From my point of view, high above. Most buildings are destroyed into ruins, while any article of flammable material is burning bringing orange light among the darkness. Broken glass are strewn about everywhere along with patches of blood here and there. but no corpse.

A flash of orange and another explosion occurred further into the Territory, a standing building once again crumbled into rubble. I hastily maneuver one disk to approach the location, only to see a blob-like flaming projectile impact a car, causing it to dent, before blowing up in a moviesque explosion.

I calculated a rough prediction of the blob's trajectory and followed it back. Managing to spot a person standing among the ruins, a perfect grin on his face. Immediately upon being found, to my naked eyes, his teeth shifted from human's teeth to something more resembling a carnivore, he then promptly shuts his lips tight and looks up to the skies. his neck bloats up, quite like that of a frog before he opens his mouth and splits out another blob of fire, straight at my disk.

"What th—Oh my god!" My dad yelled, changing his words mid-sentence. Everybody else except Mini is looking at my Visualization in stunned silence. The sight on that one disk is currently an unidentifiable mess of color as the explosion sent it tumbling away to who knows where.

"Acek Zen, can you split fire?" Mini asks innocently. Her mom proceeded to gently and loosely clamp a hand on her curious mouth. But I cut Tiffany before she managed to utter a single word.

"Nah~, I can't, but maybe I can learn how to." I tell her, the way his teeth shift is familiar to me. Very familiar. Here is someone else on our planet that decided to adopt a Devourling's Constitution, someone less afraid of assimilating organs from creatures—there are patches of blood, but no corpses—of eating fellow humans…

"We have to help!"

My dad's yell snapped me out of my stupor and I looked left at where I remember him to be, but instead, found him several steps closer to the exit. Under current circumstances, who cares about being polite with my words, "oi dad, stop!"

"Anto wait!"

"DAD!"

"Where is Akong going?" Mini asks her mother, Akong in our language means grandpa.

Rather than chase him this time, I flexed my mana to cast Shape Stone and barred the door. "I think it's better I go there and try to help. You guys stay here."

"I'm going with you!" my dad insists.

"Sorry dad, if that guy spits fire at you, what can you do?" I approach the walls and make a slight opening for me to pass through.

"What about you? What can you do?" My mom asks me in his stead.

"I'll figure something out, the least I could do is make more armor." At that word, their faces grew worried. "I have more than 800 mana, it's gotta be worth something right, even as mere thicker armor."

I rush out of the opening, a twitch of my mind closing it back in. There might be merit in having an actual shielding spell of sorts, maybe some kinda barrier quite like those used by the Goblin Shamans, just more mobile.

Finding out where they are is easy enough, just follow the explosions. So, A few minutes of running later, I have visual of the fire spitter, still spitting his globs of explosive phlegm—I immediately slip out of his line of sight and engage Sneaking before slowly making my way closer.

Eventually, by the time I got within, maybe, thirty or so meters. He stopped everything he was doing to look around, he then grins and yells, "hello brother. I can recognize the scent of a fellow Devourling even in my sleep. Mind coming out to talk?"

I figured why not… talk, that is. No need to allow myself to be seen. But his sensitive nose is quite troublesome, detecting me even with Sneaking to cover up my odor. The skill has also been stuck at level 14 for some reason, maybe a threshold.

"Sure let's talk," I say with a slight raise of my voice from where I am hidden. "Who are you and why all the destruction?"

"How pleasant, I am Barry." His head slowly moved to face my previous location—on a hunch, I had started moving right after asking my question. His eyes slowly scan the area for my presence, but have yet to find anything. "You're gonna have to ask the master for that. He specifically commanded raze'em to the ground."

"I might take you up on that offer, assuming you can point me in the right direction to this master of yours?"

This time, his head snaps in the direction of my voice. While I, once again, no longer occupy the area. He grins and says, "make me."

Inconsistent weirdo.

I have an idea on how to improve Sneaking, that is, to use the universally magical something known as mana. So I allow the skill access to that part of my skill set, access to Mana Manipulation. Allowing my mana to circulate along with how the skill functions. The mana gradually forms into a transparent but visible fog-like blanket approximately ten centimeters away from my skin. The nature in which the mana circulates out of and into my pool makes the skill very mana efficient, barely taking away one or two points of my mana regeneration.

"Hmm," Barry the weird sniffed at the air to his left and right before saying. "I can no longer catch your fresh scent."

I contemplate my next course of action… Maybe a VLoS, or I can prepare and make all eight disks currently on my pers--- a loud whistle penetrates the city-on-fire-ambience that surrounds us.

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"Ah, it seems I gotta go." He hastily made his way towards a mostly intact building a few meters to our eleven o'clock, stopping by the door and made a sweeping look, then said. "Don't come in, you'll die."

I mentally retrieved the two disks I had used to scout here, one had remained airborne and simply went back into its sheath. The other one was partially buried in rubble and slightly damaged from the exploding spit, but nothing a bit of mana cannot fix. I then decreased its rpm to lessen its noise and, unfortunately, flying speed. Then had its Latent Mana create a camouflage effect before gently sending the newly fixed disk through the door Barry had used.

The first thing I notice past the door frame is two individuals, Barry and a girl, side by side. Both turned to look at me—at the mostly invisible disk for a split second before opting to look back at their previous target of focus.

The girl is lazily leaning on to the wall, while Barry comfortably sits on the ground. The building itself seems to be a storage of sorts; very neatly organized racks line the far walls with ample free space around the entrance and the middle. On the ground in said empty space lies Wisman, bloodied, a shoe pressing on to his chest, and very hard, from the looks of it. No sign of his wife.

Unfortunately, I never did try to hear sound through the disks.

The guy stepping on him looks awfully full of himself, grinning as he talks and laughing out loud, while Wisman is visibly in pain. I may not like the guy, but this doesn't sit right with me.

Nine disks fly to hover above me, where I set five to lock onto the stepping-guy's mana signature, while the two accomplices get two each. A mental flick of my mind sends them blitzing forwards and in through the door.

The girl merely raised her hand and an invisible force stopped the two disks targeting her in midair, while Barry tanked the hits with a cheshire grin. Lastly, four of the disks I sent to rescue Wisman were masterfully caught or deflected with one hand, all except one, it managed to hone on to the guy, but barely left a scratch. It was gone a split second later. Oh how I regret a lot of things today, but specifically this time, from not creating a stronger single target spell.

Stepping-guy, who I now assume is the leader yelled out something at the two, and promptly caused them to rush out—I had enough time to watch him casually pick Wisman up by the neck before having to focus on the two that had just exited the building.

"Well well, what do we have here? Nothing!" Barry says in jest.

The girl gave him an incredulous look, "seriously?"

"Nah, I kinda met a guy. Very good at hiding himself." He regaled briefly. "You hear anything with your pidgeon-ears, Holly?"

The girl shot Barry an annoyed look. He had just leaked to a potential enemy, her name and one of her abilities. Though there is the possibility that it is all a ruse.

"Shut it, Ember!"---That or mulut ember, is what we sometimes use to call blabbermouths. This Barry guy is, kinda talkative…

He did not answer, but instead. Emoted a monkey covering its mouth, sporting a very visible grin.

"You two arguing again? What about this time?" The leader-guy chose that moment to step out of the building, and the two began racing to relay their part of the story, the sight looks to me like teenage kids about to get grounded by their elders and trying to get away with it. The scene is only broken by said elder casually dragging a man by his neck in a death grip.

But, it is only a few seconds later before the leader-guy, Simon—courtesy of another Barry-leak, began one-handedly lifting Wisman up onto the air, at this, the pair quickly went quiet. "Well, I guess this is it, dad. I enjoyed our last chat." Instantly, Wisman began shrinking, I kid you not!

He is already the size of a ten year old by the time I snap out of my astonished mind. "Damnit!" On account of this being a 3 vs 1 situation, the other part of my mind had long been prepared to cast VLoS. So, I released the spell, hoping it would distract the two henchmans—because what else could they be, and rushed for Simon, all thought of hiding forgotten. I promised dad I'll help these people and what, the only survivor I know of is currently shrinking from who-knows-what!

I leave one strain of thought to monitor the two henchmans while the other focuses on the miscreant son. By the time I'm ten or so meters from him, I release the Wind Arrow I've been casting since rushing forward. About 200 mana spent as I supercharge the spell, conjuring a dozen enlarged arrows, arrows more akin to javelins.

I ignored a ding and sent them drilling through the air on a high speed collision course straight for Simon. And yet, he simply dodged them all through sheer physical prowess, an impressive show of agility, I admit. His physical movements humanly impossible.

"Run Zane! I am sor—." I turn my head just in time to see Simon with his head slightly tilted up and in the midst of… swallowing, his hand now empty and positioned just above his mouth… knowing he eats humans and actually seeing it are two very different things.

The piece of shit!

"My mother tasted foul and guess what, so did my father." He monologues.

THE PIECE OF SHIT!!

The image of the various gun parts that used to be on display here flashed through my mind in abnormal clarity. Most specifically the gun barrel. So I created one, after another. Internally smooth surfaces, two centimeters in diameter each, set in a growing circular pattern. First one, then four, eight, and finally sixteen, for a total of 29 barrels all encased in another cylinder, manifesting as a 24 centimeters diameter semi ethereal cylinder-object. This… kinda looks like… that blue japanese character with a gun arm.

The cylinder is 60 centimeters long. The far end being the gun's output where all 29 smaller, 25 centimeter long barrels are. Then a ten centimeters thick partition in the mid-cylinder where I installed my signature Latent Mana framework. Before the rest of it, a 20 centimeters diameter wide, 25 cm deep space where an arm may be inserted. A handle may be found inside, five centimeters from the partition, the whole arm-space would constrict or expand to snugly fit its user's arm. This cylinder is designed to absorb ambient mana and maintain its existence, as I've mentioned, just making use of freely available resources.

This construct will cost a mere fifty mana to conjure, any user may then infuse more mana into the handle and therefore, the Latent Framework to shoot out compressed ten centimeter beams in an element of their choosing, the beams may carry unique properties related to their element. To summarize, a magical beam-gatling arm-gun. Lastly, I secure a compact seed of my mana signature within the spell's core, its Latent Framework, this would allow me to connect my Mana Manipulation and take partial hold of the spell, even one cast by another user, easily hijacking its usage. I plan to make this standard practice.

The creation process felt slow to complete, but really only took a moment. It's amazing what two thoughts in one mind can achieve, though the spell's concept has randomly been crossing my mind since a while back. Fyi System, this is Beam Torrent.

I insert my left non-dominant arm into the barrel and aim at Simon. Feeding the spell 21 mana for every 29 shots, at a rate of one discharge per second, I even made sure to spread out the shots a little bit. Beams of radiance that travels at the speed of light flies straight at the monster in human skin.

"Let's see you dodge this!"