Dara stared at me for a moment, and I was aware that she was not comfortable with my answer or what she could detect from the ground.

Bari had gone still, too, the measuring line slack in his hands. The easy comfort of his expression had shifted into something more alert. His Anima sensitivity was higher than mine, and he was feeling it through that channel. I could see him working to identify it.

"It’s coming from below," he said.

"We should tell Commander Rel," Dara said. She was already turning.

"There isn’t time," I said. "Besides, I am sure they have better senses than us."

They both looked at me.

"Elric," Dara said, slowly. "What do you know?"

I sighed, but instead of answering, I closed my eyes and called up my Status Screen before looking at my Titles.

[Title: Acolyte]

[Available Titles: Death-Touched]

Titles were one of the most mysterious portions of any Mage’s status screen, as their mechanisms were not fully understood, not even after nearly ten thousand years of Magus Civilization.

In the first fourteen years of my life, I had no Title, and I know for a fact that my mother and father only gained a Title when they were well in their forties after nearly a lifetime of craft in their field, but I got my first Title, Acolyte, after six months when my Anima Depth reached Level 20 Initiate.

When I gained my Acolyte Title, my life changed as acquiring Auxiliary Skills became easier, and the learning of spells became marginally faster as well.

If a normal person could gain a Title as useful as an Acolyte, their lives would change, and they would become one of the best craftsmen in their locality.

This was one of the small uses of Titles, and now I had to make a choice between keeping the Acolyte Title before this fight or switching it for Death Touched.

I had a choice to make now since I could only equip one Title at a time.

With Acolyte, I would get a slight increase in acquiring skills and growing them, but I did not know what a Title like Death Touched would give me since I could not remember seeing any Title like this in the Registry of Titles, not even in the so-called legendary sections, where Mythical Titles from Archmages could be seen.

The loud sound like a foghorn caused everyone to freeze, as the sky went red with the glow from the pyramid. I stopped deliberating and switched my Titles, and did not immediately feel any different.

The ground cracked, and my calculations were correct as it was not more than four meters ahead.

Here, directly between us, a line running east to west, opening with the sound of the world breaking its own rules, and I was already moving before the sound finished, already planting my feet at twenty metres from the lip, and raising my staff, because I had spent nineteen minutes walking to this exact position for this exact moment and I was not going to waste it.

"Get back," I said to Bari and Dara, and my voice came out steadier than I expected. "Get back and stay back."

"Elric—"

"Now."

The first demon cleared the lip; although I had seen it twice before, it was still wrong in the same fundamental way: the six limbs, the iron-dark hide, the narrow head with its pale listening structures, the total absence of hesitation, as it moved like a machine.

It emerged, oriented, and moved toward me, twenty meters away and closing fast.

Then I felt it, what Death Touched meant, as a wave of what I could only describe as malice washed over me, and I sensed spots of coldness around my waist, neck, and my beating heart, and I knew immediately that these were the spots being targeted by the demon.

With no eyes, I could not track how they were going to attack me, but Death Touched was able to show me how I might be killed even before it happened.

Right... I can work with this.

I cast Spark, and for the first time since I began to use this spell, I could accurately trace the flickering light that emerged from the top of my staff, which was traveling faster than my eyes could track, but I did not need to track my spells with my eyes, not when I could feel them.

This was no longer the desperate and thin structure of Spark 9; with Spark 12, a minor threshold had been passed, and I aimed it at the jaw structure before the demon had covered half the distance, because I knew where the jaw structure was and what it looked like and exactly which angle gave the cleanest contact with the pale tendrils.

Unlike Archers, Mages were dangerous because our spells used our souls as a foundation and that meant anywhere our eyes touched, our spell could follow, because every spell we cast used our soul as fuel, and some of my teachers had said every spell was a part of us, sent to grow crops in a field, or burn down a city... they said we should all be careful how we wield our spells, because more than anything, they were a representation of us.

This memory passed through my mind even as the first cast hit clean and the demon froze as all six limbs seized, as the pale tendrils on its face went rigid, and that high, flat sound began somewhere in its chest.

I was already casting again before the pause finished, because I knew the pause and I knew how long it lasted, and I was not going to spend it watching.

Second cast... Clean hit.

Third... The tendrils had barely resumed their motion before the third Spark hit them, and the demon locked again, longer this time, nearly three seconds, and the high, flat sound was louder.

I moved closer, not much, two steps, but closer, because at Spark 12 the cast had a reliable range of approximately six meters, and I wanted every cast to be clean, and clean required precision and precision required proximity.

Fourth... Fifth...

[Spark 12 → 13 (Initiate)]