Somehow, an Adept from the Conclave, wearing their strange mask, was below me. With Lightning Incarnate running in my channels and veins, I reached for his mask, my hands already glowing.

However, quicker than I expected, the Adept suddenly caught my wrist as if he was grabbing a petulant child, and Storm Sense showed me that all of the Adepts had just turned towards me. Their staffs was pointed in my direction, and in the blink of an eye, they released the second volley.

Growling in anger, I pulled my hand from the iron grip of the Adept, losing skin and flesh, even breaking two of my fingers. There was a soft gasp of disbelief from the Adept, but I had already blinked.

I flickered out of the kill zone, but the edge of one spell caught my shoulder, and the flesh opened. Silver blood sprayed out, and the pain was bright and immediate, but this pain was familiar, as I had suffered like this in previous loops... it meant I still had a soul, and I could still fight.

The Arcanist had not moved. He stood beside the pillar, his arms folded, his grey eyes tracking me with the patience of something that had been hunting for a very long time.

"You are fast," he said. His voice was low, almost gentle. "But you are not an Arcanist. Your speed is not enough, not against those who have seen faster."

He raised one hand.

I did not have a name for what it did. I still do not. When he raised his hand, the air around me solidified.

This was not ice or crystallization; the space itself became rigid, the way water becomes ice, except the ice was the geometry of the world, and I became an insect trapped in amber. I could not move my arms. I could not move my legs. I could not breathe.

Then something much more horrifying began to happen as I felt power beginning to leave me. Glowing lights of silver that streamed out of my eyes and mouth.

[Anima Depth: 47 → 45 → 43]

The stuff of my soul, my Anima, travelled to the hand of the Arcanist, and he absorbed it, and for a moment there was no change, and then his eyes widened a bit in shock.

"You... How do you have a soul like this?"

The field around my body, Lightning Dominion, still active, flickered. The arcs that had been snapping at the edges of my perception guttered and died, as a pain that I could not describe ran through me, hurting me on a level that was beyond pain because this felt like an intense violation of my soul.

I felt Mortal Shell fight against this pull, and I knew that without it, I would have been drained to a husk in less than a second, but the gap between an Arcanist and me was too vast, and I could barely even understand how he was able to reach into my soul and pull it out.

The Arcanist walked toward me. His steps made no sound.

"You are a curiosity, boy. A valuable one. I have never seen a soul like yours... such depth and power, it is almost equal to the crystalline state of my soul, and you are just an Acolyte. How utterly magnificent. The Conclave would prefer you alive." He stopped in front of me. His eyes were the colour of winter. "But alive is not the only option. You have been given a choice by my subordinate, yes? Now I ask you, will you serve us, or die?"

The seven Adepts circled. Their staffs was glowing, a promise that my choice in the next instant would signify whether I would live or die.

I could not move. I could not speak. But I could still feel. The core in my heart. The Celestial Marrow in my bones. The channels that threaded through every part of me, even the parts that were frozen, all of this was the architecture of my soul tied to my flesh, but I had something else that existed deeper than this.

I reached for the hollow place. For the Avatar.

Break the lock, I pushed.

The Arcanist’s spatial binding is beyond my ability to counter, the Avatar responded. However...

However what?

The binding is anchored to the Arcanist’s attention. If his attention shifts, the binding weakens.

Then make it shift.

The Avatar was silent for a fraction of a second. Then the core in my heart pulsed.

The pulse was not Anima, and it was the first time in my life that I sensed that nothing could be manipulated. The hollow inside me was empty, and yet this emptiness had weight, and it reached for something inside of me that I could not track with my soul, and when it touched it, I knew what it was... my Epic Title- Demon Slayer.

This Title had been the gateway that changed my life in its entirety. Without it, I wonder how long I would spend inside the loop before I went mad. My celestial skills and all the changes in my body were born from this one singular title that I was sure was not even meant for humans.

This pulse touched Demon Slayer, and the title released a pulse in a frequency no human should be able to hear, but something else could hear it... the demons.

From my body, something similar to the foghorn sounded, and even though no one here should have been able to hear it, the Arcanist did, a moment before the entire pyramid vibrated.

The Arcanist’s eyes widened, and the seven Adepts staggered, but most importantly, the spatial binding cracked.

I moved, with a short blink, which I barely made, a desperate, muscle-tearing surge toward the nearest Adept, my hand closing on his staff, the lightning in my palm discharging directly into the wood.

The staff exploded, and the Adept screamed. The others recovered faster than I could track, and the third volley hit me from three directions.

Fire on my back. Ice on my legs. Force on my chest. The fire burned through the remnants of my robe and into the skin beneath. The ice froze my calves to the metal floor. The force lifted me off my feet and slammed me against the pillar.

Rex’s body was above me. Upside down. Skinless. His tears fell on my face, and I looked up at him, and I don’t know if some part of him could see me, but I grinned.

I don’t know why I did that, only that there was a part of me that wanted to annoy him; perhaps it would be enough to distract him from the pain. We were two young men thrust into a situation we could barely grasp, but we could still laugh... this is important.

The Arcanist raised his hand again.

"Enough," he said. " Finish it."

The seven Adepts stepped forward. Their staffs came up. The spells that gathered around them were not the probing volleys of the opening exchange. They were kill spells. High-tier. The kind of magic that erased things from existence.

I could not stand. My legs were frozen. My back was burning. My right hand was raw to the bone. The lightning in my channels was a whisper, the field gone, the core in my heart pulsing weakly.

But I was not dead.

Not yet.