I stumbled forward, every rustle of the twisted forest setting my nerves alight. Mist curled around the gnarled roots of ancient trees, their contorted shapes casting ominous shadows in the dim, diffused light. The fog felt alive, clinging to my skin like a second, unwelcome layer.
'I… I really am alone,' I thought, clutching my grimoire tightly to my chest. My head darted around, searching the ghostly landscape for movement. Somewhere, hidden in the oppressive silence, I knew the Headmaster's Amethyst Basilisk was keeping watch. That should have been comforting. It wasn't.
"Fear?" Aria's voice was soft, her head tilted with that childlike curiosity she always displayed.
"Y-yeah," I admitted, gesturing weakly to the nightmare around us. "I mean, just look at this place!"
It felt ripped from one of Mother's old cautionary tales—a haunted forest with trees bent into unnatural shapes, their knotted branches reaching out like skeletal hands. The mist curled and shifted as though alive, hiding whatever dangers lay beyond.
I kept moving forward, trembling as I did. The eerie silence pressed down on me, my own footsteps muffled by the mossy ground. But then I realized something: my teeth were clattering.
'Wait… my teeth are clattering?'
And then I felt it. The faint tremors.
"Something is coming," Aria said, her voice calm but her eyes narrowing.
The ground shook harder, the vibrations reverberating up my legs. I froze, watching as trees ahead of us were shoved aside, their roots snapping like brittle twigs.
Then it emerged.
A Beta Luminara Miasma Beast: Twin-Headed Ogre.
My heart seized. The monstrous figure was over three meters tall, its grotesque, bulbous heads snarling as they scanned the area. Its massive belly heaved with every breath, and in its enormous hand, it held a jagged axe coated in an ominous miasmic energy that pulsed like a heartbeat.
"I… I'm going to die," I whispered to myself, unable to move as the beast stomped closer.
But beside me, Aria's reaction was entirely different.
"Food!" she declared, her eyes lighting up with the excitement of a child spotting a new toy.
I blinked at her in disbelief. "G-go!" I stammered, my voice cracking. "But protect me!"
She nodded, giving me the faintest of smiles before vanishing. One moment she was beside me, and the next, the space she had occupied was empty.
My Diamond Grimoire opened on its own, the pages glowing faintly as I connected to her through the bond. Suddenly, I could see everything through her senses—sharp, precise, and terrifyingly clear.
The ogre roared, raising its axe high as it charged, miasma trailing from the weapon in a dark, smoky arc. Aria appeared before it, impossibly small against the hulking giant.
And then, with nothing but her tiny fist, she met the descending axe.
The impact rang out like a thunderclap.
For a moment, the scene seemed almost absurd—a little girl in a flowing black dress holding off an enormous weapon with her bare hand. But then, impossibly, the axe rebounded, thrown backward by the sheer force of her strike.
"She's using more power," I murmured, glancing at the grimoire. The glowing script shifted, showing her Secondary Trait: Duality activating.
Golden light mixed with the swirling black miasma that radiated from her, the two energies intertwining like dancing serpents. The ogre staggered back, momentarily blinded by the radiance, but Aria didn't stop.
Her movements changed—fluid, calculated, devastating.
"Food!" she exclaimed again, her voice filled with unrestrained glee.
But this time, something was different. The pages of my grimoire flickered again, the word Voracious Mind glowing brighter.
She's adapting, I realized. The ogre swung its axe again, but Aria ducked low, her motions impossibly smooth. She struck upward with a punch that shattered the weapon, splinters of darkened metal scattering through the mist.
Her golden and black aura surged as she leapt upward, delivering a final, devastating blow to one of the ogre's heads. The beast let out a strangled roar before collapsing, its massive form crashing to the forest floor with a thud that shook the ground.
And just like that, it was over.
Aria wasted no time. She knelt by the ogre's corpse, her delicate hands glowing faintly as she reached into its chest. I watched, half in awe and half in horror, as she extracted the pulsing miasma cores from its body, devouring them with an almost mechanical efficiency.
Through the grimoire, I could feel her satisfaction—an almost primal joy that sent a chill down my spine.
As I stood there, trying to process what I had just witnessed, my mind turned back to the information I'd gathered from the grimoire.
Voracious Mind.
Aria had learned. In the brief moments of battle, she had absorbed the ogre's movements, its strengths and weaknesses, and had adjusted her tactics accordingly. It wasn't just raw power—though she had plenty of that—it was intelligence, adaptability, and a mastery of technique that far surpassed anything I could have imagined.
This wasn't just the power of a Prime Eterna. This was the result of countless martial arts devoured and perfected, combined with an overpowered body that seemed capable of anything.
And as I stared at her small figure, her golden and black aura slowly receding, I realized something else:
Aria wasn't just strong. She was terrifying.
"Done!" she chirped, skipping closer to me with the serene grace of someone who hadn't just dismembered an ogre moments ago. Her black dress was pristine, her hands as clean as if the entire event had been a figment of my imagination.
"How was it?" I asked, trying to keep my voice steady.
"Thirteen-point-five percent," she replied with a small nod, her tone as matter-of-fact as if she were reporting the weather.
I sighed. Only that much from nine miasma cores. It wasn't a surprise, really. The ogre had been a Beta Luminara—formidable by most standards but still far beneath Aria's level as a Prime Eterna. Growth at her stage was a slow and incremental process.
"Well," I ventured cautiously, "at least it's progress."
Aria tilted her head slightly, her gaze curious. "More cores mean faster progress," she said.
I nodded. She wasn't wrong. But the effort required to gather enough energy to form her next core would be monumental, and she needed both miasma and divine energy in equal measure. That balance was both her strength and her limitation—a rare combination, but one that demanded twice the work.
"Aria," I asked, a question tugging at the back of my mind, "do you know martial arts?"
"Yes," she replied simply.
Her brevity left me hanging. "What kinds?"
"All of them," she said with a faint shrug, as if the answer were self-evident. "Sword, spear, fist… I devoured them all in my world."
The casual way she said it sent a shiver down my spine. Devoured. She didn't mean it figuratively. The grimoire's pages had made it clear—Voracious Mind wasn't just about learning; it was about consumption, about taking knowledge, absorbing it, and making it hers.
"That's… impressive," I said, my voice faltering as I tried to process the enormity of her words. "But how does the new miasma feel? The stuff you just absorbed?"
"Perfect," she said, her lips curving into a faint smile. "Like Perfect Growth."
The way she said it made me pause. I had seen the term in the grimoire—her Quaternary Trait—but I hadn't fully understood it. Now seemed like a good time to ask.
"I wanted to ask," I said, my tone hesitant, "what is Perfect Growth, exactly?"
Aria tilted her head again, her dark eyes studying me with quiet curiosity. "It fixes my weaknesses," she said simply.
"Fixes them how?" I pressed, feeling like I was finally on the cusp of understanding something critical about her.
"Voracious Mind can cause… personality damage," she said, her words slow and deliberate, as if she were explaining something foreign even to herself. "Perfect Growth prevents that."
Her words sent a chill through me. "Personality damage?"
"When I devour techniques, they don't always fit," she said, tilting her head the other way as if to illustrate the mismatched puzzle pieces in her mind. "They can clash, cause disruptions. My body, my mind—they have limits, and too much input can break them."
I stared at her, my stomach tightening. She was speaking about herself with a detachment that made it hard to tell if she truly understood the implications.
"And Perfect Growth?" I prompted.
"It makes me… whole," she said. "It optimizes everything—my body, my mind, my cores. All the techniques I devour, all the adaptations and evolutions I make—it ensures they fit perfectly."
The way she spoke was almost mechanical, but the weight of her words was staggering. Perfect Growth wasn't just a safeguard—it was the thing that allowed her to function, to grow, to be. Without it, Voracious Mind would tear her apart from the inside out.
"I see," I said softly, though I wasn't sure I truly did.
Aria tilted her head back upright and gave me a small smile, as if to reassure me. "It's good," she said simply. "No breaking."
I couldn't help but laugh—softly, nervously. "No breaking," I echoed.
But as I looked at her—this terrifying, impossibly powerful being in the form of a child—I couldn't shake the feeling that I was standing on the edge of something vast and unknowable.
No breaking. Not yet.
But how far could even she go before the pieces stopped fitting together?