Fractured moonlight clawed through the skeletal remains of stained glass, painting ghostly constellations across the warped floorboards. What remained of House Luxor's grandeur clung to the walls like stubborn lichen—peeling murals of hunting scenes, a moth-eaten tapestry depicting the family crest's golden wolf mid-snarl, jaws forever frozen inches from swallowing its celestial prey. The scent of damp mortar and sour wine was thick enough to chew.
Reinhard's shadow loomed monstrous on the wall behind him, distorted by the guttering candle between his knuckles. His supper lay forgotten—a slab of bread fossilizing into ceramic hardness and a wedge of cheese blooming blue fur. Every creak of the dilapidated mansion mocked the labored wheeze of his breathing.
This flesh suit disgusted him. Three hundred pounds of cultural collapse wrapped in velvet rags.
But flesh could be reshaped.
[Gluttonous Devourer System – Active]
Name: Reinhard von Luxor
Physique: Obese (Metamorphosis Threshold: 92%)
Abilities:
Caloric Alchemy - Convert consumed matter into mana reserves
Metabolic Forge - Expend mana to reconfigure adipose tissue
His thumbnail dug into the table's rotten wood. Numbers flickered behind his eyelids: caloric intake projections, metabolic rates, a hundred cold equations from his corporate past now repurposed.
Survival required assets. And this crumbling estate offered only one.
"Gareth."
The rasp of worn boots on grit. His last retainer emerged from the shadows like a specter summoned. His spine still military-straight beneath patched livery, his eyes sunk deep in a face eroded by decades of quiet despair.
"My lord?" The title emerged as reflex rather than respect.
"Your wind magic. Demonstrate it."
The old knight's throat bobbed. "That... hasn't been my trade for twenty years, sire."
"You taught yourself the basics." Reinhard's gaze fell to Gareth's left boot—the sole worn thinner on the outer edge. "To compensate for the hip injury. A lateral propulsion spell, barely enough to correct your limp when you think no one watches."
Gareth's calloused hand twitched toward his sword hilt. For three heartbeats, the tension was a drawn bowstring. A sigh. Yellowed fingertips sketched a crescent in the dust-laden air. A faint green shimmer spiraled around his ankles.
[Detected: Zephyr Adjustment - Novice-tier Mobility Aid]
[Assimilation Efficiency: 87% - Accept Y/N?]
The hunger struck before Reinhard could consent. His jowls flapped as invisible currents tore through the room, parchment and dead leaves swirling into a maelstrom around them. Gareth's spellwork unraveled like yarn from a sweater, emerald threads dissolving into Reinhard's gaping mouth.
[Metabolic Forge Engaged]
Marbled fat rippled across Reinhard's arms as if invaded by serpents. The candle snuffed out as he moved. Not the servant's pathetic shuffle-step, no, but proper translocation. His bulk materialized behind Gareth fast enough to buffet the old man forward with displaced air.
The knight's sword rang clear from its scabbard, decades of muscle memory overriding shock. Blade tip wavered between Reinhard's third and fourth chins. "What abomination—"
"Put that away before you strain something." Reinhard examined his transformed forearm. Still doughy, but with muscle definition lurking beneath. Sharks in shallow water. "You'll teach me proper swordsmanship soon."
"Teach you?" Gareth's voice cracked like dried leather. "My lord, you haven't lifted anything heavier than a turkey leg in—"
"Can it or I'll have you flogged." Reinhard turned toward the collapsed staircase, cadaverous moonlight bleaching his silhouette. "And Gareth? Find me rats. Live ones. Several dozen."
The sword clattered to the floor as Reinhard's shadow stretched up the wall—no longer slumped, but standing with the predatory poise of the crest wolf finally closing its jaws.
***
The candle's frail light trembled in the ruined hall, clawing at the darkness with frail, amber fingers. Reinhard stood amidst the decay, the air thick and musky.
He flexed his hands, still tingling with the stolen magic. Hurricane Dash was like a secret weapon.
Across the room, Gareth stood statue-still. The old servant's knuckles whitened around the hilt of a rusted dagger at his belt. He'd seen nobles bend fire and ice to their will, but this... Reinhard hadn't cast. He'd consumed.
"That spell," Gareth began, voice frayed at the edges, "it wasn't mine anymore. You didn't borrow it. You—"
"Repurposed it," Reinhard finished. His tone was flat, factual, like correcting a ledger.
The servant's throat bobbed. The man who once tripped over his own robes now stood with the stillness of a predator assessing prey.
"Pack provisions," Reinhard said. "We depart at dawn."
"To where?"
"The Academy."
Gareth barked a laugh. "The exams are a bloodsport. They'll bury you in the first trial."
Reinhard didn't blink. "Then I'll dig myself out."
A beat. The old knight's gaze dropped to Reinhard's hands—the same hands that had gorged on pastries and self-pity, now curled into fists that seemed to warp the air.
"You're not him," Gareth muttered, more to himself. "The boy I served would've wept at the thought."
Reinhard's lips twitched, not quite a smile. Grief, he realized, had a flavor—ash and old wine. The original Reinhard was gone, a ghost smothered under layers of scorn. What remained was something hungrier.
Three weeks.
The Academy's gates were a maw that chewed up legacy and spit out corpses. Noble heirs would arrive polished and preening, their magic a well-rehearsed dance. Reinhard's plan required no rehearsals.
Devour. Adapt. Repeat.
He'd start in Astravalion's underbelly, where magic wasn't curated but clawed from the dirt. A mercenary's fireball, a pickpocket's charm—crude tools, but tools all the same. Refinement could come later.
At the estate's threshold, he paused. Dawn bled through the cracks in the walls, painting the Luxor crest in pallid light. The golden wolf's muzzle was chipped, its star tarnished.
"Master." Gareth's shadow fell beside him, a worn pack slung over one shoulder. "They won't expect you. That's something."
Reinhard adjusted his cloak, the fabric straining across shoulders already less soft than yesterday. "Expectations are currency," he said. "I intend to bankrupt them."
***
Astravalion hung in the sky like a scarab carved from light and shadow, its spires not merely towering but leeching—stone veins dripping latent mana that pooled in the streets below. Reinhard descended into the city's rotting roots where the glow never reached, where magic wasn't curated but clawed from the dirt.
The Commons District breathed differently here. Air curdled with the static of wild mana, carrying notes of rust and urine. Crumbling facades bore claw marks from desperate mages scraping at enchanted graffiti. A pickpocket's hand darted toward Reinhard's cloak then recoiled at the glacial sideways glance.
The tavern was hunched beneath a sagging bridge, its signboard creaking with the weight of too many hexes. Inside, patrons swam in a haze of narcotic smoke and desperation. A mercenary licked residue from a cracked spellstone. A woman in singed scholar's robes whispered incantations to a rat carcass.
Reinhard's silhouette swallowed the tavern's meager light as he entered, a mountain blotting out the moon. Conversations stuttered. The bartender's glass eye rolled in its socket, tracking him.
"Coin buys nothing here, Lord Lard," sneered a voice.
In the corner sat the mage, a marionette of nobility. Cracked opal buttons clung to his coat. Trembling fingers caressed an empty mana vial.
Reinhard upended a purse. Silver coins spun across the table, one teetering at the edge. The mage lunged. Reinhard's palm slammed down, pinning the man's wrist like a butcher nailing meat to a block.
[Devour Magic: Engaged.]
The mage's scream died as cerulean threads erupted from his pores. A dying star collapsing into Reinhard's grasp. The tavern shadows stretched taut. A gambler's dice hovered midair, frozen by the vacuum of stolen energy.
[Phantom Cloak (Uncommon Rank) Acquired.]
Reinhard released the husk. The mage slumped, mouth working soundlessly around the ghost of a spell.
"Monster," croaked an onlooker.
He flexed his hand. Stolen magic slithered beneath his skin, tightening loose flesh into something denser. Sharper.
Outside, the night buzzed with cicadas. Somewhere above, Academy prodigies polished parlor tricks between wine courses. Let them. Their refined spells would unravel just as sweetly.
***
The Commons District breathed its own kind of magic. A feral, stuttering pulse beneath the city's gilded skin. No banners here, no crests to blunt the edge of survival. Magic wasn't inherited; it was gutted from the unwilling, traded in back alleys where even shadows bartered.
Reinhard moved through the labyrinth, Phantom Cloak clinging to him like a second shadow. The spell promised anonymity. His bulk, once a liability, now parted the crowd like a ship's prow through murky water.
One spell. A whetstone. Not enough.
The arena's entrance was a rusted maw set into the district's undercarriage. Two sentinels barred the path—a woman with a milky eye and a blade's-edge stare, her companion a hulking silhouette smelling of burnt ozone.
"Gold or blood?" she rasped, nodding at Reinhard's Luxor signet ring.
He unsheathed it slowly, the relic's mana core flickering. "A wager."
Her gaze narrowed. "Die in there and we melt it down for scrap."
Reinhard's smile didn't reach his eyes. "Pray I don't."
The arena stank of charred flesh. Fighters circled a sand-filled crater scarred by spell residue. Spectators—thieves, drunks, nobles in disguise—howled as a boy in singed velvet robes hurled fire at a hulking mercenary.
"Next!"
The mercenary fell, smoke curling from his corpse. The victor—pale, trembling, fingers still sparking—was everything Reinhard needed: desperate, cornered, laden.
Inferno Bolt. A noble's spell, fraying at the edges.
Reinhard stepped into the pit. Sand crunched underfoot.
The mage struck first. Fire roared, a rabid thing meant to obliterate.
Too slow.
[Hurricane Dash]
Wind sheared the flames. Reinhard materialized behind the boy, grip closing on his wrist. Bones creaked.
[Devour Magic: Engaged]
The mage's scream curdled as blue flame bled from his pores, snaking into Reinhard's palm. Heat surged—not pain, but purpose.
[Ashen Ruin – Uncommon Rank]
The boy collapsed, his magic stripped to the root. Reinhard flexed his hand; embers danced along his fingertips, hungry and precise.
The crowd's jeers died mid-breath.
He left the pit swiftly, then, amid the chaos. Whispers trailed behind him—soul-eater, phantom, curse. Let them chatter. Their fear was a ladder.
A figure materialized at the gate, violet eyes cutting through the gloom. Their cloak drank the light, edges bleeding into the dark.
"Curious," the stranger murmured, voice like static between stars.
Reinhard met their gaze. Power thrummed in the air, taut as a bowstring.
"Define me later," he said, walking past.
***
The arena's feverish stink clung to Reinhard's clothes as he slipped into the district's arterial alleys. Three stolen spells itched beneath his skin—Hurricane Dash a coiled spring in his calves, Phantom Cloak draping his shoulders like cobwebs, Ashen Ruin simmering in his palms. Not trophies. Tools.
More. Always more.
The night tasted of wet stone and ozone. Behind him, a shadow breathed, much too precise in its mimicry of chance footsteps. Not a cutpurse. A blade honed by noble hands. An assassin?
Reinhard pivoted into a dead-end alley with moss weeping down its walls. "If you're waiting for applause," he said to the darkness, "you'll die disappointed."
A figure dropped from the rooftops, frost blooming where boots met stone. Enchanted cloth rippled around their frame, swallowing torchlight. His violet eyes glowed like poisoned stars.
The stranger peeled back his hood, revealing skin that shimmered faintly—a man wearing magic as epidermis.
"You siphon spells the way a gutter rat steals crumbs." His voice had winter's edge.
Reinhard flexed his fingers. Cold radiated from the man's pores, hoarfrost devouring the alley.
"Orion Fenrir." Reinhard matched the chill in his tone. "Iceblood heir. Academy's golden mutt."
A muscle twitched beneath Orion's translucent cheek. "You'll never set foot there."
Frost exploded.
Icicles speared from walls as Orion moved—not a mage's flourish, but a duelist's strike. Reinhard sidestepped, Hurricane Dash blurring his form. The spell tore at his lungs, raw and unrefined.
Too slow.
An ice shard grazed his arm, blood crystallizing before it fell.
Orion smiled, glacial and cruel. "Your stolen tricks are rusted."
Reinhard bared teeth. "Let's test that."
Phantom Cloak melted him into the shadows.