If I had more time, and there were not countless sources of death bearing down on me, I would like to know why Dara was looking at me with hate more than anything.

That moment of confusion filled me with anger, as a part of me began to scream, how dare she look at me in this manner? Did she understand what it took for me to get to this point? 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝙬𝙚𝓫𝒏𝓸𝓿𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝙤𝓶

This anger was a bit irrational; a part of my mind knew it, but at this time, I did not much care about being reasonable, and my eyes lit up as I could feel the ground shaking a bit as demons neared me.

I cast Arc Lightning into a cluster of six demons that had emerged from the broken ground twenty meters past the cookfire, and the chain killed all six.

Their bodies fell in a configuration that allowed me to cross over them without changing my walking pace.

Bari said something behind me. I thought I heard my name. I glanced back to see that he was being restrained by Dara as he tried to follow me.

’Good, keep him far away from me, I am the one that should draw the hatred of the demons... even your own as well.

My heart suddenly felt heavy, and I hated this feeling, and then the wave that had been getting closer to me all this while reached me.

Leading the waves were sixteen demons, and I had only fifteen percent Anima Depth left.

This realization blew away all the irrational anger in my heart, leaving me with a cold focus that was almost frightening in its intensity.

The demons came at me in two converging lines from the north and the south-east.

I sucked in a deep breath and committed just five percent of my remaining Anima Depth to a double cast, and I barely succeeded. Maybe it was because I pulled a bit from my reserves, but the bolts of lightning swept out with impressive power.

One combined Arc Lightning and Surge to each line, and the two chains went off simultaneously, branching across the demons in their respective columns, the discharges crossing each other in the center of the camp without interfering.

The two lines collapsed in synchronized waves, as the demons fell in two long rows.

I had killed them all, and it helped that they had been clustered together, allowing my bolt to travel through all their bodies before losing power.

The streams of essence entered me as a chorus rather than the individual notes of the smaller kills, and I nearly groaned with pleasure.

There was something about the warmth entering me that was almost relaxing, as if it was massaging my soul, and only in such high numbers was I feeling this effect.

Was this the effect of reaching the so-called Earth Gate?

[Stored Essence: Eighty-Five Demons]

[Surge 43 → 45 (Acolyte)]

[Arc Lightning 43 → 46 (Acolyte)]

[Staff Resonance 19 → 22 [(Initiate) — Rare]

The cascade of notifications was now arriving so fast that I could not read them all individually. I let them stack and pushed forward, knowing I had reached the point of no return... I had ten percent Anima Depth.

This was the threshold, and I gave myself a little mental cheer for having reached it deliberately.

I had calibrated my casting to bring me here at this point in the loop.

For a moment, I allowed my sense of the surroundings to fade, and I pulled power from my Anima Depth, crossing below ten percent.

I felt it in a way that the earlier loops had never let me feel it, because the earlier loops had me crossing this threshold accidentally, in panic, with the soul-cost arriving as confused damage.

This loop I crossed it on purpose, and the moment the threshold passed, I felt my soul open.

That was the only word for it. A door I had not known swung inward, and on the other side of the door was a brightness that was not Anima.

It was deeper, more fundamental; it was the substance of who I was, the self that the Anima Depth had been a measurement of.

Below ten percent, I was not casting from my reserves. I was casting from me.

The next cast left my staff different. The Arc Lightning that emerged was not a discharge of energy. It was a piece of Elric Voss made into electrical form, and when it struck the demon that had been advancing on me, the demon was erased.

Its iron-dark hide flashed white-hot for a fraction of a second, and then, the body came apart in vapor, the particles of it dispersing into the air with a sound like a held breath being released.

I had not just killed the demon... I had unmade it.

[Stored Essence: Eighty-Six Demons]

I stood with my staff, visibly smoking, and the air around me was warm.

Mortal Shell at six ranks was holding the cost for me, as I felt the binding deepening, and my body taking the weight of the soul-burn that should have arrived as memory loss or self-fragmentation.

I would be paying a price for this. I knew that. The price would not be small. But Mortal Shell was reducing it by a fraction the system had not yet specified, and at six ranks, the fraction was perhaps small. At twenty ranks, it would be larger. At fifty, larger still.

All I knew was that I could still think, then that meant I could still kill, and that was what I did.

I kept casting and killing, knowing that any moment could be my last.

Hearing a sound that was not from demons, I glanced to my side and saw survivors. More than the four at the cookfire. As I had cleared sweep after sweep across the camp, and the demons that should have been killing the rest of the expedition had been redirected toward me.

Small clusters of survivors had emerged from cover, but they did not move; they were watching the boy who was venting steam from his breath and walking through the camp, casting lightning that unmade demons.

Ten people, perhaps. Maybe more. I did not count. People who would have been dead by now in any previous loop, alive because the demons had decided I was the more interesting target.