I closed my eyes and reached for the deep Anima, the sixteen percent that remained in the reservoir, plus the cracked nine percent that produced regenerated Anima at reduced quality, plus the five percent of the white-glowing Ascendant Earth Gate boost that I had never deliberately spent, gave me, in total, thirty percent of my reservoir’s total accessible volume.
I could freely spend sixteen percent without tearing the reservoir further.
How much power could I get from this? It did not matter; I pulled.
Anima came up through my channels, and Lightning Resonance converted the volume to lightning in transit, and my channels filled up with power.
I used up all the free Anima that I had available to me, all sixteen percent.
My body began to glow blue, and I was sure that my eyes were glowing blue as well. The bolts that danced across my skin were the surface manifestation of the lightning saturating my flesh from the inside, the channels all carrying maximum charge.
It was not enough.
The horned demon was two kilometres out and closing. The lightning I had loaded into my channels would produce one maximum-commitment cast, possibly two, before the body could no longer hold the charge.
Rex, with the body of an Acolyte, even though he was under the influence of Orath, had been able to block a soul cast lightning bolt.
Granted, I was much stronger than that time, but that was an Adept using an Acolyte body. I suspected that this demon may be equal to or even stronger than Orath.
I needed to load more.
The only way to load more was to soul-cast, to draw Anima from the soul itself, past the reservoir, past the regeneration limit, from the structural substance of the soul that the body was supposed to keep intact.
This was the same casting that had cracked the reservoir to ninety-one percent.
I had theorized that with the Ascendant Anima in my Anima Depth, I had a limited budget of ten or twelve soul casts left in me before my Anima Depth shattered.
Of course, this number could grow even less if the new Anima continued to consume my previous one.
The wise thing for me to do was to stop here and allow myself to be killed; I could return and slowly grind my way through death to accumulate power.
This was the wise choice... I looked to the camp in the distance, and I could see nothing but an endless field of black chitin as demons had consumed everything in sight, leaving nothing behind.
A minor estimate would place the number of demons at least in the range of hundreds of thousands.
No, fuck that... There was no way I would be going slow.
I would spend one of my chances here.
Breathing out the air in my lungs that was at least eighty degrees hot, I burned my soul.
The cold pain of my soul’s structural integrity dropping had not become easier. I was damaging my soul, so the cost was real. The reset would heal most of it. Most.
The Anima the burn released was the entire soul’s volume, not just the reservoir’s accessible portion, but all of it, but then I noticed that my new Anima would not burn.
I could feel that part of my soul beginning to vibrate, but it was as if it was made from ice, and the heat I was applying to it was far too low for it to be consumed. Whatever this part of my soul was, it would seem that my experience of it was still too low for me to burn it.
I pushed this concern aside and left it for now, as a weird sound arose around me, and tens of thousands of tiny lights, Essence, began to surround me.
One could only see Essence with the naked eye if a source of extraordinary magic was present.
I had just become that source.
My channels filled past their nominal capacity. The lightning that Lightning Resonance was producing in transit climbed past every threshold inside my body and kept climbing.
The glow from my skin grew blinding, and my hair began to rise in the air. I knew at that moment that, except for my new blood, the entirety of my blood had just vaporized.
The essence around me began to thicken as the air itself, for about eight feet, began to ionise, a faint blue haze radiating from my body’s surface in a halo that the wind moved through without dispersing.
Thousands of meters above me, there seemed to be a distortion in the air, as if my presence was about to draw dark clouds.
My body was a vessel holding more lightning than any Acolyte body should have been able to hold.
The horned demon was a kilometre out, and I switched to the Hollow Avatar; no, switching meant that I had a soul.
With no more soul to burn, I became the Hollow Avatar, and the Hollow Avatar became me.
And in an instant, the glow from my skin vanished as I seized the scattered lightning inside me.
I encoded a single instruction into the substrate that the Hollow Avatar would execute.
"Fight until there is nothing left to fight with."
The instruction was simple, even though the power I had placed inside my body was not.
∞
My mind grew cold, and I shifted into a stance that would distribute my weight evenly across my lower limbs.
The staff went from the diagonal carry to the low ready position, the open left palm coming up at a different angle than the previous positions I had used. I would be casting hard and fast, since my mind could not keep up with a Narghul Sorcerer, even if this one was relatively young and had only two horns.
The Narghul Sorcerer was five hundred metres out, and his four burning eyes had locked on the body. I thought about all the moves he could make when I placed his age, and the options were too many, so I chose to focus on what was present: his Shadow Construct, Corruption Conjuration, and Flame Essence.
If any new variables appeared later, I would take note of them.
I began a breathing method to place all my body energy in resonance. I could not do much since this body was weak and contained too many hidden deficiencies, but I would work with the tools I was given.
The horned demon reached three hundred metres, and I settled my stance into its final position.
"Fight until there is nothing left to fight with."