I looked deep into my body, and the sheer strength I could feel inside me almost threw me off.
My bones were denser, and my blood... my blood was strange.
It was still red and flowed through my body, but then I realized that parts of it were different; some of my blood was different.
They were thicker, like oil flowing through water, and I could not understand how my body was holding two types of blood inside of me.
As I observed the new blood flowing inside me, it suddenly stopped, and I froze. Hundreds of drops of this new blood seemed to turn towards me, before they sort of vibrated and then entered my bones.
For a moment, I could not even understand what had just happened. Was my blood aware of my attention? What was happening to me?!
By all the lights in heaven, I could stay here thinking about what was happening with me, but I did not have the time.
All I knew was that my body was holding well to these changes, and if Mortal Shell could protect my body, alongside Endurance could hold my body in place, then maybe I needed a skill that could enhance the soul.
How could I gain a skill like that? Spells to enhance the soul were available, but were incredibly rare. Maybe such a skill may be rare for an Acolyte, but not necessarily for an Adept, and I was in a camp with multiple Adept... there may be a chance to acquire such a spell.
I may need to begin interacting with the Adepts sooner than I thought.
With this at the back of my mind, I returned my focus to the rest of my status screen.
The Stored Essence count for Demon Slayer was at five hundred and ninety-eight, and it was the longest-arc number on the screen.
However, the Second Earth Gate evolution required ten thousand. I had less than six percent of the threshold. Nine thousand four hundred more demons to kill before the next major evolution.
At the rate of a thousand kills in five minutes of effective combat, that was nine or ten more sustained combat sequences, assuming I could reproduce the bowl’s kill rate consistently.
However, this previous calculation did not call to mind the growth I would gain after each loop, because I know that even if I did not push as hard as I did before, I could kill a thousand demons much easier than before.
I did not believe that it would take me a long time to accumulate ten thousand kills, but I had to wonder, did I want to open more gates without fully understanding the changes that the first gate had brought?
There was nothing wrong with the assumption that Demon Slayer, and the Broken-Celestial skills it gave me, were not a power meant for an Acolyte, its gifts were bringing new factors into my existence that were altering me in ways that I do not understand.
And this scared me.
How much of me would be left if I kept pushing open more of these gates and acquiring skills that were reshaping me into a mage who saw the deaths of ten thousand demons as something manageable?
I had no answer for this, and so, like I was learning to do, I ignored it.
If my fate was to die in this place, to watch everything I know being crushed to nothing, then perhaps I should not fear what I could become, but embrace it.
Against what was coming, what was the use of an average Mage?
The First Earth Gate had evolved to Ascendant Earth Gate, and the skill’s bonuses were now a permanent part of me, and there was a possibility for growth in the future.
If this growth meant more Anima and Endurance, then I had to find a way to solve my body’s weaknesses fast, or I would be crushed by the weight of my own power.
Judging by how strong I had become, I suspected I would be able to gather ten thousand demon essence in two to three loops, and when that happened, I would unlock the second earth gate, and I was sure this would lead to further attribute growth.
This is now my deadline: fix my body before it breaks.
I let myself sit with all of it for a long minute, and my mind finally touched what was beneath all of these changes, sitting below the cracked Anima Depth reservoir, where the hollow place rested.
Smaller than my soul and yet still present in a way that could not be denied.
[New Skill Acquired: Hollow Avatar (Broken-Celestial)]
I had been avoiding the line at the bottom of the screen, and now I let myself read it.
Mortal Shell had been my only Broken-Celestial skill for a while now, and it was so powerful that I could not even rank it against any of my other skills.
I now have two.
The new skill was Hollow Avatar. The name was specific, and I had known what it referred to before I had read the description. The hollow place dwelling beneath my soul, the second centre of gravity that had let my body fight without a head.
I focused on the skill, and I gained its description.
[Hollow Avatar: Enter the hollow state, in which the soul recedes and the void beneath assumes operational control. In this state, the practitioner cannot be reached by psychological attacks, cannot be deterred by horror or pain, and operates with the cold clarity that the hollow provides.
Anima consumption reduces by 40%. Pain becomes information rather than experience. Fear, doubt, mercy, and self-preservation instincts become inaccessible.
The practitioner’s emotional state cannot be read by external observers.
Duration: voluntary, until released or until the body fails.
Cost: severe psychological integration difficulty upon return.
Warning: extended use may produce permanent fragmentation.
Warning: the hollow may not return what it borrows.]
I did not like to curse or scream, maybe because my condition as a mage made such outbursts dangerous.
My mother had scars on her back that were weirdly in the shape of two small hands. I had burned her by mistake, and I never knew this until months later.
Mortal Shell did not come with drawbacks besides the fact that it was changing me in ways that I did not understand, but Hollow Avatar? Well, this skill came with two bold warnings written in red, and I knew that I would be forced to use it even if I did not want to.