[Memory Core has reached Level 20!]
I was just reviewing our fight with the goblins all those months ago when the Mutation that was helping me do so finally reached the promised threshold. I did a little jig upon that happening, ignored the laughter coming from my lazy friends in their wagons, and then I chose to evolve the maxed-out Mutation.
[Would you like to evolve your Memory Core?]
No.
Just kidding! Yes, of course! I just said that!
[Multiple evolution paths have been discovered for Memory Core. Please choose one of the following.]
[Standard - greatly enhances all aspects of the Mutation.]
[Unbreakable - massively improves the durability of the Mutation.]
[Rapid Memory - massively improves your ability to sort through and call upon specific memories.]
Oh shit. They’re all good.
That last one was exactly what I was aiming for, and something that I foresaw being possible during the creation of the Mutation. I had already planned out what I wanted to do. It was going to be a massive step up in power.
But then… Unbreakable was very tempting. I didn’t know yet what would happen if the organ broke, and I definitely didn’t want to find out. Now that I was thinking about it, depending on how exactly my existence worked, it might be possible to set up some sort of insurance with this advancement…
I couldn’t yet make a decision, so I jumped back into our wagon and pondered.
_________________
Name: Haell Zharignan
Species: Demon
—Mutations—
Wrath Heart: Level 29
Demon Brain: Level 27
Demon Skin: Level 25
Evil Eyes: Level 25
Demon Flesh / Demon Bones / Demonic Musculature(synced) : (All) Level 24
Demon Arms: Level 26
Demon Hooves: Level 25
Hyperdemon Gland: Level 20
Demon Horns: Level 27
Mana-infused Blood: Level 28
Regen Heart: Level 27
Demon Wings: Level 24
Hellfire Heart: Level 21
Memory Core: Level 20 (Max)
Extradimensional Demon Blood Storage: Level 18
—Soul Feats—
Reincarnator
Progenitor
Imp Progenitor
Progenitor II
Demon Progenitor
Demon Harbinger
_________________
~~~
Come nighttime, as I stared up at the skies with Moonwash laying down beside my armored form, I finally came to a decision. She knew a little bit about my most recent choice, but I actually found myself hesitant in talking about this Mutation at all, even with my closest friends, especially now that it was in my mind that memory core could break. Elfrafim, Moonwash, and my parents did know the specifics since they helped me pick it out in the first place, so I felt a little bad to leave the others out… but I didn’t owe them literally everything about myself.
I selected the Rapid Memory option.
I breathed deeply and sharply as something shifted above my waist, and then I let out a sigh of relief once it was over.
I accessed my stored memories, and thankfully they were still all there.
I searched for our disastrous goblin battle, and like a fish jumping out of the ocean, it surfaced.
I thought about the last time I saw my parents, and the memory core immediately responded as a mere second later, I hallucinated that very moment. From the people cheering as our wagons departed, to how proud and happy my parents looked.
I allowed myself a small tear.
I then tilted my head and thought about all my memories of my parents in general, and like a school of fish about to be devoured by a whale, the memories presented themselves one after the other.
My memory core now almost functioned like a search engine for all my memories, and it was fast.
~~~
I got up in the middle of the night. I couldn’t help myself, I had to test something. So I separated from my sleeping friends, told Granuel and Angerly on watch duty that I had to do something, and then I went deeper into the untamed plains.
A sinister red flame blossomed upon my palms. I made it stronger by imagining all the horrors of hell, of flesh melting like lava, and of hellfire invading a person’s mouth, nose, and ears. I felt its heat, my palms began to hurt from underneath my gloves, and then I stopped supplying the flame with mana until it winked out on its own.
I created another fire. It felt almost cold compared to what was there before.
That weak ember was carried away by the wind, and then I summoned another flame, but this time I did something different. Within a split second, I beckoned to my memory core, and I received my prior image of hell in return. I fed that idea into my spell, and the fireball that formed was stronger, if still inferior to what I could accomplish if I properly channeled my thoughts for a short while.
It was still a wonderful ability, and I immediately tried to use it to create curseflame. I drew on my many memories of successfully merging wrath and hellfire, until a black flame flickered above my palm. I had curseflame faster than I ever had before.
It wasn’t instant, of course. It still took much longer than any normal spell. But it had worked.
With one evolution of a single Mutation, I had managed to hasten the creation of my most powerful spells.
~~~
I swung my sword in front of me in the quiet morning sunrise. I immediately recalled the last half-a-second, and then repeated the same motion with a minor alteration that made it better. I rapidly shifted through forms, making small adjustments each time, which I could further review later. It was not exactly a new process, only made unimaginably faster. I couldn’t go through multiple variations this fast before!
I peeled off from my waking teammates and then found some monsters to fight.
The first ones I came across were perfect, for they were a small party of tall and muscular green humanoids who were not goblins, but orcs. It was the first time I’d encountered these monsters, and I was very excited because my grandpa loved them, and I’d heard great things!
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
“Raaa…!” They shifted and raised their weapons or bare fists as I approached.
I smiled and waved at them as my memory core raced.
I remembered Grandpa’s words, and the smell of morning coffee which I also partook in because it was there.
“Orcs are great! They’re apparently not sapient, but after meeting them, I really think they are. They’re hard-working, they dedicate themselves to the martial arts, and they spend their whole lives mastering one form of it. What’s even weirder is that while they are largely believed to be incapable of communication at all, that’s not actually true. You can only convey a select few ideas, as far as I know, but any orc, from any continent, would recognize these few gestures…”
I drew my greatsword, pointed it at the one orc with a similar weapon, and roared.
The monsters paused for a moment, the orc I’d singled out pointed his sword at me in the same manner, and then he also roared.
The other orcs fell back, and I smiled as the duel commenced.
I charged forward and reached my foe. Our greatswords clashed, and I managed to win out in sheer power and momentum, but my opponent was not knocked down for he had received my attack with the perfect form.
Then it was my turn to be pushed back. The orc retaliated and I grinned as I parried his blow, only to find the sword nearly ripped out of my hand. This confirmed what I already suspected, which was that this orc possessed an anatomical mastery. There was a weight to that purely physical strike that could not be explained by the momentum of the attack, and he certainly wasn’t using magic as I understood it!
I exchanged more blows with the creature with glee on my hidden face. I felt anger every time I lost an exchange, but more than that I felt the absolute elation of the moment and respect for my opponent. Without using any external magic, I enhanced my sheer strength and tried pushed my mind to multitask and improve upon each and every move and stance. That distracted me too much, and I realized that I was not ready for doing this mid-battle just yet. I just relied on my superior power to batter my opponent until more and more wounds accumulated on his body and he began to slow down.
I felt some regret when the end drew near, but I did not let up for that would only be an insult to this honorable orc. My final strike pried his broken and battered sword away from his hand, and he collapsed to the ground, panting.
He grunted. He waited for an end that never came.
“RAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!”
He roared in a mournful tone, and I returned the gesture.
We both understood that the fight we just had was to the death, but I had the option to spare him and I took it.
His promise was likely to never attack anyone of my kind, unless if it was an honorable duel agreed upon by both parties. Though I wasn’t actually sure what he understood ‘my kind’ to be. It’d be hilarious if he meant all demons, because there was only one. Making more was just becoming a worse and worse idea as I grabbed and reached for more power.
I left them behind, and every single one of the orcs bowed. I smiled, and happily reviewed this battle in my mind. I moved through my stances and strikes during the fight, and then I reviewed and compared my perceived improvements to what I did in the heat of the moment. I lost myself in this process, until I just found myself back at camp.
I smiled and my breakfast stew, before then going through all my numerous fight, and even the fights of other that I had witnessed, all while I ate.
This was precisely why I chose this evolution of my memory core. It would be a gradual process but something that helped me train so much better would empower me more than anything else. I would just have to make sure that neither I nor my memory core broke, and that would only become easier the stronger I was.
It all came down to power.
~~~
Months later.
“Whoa,” we all said in unison as the true wonder of this place came into view. I stuck my head out of the wagon, and marveled at the veritable field of flowers and clovers that were not rooted in the ground, but were instead flying in the air like propeller wings. Our wagons shook from the gale-force winds coming from the west, and the fact that there wasn’t a proper road underneath the wheels. I would’ve stayed out of the vehicles permanently had our wagons been any less well-made.
The constant turbulence continued to howl in our ears as we traveled, but it did wax and wane to a degree, and the flying plantlife reacted in kind, sometimes even settling down to take root. The ground was full of various plants, ranging from trees that swayed and danced but never broke, to grass that seemed able to literally cut through air.
It had been a long while, but I was finally in a wonderzone once more.
“LACHITA! RIGHT!” Granuel suddenly shouted, and I jumped out of the opposite window.
I landed on my armored hooves, then began to immediately scan the landscape in front of me. My sword was already drawn, and mana continued to leak out of my pores as I gathered the largest mass of wrath and infernal that I could. I saw my target, a brown and green cheetah traveling insanely fast in my direction. I had only a few moments to react, which I used to position my sword and activate my chaotic waves of magic.
The lachita impaled parts of itself on my greatsword, and the magic burned and flayed through its flesh, but I too suffered damage as its paw managed to land on my chest.
I felt the wind be knocked out of me. I rolled on the ground as I vomited blood and felt the pain of some broken ribs. There was a deep gash in my armor, and blood poured out of what my enemy’s claws had managed to cut. My heart was damaged, and I felt the amount of wrath mana I was producing slow down.
No matter, I had a lot in stock.
My wrath was made manifest through my body, my wings unfurled themselves, and then they flapped once to lift me up while I was still rolling. My contacts were burnt off by my own power, and I took but a brief instant to assess how the battlefield had evolved. The lachita had veered off and crashed into Angerly’s stopped wagon. The other carriage had stopped as well, and Moonwash was preparing something big over there. Therick was dashing towards the fighting, Angerly raised her mace as she closed in on the dazed monster, and Granuel shot his projectiles as fast as he could from the wagon. Berry too had gotten off the carraiges, and was the one confronting the level twenty monster. The lachita managed to score some deep cuts on her carapace despite its confused state, and my aura and eyes flared to give my allies the time to breathe.
Angerly arrived, and the monstrous cheetah dodged her mace. Therick’s sword managed to nick it, and Moonwash’s earth spell threw the creature off.
That was when I arrived, with a mythril greatsword steeped in wrath and swung with the power of an angry demon.
My own blood melted, and my arm broke, but so did my enemy.
The lachita was bisected in half.
~~~
“Yes! We caught one!” Granuel rushed over to me as I sat down and began to heal myself. Oh wait, he wasn’t running towards me but the dead monster.
We had been attacked twice by a lachita before, but those encounters were brief and we never managed to kill one because they just ran away at the first sign of genuine trouble. I couldn’t hold back to bait it either, because these were level 40 monsters. That would be a disaster. We were only able to get one intact this time because this one lachita was stupid enough to crash into one of our stupid wagons.
“Aww. The fur is so damaged here…” Granuel sighed.
“Oh sorry. I guess it’s not intact after all.”
“No, wait! That’s not what I meant!”
I just laughed, until Moonwash finally finished healing Berry, leaving behind a few scars on her blue carapace. She then tended to me afterwards, and it didn’t take long until I was whole and hale once again. My girlfriend’s then started butchering the lachita once she’d confirmed that everyone was fine and healthy.
She might be the one that did the most work here. I decided to help out, just a little.
“You suck at this. But thank you.”
I whined like a puppy that had been kicked.
~~~
We arrived at the remarkably small city of Torwana. The winds sang like heavily distorted chimes, and a mountain embraced by a tornado was visible in the far distance.
Despite its smaller size, Torwana City was not weak by any means. It boasted of tall walls that were made only by the best architects, carpenters, and mages. The winds blew ever harder as we neared our destination, but the guards upon the walls and down at the gates remained unflappable. Workers stood beside them, monitoring the walls for damage and doing general maintenance. There were only a few people and wagons coming and going through the city, and the guards didn’t take long to check our badges and let us through.
There was a road leading out of the city here, but I knew it would cut off at some point, before picking back up again sometime after. I imagined it must be much harder to maintain in a place like this, but the road would then lead to the closest settlement from here, which was also another city. Horlin City was a lot larger than Torwana, and it was built just far enough from the very edges of the wonderzone to not be affected.
Our wagons rolled through the gates, and I raised an appreciative eyebrow at the city that greeted us. From homes both well-decorated and well-defended, to well-maintained apartment buildings interspersed among the other structures. This continued past the general area of the gates, and into the parking areas that we went to. It would usually be very obvious once you were in the poorer areas, but either that was in a more well-hidden corner here, or those places just didn’t exist in the city.
We disembarked from our wagon, and then walked across the comfortably windy city towards our favorite place.
Not that I could feel much of how nice the diffused wind was here behind the walls, because of my thick armor.
It really fucking sucked how I couldn’t just experience some things normally.
~~~
We arrived at the singular marketplace here, and found a market district that was larger than most other cities’. Torwana had no mall, but this more than made up for it. The smaller population of the settlement gathered here, and I felt that they were just a little bit stronger than usual on average. But what was more important was that there were more standout individuals. Level 20 adventurers weren’t terribly rare, the guards were also stronger, and I even spotted a level 40 centaur walking amongst everyone with a respectful berth given to him.
We immediately went for the stalls selling food, and got some weird local delicacy called a waramaju, which was basically a hot fluffy bun with thin layers of meat on top. It was delicious, and we ate our fill while exploring the many unique things that could be bought here. From the wide selection of materials, to the many things that could be made from them, and the butcher shops set up nearby.
Their cuisine was a lot lighter than usual, especially for someplace still ostensibly in the plains, but I greatly enjoyed it all; from the cheapest stalls, to the most expensive restaurants. The city lacked a little in luxuries, and the price of common goods were higher. But there were also loads of things that were cheaper to buy here, namely the locally harvestable materials, and the standard quality of goods and services was higher than in other places.
Finally, after a fun day that promised an even more fun tomorrow, we stayed in a quiet and subdued inn that I had absolutely no complaints about.
The decorations were tasteful, the bed was one of the best I’d ever slept on, and the wind was only let in enough to create a wonderful sleepy breeze that very quickly lulled me and Moonwash to sleep.