Six ranks from two casts. Marksman was growing faster than anything else on my screen because what I was doing with Death-Touched and spatial repositioning between casts was precisely what the skill was designed for, since I was using environmental awareness to guarantee contact rather than aiming on instinct.

Every step I took before casting was a Marksman decision... the skill was noticing!

Moving again before it landed, I made the third cast. I took three steps left and aimed at a lower angle, targeting the base of the jaw cluster rather than the tips of the tendrils that were burning.

The discharge hit, and the demon made a sound I had not heard before, almost as if it were panicking or crying for help.

Or maybe with the increase in Demonology, I was beginning to discern subtle cues in the sounds made by these demons, but for now, I was not focused on this; my main goal was to see if I could kill this demon.

I exhaled, and my breath was hot, almost as if my blood was boiling, which was not too far from the truth, because as Acolytes, our channels were not just spiritual, they were physical as well, and all of the growth I was making was causing these channels to grow and develop.

Now I was running destructive magics through them without holding back, and my body was beginning to give me signs that it was being taken to the limit.

Casting spells, especially destructive spells, could harm the body of a mage if they did not take time for their bodies to slowly adapt to their powers, but what did I care about all of that?

I had sixty percent Anima Depth, and my channels were holding cleanly; that was all that mattered at this moment.

My Concentration not fraying between casts the way it always had before, and each cast arrived with the same quality as the first.

Pushing aside the discomfort in my body, I made the fourth cast, knowing that no matter how much I was being hurt, the demon was suffering many times more.

The small yellow arc of lightning struck, and the demon’s front-right limb gave out completely, folding beneath the body and not recovering; the demon dropped to five limbs and redistributed its weight.

It was as if the part of its brain responsible for maintaining the mobility of one of its limbs had just been destroyed.

I watched the demon make compensating motions with its remaining limbs, but it was too slow, and it would take a while to regain any sort of stability... good.

Fifty percent Anima Depth, and my staff was hot now, not uncomfortably but noticeably. The ashwood was warm all the way to the grip, and the three charms were heated by proximity, causing them to glow a bit.

Fifth cast and I had closed the distance to two meters. The closest I had ever been to a living demon while attacking it.

I could keep my distance, especially as Spark had leveled up, giving me more room to attack, but I wanted to observe closely and not miss anything. Whatever result I would gain here would be invaluable to me.

The fifth discharge was the largest single cast I had produced since the opening combined strike, thirty percent Anima Depth poured into a Surge-Spark channel held wide open by a Concentration that was beginning, at last, to feel the accumulated load of the sequence.

Consecutive casting was causing the grip I had over my channel to become strained, and I knew I could not keep my present state for long, so I had to increase my output.

The cast hit the base of the jaw cluster, shattering half of its tendrils, and the demon screamed.

I felt goosebumps break across my skin at the genuine full-body response that I felt as much as heard.

This sound that also resembled a vibration ran through the ground and up through my boots and into my legs, and the demon’s remaining five limbs all fired in conflicting directions simultaneously, the body lurching and spinning without coordination, the ruined tendrils whipping against the air in random arcs.

I sucked in cold air, and I breathed out dry, hot air, as my heart was beating ten times faster than normal, and I could feel a sense of lightheadedness creeping into my mind.

Twenty percent Anima Depth, already at the threshold, if I go below this, then my souls would begin to wither.

Throughout my loops, I had not tried to go below ten percent, but hearing the screams of the demon and remembering every loop in which I had died in the first two seconds before understanding anything, and every loop after that in which I had died having understood something, and the accumulated weight of all of it settling into this moment, this one moment in which I had a demon that could not find me and twenty percent remaining and a sixth cast available if I was willing to cross the line I had drawn for myself.

I crossed it.

Walking up to the demon and placing the head of my staff a few inches away from its head, the sixth Surge-Spark discharge left me at eight percent Anima Depth, and it carried everything that eight percent represented.

I was pushing past what an Acolyte should ever do, and I no longer had a clean cast, since my channels had been scraped raw, and only with the grip of Concentration white-knuckling around a channel that was trying to close because there was almost nothing left to keep it open.

It hit the jaw cluster at point blank range, and for a moment, nothing seemed to happen, and then the demon’s head collapsed inward, the structure of its skull failing simultaneously in every direction, the narrow skull compressing and then releasing in a single catastrophic instant that scattered dark fragments across the cracked earth and left a smoking absence where the head had been.

It was as if a vacuum had appeared inside its skull that sucked everything in before exploding outward.

The body of the demon, even without its head, took a few steps towards me, as if its sight had returned now that it no longer had a head, before it collapsed to my feet.