[|||| =LEVEL 5= ||||]
I had rolled around the thought of actually using my points a few more times and finally sighed and came to my conclusion. I was OP compared to most people but I was also a bit of a glass cannon. A strong blast from, say, Sirzechs, the leader of the Devils and one of the strongest beings in DxD, could end me if I wasn't tapping into the void. Maybe my affinity for void would act on it's own and defend me, as my affinities sometimes do, but that wasn't something to be counted on.
And DxD, where there were a lot of absurdly strong people with a lot of crazy abilities, was someplace I liked to go to and shouldn't just leave to fester when I could be dealing with threats to me or people close to me. Kuroka was hardly made of glass, but not helping her out was shirking my duty as her boyfriend.
I eventually came to the thought of 'how many of these points is Kuroka worth to me'. The answer was all of them. Knowing that I could tap into the void and kill an untold number of beings made them worth a lot less to me. So if I was willing to give that much I was willing to give a good amount. About a thousand would do.
So a thousand was what I was going to spend.
I warped to a different universe that was uninhabited and cast my senses out. There was nothing. The world I was on was basically Mars but with an atmosphere. I couldn't even see any grass. Perfect.
I sat down and opened the old interface. I noted a few point gains and dismissed them. But I had some preparation to do before I did anything drastic. I went a few miles away and disposed of everything in my soul space. I had to be extremely careful to not break anything considering I had a house and my airship in there but I got it done. My soul was about to shift massively and I didn't want anything bad to happen in it.
I wrote down some circles of runes to hold affinity and filled them with my various types before releasing my elementals, who made various noises of disgruntlement at finally being let loose from my soul, where they slept all the time. I still felt a connection to them so I transmitted what I was doing to them through my aura and severed it with void, hoping to remake it later. I did the same to my panther soul, albeit with a slightly different runic circle.
Finally I got naked (I liked my clothes) and teleported to the other side of the planet, which was about the same as before except the soil was a dark brown rather than red. I could also see a sea of some sort in the distance but I didn't think the liquid was water. It didn't matter.
Hoping that I wasn't overreacting, I mentally allocated the points I had to intelligence and wisdom, the only stats that really mattered, and allocated some points to luck for good measure. I took a deep breath and committed the alloca-
PAIN
I felt my soul wracked with it, not a white-hot pain but a more deep pain, like a growing pain amplified by a few thousand times. I saw a sharp red light shining from my body, making a sphere of red around me. Farther out of my little red sphere an oppressive blue haze took precedence and elements raged. Lightning boomed and thunder cracked, fire roared, ice grew on the ground only to be broken moments later, light warped and thrashed, and space itself bent. I didn't see void but it didn't really have a color besides an empty black when it ate light.
I noted a distant burning sensation as I fell to the ground but it was overshadowed by the deep pain. I tried to get up but found my flesh melting into the ground and my muscles uncontrollable. I was… burning? Collapsing? Something clicked in my mind. My runes! My energies were so utterly unbalanced and that was reflected in my runes. I was surging with power and my runes couldn't handle that. With them directly connected to my muscles and enhancing my body that meant they were destroying me from the inside out.
As I came to this conclusion I felt a jump in my chest and my vision went black before coming back blurred. The jump came again, weaker, and my vision darkened. A heart attack? I'd never had one of those before.
My vision blackened one last time, somehow deeper than before, and my vision faded but the pain remained. In the back of my mind I noted the loss of my body, likely physical death, and felt disappointment at my lack of foresight. I had a few ideas, though. I had learned a few breakthroughs in runes with Poledina. I also had a better life affinity and far more precise control. I could probably get through puberty without disrupting the delicate processes in it. Perhaps I could take traits from magical races now that I could travel worlds?
The pain wracked me and I waited patiently for it to cease. I didn't keep time well when I was so distracted by my internal changes.
My affinities were going haywire and mage sight was useless with all the affinity screwing up the environment. My energies were also in flux, making me trapped in my changing soul. So I looked at what I was gaining.
My aura and mana wove together, making an elaborate tapestry of some sort. But unlike the other times where they made one coherent whole they began to specialize. Thick concentrations of aura and mana collected at the edges of my soul, encapsulating it in a membrane. A dense seed of aura and a little trace of mana in the center was something I knew instinctively to be my core, where most of my aura and mana were.
I also had a few other 'organs' of varying use, each of which I knew like the back of my hand. One was like the golgi apparatus in a cell, except my soul organ connected my soul to my followers more strongly than before and it would probably connect to my elementals too. It might be able to help form more coherent and stronger messages of intent in my aura as a way of communication.
Another was dedicated to expelling intruders, a crude non-sentient mass of aura and void standing constantly at the ready. There was even a strange tentacle of some sort dedicated to fine manipulation beyond what I could do before as well as extending the reach of my soul if I wanted to directly interact with something from a distance. I could probably perform surgery on a grain of dust now or cast spells more efficient and complex than ever before, provided that I created them.
Finally was a sort of portal. Through it I felt my soul space but also the presence of my other affinities in sort of realms of their own. Only space had actual… space but the others had little seeds of compressed affinity and my soul in their own space. They weren't connected to me directly but linked to me. There was only one I could recognize. Void. I… had a connection to other planes of reality like the greater void? But they seemed so weak. Shouldn't they be infinite masses of power? And on closer look void seemed to be far less than infinite. I probably released more void than the void in this dimension just by existing.
Even through the pain of my soul growing, though it was waning now, I touched one of these dimensions and felt its… desires? It was sentient? It was so strange, almost like an extension of me but not separate, though it had its own desires, even if it only had one. To grow.
Experimentally I grasped my ice affinity, running rampant around me, and plugged it into the ice sub-dimension. The dimension absorbed it greedily, soaking in affinity. I separated the link and the dimension complied, letting go immediately, though it felt petulant. I tapped the dimension and felt that I could draw from it like it was the greater void, though it was far from infinite.
… I enthusiastically plugged my other affinities into their respective sub-dimensions and reached out with the soul-tentacle I now had, sucking in affinity from the environment. It was with near-giddiness that I found a dimension for mana too, though I couldn't feel one for aura. That made sense. Aura was me, after all, and my soul was finite.
The pain was faint now and the environment was clear so I opened my senses to the world around me, seeing through my light affinity, which I disappointedly found stopped it from focusing on its sub-dimension. The landscape was beyond simply wrecked. It was annihilated. The ground looked like an angry god had descended. The uncontrolled destruction had torn gashes across the land for miles, leaving pockets of ice or undying fires or strange formations of twisted metal across the land with no rhyme or reason.
Things got even worse when my chaos affinity got involved. It twisted things into forms that were possible but completely unfeasible. On the plus side, I was now the creator of life in this dimension, having made a mushroom that absorbed light for… some reason. I left it to be as I eagerly looked at my new stats.
Abyss Mavros
Title: Archwizard of void; The Storm
Level – 484
HP – NA (NA/min)
AP – 1,038,680 (51,934/min)
MP - 22,782,000 (1,139,100/min)
STR - NA (+500%) + 206.8= NA
VIT - NA (+500%) + 206.8= NA
DEX - NA (+500%) + 206.8= NA
INT - 1034 (+1150%)= 11,391
WIS - 1029 (+1150%) = 12,983.5
LUK - 253 (+0%)= 253
POINTS - 600
I would have laughed in disbelief if I had a mouth. Instead I released a small pulse of aura infused with both happiness and disbelief by reflex. I was confused with my new reaction but I checked my affinities a moment later to find equally ridiculous results, my multiplier increased to sixteen times rather than eight times and a small counter for the affinity stored in my sub-dimensions.
The skills were, while as much a force multiplier as always, not game-changing. They fell in with what I had expected. The biggest changes were a skill called Soulful to double my aura capacity, a skill called Synchronicity to add the base strength of my unused affinities to the ones in use, one more called Magical Overlay to give 20% of my INT to the final product of my physical skills, and of course my new soul skill called Godly Soul and the new mana multiplier, called Realm of Mana. They were all extremely powerful but mostly improvements to my already existing skills.
But after my perusal of my new powers, my mood took a turn. I had lost my body, the body I had worked so hard on to slowly build up muscle and stamina. I had a lot of attachment to it even if it was technically my second body. Now I had to make a new one.
Thankfully it shouldn't take longer than maybe twelve hours. But it was work, and grueling work at that. But my new magic tendril should make constructing my new body a breeze, and I had a whole multiverse of DNA to search.
My mood went back to gleeful as I catalogued DNA to steal. A skill called overmind I had gained at 700 INT coordinated my parallel minds flawlessly, making my mind more like one than twenty, a great increase from the nine parallels I had before.
[|||| =-= ||||]
I tested my new ears with a tap, feeling them flatten effortlessly onto my head, becoming nigh-invisible. I flexed my hands, reveling in the power in them, and licked my lips, tasting a hundred other scents on the wind.
I had gone a little overboard, but the end result was well worth it. I had to work hard to assimilate the DNA I collected with my own DNA, which I collected from my corpse. It wasn't a pretty sight, being nearly half fused into the ground. That I had lasted as long as I had was a testament to my VIT and possibly because of the runes being supercharged.
I had added a few features. I had wanted a far more flexible body than before so I had bones based on rubber rather than osteocytes in some places and exotic metals in others. I used a similar rubber based compound for my veins, which let me have a higher blood pressure than normal, allowing smaller veins. My heart handled it easily, being made of a powerful living-metal that pulsed with a steady, slow beat. I had a smaller second heart nestled between my lungs for combat and purifying my body of blood poisonings. My blood was still blood but it was a little different than normal, being produced by a few specific tiny complicated organs in me. Not all of my body had or needed blood so the process worked.
I wavered on my muscles a little, trying to find a more powerful alternative than before. I decided on muscles made of a similar living-metal to my heart, though they were more devoted to power than durability like my heart. Nerves were where I had the most trouble, but tiny tubes a hundred times smaller than my veins with mirrored insides were the best I came up with. Light was faster for transmitting signals, after all, than electricity.
Even my skin was better than before. I ended up with a shapeshifting one that bunched up in areas to redirect or absorb blunt or sharp blows and was extremely resistant to chemical or thermal attacks. There wasn't much I could do against things like magical attacks, but my soul was powerful enough that there was very little to worry about on that front to begin with.
The only downside was that I missed a day from Harry's training and had to send a note to Kuroka and Esdeath apologizing for missing a few days. I explained to the two that I made a mistake and was indisposed while I recovered from a bodily injury. I didn't want to tell Kuroka that I was a corpse in an alternate dimension and I hadn't really filled Esdeath in on the whole magic thing.
All in all I spent over seventy hours collecting DNA. Then I spent five more days drafting a new body to work together. Finally was making the damned thing, which was made yet more difficult by the concentration required to smooth over the fine details. I actually messed up twice before I got the body right. I spent almost nine days making a new body, not a moment wasted. But despite all the trouble I went through I wasn't disappointed.
I reached out and smacked a cliff on the dead world, sending stone flying. I brushed dust off my knuckles, which weren't even slightly bruised. Not that that would be a problem if they were since I would heal in moments. Then I extended my new claws from my fingertips and slashed the side of the rock formation. I may as well have slashed butter. They weren't monomolecular claws but they were sharp enough that it didn't matter much. With my physical stats around six hundred and eight hundred I even had the strength to force my way through most barriers even with regular weapons, provided they didn't break.
I felt great, absolutely on top of the world. Why was I so afraid to spend my points again? It seemed silly now, but most fears were. I almost continued to test my body against the solid stone but pulled myself back. I was stalling at this point and I had been for the past hour. It was time to face the music. I shifted to Kuroka's apartment to find it messier than usual. I heard her sleeping in her room and silently opened the door and stepped next to her.
"I'm back," I whispered to her. Her eyes instantly opened fully, sleep barely present, as she grabbed my wrist and blinked for a second. Then she reached out and pulled me in for a hug. I was about to hug back when she slugged me in the gut.
"OW!" she yelled, holding her hand to her chest. "What the heck?!"
"So I've been working on some stuff, most of it related to making my body," I said in amusement.
"Making it what?" she asked, eyes narrowing and ears twitching dangerously.
"… Making it," I said, a hint of nervousness in my voice. I had decided to not modify my voice box. Speech was important socially and controlling my voice more than everybody else felt dishonest so the nervousness was something I had to actually try to hide.
"Are you saying that this body…" Kuroka paused in her furious questioning as she pulled me close again and sniffed. "You smell dusty. And new… I don't like it. I'm also pissed at you."
"I didn't die on purpose," I said weakly. "And it wasn't like my soul died. My body just kinda-"
"Oh Abyss you are in SO much trouble!"
[|||| =-= ||||]
"Sorry for missing a few days. Injury," I said in explanation to Esdeath from behind her. She jumped and had her rapier pointed at my throat as another hand…
"Sorry, I didn't realize you were naked," I apologized sheepishly as I closed my eyes.
"DON'T do that!" she hissed. I heard a ruffle of cloth as she dressed herself. "It's the middle of the night! Just… what happened?!"
"Grievous injury. I was fine with some time but I had to see somebody similar to this Doctor Stylish you have. And then I had to visit my girlfriend. She didn't take my injury well. I'm in the doghouse, as ironic as that is." I thought it was safe to open my eyes and did so to see Esdeath in silk pyjamas, her hair looser than normal down her back.
"Quite," she said with a small roll of her eyes. "You were supposed to visit every day."
"I failed that, I know," I apologized.
"That means you broke our agreement."
"One without a beneficial side on my part," I muttered.
"Excuse me?"
"Nothing," I said quickly. Esdeath glared at me, having clearly heard what I said. I waited in silence for a moment before her rapier lashed out. I sidestepped it and yanked on it, sending her stumbling forwards at my newfound strength. I almost swept her legs out from under her but instead found her pulling herself forwards faster from it's grip and shoving an icy knife into my gut. A sharp sound echoed out as it shattered.
Esdeath blinked, looking down at the knife, She moved it around a little but the tiny injury she made on me, basically a papercut, didn't really hurt. It was the surprise attack that let her get a strike on me in the first place. That and me barely remembering to hold back my aura.
"Explain," she growled as she looked up at me.
"As I said, I visited somebody like Doctor Stylish. A biomancer, if you will," I said calmly. "I wasn't exactly normal before but now I'm not really… I'm much less normal than before, which is saying a lot."
"Saying a lot with very little," she growled again. She knelt down, her face near my abs, and her knife shifted to a chisel as a hammer from ice formed in her other hand.
"Really?" Esdeath ignored me as she hammered down on my stomach. I barely felt it. "You know how this looks, right?" Esdeath paused as she looked down just a little and coughed as she tossed the tools aside.
"Your body is absurdly tough, almost as hard as dragon scales with only skin. How?" she demanded, her tone almost jealous.
"Magic," I said.
"Obviously. How?"
"Well you know I can travel worlds, right?" She nodded. "Well I collected biological samples of exotic lifeforms and brought them to this biomancer to be made into me. I didn't expect the procedure to take so long or I would have offered prior warning."
"Assimilating danger beasts into a human? I suppose… oh my. Ultra class?" She looked at me with a feverish curiosity.
"That system of measurement doesn't really work for anything besides subjective measurement, but I killed a few very strong creatures, yes. My heart, for one thing, was replaced with a type of living metal. Even if you pierced it, it could keep pumping around your blade."
"… I will forgive you for your absence if you provide similar upgrades to me, if lesser," she bargained.
"I'm not stupid, Esdeath."
"Then why did you take so long to return?" she snarled.
"Because my previous body couldn't work. At all," I said slowly. "I couldn't just slap together some inadequate replacement. All this had to be brought together from scratch."
"From scratch? Are you not in your original body?" Esdeath looked at me a little skeptically.
"Technically this is my fourth but yes this is a different one."
"How… you don't use a teigu..." she said in realization.
"I'm a magic-user."
"Most magic users are weaklings," she said in disdain.
"Well I'm quite clearly not. It's likely that your magicians are incompetent or too rare to make any serious research. I had a dead civilization to take knowledge from and a more advanced society than yours. I had a lot going for me, not to mention that I'm apparently quite talented." Esdeath bit her bottom lip lightly, which I realized was actually pretty cute compared to her other habits of torture and slaughter, and thought for a moment.
"Have you been holding back in our fights?" she asked with more suspicious looks.
"I've been restricting myself to one school of magic, yes, though it's one of my most versatile ones and the progress I've made with it was real. I also wasn't really restricting myself in melee combat, though I've always used a type of my magic to supplement it."
"And how much stronger are you than you've let on?"
"Very."
"How much?"
"VERY."
"Give me an example."
"The Empire." She glared at me. "That was a viable example!" I defended myself.
"How is that an example?" she asked, fuming.
"That was an example of what I could destroy given ten minutes to really let loose. This is without calling on a higher power. Then again, it's easy to kill everybody in a given area. It's much harder to implement a lot of force in a small area without hurting your comrades or valuable targets." Esdeath was still scowling furiously at me.
"I'd like an example," she said frostily.
"… Fine," I said, resigned to the fact that my life was dictated by pushy women. I grabbed her wrist and transported us to the dead world I was at when I made my body. Esdeath turned and looked at all the red rocks and dusty land.
"The air is so…" Esdeath muttered.
"This world doesn't have much water. Most of it is dry land like this. The atmosphere is thankfully in place. There's four moons, though, which leads to some pretty strange tides in that ocean. There's also no bacteria or viruses. Life is literally gone from this planet."
"It's eerie."
"It's also a great place to let loose." I raised my hand and my lightning affinity, twice as powerful as before, reacted with a surge of as much mana as I could use the spell with to call down a lightning bolt from the sky. A hundred miles away a massive lightning bolt slammed down. I waited a few seconds for the destruction to settle.
"Alright, it shouldn't be horrible to visit now," I declared. I opened a portal and stepped inside, Esdeath following after. A short flex of affinity swept all the dust away from the site so it didn't sting Esdeath's eyes.
The land was blackened. A black line of char leading a few yards away led north while all the land in a circle around it was slightly blackened. Directly at the line of impact was a crater about the size of half an exercise ball.
Esdeath slammed her foot down on the ground. "It's stone," she noted. "Not exactly unbreakable but it's a sizable impact. How could something like this destroy the Empire?"
"Because that's what I can make with a tenth of a second to gather power. I have an affinity for storms. It's my second most powerful affinity. If I wanted to destroy the Empire I could create a storm that covered the Empire quickly and rain down lightning on anything important looking. Or I could take ten minutes to collect an absurd amount of power and simply destroy the entire capital."
"I see…" Esdeath turned to me. "I want to get stronger." I rolled my eyes at such an obvious answer. Of course my strength appealed to her.
"Why? You're one of the strongest people on your world already."
"I want to hunt more dangerous prey," she said impatiently. "I wish to become stronger and grow to become more deadly than any danger beast. The Empire offers me conflict so I serve it. However, it only holds me back when there is an opportunity to become as dangerous as you seem to be. So I would rather serve you if you can offer me conflict."
I looked to her a little incredulously, though that quickly faded. She only served the horrible evil bastards that ran the Empire so she could fight and learn to become more deadly? That made sense from a certain point of view. It was supply and demand. She demanded conflict and the Empire was the best provider of it. It wasn't a personal attachment. It was a business deal.
"So you want me to make you stronger? Or do you want violence?" Esdeath considered that.
"I wish for strength. I enjoy violence, crave it really, but I admit… I've thought about your words. I will not be a warrior forever. I want something to have after I sheathe my sword."
"You want strength so you can retire peacefully?"
"I want strength so I can enjoy my passions and perhaps win peace for myself."
"You could collapse the Empire if you wanted to. I know how loyal your men are to you. Why not do so and retire with servants to serve your every whim? You are strong enough to secure a peaceful place for yourself."
"Peace is not waiting to die in the midst of a loyal army," she said, annoyed.
"Then what is peace for you?"
"Private." I looked at her for a moment where she met my gaze challengingly.
"Good enough," I nodded. "I know how you could get stronger. You're technically already on your way there with your studies on your teigu. But I'm not just going to give it to you, obviously. I don't live in the Empire so you'll have to leave it."
"Done," she said immediately.
"Secondly, I want you to finish your goals. This is for your own good, really." She looked at me with a puzzled expression. "Leave no loose threads," I explained. "You have responsibilities to the Empire and obligations you've made. Leave the Empire when you can, destroy it, or stick with it and dominate the world, but don't just walk away. That's no different from running. Finish seeing to your problems before you retire from this world and I show you more."
"That's reasonable." She nodded to me. "And the rest?"
"Stop being such a sadist. There's nothing wrong with enjoying the pain you inflict on your enemies or allies if they're willing but on helpless civilians and enemies you've already defeated it's… well, despicable. Tone it down somewhat. I try to leave everywhere I pass a little better off than before, ignoring events that would happen without my intervention. I'd like for you to adopt this policy." Esdeath nodded, though she seemed much less happy with this requirement than the others.
"And that would be all?"
"That's everything. Finish your responsibilities before you leave forever and hold your habits in check, though you don't have to get rid of them entirely. I'm not asking for you to change yourself. Just control yourself." I paused and thought of something else. "Also, what's that secret project you have? I'm getting REALLY curious."
"I'm not telling," she said with a pout at me. I blinked in surprise because I had never seen her pout at me before. What was up with her? First the lip biting, then the pushiness and almost concern for me losing my body and now this?
"But here's the problem. I've got some cat in me and the curiosity is killing me here."
"I'm a sadist."
"I could help you out. I have some powers over ice too, you know?" I clenched my hand and a dagger made of ice formed in it. Esdeath blinked at it and looked between me and the dagger. An odd look entered her eyes and I saw a somewhat unhinged smile cross her face before she coughed and spoke, the strange look gone.
"Be that as it may, I have my projects that I will complete myself. I'll show you it when the time is right."
"Ugh, fine. Since we've got everything worked out now I'll leave and visit tomorrow. Has the campaign progressed?"
"Oh, yes. We're nearly at the Northerner's citadel. Things will begin getting much more interesting soon."
[|||| =-= ||||]
"You're back!" Harry exclaimed as I approached him in the Gryffindor common room, Helen having brought me after I apologized profusely and she calmed down. He was sitting with his two friends, Hermione and Ron, but the book Hermione was reading and the game of chess Harry and Ron were involved in was quickly dropped in favor of me.
"Yes, I'm back, and I really need to get you back to learning new things. How's wandless magic been going?"
"WHAT?!" Hermione exclaimed loudly, turning to face her friend to look wide-eyed at him.
"Mate, you've been learning wandless magic?" Ron asked in awe of his friend.
"Oh, you've been… my bad." I winced as Harry's smile at seeing me turned into a grimace.
"We can talk later," Harry said in a pained voice.
"Remember that kids are dumb and get jealous easily," I reminded him.
"Rude… and wrong."
"Hey!"
"Adults are people who can control their feelings and put themselves in other people's shoes. There's a lot of children in adult bodies, as you likely know already," I said to Harry's friends. Before giving them a chance to speak I began my lies.
"Anyways, I might actually have to cut our nightly sessions. I have another friend, a lady friend, much prettier than your mug I might add, who wants to pick up some tricks. Most of the past nine days have been me dealing with some situations in northern Greece which are going to take some time from my schedule."
"Trouble? In Greece?" he asked.
"Old families are causing trouble, trying to summon Zeus and getting a being made from lightning and causing a small massacre, friction between this tribe of satyrs and that collection of naiads over some lake, and a lot more little things. It's not big enough to get reported on, not that Britain is anything other than completely isolationist. Point is, trouble's brewing down there and I got the unlucky draw. I apparently have more time on my hands than I should."
"But you're managing the largest tournament in Britain!" Hermione said in shock.
"Britain's a very tiny corner of a very large world. There's not many people as powerful or skilled as me and that comes with a lot of responsibilities. Saving Harry's life is mostly done at this point barring outside intervention, which I'm able to ward off myself anyways. Putting in much more effort would be wasteful, apparently, and an oracle with some repute in my organization did a search and said you'll probably be fine if I left you now."
"Oracle? Organization? I thought you were an unspeakable, and aren't all oracles like Miss Trelawney?" Harry asked, confused.
"Firstly, I never said I was an unspeakable. I just heavily implied it. The organization I work for is more like an international black-ops team. Almost the entire magical world lets Britain do its own thing most of the time because you all tend to handle yourselves, until recently, and get angry when other countries meddle in your affairs. Secondly, oracles do exist, but it's a bloodbound gift. You either have it or you don't and it's not really something you can activate at will for most."
"I… see?" Harry said, clearly not getting it.
"Lovely, then my job's done for now. Have fun getting chewed out by your friends for keeping secrets. I'm off to get chewed out by my girlfriend for disappearing for a week. Believe me, neither of us are eager to end this conversation." But nevertheless I stepped back into the wall of Hogwarts, an entrance opening up behind me.
"This means goodbye for now to you too, Helen," I muttered as I heard Harry's friends start to try to talk over each other in an effort to make their opinions heard.
"Goodbye…" Helen whispered to me directly. I smiled and sent a pulse of wistfulness as I shifted dimensions.
[|||| =-= ||||]
It was easy. I let my void affinity lash out to devour the numerous spells and bodies thrown at me. Spells were dissolved to nothing while bodies went limp mid-air, where they were slowed accordingly by my motion affinity. Meanwhile my storm, heat, and light affinities all worked tirelessly to destroy the enemies as quickly as possible. All of this was controlled by my parallel minds, though the line between parallel and myself had blurred a little with my recent power-up.
"DIE, MONSTER!" another useless devil screamed in the air, letting loose all the mana in her soul in a fiery inferno meant to kill me. I had taken more powerful attacks just a minute ago from far older devils. Void sprang for the inferno, constricting around it and squeezing it into nothing within half a second.
"Die, fool," I said with a little dramatic flair as I swept my hand at the devil. Not that I needed to move. I just liked to do so. The devil mustered up a scrap of power and threw herself away from me. An arrow of light and purity affinity sprouted from her neck and she gurgled, falling down from above. A blast of lightning with it's own purity component blasted her head to a grisly mess before she hit the ground. I was being neat, after all. I didn't want any unnecessary survivors.
This scene had repeated itself a total of sixty two times in the past five minutes, ever since I had entered the mansion belonging to one Creuserey Asmodeus, reportedly a stuck-up asshole and utter racist according to Kuroka. She gladly forked over his address and I used my mind affinity to copy a memory of the manor from her mind, letting me teleport to the manor easily. The defenses were nothing in the face of void, all being magical, and the attendants of the manor were all weak.
Eventually, after carving a bloody trail through the manor I arrived at the study of Asmodeus. I sensed his power just beyond the door, ready for battle. So I did the right thing.
I knocked politely and waited for him to answer.
I was answered by a pause and a blast of lightning destroying the door, piercing through the wood in an attempt to kill me. My lightning and void affinities suffused my aura and the blast harmlessly passed over me, although the infernal aspect of the spell stung a little. Fun fact! Suffusing your aura with an affinity gives extreme resistance to related spells of its nature! Not that the tactic was very useful to me. Not many people who knew me were dumb enough to attack me with magic.
"Rude," I commented upon seeing Asmodeus shaking with rage behind the hole in the wall he made.
"Rude?!" he hissed with the fury of a man who just had his life's work destroyed and ancestral home invaded. "Rude is an understatement for the sheer BELLIGERENCE you have shown to dare defying-" I got tired of his monologue and sent a blast of lightning at him, making sure to make the flash extra bright for his eyes. Asmodeus' hands flew to his chest as he held a magical circle to keep my lightning from hurting him. Even so, his hands sizzled and blackened under my power. I hadn't even used purity in that attack.
"Yes. You're rude. You won't even let me monologue." He chuckled in the darkest, most unamused tone I had ever heard.
"Rude… You… utter FUCKER!" he screamed. "I AM THE RIGHTFUL SATAN ASMODEUS! DO YOU KNOW WHO YOU'RE FUCKING WITH?!"
"The first step in showing people not to fuck with me," I answered calmly. Motion affinity flowed out of me, wrapping around Asmodeus and acting with my intent. He tried to struggle but found his bonds held strong, though they used more mana from me than I'd have liked. Then, he tried to shoot magic at me. Void removed the problem as I stepped towards him. My sword appeared in my hand and, as Asmodeus began screaming at me once more, nearly incoherent with rage, I neatly severed his head from his body, lopping off an arm in the process for good measure.
Two more manors and a castle fell that day, each ancestral homes layered in wards, barriers, and defenses, all of which were ancient and powerful enough that they would give satans pause. Void broke through them all and I killed over six hundred devils that day, sparing only the children and those unwilling to be in the houses. Creuserey Asmodeus, Shalba Beelzebub, and Katerea Leviathan all died under my magic and were beheaded by my sword.
That day I killed three devils that led a faction feared by the whole underworld and crippled the manpower of the Old Satan faction, leaving only Rizevim Livan Lucifer alive to lead the faction. They hadn't publicly done anything against me. I just needed a sacrificial lamb to act as a demonstration that I could kill without any real consequence. The only allies of the Old Satan faction were the Khaos Brigade and with my closeness to Ophis they wouldn't dare so much as peep about me taking down one of their largest allies.
A whole faction that had been present for some centuries and a thorn in the side of the Satans, among their ranks one of the strongest beings in the world, and I killed them all seemingly easily.
It was one way to make a statement.
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