The destruction that Mina found upon arrival was… well, it was a nauseous massacre that put many a battlefield to shame.

Perhaps it was because of how personal each death seemed, no two combatants seeming to die from the same reason. Perhaps it was because of how she could tell all of the fallen were from only one faction and died in fear and pain.

Be it the man who had his armor completely melted over his body or the one partially welded to the floor, the woman whose head was only a jaw or even the lump of flesh dripping onto the floor who could not even be recognised as a person due to how twisted their form currently was….

It took mere moments of analyzing the situation for her to hurl all the food she’d put down that evening, and there were at least a dozen ‘corpses’ left behind.

Whatever sick bastards did all of this however, she could see that they were going somewhere else. She could read fataram after all, and they had left a gruesome message engraved on one of their victims, so it was rather obvious that they wanted to be followed towards the city of Embremar.

Whether the explosions she could hear in the distance were mere hallucinations of her part, it didn’t matter, she was going somewhere else and avoiding this monstrosity contest as best as she could.

………………

Despite not getting a skill for it, Aki was pretty sure he had reached Level 10 in cadaver displaying.

Being back into combat wasn’t only great for his mood however, as he was gaining talent points like a chinese old master plucked peaches. Through his policy to make at least three spells for each school of mana he used, there were a lot of those available to grind, way more than the enchantments he’d ended up learning and mastering while in the demon castle.

Some were far more situational than the rest and would need to be mastered independently in a more controlled setting, but considering the over thirty different mana types he dealt with, he had a lot of ground to cover before even beginning to create more composite spells, nevermind creating spells by school of magic instead of essence.

While he had a wide repertoire of abjuration and evocation, and maybe his transmutation and enchanting could be said to not be too bad now that he had put some time into it, his conjuration, divination and animancy were practically non-existent, with his potential for illusion and biomancy pretty much cut in half by his own Path.

The Faith and Dimensional casting techniques he actually knew remained completely untouched as well, but that was due to him lacking the qualifications to even use such methods rather than the time to learn their practical side.

Rather than wallowing over his lack of talent for true wizardry however, Aki was more than happy to stick to his sorcery. Or he would if there wasn’t such a great payout with advancing everything. The whole thing was a bit frustrating, but overall, he could keep advancing his capabilities easily enough, especially with the system matrix helping engrave his significance into his Spark and it’s layers.

Of course, if he fought a strong soul mage of respect and was denied access to the system he’d eventually lose levels on those things, but the whole scenario was so fantastical it might as well happen only when he was much further down the road of power.

As of right now, he was still learning to expand his senses through spellwork and modifying the coding of reality, all the while figuring out if he should start working on his creating or summoning allies. Stitching soul impressions to biologicals was easy so long as you knew what you were doing and didn’t care if it was going to last, but transferring willing consciousness through realities and possibility and into prepared shells was also rather more immediately effective.

“JORG, NO! YOU BASAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!”

Which admittedly didn’t make him much less deadly to his targets, especially when they kept trying to talk. His enemies' weird shit aside though, this was exactly why he had become so infatuated with sorcery.

Little preparation, lots of emotion, great versatility, entirely customizable even at the weakest levels.

It was both a shame and a very interesting feature that he could not simply will himself into the major leagues by simply doing more of all of this without the system, but he was all for growing himself and meditating over cool stuff to learn, if only he was allowed to learn it at his own pace, of course.

His own pace involved a lot more murder than he’d previously thought recommendable when not feeding an XP counter or some similarly mystical numbers quote, but it worked and was fun, so that was fine.

Not that he did not question whether his willingness to so readily murder people he knew next to nothing about was an artificially induced thing or not, but the chances that one or more beings would bother with something of the sort when he was already so likely to do it anyway was rather low.

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Rather, he should probably question his willingness to accept the contract that currently bound him, but he had been under quite a bit of stress at that point, and the promise of magic was indeed something that would have swayed him to accept this serving existence. Especially since it was so simple to prepare for the changes he wanted to make on that which he served.

Still, the whole situation wasn’t exactly great for his mental health and he should probably stop with the overly gruesome stuff for a bit. Even if he didn’t end up going to town and spending a week living out every sex fantasy he could conjure up, relaxing a bit and allowing himself to remember while drinking some actual coffee after almost a week on the road would do him well.

There were still terrorists to hunt down and foreign state agents to root out, sure, but he quite doubted that they could tell where he was going so long as he avoided simply entering the closest city after a successful hit. And he should probably not taunt them with info on where he’d next attack if he planned to rest.

At this point it was obvious he was fast, possibly to the point that it probably looked like it was all the job of a teleporting mage or several teams working in conjunction, but still it wasn’t like he found any overt resistance, with at max a few people at the level of a good knight being added here and there to lead some operatives that should have probably given his enemies a better tactical advantage.

Those preparations were absolutely nothing compared to the wards at the royal capital however, so he easily turned them to his advantage with a bit of stealth and enchanting knowledge. His modifications would probably not be so useful to long term operations or servos that were regularly scanned for signs of invasion and corruption, but for a quick battle they more than made up for the necessary investment to modify and take control of the enemy resources with a factor of confusion being added to the attack and all the free hits he managed to score by shooting quickly and wildly.

Again, proper wizardry would allow him to do better, adding to the already deployed resources and reducing his own expenditures, but in this, the whole affair actually served as practice as well.

Which in turn was more than a good enough reason to actually treat himself and figure out some stuff while in town. See the sights, start some drama, eat a pastry shop out of stock (or at least get one of each of their plates), buy himself some good fantasy books and maybe nerd out while looking for recommendations.

……………….

"And you mean to say that despite the sheer amount of traps they have not even slowed down?" Lumpur questioned the trembling demon kneeling before him, his proudful ntur not stopping him from recognising a superior entity.

With an unsuccessful plot as the spark, the empire seemed to somehow have caught wind of a series of locations being used as hideouts and regional headquarters.

So of course after the first report reached a sensible administrator they started reinforcing the bases with available combat personal while moving the logistics away. Even if the empire managed to destroy a third base in the time it took to evacuate the region, that was a testament to their speed and commitment rather than the incompetence of his subordinates.

"Yes, your eminence."

At this point he was mostly sure they were dealing with an incredibly specialized small team or a single operative, what with the lack of noticeable bodies from the other force despite the speed at which these take downs were happening, but still, this did not explain how they could keep going despite the amount of resources destroying the bases should have cost.

There was no way that these savages could send someone capable of taking down so many journeyman preparing to ambush them on such a short notice nor keep them fighting for three days on end after all, so clearly there was something he wasn't seeing here, for they also did not have the amount of experts available to actually perform all of this.

"I see. Well, I shall consult our God for wisdom, but it is clear that we will be better served by leaving them to chase ghosts instead of feeding the lives of our brothers and sisters to a task they are not suited for." If there was any unwanted inflection in his voice, his mask did it's job and distorted it, the demon-kin bellow him too lost in his own emotional upheaval to notice otherwise.

"It will be as you say your eminence." The man bowed lower and he dismissed him, saying he'd need peace and solitude. For once, those were not empty words or euphemisms.

As an honorary deacon of the church of the God of War Matraeus, he knew the ritual necessary to commune with his God, and while such holy moments were not meant to be attempts at gaining tactical information, there were several well documented cases of the Pantheon choosing to grace their followers with divine revelations when it best suited their interests and duties, especially when it would not harm their brothers and sisters.

So he looked back on his days as a trainee and Templar, quashing his anticipation to once again be in His embrace and presence and allowing himself to be in tune with the World he served. Only then did he move to put his forehead to the floor, slowly praying as he showed his respect in a trance.

Then He was there, the barelit room suddenly shining at the resplendor of his aura, becoming more through the honor of bearing his presence. A calm feeling of askance reached him, and after once again bowing, he presented his query, questioning if the souls of the new converts could share their experiences against the enemy.

There was silence for a while, his concentration elsewhere. Instead of a calm and gradual return however, Lumpur suddenly felt himself almost passing out as the presence of his God suddenly magnified to a level he'd not ever experienced before, his physicality unable to deal with the rapid change in mana concentration.

Even as his consciousness barely hanged on however, he heard the forming silhouette and His question. Asking for passage into his memory to better understand these new developments.

Which made little sense as He should be able to ask any one of the new recruits that followed him and recently died in…

'Unless their souls were broken.'

Realization dawning on the elf, he blanched further, panic taking him before his God's calm presence could calm him as he hurriedly offered himself.

Lumpur remembered little else from there.