The notification arrived between the fifth and sixth cast, and I felt the difference immediately, the sixth Spark carried more charge than the five before it, a subtle increase in the quality of the discharge, and the demon’s pause extended to nearly four seconds, and the sound it made was no longer flat but had a fractured quality, like something under strain.

Sixth... Seventh...

Behind me the camp was chaos, I could hear the shouts, the Surge casts, the sound of Commander Rel’s voice organising the retreat that I knew would fail, but I kept my attention on the jaw structure and the twenty metres between me and the crack and the demon that was slowly, loop by loop, hit by hit, becoming a problem I was learning the shape of.

Eighth cast. The demon’s legs buckled on one side. Not a full collapse as it caught itself, the limbs compensating with the automatic precision of something built for this kind of stress, but a buckle all the same, a genuine structural response that meant that something was accumulating.

Having bolts of electricity that would numb a horse running through what I think was an extension of its nervous system could not be a pleasant thing, even for a demon.

Also, there was the fact that I could sense the spots of coldness on my body from Death Touch fade every time I froze the demon; there was stunned silence behind me from Dara and Bari, but at least they were both safe for the moment, and that made me happy. My concentration did not drop.

Ninth...

[Spark 13 → 14 (Initiate)]

The demon made a sound I had not heard before; it was somehow lower than the high, flat tone it used when paralyzed, and I found the tone to be considerably more interesting.

More and more, I kept thinking of these demons as machines, but they were not.

I was three meters from it now. Close enough to see the pyramid’s red light, pulsing fast, the full eruption underway, reflected in cold gleams across its iron hide.

The pale sensory structures along its jaw were no longer moving with their constant small adjustments. They were still, but then they slowly turned to me, as if the demon was trying to understand me.

That was new.

I drew everything I had left, my Anima Depth running low as the familiar thinning feeling began at the edges of my awareness, and cast the tenth Spark alongside a burst of Surge directly into the center of the jaw structure cluster with everything I could push through the channel.

The discharge was the largest Spark I had ever produced, which was not surprising with Surge boosting it up.

Surge was the muscle behind a punch, and I should have pushed Spark to the Acolyte level before boosting it with Surge, but in the heat of the moment, I had taken a leap of faith and perfectly merged Surge with Spark.

I felt power leave my body and flow through my staff as Anima rushed out through the channel with a force that made my arm ring and my vision briefly go white at the edges.

There was a bright flash of white and the demon collapsed, all six limbs failing simultaneously, and the narrow body hitting the ground with a weight that sent a small cloud of dust rising around it, and it lay there and the pale tendrils were now blackened with smoke rising from them as if they had been roasted, and the high flat sound that had been building across ten casts cut off entirely.

I stood over it with my staff raised and my Anima Depth at approximately fifteen percent, and my heart hitting my sternum hard enough to feel in my back teeth.

The demon was not dead. I could see the small movements of its breathing, and the slow, irregular flicker of the tendrils beginning to stir again. I had given everything, but it was not finished, but it was down.

For the first time in three loops, the first demon was on the ground, and I was standing over it and not in pieces.

I had done it with ten Spark casts and no lattice and no torn soul and nothing but the knowledge of where to hit and how many times and what the hit needed to carry.

[Spark 14 → 19 (Initiate)]

[Concentration 29 → 32 (Acolyte)]

[Observation 23 → 26 (Initiate)]

[Anima Sensitivity 24 → 27 (Initiate)] 𝒻𝓇𝑒𝘦𝘸𝑒𝒷𝓃ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝒸ℴ𝘮

[Surge 32 → 33 (Acolyte)]

I looked at the notifications and felt... traction.

The feeling of a wheel that has been spinning, finally finding the road beneath it.

Pushing against insurmountable odds and fighting against powerful opponents were the fuel for advancement, and yet all of these changes still amazed me, but I could not let myself be distracted, because I knew that I would not survive... at least not yet, but I was getting there.

The demon stirred as its tendrils were moving again, slowly, and one of the forward limbs was beginning to push against the ground, and I had perhaps thirty seconds before it was back on its feet and I had perhaps fifteen percent Anima Depth remaining and the camp behind me was still in chaos and there were more demons coming from the crack and I had not yet solved anything.

I looked at the waking demon, no, I had solved the first thing.

I stepped back, because thirty seconds and fifteen percent was not a fight I could finish, not today, not this loop, and I had learned enough about dying to know when the information I could gather was worth the cost and when it was not.

Today, the information was: ten hits bring it down. Temporarily.

Tomorrow I will find out how to make it permanent.

I turned from the demon and looked at the camp, and the chaos, and I nearly faltered when I saw dozens of demons tearing everything apart, even though dozens of their shattered bodies surrounded the mages near the red pyramid, but when their Anima Depths ran out, even they would begin to fall.

If I were going to survive and learn more, I should be near the mages, but I was holding back; too many strange things were happening, and I did not know if any of the mages would be able to sense the loop around me.

I began to move toward Dara’s voice because she was alive and calling my name, and that was the only remaining objective that mattered.