The ground cracked east to west, four meters ahead, as the world seemed to split apart, and the first demon cleared the lip of the crack with the unhesitating efficiency it always had.

I cast Arc Lightning combined with Surge before the demon’s six limbs had fully found the ground. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝔀𝓮𝒃𝙣𝓸𝒗𝒆𝒍.𝙘𝒐𝒎

No hesitation or half measures, I was going all out from the start, knowing that before I die, I needed to push my two main combat spell disciplines forward as much as possible.

The arc left my staff at full Anima Depth and full Concentration and full Staff Resonance, and the discharge was the cleanest, brightest cast I had produced in any loop, pale blue-white, larger than any individual cast I had thrown before, the shape of it singing in the air as it traveled.

It found the demon’s jaw cluster while the creature was still emerging, and the demon’s head came apart in two pieces before the body had finished standing up... the bolt was so hot that it vaporized the liquids inside the body of the demon in an instant, and the top part of its body exploded.

The Surge-amplified Arc Lightning at this rank was producing structural failures that the previous loops had not produced. The skull had detonated, the back half going one direction, the front half going another, the tendrils on both halves still burning as the body collapsed.

[Stored Essence: Fifteen Demons]

I felt the warm stream enter me, and I did not stop to acknowledge it... the second demon was already coming.

My head turned towards the demon, and I raised my staff before I faced it, and it died like the first. I had decided something during the practice session that I had not decided in any previous loop.

I was not going to defend a position; I was not going to wait for them to come to me. I had a kill count goal and a fuel supply to feed, and the most efficient use of my time was to hunt. With that in mind, I moved.

I cut west away from the pyramid’s eastern face, where the horned demon would emerge. Staying clear of the pyramid was a strategic choice this loop. I strongly suspected that the Adepts were so useless because of their proximity to the pyramid, which was the source of suppression.

Of course, I could have hurried over and warned them before this eruption began, but Scholar Orath’s disappearance before this entire fiasco began was a red flag that I had to take note of.

I did not understand the full powers of an Adept, and by the time I spent trying to convince them, the demon would come, and then I would be in the same mess or even a worse one.

No, the plan was to get strong enough to be able to call attention to this problem without being taken for a fool, and so, the primary goal was to enhance my strength as much as possible so I could gain the ground to speak in front of these people.

Today I was going to operate at the camp’s edges, where I could push my output to the limits Mortal Shell allowed without worrying if the pyramid was going to suppress me.

Two demons came at me from the north before I had moved twenty meters, but I did not slow my walking pace, since I was already used to their pace, and my spells were faster.

I cast a single combined Arc Lightning and Surge, swept the staff in a clean arc from left to right, and the discharge branched on its own through both demons before I had taken my next breath.

The chain went jaw-to-jaw, as two skulls failed structurally, one after another, in the rhythm of a heartbeat.

[Stored Essence: Eighteen Demons]

The bodies fell, and as the streams of essence entered me, I kept walking.

This was different from anything I had done before. Before, I had been defending, surviving, pushing through. Today I was processing. The demons were not threats; they were inputs.

They came at me, and the system that I had become, staff plus channels plus Mortal Shell plus Demon Slayer plus three Acolyte disciplines and four Acolyte auxiliary skills, produced outputs that were corpses.

I crossed the broken ground at the western edge of the camp, and five demons emerged from a secondary fissure I had not seen before. I did not bother with Threadwork. I cast Arc Lightning across the gap, and the arc found all five through the conductive bodies of the fissure’s wet stone, and the demons dropped in a sequence the Surge had calibrated to hit the most efficient targets first, jaws, then skulls, then joints.

The fifth one I directed manually, the staff-tip pulling the arc toward its retreating back, and the demon’s spine cracked along its full length, and the body went down in a configuration that suggested every joint had failed at once.

[Stored Essence: Twenty-Three Demons]

[Arc Lightning 38 → 39 (Acolyte)] [Staff Resonance 12 → 14 (Initiate — Rare)]

Staff Resonance was growing alongside the casting, and I was not surprised. With the amount of power I was pushing through it, I expected to see growth.

As a sidenote, upon gaining my Attunement Skills and Staff Resonance, when I touched my staff, it began to grow until it merged with the growth of my present Staff Resonance.

I could keep all the upgrades I made in every loop, but my staff could not, and now with every new loop, I expected my staff to be transforming as I held it.

I noted the rank-up and felt it in the staff itself, a slight refinement of the bond, the wood transmitting the discharges with marginally less conduction loss than it had transmitted them with thirty seconds ago.

If my Staff had consciousness, then I could imagine its surprise at this massive growth that seemed to be coming from nowhere.

The blue crystal at the tip pulsed faintly each time I cast. The ashwood was warm under my hand in a way that felt less like heat and more like response, the staff registering each cast as something it was participating in rather than something passing through it.

The hunt has begun.