Deep breath in, a peaceful breath out. Luine started talking just as I came down from my menace magic high, still surrounded by the corpses of our fallen enemies.

Maybe she should fall too.

She shouldn't. I was in full control, and I always knew who I was and what I valued. Becoming a betrayer and treating my friends poorly was certainly no part of Haell Zharignan.

“ That  was a disaster in the making.” Luine stomped on the head of a still-twitching goblin.

“What? Who? Me?” I asked in succession, put off balance.

“What? No. The goblin shaman.”

I shrugged. “Eh. Wasn’t that strong. I probably could’ve taken it 1v1.” Provided there were no other goblins around, that was.

“ Sure. But it was only around level 30. For its highest Mutations, which would be the brain. I doubt its other parts were up to par.”

“Right, exactly. So it’s weak. I don’t understand what the contention is here.”

“That’s exactly the problem!”

I stared at her. I did not get it.

Luine scratched her head. “Right, I should explain.”

“No, no. No need. Keep being vague and cryptic.”

“I’m not even being vague and cryptic…” she sighed. “But fine. Basically, goblin shamans have their brains at least level 40 before they start… doing their shaman things. That one,” she pointed at the corpse of the shaman nearby, “was bloody talented. Almost as much as Moonwash, when it comes to magic.”

“Oh. Oh yeah, that’s bad. But at least it wasn’t as talented as me!” I couldn’t help but add that last part, a mix of competitive spirit and ugly envy, only exacerbated by my remaining menace high.

Luine looked at me, really  looked at me. “Yes, obviously. That would have been bad. A goblin as good as you would’ve given me  a run for my money at that level.”

“O-oh…? Well, thank you?” I blushed, but it was thankfully hidden by my red skin. And the full helm over it, that helped too.

Luine snorted. “You’re welcome. Now how about we clean up this mess.” She gestured towards the piles of nearly two hundred goblins around us. “Burn it all to the… ground…”

Moonwash was already looting the still-warm carcasses. She was specifically aiming for the most dangerous part, the goblin seed sack.

Luine worked her jaw, she took a few deep breaths. “This is fine. This is totally fine.” She looked at me. “Do you think this is fine, Haell?”

“Oh, totally. It’d save a lot of trouble, instead of having to cultivate new goblins to harvest from.”

She touched her chin and manually worked her jaw. It was so fun  exasperating people like this, but I should not make a habit out of it. Much. “Right. Yes. You guys did that… This is fine.”

“Perfectly fine.” I smiled, very wide. If only she could see it. But I reckoned she could at least feel it. That’d have to do.

~~~

Days passed, then weeks, months, and more. The carnage I was capable of kept on growing, along with my levels. It was a truly prodigious pace, including that of my two Mutations below the level of ten.

I just kept on fighting, I kept on being in tune with the menace within me, and I also helped Moonwash in my downtime with all her crazy ideas. It was a grueling schedule that was so easy to lose myself in, but the world itself did not get lost so easily. Change happened, wildlife disappeared or migrated away from where I typically roamed, which in turn disrupted the life cycles of even those plants which could not move. Some of them ended up dying, while others still thrived harder than before.

Other monsters, those who were stronger and two evolutions ahead of me, did not like this, and I found myself targeted at times. Or maybe it was just a coincidence, a lack of prey other than myself to keep them company.

I encountered a wild warsymbol, a quadrupedal creature that looked like a mixture of a bear and a t-rex. It was only Luine’s distracting of it that allowed me to escape with my life.

We hunted it afterwards, all four of us. I was somehow able to cut through its skin with all of my advantages mashed together, but the wound was superficial. Painful for sure, but it wasn’t actually deep enough to even slightly hamper the monster’s movements. And all I got for my trouble was a kick that I could not fully dodge, which dented my armor way too fucking deeply for what was supposed to be a mere glancing blow. The gap between evolutions only widened.

I had to be healed, and then I helped from the sidelines with the projectiles that I could use, but even then the damage I dealt was minimal. The weakness that my menace bullets allegedly caused was near unnoticeable, and my fireballs could only remain alight because I packed them with more mana as a fuel reserve. The flames very quickly died down otherwise, barely able to consume this monster’s flesh to keep itself going. And even when they persisted after a hefty investment of mana, the heat was only enough to maybe lightly singe the beast’s fur.

What truly ended the creature was Baston's countless restricting roots, and the poison he concocted delivered by Luine hundreds of times over. The warsymbol showed far greater physical strength and toughness than either of them, but my mentors were able to bring the beast down with time.

I could hardly contribute in these high-level fights, and the ecosystem had still not fully recovered from the calamity that was me. I’m so cool. I started ranging further and further away due to the lack of reasonable prey, until we ended up going on expeditions towards the nearby wonderzone. It was still uninhabited, albeit with more adventurers going around now, and we didn’t even have to kill them. I just had to put on some boots that camouflaged my hooves as regular human feet, and cover my horns up with crystal-like focuses. I hated it, but Moonwash also concealed my red skin with makeup, and she even made contacts that made my eyes look normal using the knowledge that I shared from my world. It was wild. And it was a good trial run for when I went back into society once more.

“Hello fellow humans! I am human like you! Let us count money and kill each other now! Weather weather weather.”

The wonderzone had still not been tamed again, owing to just the inherent danger of it, but also that the Angelore Empire moved at a snail’s pace in general, likely because of the Heavenly Hegemony’s tried and true methods across the stars, and the many threats they continued to faced thanks to their own hubris.

It’s led by immortals at the very top. Of course, they didn’t have any sense of haste. Therefore they wouldn’t see me coming.

The Endless Dive wonderzone was lost to their people because of the war they waged against the impenetrable barrier range to begin with. That conflict spilled out and ravage through all the towns and villages closest to the mountains, and the leadership here was still reeling and trying to reclaim all that was lost… So that they may try again in the future.

They really weren’t the brightest.

I was not the only one who was constantly busy, Moonwash might have been even more so. She constantly worked on her craft, getting better at forging, woodworking, and more. She made time for experiments and research, to figure out infusion, particularly with curse-aligned magics such as my menace mana. It was convenient, having such a cooperative source near her at all times. Luine had still not yet come through with the identification ritual, but Moonwash had already begun dabbling in rituals, having learned enough from books and from my mother. She made the ink and drew sigils, symbols, and illustrations into flat ground. The first one failed, I didn’t even know if it was ever recognized as a ritual. The next ones were regarded by a dismissive force, before evaporating into nothing. It took only a day before her first success, summoning a small fireball, smaller than what she could conjure up in a second. Things only snowballed from there as ritual crafting became part of her own daily training, until finally she could create balls of flame that were burning hot just to behold.

Moonwash even found the time to squeeze in more fights and hunts into her very busy schedule, partly for the leveling speed, partly because she recognized the need to be able to defend herself and murder those who defy her will, and partly to test out her spells, be they rituals or otherwise. The raw casting of magic was an artform she also enjoyed, fleeting as it was. She didn’t dare abandon it for her new and shiny rituals. That was a good idea in my book, because rituals were too slow and even unpredictable. The power my friend could draw out from them always varied, no matter how skilled she became in the craft. Then again, I supposed that was technically true of common magic as well.

Moonwash created another  new staff for herself, one that was far thicker than normal, and without a mana repository. No, it wasn't just for whacking people over the head, although I was sure it could do that just fine. But it had a focus on it, one that she managed to scrounge up together using the seeds of many many goblins and the necklace used by that budding shaman we killed.

The fuel was my blood.

I got to find out just how fast my regen heart can refill that right up.

It was fast enough.

Well, I’d feel lightheaded in the moment for sure, but it’d pass. I would also need to have several good and hearty meals as my blood gets replaced, otherwise my body would cannibalize itself for the nutrients that it needed.

I always got the munchies after... and  during a fight. Maybe that was why.

Refilling Moonwash’s staff became a regular chore for me. It was fiendishly difficult to just recharge the blood already within the staff with mana, and we found out that it was because passing through a heart was fundamental to the recharging process. It was still possible to do it without that of course, but it was literally far more efficient to just bleed myself out, and then gradually regenerate the blood.

Moonwash did repay me by making sure to be the one to cook all the nutrients that I needed for a recharge. It was never her favorite thing, but living away from civilization had really pushed her to master that craft as well, and I loved it. Even she wanted nice and delicious meals sometimes, no matter that she could content herself with lesser food on most days.

Moonwash wasn’t actually very talented at using menace magic, so she had trouble using the staff at first. It didn’t help that it placed grave mental pressure upon the wielder, if not nearly as much as that one dagger that nearly made us kill each other. Seriously Mom. I love you, but why the fuck did you leave that lying around!? All the grounding should’ve fallen on you, aaaaahhhhhh!!!  

I quite honestly hardly felt shit from the new staff, but Moonwash got to experience just a portion of what I had to go through at every second of everyday whenever she used it, and she was not found wanting. My friend showed that she was not afraid to put in effort nor go through the pain as she mastered her own creation without complaint nor any attempts to shirk on her training. She learned just how to become a menace.

In a bout of genius, since the blood in her staff would always have to be replaced anyway, Moonwash decided to carve special sigils and designs across its body. She used the same concept behind rituals, and made the carvings and enchantments using a mixture that included so many goblin seeds. Moonwash made it so that pulling the mana away from the staff would also evaporate the part of the blood that it was on, thereby empowering the mana if only a little. She was able to trigger a mini-ritual of sorts, if in a vastly inferior form. I knew it to be true, the pressure exerted by the staff and by magic itself made it clear that Moonwash was indeed tapping into the power of rituals, no matter how weak.

It was amazing. I had never heard of such a thing. The main conceit behind a ritual was how fleeting and temporary it was, compared to an enchantment which lasted for a long time. And yet my friend managed to make a permanent ritual of sorts, for whatever variety of spells she might use the staff for, an inherent contradiction.

I wondered if I could do the same.

I tried.

I succeeded.

All I had to do was to believe... which sounded like bullshit, but that's a lot of what magic does. I had to pound that singular image into my head, and it was far from easy. The breakthrough came when I got a chance to work with rituals once Moonwash finally got her wish from Luine. The identification ritual.

It was something fundamental that was somehow possible with nearly every type of mana, but the more esoteric it was the better. And I had that in spades.

Moonwash altered the ritual to fit my menace magic. We found out that my blood was very potent  for regular rituals as well, which might be why it was even possible to cast mini-rituals with them. There wasn’t even a need to mix it with anything, my raw blood could power rituals nearly as well as the best catalysts that money could buy!

I only grew more interested in learning about ritual crafting, but I already had too much on my plate at the moment!

So naturally, I only added to my workload. I learned how rituals operate, the subjectiveness of it, the plea and the demand for the world itself to work to your whims.

For the identification ritual specifically, the concept was to scour the thing that you want identified. So if one wanted to use the element of fire specifically, the ritual would also burn whatever thing was being identified. Earth would bury and even crush it, water would flow around it, and air was popular as it did the same but typically with little damage or intrusion. My own menace magic merely embraced and prodded something, although I noticed that any organic material was definitely made worse  by the process. The list went on from there, every element was an individual of its own, and perhaps even that had a million different variations.

The end result was a magical wave of whatever element was used crashing into one's mind, ultimately culminating into a status notification containing the information of the object or objects that were being identified.

Onto the actual casting itself, it was weird in a lot of ways. I felt the gaze of the world and something far beyond me the moment I tried. Good ritual casting was apparently about withstanding that pressure and then directing it. I gestured towards the ritual we drew, and I felt the universe's attention leave me and suffuse the scribblings of blood instead. The blood evaporated, the menace mana exploded into motion and became far more potent, diving into the carcass and then leaving... but not completely. Afterwards it came back to me, which was apparently difficult and overwhelming for Moonwash when she tried the same thing, but menace magic was always inside me. The intrusion bothered me little.

Finally I got a status notification containing the wolf's information, if vastly incomplete. My skills with rituals still left a lot to be desired, and there were many factors to consider for a successful Identify.

_________

Name: N/A

Species: Sable Wolf

—Mutations—

Wolven Claws: Level 8

^#&$^&$&$*@*@*^@%#^#&

_________

To cast ritual magic, one typically needed a staff or wand to connect to the mana within. But the process of drawing it in itself created a connection. The medium used to create the ritual centered the magic, making it easier to make it mine, and most importantly for myself, the fact that it was my blood allowed me to cast without a focus. Which was a good thing because the mark left by my skin would've faded by the time I was done painting the ritual, making my horns thereby useless.

Having a staff still helped of course... until it no longer mattered.

[Mana-infused Blood has reached Level 10!]

[Would you like to evolve this Mutation?]

My blood had leveled so fast during this series of experiments. We still didn’t know exactly why that is, but its importance to our actions, and discovering new shit with it, seemed to really help a Mutation grow. I didn’t know if that or real combat weighed more, but it hardly mattered. I absolutely loved both fighting and exploring just what this world and my new demonic body had to offer.

I selected yes.

[Multiple evolution paths have been discovered for Mana-infused blood. Please choose one of the following.]

[Standard - greatly enhances all aspects of the Mutation]

[Connection - your blood will now remain connected to you semi-permanently even if it is taken out of your body.]

I wasn’t expecting another set of choices but I was happy about it. I’d heard about Mutations offering diverging paths sometimes , but it was supposed to be a very rare thing. I was happy to see one pop up, without the need for stupid risks and demon bullshit.

Needless to say, I picked the latter. I’d hardly ever been at risk of running out of mana ever since my evolution to an imp, and that was because the sheer volume of my blood could hold so much more than a common repository. Of course, a repository could hold a lot more in relation to size, but the organ was tiny compared to the sheer amount of space blood could occupy. Blood was clearly the winner. Mental side effects may persist. Please consult your doctor.

What followed after my choice was a very strange if not outright painful sensation that led to me feeling everything my blood did for a few seconds. From how it flowed inside my body, to how it was affected by my two different hearts whenever they passed through the organs. Some of it even dripped out of my nose during the process, and I felt the solidity of my connection to it and the mana within. It persisted and it remained, even if diminishing ever so slightly with the passage of time. That connection was likely strengthened as well by technically passing through my skin on its way out.

Shit was wild.

It truly went to show how Mutations were malleable even without the demon bullshit I pulled.

The next step after all that was done was to just keep on casting rituals. I identified the shit out of everything I could get my hands on, including myself. Being flooded with menace magic was probably unhealthy for everyone else. For me it was just a monday.

I also learned to do other rituals, which were basically just my regular magic but stronger, and perhaps more directed, creative. I learned how to overwhelm a creature with so much menacing thoughts that they become so confused to the point of becoming catatonic and unable to even act. A confuse spell basically, and I was able to infuse that image into my menace bullets after a lot of practice. It was a very good addition to my arsenal.

All of this culminated into me finally achieving the goal that I originally set out to do, the reason why I started dabbling with rituals to begin with.

I used all the knowledge that I’d gained, the feeling and the instinct of casting rituals, then I applied that to my own magic. The one image in my mind was that of my blood evaporating inside of my own body in order to empower my spells. It didn’t work for a long time, I didn’t know if I was even making progress or if my ambition was even possible, but all that effort was finally rewarded on one cold winter afternoon. It never snowed in Latarus, and neither did it here, but it was definitely colder this far east and so close to the barrier range.

The attention of the world and of magic itself crashed around me like the weight of the mountains constantly looming over the horizon. It was greater than the force of any ritual I’d ever witnessed, not even my mother’s greatest spells held a candle to this power. It was stronger than any monster, stronger than my grandfather, I would bet that even angels would be brought to their knees. The unbearable aura hovered over me for a long moment as I collapsed on all fours, panting and wheezing.

My blood shifted in response to the experience, and I knew that I would never be the same again.

I almost fainted from the horrifying sensation.

The presence finally departed after a few more moments, but not entirely. My steps felt heavier as I stood back up, as at least part of the pressure had stayed . It would remain muted while I wasn’t doing anything, but I would always know, I would always be made aware, that it was there.

Just another pressure that I will need to get used to. I wasn’t intimidated by the prospect.