Sherrel pressed her face up against the panel of her monitor, she cooed like a bird.

  Playing on the monitor was a tragic scene of high commander Ellihim losing his life to halt the demon armies from getting through Wormweir Pass.

  Sherrel made a strange high pitched croaking noise as her tears ran down the monitor. "So tragic!" she felt emotional every time she saw it, but maybe because it was 3am this time was especially bad. "Gahh, he's leaving behind a widow, 3 sons and a daughter! That's a whole family! How sad."

  Sherrel could feel a fresh round of sniffles approach her but before that she fell through the monitor. "Ack!"

  Lying in a crumpled heap on a cold smooth floor, she looked around. Everything was pitch black. "Light!" She encanted. And just like that a shimmering ball of light illuminated around 10 feet around her. Everything was black including her surroundings, the mirrorlike stone she was sitting on, and the eyes and hair of the strange man leaning over her.

  "Ah ah gah ah!" she quickly scrambled on her hands and knees away from him. There was a mirthful laughter that came from the abyss as the man stepped forward again.

  "Demon lord?" the woman couldn't help but exclaim. Truly this man looked like the demon lord her party had just slain. Short black hair, beady black eyes, even his clothes were the same ostentatious gold and black.

  "Grr back! Back demon!"

  The strange man couldn't help but laugh again. The sound echoed in the strange environment. "So you are the one behind Sheileen." he said.

  Sherrel's hackles raised, that was her in game character's name.

  The demon lord bowed to her. "A pleasure to meet you."

  Sherrel studied him, he was handsome, but she had always regarded the demon lord as a piece of trash, indeed he gave off the impression similar to that of an oily used car salesman.

  Getting up, she brushed off her knees. "What do you want from me?" Sherrel asked.

  "Why it's quite simple. I want you to receive my legacy."

  "I'll pass."

  "Hear me out. I don't resent you, you know."

  "I don't like you."

  The man sighed. "In every age, a great evil arises. That's me. But then as fate would have it the chosen avatars of the gods themselves arrive to save the day, that's where you come in. But really we're both pawns of fate, playing the role that's been chosen for us."

  Sherrel fidgeted. "Creepy."

  The man smiled. "Yes quite. But I wanted to see if there was a way to defy fate, I know quite a bit about you, about all of the heroes, the avatars. But you always stood out to me. The others were all very straight forward. A paladin, rogue, knight and mage. But you, the healer, were an anomaly. You didn't have roots as a holy woman, but instead you were a former mage, and what's more an alchemist? A leatherworker, a blacksmith, all that should have been impossible. You truly made the most of the god's blessings didn't you?"

  "I don't have to answer you."

  "Nevermind that, I found another kindred spirit in you, someone yearning to be free but forced into their role as a hero."

  "I wasn't forced into anything, I just wanted to be useful on raids." Sherrel muttered.

  The demon king ignored her. "And that is why I have chosen to relinquish my legacy to you." He opened his hand, Sherrel squinted as dark purple mana coalesced into a strange dark crystal.

  "With it, I can give one last defiance, I can give you what you truly want, the power to pursue your own interests, not those foisted upon you."

  Sherrel stared at the dark crystal. "What I truly want..." She looked up. "... And what would that be demon?"

  The man grinned, the crystal seemed to glow anew and he raised it. " ...Why don't we find out."

  There was a purple flash-- and then nothing.

  The sensation of wood on her cheek was cool. She groaned and stretched, then slowly lifted her face from the counter top, then blinked. "Gahh!" She flailed and fell to the ground. She scurried back against a heavy wooden shelf. "Back demon!" she shouted. "Huhuhu." Slowly she got up. Then brushed herself off. "What in the flipping heck?!"

  She was in a storefront, it was a decent size though not excessive, but even without looking at her reflection she could already feel the changes in her body. She pulled a bit of her hair so that she could see it's reddish color instead of her normal brown. A wave of her hand brought her staff to her hand and opened her System panel.

  Name : Sheileen of GrimHollow

  Level : 10000?

  Title : Healer of the End (... 107 more )

  Class : [Hidden] (... #!?rVgHCxn)

  Health : 120000

  Mana : 5000000?

  Strength : 11372 + (2000)

  Dexterity : 16089 + (2000)

  Constitution : 13565 + (2000)

  Perception : 20456 + (2000)

  If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  Intelligence : 56874 + (2000)

  wisdom : 37219 + (2000)

  Giving it a cursory glance, her status was more or less how she expected it to be, the only discrepancy was her health which had skyrocketed, but other than that, it was as she suspected. "Fufufu I have become Sheileen Grimhollow."

  Her character in Land of Eternal was a hodgepodge of different classes and specializations, something that was quite frowned upon by the min maxers and guide adherents. It was common for players to make a new character and heavily specialize in a different combat class, or crafting class. But Sherrel had never made another character. She had hit the level cap of ten thousand long ago. But classes could be leveled up to a thousand independently. She had started out as an enchanter mage hybrid. With every level gained, the player got around ten points to spend on their stats, in contrast, gaining levels in a specific class would grant specializations, these could be bonuses to elemental damage, increased mana, increased mana regen, or passives relating to the class. So for example her thousand levels in mage gave her improvements to mana efficiency, casting time, and magic damage.

  There were two types of specializations, those that the player actively picked, and those that were granted because some type of condition had been met. For the actively picked ones, once a class leveled to a certain point, it would let you pick between a few predetermined specializations. Otherwise, if you did something like cast a certain amount of spells, or enchanted enough items, then you would meet the requirements to gain a certain specialization.

  Most players had a handful of different, but similar classes, and ending up picking or gaining specializations that complemented their build, normally combat focused ones.

  Sherrel had instead picked up just about every class that had interested her and picked specializations more focused towards crafting and arcane knowledge.

  The only reason she wasn't useless in combat was because she had no lifed the game. She spent nearly all of her waking moments playing and accrued a lot of specializations by manually meeting the requirements. Unfortunately because of her stat spread she was weaker than a specialized max level mage. Sherrel didn't mind though, her character was unique and had access to a lot of magic only available to her.

  That being said she couldn't really compete with her party's other mage's damage per second, so she did what she could and instead turned towards healing, turning herself into a rather eccentric support player, both in battle and outside of it. It was a shame that her stats also meant she could never be one of the best crafters in any particular field, but crafting was less stat reliant so she was instead a decent enough crafter in multiple fields, most of them really, which was uncommon. If one was to focus entirely on crafting, leveling would be more difficult, so she was unique in the sense that she had a max leveled character with significant levels in crafting classes.

  Of course other players had multiple characters so the point was kind of moot but... making a second character had simply never appealed to Sherrel.

  So she had one character and it was Sheileen of GrimHollow. A rather unassuming human with curly maroon hair. Not much thought had been put into her creation initially, but after a decade or so of playing Land of Eternal, Sherrel felt like she already knew Sheileen intimately. In fact she didn't feel out of place at all, every spell, mannerism, or peculiarity was so deeply her own that it gave her no pause at all. She was already fully in sync with this new body.

  What gave her pause was this store! With her newly refined mana senses, she could tell something was off. The building emanated a subtle demonic stench, she already had a suspicion about what was causing it. She raised her staff and for a moment mana hung heavy in the air, then in the center of the store, an oppressive feeling got worse as a purple crystal began to appear.

  "The demon king's legacy." She muttered.

  She could tell clearly that it was bound to her, it responded to her will, it was not some errant artifact. But she still found it to be most strange. It seemed to be connected to the store, anything that was associated with the demon king Sherrel had a hard time trusting, so she was going to peer deeply into just what this artifact and it's magic was doing.

  Before that though she leaned into her staff, letting out a muffled squeal.

  "What the heck! What the heck! What the heck!"

  The demon king? Really? Was she supposed to believe that? Had she fallen asleep at her desk again? Everything seemed so vivid. The girl shuddered, and if she was dreaming she'd probably dream of high commander Ellihim and not... we- well he was married so that was wrong, but if it was a dream... no! No! No-!

  The mage slapped her face with both hands. But not the demon king-! She couldn't stand it.

  If it wasn't a dream- then? Then what?

  She grasped her staff and felt the mana flow through her mana veins, she formed a crude spell, held together mostly by her will and her own understanding of magic. It shifted and ebbed in on itself as she wasn't satisfied with a rigidity that was safe, but could be predicted. She needed to really know. Her eyes shone as though forming into kaleidoscopes, as she cast [true sight].

  What a lot of people didn't know, was that [true sight] was more than just about what the eyes could see, it also worked against mental effects, as well as enhancing memory and so on. After all in order to see something you also had to retain the memory of seeing it otherwise it was pointless.

  Sheileen went over the events in her own head, looking for deception or discrepancies. As the multicolored light began to fade from her eyes she frowned. "It wasn't a dream, it was all true."

  Even if Sherrel was still sceptical, she was no longer just Sherrel. Sheileen was a nice, quiet, and polite weapon of mass destruction who had experienced the fall of the demon king. It was her experience, her sorcery that Sherrel was relying on. The two were like slightly out of sync ripples in the same pond. Both made out of the same water, both in the same body, but just slightly out of tune. And they were becoming more in sync by every passing moment.

  While a part of Sherrel still doubted everything, Sheileen was confident and way ahead of her. It would be a while before she finally caught up.

  Sheileen raised her staff up, the mana grew heavy. Complex, hundreds, thousands of spell circles wrote themselves upon reality all at once, interlocking and idly rotating in one large design.

  [Lay bare your secrets]

  As though the world laid still, nothing escaped Sheileen's notice in that moment. Her intent was focused on the crystal, fascinated by this remnant of the demon lord. She saw it all, the flow of mana, the soul crytal's lattice, and she studied. Drinking deeply from this chalice of knowledge before her, as well as probing it for any signs of maliciousness. Sherrel had thought this would be difficult, or impossible to understand. Instead it seemed... crude, fascinating but somehow quaint. It was a whimsy. It made her smile. The demon king's unendable might and innate arcanic intuition used... to create a store. It was like the grand bank, it tied into the System itself, but for what a feat it was, it was ultimately folly. Because it well and truly was all just for this store.

  She sighed in relief and her oppressive spell faded. "Well... that's not what I was expecting but..." she looked at the empty, slightly dusty shelves. "... I won't have to kill you again, so I'm satisfied."

  She stretched her arms up over her head. "A storefront System, I supposed I'll have to accept it, since it seems it was given earnestly." Her nose wrinkled. "Even if it is from that man."

  "I wonder... is this, peace?"