My friends were dead, and for the first time, I hoped that this loop would not end, so I could get the chance to rescue them when I woke up... I was now strong enough to do so.

Before heading towards my next objective, I checked my status to see all of the changes that had appeared on it.

[Name: Elric Voss]

[Age: 16]

[Title: Demon Slayer (Epic)]

[Available Titles: Death-Touched — Acolyte]

[Anima Depth: 44 (Acolyte)]

[Disciplines:]

Threadwork 40 (Acolyte)

Surge 41 (Acolyte)

Arc Lightning 35 (Acolyte)

[Attunement Skills:]

Staff Resonance 12 (Initiate) — Rare

[Auxiliary Skills:]

Concentration 37 (Acolyte)

Observation 35 (Acolyte)

Anima Sensitivity 27 (Initiate)

Meditation 21 (Initiate)

Endurance 24 (Initiate)

Marksman 28 (Initiate) — Uncommon

Cooking 16 (Initiate)

Inscription 19 (Initiate)

First Aid 11 (Initiate)

Cartography 6 (Initiate)

Demonology 22 (Initiate) — Rare — Unregistered

[Blessings: —]

[Soul Condition: Stable]

[Demon Slayer — Approaching First Earth Gate]

I glanced at my Staff Resonance; it was the first Attunement skill that I acquired, and hopefully not my last. This skill was the sort that changed the way a mage operated, and I needed to focus a lot on it going forward.

Then I began to move, but I did not go north even though I could hear Commander Rel’s voice still cutting through the chaos somewhere behind me, organizing who remained alive into something that could survive another few minutes, and I was walking away from it.

I could help her defend the survivors, but that would be a waste of my death. Now that I had the tools to defend myself, it was time I began looking for answers.

And one of the answers I needed was why was our mages so—pardon my language—fucking useless?

Granted, this attack was a surprise, but they were a little too ineffective for it to make any sense. 𝚏𝕣𝕖𝚎𝚠𝚎𝚋𝚗𝐨𝐯𝕖𝕝.𝕔𝐨𝕞

If I could kill these demons as an Acolyte, then fundamentally, these creatures, although physically powerful, fell into the range of Acolytes, and a mage could kill any number of Acolytes without too much issue as it would be difficult for us to even hurt them.

That question had lodged in me the moment it arrived, and it was not going to leave until I had an answer.

I had fifty percent Anima Depth and a spell that had killed eight demons in under two minutes. The Adepts working the east face had years of training and ranks I would not reach for a decade. And from what I had seen across every loop, they died anyway, and I wanted to know why.

I moved east through the wreckage of the camp, staff raised, eyes open, Death-Touched absent, and the silence where it had been a constant reminder that I was navigating by sight alone.

The camp between me and the pyramid’s east face was not a straight path as the eruption had not confined itself to the single east-to-west crack I had been fighting beside.

Secondary fissures had opened across the southern half of the camp during the full eruption, narrower than the primary crack, some only a foot wide, others wide enough that a person could fall into them and not immediately find the bottom.

They ran at irregular angles across the compacted earth, splitting the ground into an uneven grid of isolated sections.

I had not seen this before because I had never survived long enough to reach this part of the camp.

The first fissure was six meters wide. I looked at it for half a second and raised my staff and cast Threadwork, manifesting a bridge configuration I had practiced in the Academy as a theoretical exercise and never deployed in field conditions.

With all of my increased attributes, I found this configuration to be easier than I had expected.

The weave extended across the gap as a lattice of compressed Anima, not solid but cohesive enough to bear weight if crossed quickly, appearing like a sheet of cracked glass before me, and I went across it at a run with the lattice flexing beneath my feet and holding.

[Threadwork 40 → 42 (Acolyte)]

I immediately dismissed it as I crossed, and as I moved forward, I saw a second fissure, but this one had a demon in it.

Its two forward sickle limbs were already braced against the edges, the narrow head lifting as I approached. I cast Arc Lightning downward into the fissure before it cleared the lip, and the arc hit the jaw cluster at close range, and the demon dropped back into the darkness.

The third fissure was narrow enough to jump, and I easily crossed it. My body had grown faster and stronger with my increasing Anima Depth, and now that I was really moving, I could feel all those changes.

At this point I was approaching the peak physicality of a normal man, and I still had years ahead of natural growth and development in front of me.

Two more demons emerged from the second major crack I crossed, and I cast Arc Lightning at the nearer one, and the arc jumped to the second without me directing it, the branching capability finding the second body on its own, both demons dead from a single discharge.

I kept moving, meeting small clusters of demons that I quickly dispatched without wasting too much time.

[Arc Lightning 35 → 38 (Acolyte)]

[Demonology 22 → 24 (Initiate) — Rare — Unregistered]

[Marksman 28 → 30 (Acolyte)]

Marksman crossed the threshold. I felt it land in my hands and my soul in the same way Concentration had landed, as my spatial awareness sharpened, and the tracking of moving targets became something that arrived without effort.

By the time I reached a position where the pyramid’s east face was visible, crouched behind the overturned instrument tables, thirty meters from the base, my Anima Depth was at eleven percent.

One, perhaps two casts remaining.

I hoped to keep it that way for a while, and then my eyes grew wide as what I saw stopped my breath for longer than I could afford.

The east face of the pyramid had become something I did not have a word for.

The instrument tables were in splinters, and the calibration arrays and Resonance meters were scattered across the earth that had been so saturated with demon blood that it no longer had the color of earth.

It was dark, slick, and pooled in places that had been dry, compacted ground this morning.

Four researchers I had known by name lay among the wreckage, and I did not let my eyes rest on them.

I let my eyes focus on the demons... There were so many of them.