The spell, Mana Bolt I apparently, which he had been using had been very effective so far. Since he never tired either physically or mentally insofar as he was yet aware, he would be able to maximize his kills with it. Controlled shots, carefully targeted. The only thing currently lacking was the ability to cast faster and hit more targets in a line. It made the most sense. By far. Absolutely the most logical choice. Perhaps he could even gain some insight into the fundamental mechanics of spells by examining the improvements to the patterns and flow of Mana in an upgraded version of the same spell, while the likely drastic differences between the other two options and his current spell would by like reading a totally different sentence in a new language without any contextual linkage to the first sentence you’d learn. Yes, it would grant a broader vocabulary and perspective, eventually, but in truth it was a piece to a larger puzzle which would not even seem to be of the same image until much, much later.

Then again, he had limitations which were clearly based around his vague idea of what a human body was like. He could only see forward in detail. In a very small area truthfully, the remainder of his forward vision increasingly unfocused the further it was from his forward vision. While the cracked landscape was so repetitive in its nature that his mind pieced together a clear image of what he should be seeing, if he were looking directly at it, the Them which emerged varied so tremendously that the lack of visual acuity outside of the small zone of attention became painfully clear. To truly watch everywhere and identify his opponents, which were now starting to vary a little in size, form, and behavior, and likely would continue to vary much more as time went on, he had to constantly scan his vision around.

That and he couldn’t see behind himself. Since all of Them appeared from all directions, seemingly within proximity of his position, he had to be constantly on the lookout. While kiting them to line up shots. While casting Mana Bolt in his mind and aiming carefully. While ensuring he didn’t back up against an uncrossable split or gouge in the wasted surface of this world. While. While. While. Therefore, even though an upgrade to his Mana Bolt spell would probably provide he greatest mathematical gain and perhaps an early or even only insight into how he might create or modify spells in the future, it also left him vulnerable. A glass canon. Better to survive your mistakes than live on the edge of pure skill and power in the assumption of your own perfection. He should obviously learn to imbue Mana into his Shadow and thus provide himself longevity and greater leeway for errors. It made the most sense. By far.

Naturally he chose the lightning. Because lightning. Who would have chosen anything else? Nobody cool, that’s who. He even had a good justification…

Which, uh, he would figure out later. For now though, lightning!

Having made his choice, he fell within his own mind, into his self-imposed visualization of a library. The vague form of the librarian accepted the choice, the other two vanishing as if they had simply never been. The new volume found its place on the shelf which was empty except for that one volume. The volume which he now knew to be the Mana Bolt spell. Knowledge flooded through his thoughts. Patterns of flow. Patterns of rigid structure. Where Mana Bolt was actually a quite smooth and fluid feeling spell, Arcane Spark was incredibly rigid, all sharp angles and confusing structures. Given that Mana Bolt could be improved, likely many times over, he assumed that this new spell could be as well. That meant the structure and the casting imparted to him were likely greatly flawed.

He didn’t care. Instead, he opened his eyes. The two spells were so different that they could be performed in a mutually exclusive way. A hand which was still hanging outstretched in the air channeled a fresh and familiar Mana Bolt even while he simultaneously built the confusing structure of Arcane Spark. Unlike Mana Bolt, Arcane Spark did not need physical or mental aiming. In fact it quite simply could not be aimed. Maybe he’d learn later a way to modify the spell to do so, but the knowledge of the how came along with a sort of instruction manual on the what of the spell. Arcane Spark would emit itself towards nearby Shadow. It was Mana manifest back into a sort of Chaos. Whereas Mana Bolt was pure Mana, structured, compressed, directed, Arcane Spark was a much more raw discharge. Unlike the straight Chaos though of Them, it was primarily of a fairly tight spectrum of whitish blue colors. Intentional Chaos? The concept felt right, but off just the same.

The hot thin arcs of lightning that snaked out from his own Shadow in three directions, burning through almost a dozen of Them in an instant, felt so right. He spammed the two spells as fast as he could, slowing down and eventually coming to a complete halt. Arcane Spark would not discharge unless there was some foreign Shadow within reach, so he was able to use it to ‘watch’ his blind spots. With the added destructive power he no longer was forced to constantly flee. Any of Them which emerged within range were struck down immediately. It wasn’t the most efficient use of Mana and he would need to start timing it better. Still, finding himself with some breathing room, carefully picking off clumps of Them with Mana Bolt and clearing space with several bursts of Arcane Spark tamped down on the rising sense of inevitably being overrun.

After some time, he realized that the place inside him which consumed Chaos and stored Mana was not filling as quickly as before, even though he was destroying just as many of Them. It would be several more hours before he could be sure that the tide was increasing or decreasing, but if it was gong to gradually increase as seemed to fit the pattern, he would need to grow as quickly as possible. Safety, calm, these were comforting feelings, stabilizing thoughts.

They were more deadly to him than any of Them.

With great mental effort, he returned to his prior strategy. Pull Them into groups by leading them in a slow pursuit. Maximize Mana Bolt. Arcane Spark was perhaps a little more efficient if he discharged it only when mostly surrounded. Using that as a primary strategy though would just increase his risk of being overwhelmed. He wasn’t sure that casting two spells at once would still be possible while experiencing the pain of contact with Them.

So he instead began to use Arcane Spark primarily clear Them out when they started to clump up upon him. His movement was intentionally slower than Them. Enough to get them into a long clump for multi-hit shots but slow enough they gradually started to build up around him, pushing around each other or tangling up together. The tangles he carefully picked off with Mana Bolt as a primary goal. If they merged, they would consume their Shadow to partially block his shots. He spent more Mana to receive less gain. Even though his ‘injuries’ had long since recovered, his Shadow continued to absorb more and felt perpetually stronger. The edges of his ‘cloak’ seemed a little less frayed. The material looked a little less ephemeral.

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It would take weeks or months or years of consuming Them to achieve the level of solid stability he felt it wanted to reach. Well, maybe not that long, given that they were definitely still increasing in number. Some of them were emerging already in a state of partial entanglement, often out of the effective range of Mana Bolt. It was when dealing with these that the true worth of Arcane Spark really showed itself. While the larger and more durable of Them did not fall to stray hits by a Spark released into a mass of Them, if he whittled down most of the smaller ones with Mana Bolt and released a Spark into just one or two larger ones, the more concentrated energy tore them apart on the first blow.

Even better, Arcane Spark seemed to ignore their attempts to shield using Shadow, disbursing them without reducing the gains. If he could cackle with joy, he would. Alas, he either lacked the physical means to do so or this forsaken planet lacked an atmosphere. Regardless it did not matter, for he cackled in his mind.

His core was filling with Chaos almost faster than it could be purified into Mana. Almost. As his mind became more and more adept at managing his spells and movement without using his full concentration, he allowed a part of it to watch the process. Chaos would flood in, drawn in as if by some intense gravity. Much like objects in space, it did not fall directly in but rather went into a sort of spiraling orbit. Even the Chaos which came directly towards the center of it was forced tangentially into the decreasing spiral. It would swirl with increasing velocities as it traveled inward, all of the unending colors distilling to a pure white. As the Mana built, the rate of conversion slowed, though not by much. There was definitely a fixed space in which he instinctively knew Mana would not fill, which served purely to purify the Chaos.

Any space beyond that which was still unfilled with Mana also served to purify, accelerating the process. The outer space was much larger so the decreased available volume inside that zone was not a significant portion of the purification capacity. Still, it was a real portion. He feared that he would cross beyond his ability to purify the Chaos before he was once again filled with Mana.

What then, anyways? Would he be able to once again compress it? Would he grow stronger as a result? Be granted another spell by whatever being was implanting this knowledge within him? Would he learn of his identity before this? Learn any of his past memories? Maybe he would gain some means of leaving this forsaken place…

Something was wrong. The remainder of Them was thinning out. The number of Them which were spawning from the cracks begin to rapidly diminish. No, not just that. They were also moving differently. They were… fleeing? Not from him, but rather, from something else. They began to ignore him, moving unexpectedly all away from some other area. Several of his Mana Bolts missed their targets because they no longer moved directly towards him but rather somewhat to the side.

Swiftly eliminating the few that were still in his proximity or headed mostly towards him, he looked in the direction they were fleeing from. There was nothing. Nothing unusual at all. Well, except the total lack of Them endlessly emerging. It was as if the world was resetting back to the way it had been when he first awoke.

When the first streaks of Shadow and Chaos emerged, long and erratic in form, worm-like, never emerging fully from the cracks or revealing a central origin, he felt a cold pit of terror. There was a great deal more Shadow to this than the rest of Them he’d faced so far. That and, it seemed they were hungry for the same thing.

The long ropes of Shadow and some Chaos shot out incredible distances. As far as he was, then further, in a display of speed far greater than he could manage. They split and split and split into smaller and smaller streaks, flowing and branching like roots spreading out, roots of smokey Shadow and vibrant impossibly colored Chaos. Each and every one of Them which had fled was speared.

Then it began to feed. All the Shadow and Chaos in those which had fled was visibly swallowed into each strand, moving down them like prey swallowed by a snake. The limbs and their food all retracted back into the cracks. The world fell still. For a long moment, several long moments really, he stared in shock. Frozen by fear, by the sudden shift in the pattern he’d now worked with for days or weeks unknowable in a world without any means of telling time, without a changing environment.

When the cracks began to widen and a greater mass of energy started to break through, it was almost a relief. To have nothing except the empty wasteland was somehow worse, or almost worse, than the constant threat of death and the unending need to destroy and absorb. For a moment he almost had to face his internal thoughts again. To acknowledge the crisis of identity. The total lack of identity, really, which he faced. The crushing loneliness that he had so far ignored.

Now though it was easy to put that all aside. Silently, without even the sense of vibration on his flesh, such as it was, the thing erupted. It was mostly Shadow. The Chaos within was so tightly contained that there was a true sense of form to it. Not that it would be called anything but amorphous when compared to structured life. It was like a big, bloated insect with a hundred whip-like legs, made of smoke and holding more than the normal spectrum of light within itself. The lack of any sensation from the massive eruption of hard stone and clay strongly suggested that there was simply no atmosphere present for sound to travel through.

Then it screamed. The screech was definitely not silent. It also wasn’t something he heard with any sort of ears or other auditory organ. Rather it screamed directly into his very being. The Shadow of his cloak rippled visibly from the scream. He was still frozen in shock and fear. Still unmoving. Still struggling to reconcile this sudden shift. His confidence in his ability to survive, to continue harvesting and growing was shattered.

Several of the limbs shot out towards him. The very Mana within him held still as the breath he could not take as the ending of his empty existence bore down upon him with the inevitability of a mouse trapped within the cage of a boa. He was prey. That he’d played the predator for a short while was a sick joke upon his mind. The confidence of his superiority and power and that only sheer overwhelming numbers would pose any real threat had crippled him. He wasn’t enough. Not strong enough.

He immediately regretted not upgrading Mana Bolt. A more efficient spell might just have allowed him to achieve another upgrade, one that might have given him some opportunity to survive this. Or perhaps to even hurt this new hunter, which was so clad in Shadow that he could likely exhaust himself firing his laughably pitiful Bolts into it before it would even come close to be destabilized.

He regretted not learning to empower his Shadow. If he had, then he might have a chance of surviving the strikes which came at him by nearly the dozen. It would have drained him and yet he would have lived, perhaps to claw his way to victory. Perhaps though the limbs were fast, the overall thing was slow. He was far too within its reach to dodge it now. He would be consumed before he had the chance to get even as far as those of Them which had been furthest fled. Not one had been beyond its reach.

He closed his eyes, or would have, if he’d had eyelids. Apparently he had no eyelids. Why this irked him so much to discover, he did not know. In the face of your doom it seemed hardly an important thing nor worth even the briefest moment of annoyance, yet he was indeed annoyed. That he couldn’t even close his sight to that which was coming was just a further indignity to this empty and brief existence. As if whatever cruel god had put him here was spitting upon him in his final moments.

He didn’t even have the time to turn his head away.