I sat up in my bed slowly, my body carrying the phantom memory of pain even though no part of it was damaged, and I stared at the notification hanging in the corner of my vision.

[New Title Unlocked: Demon Slayer]

The mind is a funny thing. Despite all that I had seen, there was a small part of me that still believed that I must be making a mistake, and what I was fighting were not demons... but this title blew all of that away.

As prospective mages, we were all encouraged to think, but everything happening to me was so beyond my knowledge that my thinking would most likely lead me astray, and my only hope was to be a very astute observer and learn rather than think.

And so, I had expected to need to investigate what this title did. Every previous title I had acquired had arrived with only a name, leaving me to work out its effects through use.

Death-Touched had taken me a full loop of combat to understand. Acolyte had revealed itself gradually across two years of Academy study.

The system did not explain. It named, and left the understanding to the bearer.

Titles were of the most significant measures of power, since they could create effects beyond what most could ever aim to accomplish.

Like Death-Touched I had previously acquired, perhaps there was a spell that could mimic the effects of this Title, but it would be under a specialized field and most likely beyond anything an Acolyte could learn, and yet I had gained this ability due to this title.

Marksman had also been derived from it, an uncommon skill that held unknown potential, but it was already displaying its uses at this time.

I reached for the title to examine it the way I always examined titles.

And the system answered me.

[Demon Slayer] [Type: Epic] [Acquired by: confirmed solo kill of a demonic entity] [Effects:] — Demonology skill growth increased by a significant margin

— Strong resistance to demonic forces — physical, sensory, and soul-based

—Small chance upon future kills of acquiring a Celestial skill [Growth:]

— This title can evolve through continued demon kills

— Kills of higher-ranked demons contribute substantially more than kills of lower-ranked demons

— Evolution thresholds are unknown to the bearer until reached

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I read the screen three times and then stared at the canvas ceiling for a long moment, trying to slow down my rapidly beating heart filled with excitement, and because, despite my excitement, three things were not making sense.

This was not how titles worked. The Registry of Titles, which I had studied for six months during my second year at the Academy, because I was curious about the mechanics of a system that shaped mages as much as it tracked them, was clear that the system provided a name and nothing more.

Even the legendary section, which cataloged titles held by Archmages across ten thousand years of Magus Civilization, described effects only through the observations of the title bearers themselves. The system had never explained a title to its holder directly.

Which meant one of two things.

Either the system had changed its behavior specifically for me, which seemed unlikely, and which I could not think about without uncomfortable implications.

Or this title was different. Rare enough, or old enough, that it operated on rules that the ordinary titles did not follow.

I preferred the second explanation; however, I was not certain it was correct.

My second concern was the rank of my new title. I had read the Registry of Titles in my second year, and I knew the tiers: Common, Uncommon, Rare, Epic, Legendary, Mythical.

Epic titles were rare enough that they were listed individually rather than by category, and most of them had been earned by Adepts or Arcanists for specific documented feats.

No Acolyte in the Registry had held an Epic title. I was sixteen years old and ranked 47 in my cohort, and I was holding a title that sat four tiers above where my cohort was nominally positioned.

The last concern was the word Celestial, since I had never heard it.

I had studied the Disciplines for two years. I knew the Elemental branches, Flame, Frost, Stone, Storm, and the minor elementals beneath them. I knew the Occultic branches, Veilcraft, Threadwork, Resonance, and the restricted disciplines that were only taught in the upper Academy. I knew the lost and theoretical branches that appeared in the older texts. I did not know Celestial.

It was not a word the Academy used. It was not in any Discipline taxonomy I had been taught, and it was not in any of the three books by Scholar Orath that sat on my reading list.

Yet the system was offering me a small chance at gaining something from a category it called Celestial, as if the word were so ordinary that it required no explanation.

Either the Academy had not taught me everything, or the system knew about something the Academy did not. Both possibilities were uncomfortable. I filed the word under a new mental category marked investigate and tried not to think about what kind of skill might appear from a branch I had never been told existed.

The growth clause I understood immediately. The title evolved. It was not a fixed reward for the first kill; it was the beginning of a progression.

Higher-ranked demons contributed more. Which meant the system assumed I was going to keep killing them, and was rewarding escalation rather than mere repetition. Which meant I needed to start thinking about which demons were higher-ranked.

I had killed a demon, and it had taken everything I had to do so, but I had a sinking feeling that what I had killed was not a particularly powerful demon, and the fact that there were more higher-ranked demons only made the prospect of my future and surviving past an hour rather bleak.

If I could survive long enough, would there be higher-ranked demons ahead? Probably, but if the title grew faster from killing higher-ranked demons, then my progression path was mapped already.

I just had to reach the demons that sat further up the hierarchy and kill them, too.

At Epic rank, this title would increase my resistance against demons. What this would appear as, I do not know, but this was a warm coat in the midst of a winter storm, handed to me before I froze, and I do not throw away such lifelines.