I had calculated something during the practice session.

A pure Arc Lightning cast at my current rank, against a single first-wave demon, costs approximately three percent of my Anima Depth, while a combined Arc Lightning and Surge cast costs approximately five percent.

Of course, this calculation included my Staff Resonance that made my spells just a bit cheaper and pack a bit more oomph.

A combined cast with branching across multiple targets costs between seven and fifteen percent, depending on the chain length and the directing required.

I had Anima Depth at forty-seven, which meant I had approximately eighteen to twenty casts before I crossed below the ten-percent threshold and entered territory that would burn my self.

That was a lot of casting, not infinite, but a lot.

But that would not be enough; I had to be efficient. Every cast had to pay for itself, in essence, harvested. I had to recover Anima between fights, even if it was only the faintest trickle of it. And I had to know, to know, when I was approaching the threshold, because crossing it deliberately was something I was going to do this loop, but I needed to do it on purpose, not by accident.

The fight was not just with demons. The fight was also arithmetic, because as a mage, control, planning, and discipline were our greatest weapons.

Eight demons came at me from a collapsed tent. They had been hidden, waiting in the wreckage of one of the field tents that had collapsed during the eruption, and they emerged in a coordinated pattern: three to my left, three to my right, two behind. They had decided to flank me.

I let them, you don’t tell your enemy they are making mistakes, you allow them to keep doing what they were doing.

I waited until all eight were inside the radius I had calculated for the chained discharge, and my Acolyte robes billowed around me when a blast of air erupted from my body as I cast the largest combined Arc Lightning and Surge I had ever produced, pouring twenty percent of my Anima Depth into the cast in a single committed spend.

Despite my focused state, at this moment, I watched in awe as the arc that left my staff was a tree of light.

It did not branch in the orderly sequence that the previous chains had branched in. The Surge amplification at this scale produced a discharge that found every conductive body in the radius simultaneously, eight separate strikes initiated from eight different branch points, the trunk of the cast splitting into eight smaller trunks before any of them had reached their targets, and each smaller trunk striking a demon in the same instant.

Eight demons, one cast, all in less than a second. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝕨𝕖𝗯𝚗𝚘𝕧𝕖𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝕞

The bodies fell at the same time, in a rough circle around me, and I stood in the center of the rings of demons, as the black smoke from their burning bodies created a layer of smoke around me.

"Good, if this is hell, then it needs the right atmosphere!"

I allowed myself to have a small moment of humor, and I focused, and I used the chance to check my progress.

[Stored Essence: Thirty-One Demons]

[Surge 41 → 43 (Acolyte)] [Arc Lightning 39 → 41 (Acolyte)] [Concentration 39 → 41 (Acolyte)] [Marksman 32 → 35 (Acolyte)] [Staff Resonance 14 → 16 (Initiate — Rare)]

The streams of essence, eight at once, larger than I had felt at any previous time, entered me in a wave that briefly compressed something at the center of my chest before dispersing through whatever channels the title used to store its fuel.

The Demon Slayer line on my screen pulsed faintly, the Approaching First Earth Gate notification deepening to Approaching First Earth Gate (significant progress) in a way I had not seen before.

The title was getting closer to its first evolution, the thirty-one kills were doing the work, and I was eager to know what this first evolution of this Epic Title would bring me, knowing that it was the reason I had acquired the Mortal Shell skill, which may have just changed the trajectory of my life.

There were more demons ahead, and I still had Anima left in the tank, so I moved towards them. It was then that I registered, for the first time, that I was being watched, and it was not by demons but by people.

A small group of expedition survivors, perhaps six of them, the porters and one of the junior scribes, huddled behind an overturned cart at the western edge of the camp, were watching me through the gap between the cart and a fallen tent pole.

I had passed within ten meters of them without noticing them, since my attention was focused on identifying the shapes of the demons, since I no longer had Death Touched to be a passive eye that detected threats all around me.

They had been hiding from the demons; however, the demons were no longer reaching them. I understood why a moment after I noticed them. The first wave of demons that had been pouring across the western edge of the camp were now veering toward me... Every one of them.

I knew that these demons were not mindless animals, and they would obviously take out the most threats in their vicinity, but for a moment, I was not aware that I had grown to become such a threat in what seemed like the blink of an eye.

The demons knew where I was; they were coming for me. All of them.

Which meant the demons were not coming for the survivors. Originally, I had not planned this. I had not chosen to draw aggro for the porters’ sake. The hunting strategy I had set up to maximize my own kill efficiency was, as a side effect, pulling the demonic attention away from every other living person at the camp’s western edge.

The porters were going to live longer this loop than they had ever lived, a smile touched the edge of my lips... I could live with that.

However, something drew my attention, and it was my staff... it was beginning to char.