Thankfully, the demon had not succeeded entirely, because something had held me in the body until the loop reset and gave me back to it.

Maybe it was because, although my Demon Slayer Title was broken, when I came back to life, it was still present and helped me fight against the touch of the demon, but it was still extremely frightening to think that the effect of dying in that manner had traveled over into the next loop.

The system, with the assistance of my Epic Title, had registered the experience and granted me the skill that was specifically calibrated to that exact attack. Mortal Vessel. The skill was not protective in the conventional sense. It was a deepening of the relationship between what I was and the body I was carrying around in.

Every rank I progressed in this skill would make it harder to remove from my own flesh, and I read the line again to be sure I was reading it correctly. Every rank also made the flesh itself harder to break in the first place.

Each rank progressively reinforces the body itself, hardening flesh, bone, and channel against external harm.

The skill made my body more durable.

I sat with that for a moment longer than the others.

I had spent every loop dying of damage that should have been survivable.

The first demon’s first hit had thrown me four meters into a supply crate, and the supply crate had collapsed.

That had been a hit that a normal person would not have walked away from. The Acolyte robes had stopped the limbs that came after. But the body underneath the robes had been a sixteen-year-old’s body, untrained for combat, soft in the way most academic bodies are soft.

Mortal Shell was changing that.

However, for me, the most important change that Mortal Shell could give me was the final part of its description.

-Each rank progressively reduces the cost the body pays for sustaining a strained soul.

This right here was what was important. I believe that what almost led me to madness was my soul condition, and if Mortal Shell could make the cost of dipping into my soul reserves manageable, then it meant I did not have to fear the repeat of being mind raped every time I encountered that demon, also it would mean I could cast longer than any Acolyte should.

Something that was not openly mentioned was that the power of a mage’s spell increased dramatically when they began pulling from an Anima Depth that was below ten percent.

Think about it, the fuel for any mage spell was their soul, and at ten percent, that was when you begin to touch the core of your soul.

That meant that any spell you release would have that much weight and meaning behind it; however, this path was a losing road for a mage because they would begin to lose themselves, their memories, and who they were, burning up in a blaze of glory.

Mortal Shell, if I was right, would allow me to resist the cost of straining my soul beyond the limits, and I could fight for longer and hit much harder.

Already, I had gained six ranks in this Broken-Celestial skill, and I did not know what twenty ranks would be like, or even what fifty could give me.

How deeply could I burn my mortal shell?

The line flesh, bone, and channel against external harm meant that the skill was building me into something more durable than I had been, and the durability would compound with the binding, and the binding would compound with the durability, and at sufficient ranks the body itself would become an instrument rather than a vulnerability.

By all the lights in the heavens, this skill could be the central focus that I could use in building up my power.

Truthfully, I could not imagine how many deaths it would take before I could begin to make a difference.

I was an Acolyte, and even if I could be reborn after death, what would it mean to grow to the extent of battling the demonic forces that would be emerging not very long from now and winning?

It would take too long, and even if my body was capable of surviving, my mind and soul, on the other hand, were my greatest weakness... and with Mortal Shell, I could push against that weakness and push my spell work harder than any Acolyte ever could, and in this manner, I would grow faster than any Acolyte ever should.

The skill is not a shield. It is a deepening of the bond, and the bond strengthens both halves.

Both halves, what did that mean? I closed the description and tested the skill.

I reached inward toward where my Anima lived and toward where it connected with my body, and I felt the relationship between them in a way I had not been able to feel before.

There was a presence there now, a thing that was working underneath my conscious awareness to keep my soul in my flesh and to keep the flesh whole around the soul.

I could feel it the way you feel a steady hand on your shoulder when you are about to step on uneven ground.

It felt like my father’s hand.

I closed my eyes for a moment and let the feeling settle, then I read the last notification.

[Demon Slayer — Approaching First Earth Gate] [Stored Essence: Fourteen Demons]

I had not seen Stored Essence before.

I called up the title’s full description.

[Demon Slayer — Epic] [Stored Essence: Fourteen Demons] [The essence of slain demons accumulates within this title and serves multiple functions:] — Fuel for resistance against demonic attacks — Material for title evolution at gate thresholds — Potential for further skill acquisition at sufficient accumulation

[Note: Essence consumed in resistance is permanently spent.]

I sat with that and pushed my mind deeper into the title to feel the streams of warm power I had felt entering me with each kill, the absorption I had registered without fully understanding that the title was tracking it as a stockpile.

Stored Essence: Fourteen Demons. The number was the count from the loop where I had killed the first demon, chained the seven through Arc Lightning, dropped one more in the fissure, taken two with a self-branching arc, and dispatched the small clusters on the way to the east face.