only have forty some pacts open." I said.

Brunhilda looked at me, waiting

"That's bad," I told her.

She shrugged, "If you say so buddy. I can't make any pacts at all. Based on ours, you can basically hand out superpowers."

"We may be thinking about this the wrong way," Toad cut in, "What support powers do you have? Something someone with a pact could use to buff others."

Not a lot. I looked through Perks. My maximum survivability focus had focused all of my perks into personal power. Well except one, Improved Pact. I considered that for a moment, "Hey Toad do you want to try something?

Pact Offered

Toad Badkiss: provides

Service as General in Army

Note 1: willingly breaking terms of pact will result in a Smite of Toad Badkiss

Titan Spawn: Provides

Improved Pact (This perk cannot be reduced).Mental Resistance (This Perk Cannot be reduced)Base attribute improvement

Pending Acceptance…

I sent the offer and watched Toad accept the prompt and then read it. Not sure why he just hit yes. His eyes bulged.

Time Stopped. It stopped hard.

Possible Exploit Detected…

Pacts require Divine Scale. Please wait for automatic system review.

Please wait…

Please wait…

Resolution determined.:Pact recipient will be temporarily elevated to Divine Scale for duration of the pact.

Mismatch detected. Improved pact requires ability to form pacts.

Please wait…

Resolution determined: Due to player being Divine Scale, and having the Improved Pact Perk. Recipient will have the ability to form pacts.

Thank you for your patience.

Ticket closed.

Toad stared into the middle distance for a while, "I have formed pacts with fourteen who i will refer to as captains. They will form pacts as well."

Time stopped again.

All Processes stopped.

Arbitration begins in…

5…

4…

3…

2…

1…

That tracks.

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