Months went by quickly now.

Today was the end of my first year though, even though I actually only attended for five months out of the regular ten months.

There was a two month break before the second year would begin, and apparently, my plans for the break were already decided!

I was conscripted to join the Fourth Battalion in the reclamation of the Voidlands.

Which sounded just fine to me. I had finished my change to void already.

My mana had dropped a lot because of that...but then afterwards I had killed many more street thugs and gotten a badge for good citizenry, so my mana had recovered somewhat.

And because of that I'd passed in third period!

Obviously the void mana was...slow, and heavy, but now, I could make void spears! Which...didn't really do anything much different than throwing void orbs...well void spears could have some penetrating power, but really, void mana's whole thing was consumption.

Anyway, I'd graduated with an overall grade of 97 once I was able to use void mana, so I was a certified amateur mage.

Something about 'certified' and 'amateur' being in the same...term like that was...strange and off-putting to me but that was what it was and I was hardly one to say anything about it.

Speaking of speaking...I had it!

Barely.

"aH wEh AiR YeT?"

Speaking required vocal chords of some sort or a high skill with vibrating air which required high skill in magic - usually wind magic.

I didn't have wind magic but I did have vocal chords now. And a mouth.

Naturally, learning how to manipulate the body parts had been hard, but once I had the necessary organs it was just practice. I already had the ability to make limited sound anyway, which as I'd realized was actually me manipulating my internal kind-of-metal parts into grating against each other.

Still, this was why I liked enthusiasm. The kidnapper types came to fight and attack me when I baited them out by walking into their turf and then I killed them and borrowed their organs!

It was so...simple that I didn't know why it hadn't occurred to me before to do this.

Well it was still a hassle since the organic parts rotted without being sustained - which I couldn't do - and so their functionality decreased and then I had to go replace them. 

Ah the struggle.

Necromancy could preserve body parts to an extent though so I was thinking of learning it. Keeping an actual body inside myself as a decoy was an idea I'd had for a while. The problem was necromancy wouldn't make a body that bled and breathed or drowned right so to make the disguise authentic I would have to use other methods.

Keeping a live prisoner inside myself was too risky, and they would just tell anyone who saw to save them or whatever anyway. Also it wasn't the same for talking through either. 

Essentially, it was too much of a hassle for now. I would have to settle with replacing my...equipment regularly.

On that note, the voices that I produced sometimes varied because of the vocal chords too. 

Sun said it was disturbing to hear a different voice coming out of my mouth every two or three days.

He should appreciate the work I put into this. It made me quite sad whenever one of the voices I decided I like rotted and became useless.

I really needed to figure out a way for that to work better.

I had tried making organic stuff with reconstruction but it hadn't worked...though apparently you could if it was S rank. 

So that was a goal. Raising reconstruction higher in order to make live lures.

They were very effective. I had stuck my head around a corner once, with the mask off and the thugs had relaxed thinking I was there friend. I used the hand to wave them over and then killed them!

It was hilarious!

I really did enjoy playing around on my days off. 

Now we were heading off to the place I'd been born in because I, was important for the reclamation.

Retoz had been there when we were leaving and waved us off though so had the mysterious vampire (he'd just stood there. Or floated. I couldn't really tell. Everything around him was distorted.

"No. No we're not. Or rather, now you zone off even more!"

No no, I am pondering on the world. This is philosophy, something that requires refinement to understand.

"Refined? You? Pfft hahahahaha."

Sun snorted and started laughing while Styx also let out a chuckle from the side.

"hAHaHahAhA. veWy fUnNy."

That sent sun into hysterics while Styx silently started shaking. Which meant he was laughing, not having a heart attack as I'd thought the first time it happened.

"sIgH. oH WoE iS mEH..."

We didn't go with a caravan this time either. As it turned out they had done that that time more to enrich my experience rather than truly needing it. Also because I could now detect and warn them of danger more proficiently so a larger group would just make things slower. 

This was going to be a long week...

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Unlike stories had led me to believe, there weren't really any special events during our travel. 

We talked some, mostly random things like, "What does that rock look like to you (I thought it looked like the victim of a strong fire magic [it fused legs and charred them black])?"

There was fighting of course.

I found that wolves were...simple. 

They didn't use much in the way of tactics like the thugs did. I still remembered that one who'd shot at me with a bow and arrow from a nearby roof. I pulled him off with my actual body of course. 

He made an interesting splat. Not as...splatty as I would have liked, but I'd had to go and finish the job after. 

Demons could be quite tough.

The population was very low though. Units of hundred thousands were already pretty big. Millions weren't possible unless every demon on the planet was called, not to mention having to organize them into a unified force.

Wolves though...well wolves here were stupid. Void mana wasn't good for the brain apparently. The ancestors of these wolves turned stupid because of that and slowly it became normal. 

High intelligence (for a wolf but not for a person) would just lead to absorbing more void mana that would poison and kill the wolf - and same for most living things in the Voidlands - so stupid wolves became stupider over time. The intelligent ones were generally abnormally so and led the wolf hordes (hordes, not packs. It was really rare).

It was fun to go back to the familiar crushing of skulls. I still had that dwarf's hammer. It was pretty good and a free upgrade from my old club. 

As it was though, I had a lot of money. It was all in the bank, but killing people and taking their money and stuff, and selling what you didn't need, was apparently a really fast way to make money. 

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It was only 47 gold coins so far. 53 short of one black gold, which would pay off what I owed for the school admission to Styx. 

Coppers were technically all you needed to survive though, people out here were just slightly richer because of all the monsters. Slightly because mining towns or ports had richer people. Merchants made a lot of money. 

But money made a satisfying clink when I poured it into a pile. I could only imagine what a dragon's hoard looked like. 

I would have a spirit's hoard and then I would buy -

"Hey, does that look like a living armor to you too or is it just me?"

Styx narrowed his eyes at a spot in the fog.

I couldn't feel anything though. Strange...oh no, now I could. Not where Styx was looking though.

"mOE cOmIN?"

"Ah, so it is a scout. Damn. They're really such a pain to fight without thunder magic or something."

"Yep. My swords won't cut that very well. Not cleanly. I'd have to hack at it for a while..."

I was confused by their exchange as vaguely demonoid silhouettes made their way out of the perpetual fog that clouded the Voidlands. Usually that meant reduced visibility for everyone but whatever those things were, they moved in a straight line towards us.

12?

It certainly didn't look like any living armor I'd ever seen. 

Looking like a demon, yes, but...these didn't seem to be meant for people to be in. They had grey outer skeletons and thick armor all over, with a strange unmagical light in their eyes and the chinks of their armor. 

It was...unholy. 

So...un living. Undead had mana. These ones...were mostly without. A mana core it seemed but not all around. It was...unnatural. Creepy.

I disliked them immediately. Not to mention, living armor was what I was sometimes mistaken for, not these...fakes.

"TARGET LOCKED."

Nope. You're locked. 

I quickly corroded to the core which should be the important part if they were still following rules. It was much much easier to do now too. Several times easier. 

It felt like...steel? 

The core was some weird material I couldn't seem to eat fast but when I ate up the parts around it the thing's eyes faded and...it exploded. 

"Gah what the hell!"

Sun was quickly bending around and dodging the flying pieces while Styx smacked them out of the air if he couldn't dodge with his sword. 

The other armors let the pieces ding off of them while there was a fizzle from something in the fog where some pieces had gone.

Well this was annoying. They exploded when they lost?

Styx glanced back at me before quickly closing the distance and jamming his sword into its eye where sparks flew out of it.

He groaned and pulled back, "Do what you're doing but try to get the ones in the back first so we don't get hit."

Sun was being pushed back while the things slowly...died (?) from freezing over.

I did as Styx had asked and the same phenomenon repeated. Whatever these were, I hated them. And, from here I could now see there was something in there, in the fog. Ignoring the weak lights that hit my body and burned little holes I went straight for the thing, which looked the same as these things did but with lighter armor and weird legs. 

It had started running when I had, but since I had a visual it quickly lost use of its legs. 

Then it blew up when I went to hit it.

I felt shards of it tear into my body, even as I was thrown back by the force and new things closed in on us from the fog.

This wasn't working. We were at a disadvantage with how hard they were to kill and only sun had an effective attack measure.

Even for me, the conversion of material to mana was worse for these things and if not for my being in the Voidlands my own mana would have been eaten through rapidly, while sun needed to distill what he wanted out of the fog. We were at not only a disadvantage with the existing numbers but also from the steadily increasing numbers.

I would undoubtedly win but at the cost of St-un. 

This was ridiculous. Four days in should not have led to such dangerous areas. 

And these were no monster I had heard of. The heads weren't being destroyed just caused explosions that damaged the body more.

I had stopped wasting mana on regenerating and was just trying to fell more of them.

We were down to six but three more had just joined.

While I was unaffected by the lights they used, St-un got burns whenever they were hit and sun's ice sometimes made the light come back out even worse. 

It was terrible.

Even as I watched, Styx's sword snapped in half and he was forced to take one out of the scabbard on his left hip, while sun froze two more.

Unfortunately two wasn't even enough to cancel out the old reinforcements while another sprinted in.

However they were finding us, they were swarming. I could feel 29 more. 

A total of 51 then.

We couldn't take 29 without someone dying like this.

My vocal chords were already torn, but I quickly said my plan.

"UN! UH!"

A highly intellectual tactic known as a tactical withdrawal.

St-un nodded.

Styx exhaled and then there was a flash as the three armors in front of him were chopped horizontally.

Then his sword broke and he pulled out a small dagger from another sheath inside his weird jacket before starting to dance around one of the armors.

"Which way?"

I considered that as I watched sun engage the remaining two while the last two were exploded by me.

Sun easily froze the two and then frosted Styx's opponent's legs and kicked it down.

Both ran to me, ignoring the dropped enemy who was slowly crawling over. Lights didn't work when the things on its arm were frozen though. I was pretty sure it would explode once it was close enough though.

"AK!"

"Alright. We'll wait near the pond."

Right, that was a ways back...oh, on the way there somewhere.

Then they were gone, and I was alone again.

I killed the last one and idly watched it explode, catching some shrapnel in my head.

My mask was a mess now. It was partially melted and had holes in it too.

The huge group was moving as one, slowly collecting. Probably so that we couldn't just quickly pick them off like before and would be killed easily by the lights. 

A viable strategy. Except that I existed. 

I giggled slightly (a voice I picked up from a soul I ate a while ago. On that note, demon souls gave feelings sometimes when I ate them. Random memories I think. Sometimes they were slightly more intact and the memories persisted for a while before disappearing, a perk of void mana I think) in anticipation of the many explosions. Without having the two to worry about, I could just relax and explode them.

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They were here. 

Judging by how they had gone out of their way to collect instead of closing in as a cirlce like before, I could only assume they could somehow tell how the battle had gone.

Ah, there was another of the ones without a core.

"ANALYZING."

Oh? 

"TARGETS NOT FOUND. CONCLUSION."

"RETREAT."

One of them checked where the non-core one had died and picked up a small box thing.

"SCOUT SCAVENGED."

Oh? 

They seemed much more...talkative now...should I kill them? It seemed I could learn more if they kept talking and thought I was...uh oh.

They were coming to my 'corpse.'

"COLLECTING SAMPLE."

"SELF DESTRUCTS. REASON UNKNOWN."

"CONFIRM CAUSE OF SELF DESTRUCT."

Oh well that wasn't good. The sample one had just picked up a piece of my arm.

That was annoying.

A quick corrosion and it exploded.

I was getting better at this. I didn't need to make large holes for this. I could use smaller holes now, it was just to get the void mana into contact with the thing I needed to corrode.

"ENEMY ATTACK! INITIALIZING RESPONSE."

They looked all around themselves and didn't even -

"ORGANIC RESPONSE DETECTED."

Oh well there go my vocal chords.

What was that weird light? Hey was that thing eating my arm? 

Eating me!?

I was the eater, not the eaten!

"UNKNOWN MAT-"

EXPLOSION, FAKE!

EXPLOSION EXPLOSION EXPLOSION EXPLOSION!

They started randomly shooting the light off into the fog and three even peppered my body with more holes.

Jerks.

Then they started running. I targeted the one who scavenged and took out the non-core's legs too.

As expected they went for the small grey box and the dropped scout, but I kept exploding them. 

Finally, when there were only 15 left they abandoned the cube and scout and instead shot them full of holes. Probably to get rid of the boxes. Whatever those were, even if I wanted to block, I couldn't.

They passed through the mana hands.

A void wall wasn't something I was capable of either. That was hard.

Making mana manifest like that required considerable skill for me, not like earth where you could just pull up the ground.

Then the surviving 11 were gone.

Without my body parts of course. 

Hehe. 

The lights were nice to see up close. As well as the sight of their bodies scattering even better than organics did.

This...self destruct seemed quite...fun.

Perhaps I would find more of these...fake armors for fun like the thugs.

Ah, but these did not give experience. 

They apparently counted far below me in tier (hah, only natural, I was a high quality spirit armor thing), so the experience was far reduced. It was the same reason kiling so many thugs was only three more levels. 

At B the difficult scaled even harder for levelling. Levels were an easy way to power up after all. Said shortcut was naturally harder and harder to progress along since it was basically cheating (except everybody did it).

This was why everyone hated golems in fights. They had numbers but usually garbage tier and just wasted time.

Sad.

Oh well. 

They were enjoyable to massacre and didn't seem too smart. Any normal person whose teammates started exploding would first check for cursed equipment, curses in the area, or pray that it was just some bored wizard in a tower far away and not some eldritch freak. But these idiots? No, they tried to 'analyze' and retrieve dumb metal boxes.

Hahahaha. That was a win for me.

No vocal chords to laugh though...oh well. A wolf would substitute for now.

I internally complained about stupid no loot trash as I regenerated on the ground.

How was I going to get all of this to a city to sell all of this?

They could have at least come to die closer to the city. 

Jerks.

I am surrounded by jerks. 

Well, not anymore.

I giggled at my own little 'joke' (I didn't understand the other's jokes and they didn't get mine) and watched the grey fog slowly shift around me. 

Spoiler: Status 

Unnamed Void Spirit Level: 9/10 Species: Void Armor Avatar of Soul Bewitching Shadow Domain Spirit © Affinities: Darkness, Death, Void, Pseudo-Space Age: 664 years

Titles:  

Body Status:

Normal

Status Points: 43 Health Points (HP): 289/289 Mana Points (MP): 289/289 Intelligence 74 Wisdom 29 Strength 10 Dexterity 9 Endurance 15