Lisa drunkenly protests, “No, I don’t want to go home! It’s still early!” And then proceeds to burp into Reyn’s face as Lisa drunkenly sings offkey, “Girl’s just wanna have fun!”
Reyn winces at the putrid breath thrown into her face and turns her face away. Carefully holding Lisa up, Reyn growls, “I know it’s the weekend, but I would like to sleep in for once! Now get into the cab!” Reyn swiftly shoves Lisa into the waiting cab and firmly slams the cab door shut after her. Reyn hastily says, “Take her to 125 Washington Heights on Broadstreet.” The cabby nods his head in affirmation before darting away with his drunken passenger in the backseat.
Reyn snorts with relief and glances down at her wrist as her watch that reads 1:35 p.m. Reyn snorts unhappily and murmurs, “Dinner and a drink, aye? Yeah, right!” Grumbling to herself, Reyn makes her way home through the darkened streets back to her apartment.
With a tired sigh, Reyn locks the door behind her and tosses her bag onto the kitchen table. With care, Reyn undresses and hangs her clothes back up in the closet, before changing into a t-shirt and shorts. Reyn crawls into bed and closes her eyes to sleep. The minutes tick by as Reyn opens her eyes wide awake unable to sleep. Tossing and turning don’t help until Reyn at last fed up sits back in bed and sits cross-legged on the bed. Closing her eyes, Reyn begins to absorb the last of the remnants of the ley line overhead.
Reyn knew that at some point this world must have possessed magic as ancient ley lines of mana still existed in the world. The legends still told among humankind surely couldn’t have been fabricated at some point there must have exited magic or even magic creatures. She could only conclude either those that wielded magic had gone extinct over the gradual loss of mana or they had gone into hiding or simply left this world for a new world.
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Reyn suddenly feels the last of ley line overhead disappear and be absorbed into herself. Inside her core is a giant World Tree with seventeen large glowing flowers. The mana drifting into her body and in existence tries to open the 18th flower bud, but it is simply not enough. The tiny bud on the tree branches remains the same as it waits for more power to break through, before opening its flower petals into full bloom.
It had taken Reyn most of her life to reach the same level of power that she had originally possessed in her previous life as a Demon King. However, when Reyn had died as a Demon King she had only been 13 years old. Having been only a young demon, Reyn had been far from being as strong as she would have been had she been allowed to grow up and become a full-blown Demon-King.
Reyn finishes absorbing the crumbs of mana into herself as she feels her body automatically strengthen itself and shove all excess energy back into her core. After the 1st level formation, Reyn closed off that power level and restarted from the beginning, before trying to grow a 2nd flower, (and enter the next level). Since Reyn was now human, she knew her body wouldn’t initially accept the change but would take additional time to adapt to the change in her body. Even though Reyn had long since stopped doing so, Reyn still had the habit of hiding any traces of mana absorption.
Besides, she was still wary of being outed by anyone with the ability to absorb mana. Even in her previous world, different demon and human cultures called Mana different things including Qi or Chakra. And said small differences were often the cause of wars between different groups trying to prove which absorption method was superior to the others. And though Reyn had yet to meet anyone with said abilities, that did mean they did not exist in this modern-day world. And if said groups did, in fact, continue to exist in secret and among the shadows, she highly doubted that a collision with them would end in a peaceful exchange of words.
Reyn opens her eyes and glances at the time, the clock reads 10:32 a.m. Reyn sniffs to herself as she crawls back into bed dead tired. Now, that the ley line was gone, she was going to have to move again if she wanted to absorb more mana from another ley line. However, for now, Reyn falls sound asleep to the lull of city’s late morning sounds.