Reborn in hell with a skill creation system

Chapter 10: The Ascension Fruit

"The Envy Tree," Zara said, and her voice seemed to lose its flatness for a second, but she quickly recovered it.

"It bears fruit once every hundred years. The fruit allows any demon below High tier to ascend one full tier instantly."

She leaned back and looked at him directly, "I intend to have it."

He looked at the map, then at her, then back at the map.

The marked location was deep. Surrounded by boundary lines that he was now guessing represented territories belonging to demons considerably more dangerous than anything he’d seen today.

She folded her hands and she continued looking at him with a serious expression.

"We, masters of the pit, hold a competition every cycle for the right to enter the territory. The top ten are permitted to enter with one champion each." She paused before adding, "and unfortunately for me, you are my champion."

The frown on Zara’s face got darker as she looked at him, "which wouldn’t have been the case if you hadn’t taken down the Garth."

"Seriously, what is a hatchling even doing there?" She pulled her hair in frustration.

That was a question he couldn’t answer even if his mouth worked properly.

What was a hatchling doing there?

Farming souls, mostly. Minding his own business before falling off a cliff.

None of those were answers he could currently produce, so he just held her gaze and said nothing, which seemed to frustrate her further judging by the way her fingers tightened on the edge of the board.

She stared at him for a long moment, her gold eyes searching his face for something, then she let out an exhausted breath through her nose and looked back at her map.

"The competition starts in three days," she said, back to the flat controlled voice, "the other masters have been preparing their champions for months. Some of them have champions at peak Low Demon tier."

She tapped the map without looking up, "and all I have is a hatchling."

He was aware of that, yes.

"A hatchling that somehow killed Garth," she added, almost to herself, and the frustration in her voice seemed to have lessened as she seemed to think of something.

"Hm," she said.

Zara then stood up and moved to the wall where the collection of objects was arranged, running her fingers along them until she found what she was looking for.

It was a small vial containing something that seemed like liquid but glowed faintly at the center.

She held it out toward him and he curiously looked at it, then at her.

"It’ll fix your speech," she said, then added, "temporarily. Until your vocal structure develops naturally."

"Don’t misunderstand though," she said again, "this is not a gift, it’s only an investment and I expect you to pay me back in full."

Yeah, as if he had asked to be invested in.

She should’ve just left him to his soul farming, maybe by now he’d have reached that feeling that he was going towards.

Which was probably a breakthrough.

Still, he took the vial and gulped down its contents in one go and he immediately felt a slight burning in his throat.

The liquid tasted like... nothing, so it was easy to gulp down.

Mael then waited for whatever was supposed to happen after the burning.

Zara was also curiously waiting to hear what this hatchling sounded like.. given that it seemed to have just hatched, it’d probably sound like a child.

"For what it’s worth," Mael suddenly said, "I didn’t know it was a competition."

He had expected his usual garbled language as he tried testing if the vial truly worked and he was pleasantly surprised by his own voice.

So was Zara.

She had expected him to sound like a child, and yet, he sounded like a man.

His voice was deeper and Rougher than she had probably anticipated

He quite liked it actually and so did she....not thag she’d admit it.

Zara recovered quickly, her expression turning back to neutral like it had never left, though she couldn’t quite hide the brief surprise that had crossed her face.

"A hatchling that sounds like that," she muttered, more to herself than him, then seemed to decide she wasn’t going to think about it too hard and looked back at her map.

"I know you didn’t know," she said, answering what he’d said before the voice had derailed her, "which is the only reason you still have a head."

"Comforting," Mael said he muttered before moving a finger to the collar on his neck and requesting, "can you also get this off me? It affects my growth."

"Don’t push your luck," Zara glared at him briefly before turning back to the map and explaining.

"The territory around the Envy Tree is called the Hollow," she said, back to business, "it opens once every hundred years alongside the fruit. When the masters hold the competition, the top ten enter with their champions and from that point, it’s simple."

"First champion to present the food to their master wins it," Zara paused before adding, "or rather, the first master to eat the fruit gets to ascend."

"And the others?" Mael asked.

"They’re free to return empty handed," she said, then paused, "or not return at all."

So it wasn’t just a race. It was a race where the other nine champions were highly motivated to ensure their competition didn’t finish it.

He looked at the map again with fresh eyes before asking, "how big is this territory?"

"Big enough that ten groups shouldn’t naturally run into each other," Zara said, "but champions have a habit of seeking each other out anyway."

In other words, he’d be actively hunted if he made it into the top ten, which was even more reason to get this damned collar off him, but he had a suspicion that she wouldn’t get it off him.

So Mael studied the boundary lines on the map, observing the rough shape of the territory and noting the markings she’d made inside it that he couldn’t read yet.

"What’s in there besides the tree?"

Zara was silent for a while as she also looked at the map.

"The Hollow has its own ecosystem," she said carefully, "things that don’t exist anywhere else in the Pit. The kind of things that have had a hundred years of isolation to grow undisturbed."

"So dangerous things."

"Everything in the pit is dangerous."

"You know what I mean."

She looked at him for a moment before letting out a sigh and giving the answer he was searching for.

"Yes."

"Extremely dangerous things."