"Up, up, lazy–"

My hand flashed upwards even before my brain could register the movement, and I grabbed the silver orb floating by my head.

This silver orb was the reason my Inscription had reached 19, and before this expedition, I had been determined to focus on this Auxiliary Skill, alongside my Threadwork, to be the center of my discipline.

If I did this, I would not become a combat magus since my spells would be focused towards crafting, but I come from a family of craftsmen, and violence had never truly attracted my attention.

My eyes opened as I glanced at the orb, feeling its warmth and the faint sounds of its internal clockwork mechanism boosted by my Inscription and a potent battery of magic that would keep it functional for decades.

I would preserve the voice of my sister for years, and I planned to use this small recording to embarrass her sometimes in the future, hopefully when she got married and had children.

Adepts lived for up to two hundred years, and depending on how much you wanted to preserve your life, there were certain spells and disciplines that could also push the lifespan of an Adept Mage to even a thousand years or even more.

What this meant was that I was not in a hurry to get into a relationship, knowing that I would retain my youth for decades, and I would have to watch my family grow old, even my younger sister.

There was a time when this was the source of my greatest mental anguish.

Now... everything had changed.

[Soul Condition: Stable]

I read that line twice. "Hmm... would you look at that."

I had died with my soul on fire, and felt my own essence venting through my breath. I had forgotten my own name in the last seconds before the end, and there was no way I did not damage my soul, and now, the system was telling me, in three flat words, that I was clean.

The question I needed to ask myself was whether my stable soul was a result of Mortal Shell or from not dying at the hands of that horned demon.

Maybe it was a result of both of these factors. I was not in a hurry to get the answers because I knew that as long as I remained in the loop, these answers would come.

The notification for the growth of this skill and others blinked before my inner vision.

[Mortal Shell 6 → 17 (Initiate) — Broken-Celestial]

Eleven ranks in a single loop. This had to be the highest growth in a skill that I had ever experienced.

Come to think of it, was I not growing too fast?

Either this was the result you got when you are fighting against superior opponents and being pushed to the extent that you die, but I was not going to look a gift horse in the mouth, because I deserved this progress.

I would never think that my death was cheap, or that the sacrifices I had made should not equal the benefits I was receiving.

I sat on the cot and felt the skill in me, the way I had learned to feel the changes that such magic does to my body.

Cut open the body of a mage, and we are very different inside. Our outward appearance was usually the last thing that changed, but inside us, there were vast changes that could not be described, as fundamentally, no two mages are the same, especially as they grew stronger and focused on their discipline.

I could feel a substantial change inside me, as Mortal Shell had transformed from a faint binding, a thread holding my body together, the way a spider’s silk holds a leaf; it had now become a thick, woven fabric.

The next rank would tighten it further, and the rank after that, and somewhere in the distance was thirty, when it would reach the Acolyte Rank, where the buffering would do more than it had done last loop, and somewhere further was fifty, where the buffering might be enough to let me cast from below five percent without losing my name.

[Stored Essence: One Hundred and Five Demons]

The Demon Slayer line carried the count forward, as I had known it would. The previous loops had taught me that essence was not erased by death, and the title kept what the title had earned.

How long would I survive against the horned demon with more than a hundred essence, a few more seconds?

And this was it, just pointing at me, from its physique, it should be a spell caster, likely at the Adept Rank or maybe even higher.

Pushing this grim thought to the side, I looked at the next line.

[Demon Slayer — First Earth Gate: Threshold reached, evolution pending]

What would it take to evolve this Epic Title?

I had killed a hundred and five demons in a single loop, more than I had killed in every previous loop combined, and the gate was still waiting.

It wanted something I had not given it.

I closed my eyes and called up the rest of the screen, the way I had begun to do with each reset, to take stock of what the loop had built before I asked the next question.

[Name: Elric Voss]

[Age: 16]

[Title: Demon Slayer]

[Available Titles: Death-Touched, Acolyte]

[Anima Depth: 49 (Acolyte)]

[Disciplines:]

Threadwork 42 (Acolyte)

Surge 45 (Acolyte)

Arc Lightning 46 (Acolyte)

[Attunement Skills:]

Staff Resonance 22 (Initiate — Rare)

[Auxiliary Skills:]

Concentration 41 (Acolyte)

Observation 37 (Acolyte)

Anima Sensitivity 27 (Initiate)

Meditation 26 (Initiate)

Endurance 31 (Acolyte)

Marksman 35 (Acolyte) — Uncommon

Cooking 16 (Initiate)

Inscription 19 (Initiate)

First Aid 14 (Initiate)

Cartography 6 (Initiate)

Demonology 39 (Acolyte) — Rare — Unregistered

[Celestial-tier skills:]

Mortal Shell 17 (Initiate) — Broken-Celestial

[Blessings: —] [Soul Condition: Stable]

I sat with the screen for a while, a bit shocked that my Anima Depth had reached forty-nine, the same rank as Bari, and higher than Dara. 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝒆𝒘𝙚𝓫𝙣𝙤𝒗𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

The only Acolyte now with a higher Anima Depth than I should be Rex, but he should be that fifty-one, and now I was only two ranks from reaching him.

Arc Lightning was at forty-six, approaching the boundary of its tier, Surge at forty-five. My two main sources of attack were growing extremely fast, and for the most part, I know I did not need to change anything.

When my spells reached fifty, that was when I had to consciously begin to shape and manipulate them, but for now, I just needed to cast as much as possible.