If I didn’t know any better, I would have thought the surly, blue-skinned demoness who served as quartermaster in this new demonic outpost particularly disliked me. She certainly stalled long enough after I handed her the scroll, grumbling and muttering and clearly in no hurry to open it.

Thankfully, I did know better. Having watched her interact with six other demons, two of whom arrived after I did, I felt confident that she wasn’t singling me out for being a human.

No, she just hated everyone equally.

I could understand someone loathing a customer service job, especially in an actual demonic legion. But all her customers were careful to give her no trouble. In fact, every demon I saw in the shop was exceedingly polite. A couple of them downright simpered in her presence.

Her presence… this was a demonic power I hadn’t encountered before. Her aura permeated the small room, heavy and ominous, coating the air and making it hard to breathe. The effect worsened the closer one got to her. As I stood at the counter, waiting for her to open the scroll she was still waving around, it took all I had not to keel over.

I wasn’t the only one suffering either. Three of the demons who walked in after me stumbled at the threshold. Only their supernatural reflexes saved them from taking a nosedive.

She was clearly a powerful demon. No one was going to mess with her. So why was she being such a nuisance about doing her job? I didn’t know, but I strongly suspected it came down to amusement. She seemed to relish forcing everyone to wait and suffer.

This might have been a bigger deal if we weren’t part of the Legion of Torment. Really, it was right there in the name. Considering the agony we endured on a regular basis, I could put up with mild inconvenience much longer than this.

Especially since a demoness this powerful could easily splatter me across the walls with one flick of her tail.

Finally, after complaining for fifteen minutes, she ripped open the scroll and scanned it. She then did an abrupt double-take before raising her wide eyes to meet my confused ones.

“Well, I don’t know what you did, but…” the demoness sighed, her annoyance replaced by genuine hesitation. “Do I even have enough supplies for this?”

After asking herself this question, she hurried into the back of the supply depot.

I strained to see past the door, but the room beyond was lost in shadow. I did hear more grumbling though, accompanied by the noise of objects being banged around, so I assumed she was at least searching for whatever Glaustro had declared I should have.

At long last, just when I started to wonder if I should go talk to Glaustro about the difficulties I was having, the demoness emerged.

She held a grimy, slightly stained backpack in her left hand. “Here,” she grunted, depositing it roughly on the counter. “I even included this amazing bag as an apology.”

“Thank you, ma’am. I don’t see why you should apologize at all.” I kept my voice carefully neutral. Just because she was acting a bit more likable didn’t mean a splattering wasn’t on the menu.

She looked tempted to spit on me. “Not for my behavior, you idiot mortal. I failed to provide what your patron demanded of me. We don’t exactly have ten thousand superior grade mana crystals just lying around. We demons rarely use those.” She scoffed, her eyes glowing with demonic pride. “I did manage to scrounge together five thousand. You’ll have to make do with greater mana crystals for the other half.”

I almost passed out on the spot. Ten thousand superior grade mana crystals… from the memories Clarinette had left me, that sort of wealth could push a mage effortlessly all the way to the highest possible ranks Berlis had ever seen.

My spinning mind snagged on a problem. Five thousand superior grade mana crystals was one thing. But another five thousand, converted to their ‘greater’ amount, equaled fifty thousand shiny little mana rocks.

How was I supposed to walk out of here with all those crystals?!

I was starting to panic when my eyes fell on the backpack again. She did say she’d thrown it in as an apology. So, while it might have been a rude thing to do right in front of the proprietor, I pulled the backpack to me and examined it.

It was a sturdy, if simple, backpack, just a hard frame with fabric stretched over it. More like fancy bag than a backpack. Still, it had a flap that could be tied down over the front to keep the contents from spilling.

Slowly, I untied the two strings keeping the backpack closed and lifted the flap. Much like the door to the back of the supply depot, all I could see was impenetrable darkness. It was a bit like staring into the night sky, or what I imagined the darkness of space to look like.

An apt comparison, since when I dipped my hands into the backpack, my fingers immediately brushed against mana crystals. I’d never seen or held them of course, but the jolt of power was unmistakable. The mana inside the crystals felt eager, like a single tug of my will could send the mana spiraling down my veins and into my core, where it would help me become more… just more.

My smile felt much more bloodthirsty than it used to be. “Thank you, this will do very nicely.”

The woman rolled her eyes and crossed her arms. “Yes, yes, I bet it will. Now, please get out of my depot, and tell that patron of yours to give us a warning next time he wants to spoil his pet.”

Not even the demeaning tone of her voice could ruin my mood. “Of course,” I said, smile still firmly in place. “Just, before I go…”

Ten minutes later, I settled down on the sterile torture chair of an Absorption Station with a sigh.

Technically, since I wasn’t absorbing a soul, I didn’t need the chair. I could just sit on normal ground and avoid the creeping fear that all those hovering absorption implements would come alive and hack into me for no reason. But my mana senses told me the chair had the highest mana density in the place, so sacrifices had to be made.

But I couldn’t settle down. I wriggled around in the chair, unable to focus and enter the odd meditative state required by serious mana exertion. Instead, I briefly amused myself by remembering the indignant look on the demoness’s face when I dared ask her for directions to the nearest Absorption Station.

I didn’t have to go to a station, not really. I could have absorbed the mana crystals anywhere. What prevented me from doing that was plain old good sense.

True, mana crystals were not as appealing to demons as souls were. Souls were sources of power, sustenance, and knowledge. In comparison, mana crystals were useful batteries and occasional snacks, just for funsies. They weren’t a resource demons would murder you over, generally speaking.

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I still didn’t want anyone to know I had a small fortune in mana crystals just lying around. Absorbing them at an inn would almost certainly tip someone off. Hence, I decided to hide away and do my thing in a risk-free environment.

A small part of me wanted to do the responsible thing and look through the greater souls from Glaustro first, but giddy anticipation got the better of me.

I snatched up the backpack and carefully fished out twenty greater mana crystals. I could have started with the superior ones, but there was a real concern that, as a mage apprentice, I couldn’t handle their mana quite yet.

To be fair, I was probably still pushing it with greater mana crystals. Two things gave me confidence. First was my inherited talent for mana manipulation. Even Hayden’s demonic teachers had praised him for it.

Second was the experience I had absorbed from Clarinette. She had struggled with a broken core all her life, fighting to corral her mana into doing what she wanted. This made her tough. If there was anyone on Berlis who could handle mana crystals, it would have been her.

Honestly, it was a shame Berlis was too mana-poor to produce these crystals. If they’d been available locally, Clarinette could have used them to heal her core.

Gripping a mana stone in each hand, I allowed myself to sink deep into my own body. For a while, I simply admired the smooth flow of mana and savored the way it all coursed through my blood, flesh, and bones, strengthening and refining everything it touched.

My ribs twinged and pulsed, trying to pull my focus, but that just drew my attention to the way mana interacted with the wound. It was fascinating to watch the mystical force I still knew so little about as it coalesced around the cracks in my bones, slowly filling them in. Not only did the mana heal the wound, but it also enhanced my body’s base material, toughening up the injured area on a fundamental level.

If I were a glutton for punishment, I might have been tempted to break more of myself just to bounce back with a superior physique. Unfortunately, that was a step too far for me at the moment, especially since it would leave me vulnerable in the middle of a demon army.

I allowed myself a few more moments of wonder, then took a deep breath.

It was time to begin.

As carefully as I could, I stretched a single wisp of mana away from the cycle I established, then pushed it through the center of my palm where my skin met the mana crystal directly. A jolt of power ran through me, and I gasped.

The mana in the crystal was, for lack of a better word, pure. These crystals had formed deep underground before winding up in the blue demoness’s supply depot. Just like many layers of dirt and stone could filter subterranean water, the layers of earth had filtered the mana, purifying it as it condensed into these crystalline forms.

The result was a bundle of fundamental energy, so pure and concentrated that it could respond to any command with remarkable ease. That’s what made mana crystals so useful. They could power wards, enhance magic items, and even replenish your mana reserves in the heat of battle.

They could also be absorbed to grow your mana core. That was my goal for the day.

Taking another deep breath, I plunged my own mana deep into the crystal, then used the mana as a bridge to pull the crystal’s mana into my body.

Immediately, I knew I was in trouble.

While the mana was just lying in the crystal, placid and eager to assist, one could overlook its density and sheer volume. As it raced into my veins, though, that became an utter impossibility.

This single crystal contained almost as much mana as my entire body.

Overwhelming it all into obedience was out of the question. The only thing I could do was nudge the torrent of power in the right direction, gradually corralling it into the path I wanted it to follow.

Wherever it went, my body burned. I heard of mana burnout before, of course, but I never thought the term was so literal.

The only reason I didn’t pass out was the incredible effect of the mana’s passage on my physique. When I absorbed Clarinette’s soul, it had taken a while for my body to adjust to my new mana core, strengthening and adapting to handle the flow of power. This was a rapid version of that gradual process, and the newfound strength it gave was addicting. It forced me to endure even as tears slid down my cheeks.

And then, finally, the crystal’s mana reached its destination.

It slammed into my core with more force than I would have liked, then swirled around, trying to force its way in from every direction. I felt like the mystical core of my body was getting pressed down, squeezed, like in a hydraulic press.

Some of the mana stuck to the surface of my core, building it up, adding a new layer to my advancement. But most of it couldn’t attach quickly enough, and the pressure continued to build as more and more mana accumulated in one of my most important organs.

My heart was burning like no other part of my body had.

Its beating stalled, then sped up erratically, all proper rhythm gone. Dizziness and pain assaulted me in equal measure. I found my focus slipping.

The only thing that kept me in the moment was the agony radiating from my core. It was consuming the mana as fast as it could, but the process simply wasn’t fast enough. As the crystal’s mana continued to flood my heart, the pressure mounted to levels that were making my core shake.

For a moment, my mind flashed helplessly to memories not my own.

I squirmed and whimpered, unable to beg as my mother’s mana gathered in my chest, compressing, squeezing around the mana I had managed to gather on my own. It was starting to coalesce, to form a core.

Even as it did, the one person I thought I could trust pressed even harder, dissatisfied that I was taking too long.

My new core formed, then quailed before the superior force. The pain consumed me. But even as I lost consciousness, I heard a resounding crack spread through my very being…

The memory faded, not by choice, but because of the pain growing in my present. My core was shaking harder now. It was on the verge of suffering the same fate as Clarinette’s.

More memories rose at the thought, of sorrows, of things that should have been done, of remedies to past regrets. They clamored at my consciousness. This time, I gave myself to them willingly.

I wasn’t sure who I was in those moments. A soldier in an Abyssal army? A failed mage, whose future was ruined by her own mother? My identity was merging with Clarinette’s, and there was no guarantee who would emerge from the chair.

It didn’t matter.

All that mattered was speeding up the formation of a new core layer.

All that mattered was the desperation I shared with the dead woman in my head.

We squeezed the mana closer, forcing it to compress before it wanted to do so. We struck out with my own mana, forcing the foreign presence to break up into more manageable strands I could then weave into my core. We worked and fought side by side, one in both mind and purpose.

The moment came suddenly, neither piece of me aware of how close we had finally gotten. Something clicked inside my chest, and my core’s draw on the mana intensified. It guzzled down the full content of that mana crystal, until my fingers were flat against my chest, the object they had been holding now gone.

I collapsed back into the chair, panting desperately for breath that refused to fill my lungs fully.

“That was… so stupid…” I whimpered. “What was I thinking?”

I knew the answer. I wasn’t thinking at all.

True, neither Clarinette nor I had ever tried to absorb mana from a crystal. I couldn’t have known what it would do to me. Still, that should have made me all the more cautious. If it wasn’t for all the practice Clarinette had done, learning to snatch mana into her core before it could leak out, I would have burned my future as a mortal mage then and there.

I might have lived, but there’d be no excelling in my ascension to demonic status. In fact, such a blunder almost certainly would have damaged my soul in some irrevocable way. I would have run the risk of ascending as an imp.

I wasn’t sure I could ever recover from that.

My mind was still a mess, but ever so slowly, I managed to untangle my essence from the stolen memories. Then I stuffed them back down into my subconscious, where I could keep them contained.

I had been so nervous about carrying around Clarinette’s essence, even wishing I could erase her memories fully.

Thank every unholy god, that wasn’t possible.

I tried to sit up again, but my limbs spasmed and my heart did a weird skip-and-bump that almost made me pass out, so I just collapsed right back into the seat. I didn’t even have the energy to curse. All I managed was a frustrated smile. This was wholly my fault, after all.

Well, at least I didn’t start with a superior mana crystal. That’s something.

And it wasn’t even something I could take credit for. I felt tempted to do something nice for the quartermaster, since her inability to provide only superior mana crystals had basically saved my life.

I changed my mind immediately after thinking about her stupid smug face, but… it’s the thought that counts, right?