In that instant, I felt a slight loosening inside my body, and I checked my Anima Depth to see that it had changed,

[Effective Operating Capacity: 34 / 59]

My effective operating capacity had increased by one point. With the strength of my body, skills, spells, and attunement abilities, a single point would go a long way for me.

I had nearly forgotten that the core in my heart had barely had the time to begin its changes before I perished, and now those changes were picking up momentum.

Three centimetres of dense, impossible conduit, running from the heart toward the spine, and I could feel this channel in a way I could not with any of my other channels, which included my seven Primary channels.

It was as if my previous channels were made from spider silk, while these new channels were forged from titanium.

I was building a body that the magus tradition could not produce, from materials the magus tradition did not catalogue, along a construction path that the Stone Oracle had not foreseen. The system was tracking the project anyway.

If everything went the way it should, then my reforged body would functionally become an Anima-saturated organism rather than a body with magical infrastructure.

I could not even wrap my head around what that would mean if I pushed myself to think about it.

It was as if my entire body would become an Anima Reservoir, and not just that, with the bindings of Mortal Shell and the density and durability of Cor Telluris, my body would shame the hardest substance on the planet.

Beneath the core section, the title’s status.

[Demon Slayer (Epic) — Ascendant Earth Gate active]

[Stored Essence: 8,847 Demons]

[Second Earth Gate — Unlock Requirement — Stored Essence: 8,847 / 10,000]

Eight thousand eight hundred and forty-seven. Most of that increment had come from the Narghul Sorcerer’s kill.

I could see that the title had assigned the demon’s essence at a rate substantially above what the chitin demons had contributed individually.

I was approximately one thousand one hundred and fifty essence-units from the Second Earth Gate threshold.

If I only kill the Narghul Sorcerer in this loop, then I should have more than enough to open the second Earth Gate.

However, I recalled that for my first Earth Gate to open, I had to kill more demons even past the threshold of the first gate.

It appeared as if each gate was not easily opened and was stuck, and only an overflowing essence could shove them open.

Whatever the situation might be, I knew that in this loop I would have enough essence to unlock the second Earth Gate, and I was no longer afraid of what changes it would bring to my body.

I closed the status screen and thought about my game plan. There were about five minutes before the eruption began.

∞

With the eruption coming, I laid my staff beside me, and it only needed to be in contact with me for the transformation to begin.

My staff was falling behind, and if I did not find a way to gain access to Focus Crystals, then I would slowly start to leave this tool behind.

But I could not; this staff was one of the tethers of my soul, and it would remain with me.

Clearing my mind, I began to focus on a task I should be handling with the time I had left to me... which was my new Anima.

I had gained this Anima and Endurance from opening the first Earth Gate, where it gave me +5 Anima and +20 Endurance.

This was not just a random upgrade to my attributes; it gave me a more powerful Anima and a few hundred drops of blood that were denser and almost seemed aware.

Looking inside my body, I noticed that more of my blood was changing to the new blood, from a few hundred drops, they were nearing thousands.

My blood, however, was not the issue; the new Anima was, and I think I knew how to solve this problem.

Anima, in its raw state, was just the stuff of our souls, and it was a resource that a mage could utilize.

Unlike a normal human whose soul depth was fixed at birth, a mage’s soul depth could actually grow, and that gave us the ability to connect to the Essence of Existence around us.

Although our Anima Depth could increase when we cast spells, the core of who we are as a mage only slowly changes over time with all the experiences we acquire during our lifetime.

It was these experiences that shaped us and made us who we are.

Looking at the glowing Anima inside me, I understood that I could not fully control this Anima or even burn it like I could because this Anima was blank.

I had been handed the raw stuff of creation itself, and for me to channel it, I had to make it my own.

With this thought in my mind, I began the process, which was simpler than I thought.

I simply began to open myself and everything I was to this new Anima in my core, and they were like starving children who had been given food.

They gravitated towards my memories, and they began to assimilate them, and I gasped in shock as the details of my life flashed before my eyes, far clearer than ever before.

Including the moment of my birth.

This moment flashed by before I could fully understand what I had seen, but I knew that I had assimilated my new soul.

A smile broke across my face as I felt the earth beneath me let out a sigh... it has begun.

The loud foghorn blew, and the name that I could hear was becoming clearer.

But what I knew was that it sounded like a scream of rage, or maybe fear.

From my experience, I had maybe six more minutes before the demons came for me.

I would kill the Khaaz Demons, and when the Narghul Sorcerer comes for me, he shall die as well.

His entire being was the material I would feed into the core, and the next channel would grow, and the construction of Cor Telluris would advance until the body was complete.

The Narghul Sorcerer would die today. And tomorrow. And the day after that.

Each death would feed the transformation. Each loop would make my body more impossible.

Until the work was done and I became a force that even the Hollow Avatar called unprecedented.

The fifteenth iteration of this battle was beginning.

Let the demon come, I could not wait to feed him to my heart.