The fox’s ears swiveled forward, and its mouth opened, and I braced myself for another mangled attempt.

"Mel," it said gently, and I smiled.

"Yes," I said. "Mel. If you are linked to me and I don’t finish what I need to do soon, then you will get to hear her voice every morning."

The fox appeared a bit confused before repeating her name three more times, each time clearer and closer to the original. Then it stopped, tilted its head, and said, with perfect, eerie accuracy, "Lazy cur."

I sighed. "You’re never going to let that go, are you?"

The fox blinked, and I could have sworn it was smiling. Its tail curled around my wrist, light as a feather, and through the link I felt something that was almost like contentment.

"Come on," I said as I stood up. "We have work to do."

The fox hopped off my chest and landed on the cot with a soft thump. It stretched, its silver fur rippling in the grey morning light, and the half-moon above its head pulsed as if in acknowledgment.

I set the orb back in the cupboard, and the fox watched it go. I had no doubt it was filing away the location of the orb and was fully intending to steal it again.

Then it climbed up my arm and onto my shoulder, and pressed its cold nose against my jaw, and went quiet, the morning’s entertainment apparently concluded.

I went still, feeling the soft thumping of its heart, and I smiled. I felt that there was a wound inside my heart that I did not know I had, and now that wound was healing.

I reached for my staff, hung it behind me, and closed my eyes as I called up my status screen. I could hear the charms on my staff ringing softly as the tail of the fox was curiously playing with them, and I smiled again.

∞

[ Name: Elric Voss]

[Age: 16]

[ Title: Demon Slayer (Epic) — Ascendant Earth Gate (Fourth Gate Open) ]

[ Available Titles: Death-Touched, Lightning Adept, Storm Bearer (Legendary)]

[ Anima Depth: 89 (Adept) — Broken-Celestial — Crystallization: 21% ]

[Disciplines:]

Lightning Edict: 71→ 73 (Legendary) — Broken-Celestial

Loom of Lightning: 79→ 85 (Epic) — Broken-Celestial

Lightning Tribunal: 74 → 76(Legendary) — Broken-Celestial

[ Attunement Skills: ]

Lightning Resonance: 90 → 92 (Arcanist) — Epic

Staff Resonance: 68 → 69(Adept) — Rare

Force Resonance: 44→ 49 (Adept) — Rare

[ Auxiliary Skills: ]

Endurance: 119 (Arcanist) — Broken-Celestial

Concentration: 84 → 87(Adept) — Uncommon

Observation: 82 → 86(Adept) — Uncommon

Anima Sensitivity: 79 → 82 (Adept) — Uncommon

Meditation: 70 → 73 (Adept) — Uncommon

Marksman: 69 → 74 (Adept) — Uncommon

Demonology: 74 → 83 (Adept) — Registered

Inscription 24 → 26 (Initiate)

First Aid 22 → 41 (Acolyte)

Cooking 16 (Initiate)

Cartography 6 (Initiate)

[ Celestial-tier skills: ]

Mortal Shell: 96 → 99 (Arcanist) — Broken-Celestial

Hollow Avatar: 64 → 74 (Adept) — Broken-Celestial

Lightning Incarnate: 62 → 71 (Adept) — Broken-Celestial

Soul-Forge: 51 → 62 (Adept) — Broken-Celestial

Titan’s Marrow: 3 → 21 (Initiate) — Unique — Broken-Celestial

[Cor Telluris — Complete]

[Channels Grown: 10,008 / 10,008]

[ Soul-Vessel: Stone Origin Shell — Initiating]

[ Laws: Lightning Law Shard (1 / 9) ]

[Heavenly Bond: Moon Fox Fragment 1%]

[ Stored Essence: 45,000 / 500,000 — Fifth Earth Gate ]

[ Blessings: Anansi Web (Consumed) ]

[ Soul: Welded — Condition: Stable]

I briefly glanced at the Auxiliary Skill, First Aid, and how much it had grown under the manipulations of the Hollow Avatar. The memory of its fight had not left my mind. With the Legendary Title, the Hollow Avatar’s greatest weakness was its inability to control Anima, but it could manipulate lightning a million times better than I could.

Seeing what it did to the arm that I had lost and how it had been attached, I acknowledged again how little I knew about magic or the limits of my powers. However, I think I may have one of the greatest teachers that a mage could stumble upon, and it would be foolish for me not to take as much advantage of this as possible.

I did not even check much of the progress I had made across all my skills and spells, not even my new bond with a Heavenly Beast, and I focused on the most important change on my status screen. Cor Telluris was complete, the Hollow Avatars’ and my crazy insistence to depend on the loop had birthed something I was sure that not even the Jade Oracle had fully understood in the end.

It had called me "Clockwork boy" and "broken," but after thinking about it for a while, I realized the Jade Oracle was mistaken about what I was.

Originally, Cor Telluris was meant to spread across my entire channel at once. That would have given me a channel that was vastly stronger than most mages’, and I would be able to run more lightning through my body than could be considered normal, and that would be it... from this level, then I suspect that the Avatar would find other materials to slowly change my body, as it had always believed that my body was weak and flawed.

However, before the Hollow Avatar could finalize this process, a part of me had reached out to it and reminded it of the loop and the fact that while Narghul Sorcerers may be considered rare, the loop was essentially giving me a nigh infinite number of chances to harvest these rare resources.

When the Hollow Avatar acknowledged my thoughts, the focus for Cor Telluris had changed; it was no longer focused on changing my entire Channels at once with the limited materials on hand; instead, it was going to be perfecting each channel until it became something that defied all meaning.

The Jade Oracle had glimpsed that my channels were not complete, she had seen part of my channels were transformed, and the others were still the average channels of a mage, and she had called me a Clockwork boy that would break with a single touch.

At first, this task had seemed almost impossible, but I had nothing but time in this place, and slowly but surely, I had grinded the loop, and the channels were complete.

I did not have to glance into my body to know that it was changing, even up till this moment, I could feel all my channels stretching and contracting, all of them seemed to be creeping towards each other and making new connections that I could not even understand.

If the true potential of a mage was 10,008 channels and not the seven Primary Channels we had as Acolytes, or the 14 Primary Channels I was supposed to have as an Adept, then what was I becoming?

Sending my thoughts to the Avatar, I asked, "Soul-Vessel...Stone Origin Shell... what does it mean?"

It was silent for a while, and then it said, "I do not know..."

I nearly choked on my saliva. "You... don’t know."