Chapter 31

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The creature woke up itchy but refreshed; a side effect of [Moulting] that, unfortunately, it could do nothing about. The was not a pleasant way to wake up. The creature shrugged off the shed skin and finished its morning ablutions. The [Survivor] gave its shed skin a thoughtful look before it flew off with the exuviate. Now that the creature had a permanent home of some sort, it did not want to leave the exuviate just lying around.

Though, the creature couldn’t just throw it out as the exuviate was its own shed skin and carried the Malfae’s scent. The [Reincarnated] surmised that if it had a scent-based tracking Skills, then so would the other creatures. And the Malfae did not want to lead those other creatures to its den.

Thus, the creature carried the exuviate to the small pond where it had hunted frogs and dropped the shed skin in the water. The creature’s reasoning, for disposing of the shed skin so, was quite simple. It expected the water to dissolve any scent that had remained on the shed skin and even if the water didn’t do so, it wasn’t like the creatures in water could come out of it to track down the Malfae.

With the exuviate taken care of, the creature flew towards the spider hunting ground for a daily dose of venom. Though, it was not until its fifth try that the creature was able to hunt and eat the spider. And once the Malfae had suffered through the venom-induced pain and HP loss, the creature decided to look for other prey to hunt and to Level up. After all, it had yet to Level up even once, outside of the Level granted by the cocoon.

The creature flew around but found it hard to decide on a suitable prey. Any creature that the [Reincarnated] had found to be good prey, was all but useless in terms of granting Levels. While those that could grant it Levels, where those that the creature would rather avoid.

Ting.

[Skill [Flight Lv.6] has levelled up [Flight Lv.7]. Your speed and manoeuvrability have been increased.]

The creature sighed as it landed in the clearing where the flower and the mantis had been. Despite all its efforts, the creature had not been able to find out anything about the sudden disappearance of the two. The creature thought back to the flower and sighed again. That flower had the essence much akin to the white moon. And despite how illiterate in this world the creature was, she had been a somewhat accomplished mage.

And from her memories, the creature knew that something that had Essence similar to the heavenly bodies was not just another flower or plant. Thus, the creature felt like it had missed out on a once in a lifetime opportunity.

Which, in truth, it had. Not that the creature will ever come to know just what it had missed out on. The Malfae shook itself to break out of the mindset and its eyes fell on the ant colony that it had noticed long ago. The creatures were red and huge, at least by the standards of her world, with each ant as big as half a mortal’s finger. They were fast and always seem to move in a line. They seemed to have a purpose and always moved out with a destination in mind, never straying from their destined paths; almost like golems.

Though some ants were neither with any group nor were they following any line. From what the creature had observed of them, they were the ants whose purpose was to look for food. These ants, that strayed, were always looking for more food. And when they would finally find their treasure, they would double back and return with lines after lines of their fellow ant brethren to loot the newfound source of food.

These treasure hunters often strayed a little too far, in their single-minded search. They forgot themselves and their surroundings, with only their goal in their minds. More food. The Malfae observed these easily strayed treasure hunters.

As these treasure hunters were often lost, the Malfae deemed them easy prey. Though, it hadn’t hunted them yet as the winged creature didn’t believe that killing them would be worth the time and the effort. Most of these ants were one evolution below the Malfae anyway and would not grant it any Levels.

It sighed. ‘Gone are the days when I could kill prey and receive half a dozen level ups.’

Shaking its head to clear it of the melancholy, the creature frowned. The creature thought for a moment and decided to hunt a treasure hunter but without crushing it into a paste. ‘Ants have an extremely hard exoskeleton, so traps and venom would not hurt them much. Which means I would have to use [Malfae Shield] to crush it but what good would that be?’

It took off and moved the [Malfae Shield] from behind its back to hover right above the lost ant. The [Survivor] then spread the individual wings of shield apart until gaps appeared and brought it down, fast, on the ant. By the time the ant sensed that something was wrong and looked up, the wings of the shield were already closing around its neck.

The wings hit the tough exoskeleton and almost made it through, before shattering. The Shield could only absorb 40 points of damage, after all, thus the Malfae was not that surprised when the wings fell apart.

‘[Malfae shield].’ Another shield manifested before descending on the ant to try and finish chopping off the ant’s head. Surprisingly, this time, the blade succeeded in decapitating the ant before shattering like thin glass.

The creature grinned and slowly flew down to the still twitching body. This hunt had been easier than even hunting spiders. However, hunting the two was fundamentally different because spiders remained hung in their nets, which provided them with great mobility, and they always maintained their vigilance. While this ant, on the other hand, had not only been obsessed with its desire to search food, it also walked on the ground. Its presence on the ground limited its mobility to a great extent. The two were not comparable at all!

The [Reincarnated] landed next to the ant corpse and observed the body for a few moments more before it flew off, leaving the ant to rot and waste. ‘It’s useless though. That ant had little mean and no venom. And it didn’t even give me any Levels.’

Arriving at the crevice, the creature checked its new home with both [Sense] and [Sense Essence] and entered cautiously. It found nothing out of the ordinary and checked the eggs, finding a little change in the eggs, but not something worth noting about.

The creature settled down and closed its eyes. It panned to spend the rest of the night practising [Mana Manipulation] but not in the same way that it had been doing till now. This time, the creature did not plan on activating the Skill that it had inherited. Rather, it wanted to reach the state of observable mana on its own, step by step. Thus, the creature focused on its breathing.

With its eyes closed, the creature took a deep breath in, before slowly letting it out. Gently, it breathed in again, holding it for a while, before letting it go just as slowly.

In, hold, out.

In, hold, out.

In, hold, out.

Its heart calmed down and its mind wandered as it gently began to lose the sense of its surrounding. With each passing sense, the Malfae tried to find its way within itself. It tried to travel inwards, towards what made the creature, it.

The process wasn’t as easy as the creature had thought it would be. The Malfae had assumed that because it had the Skill to do so, and had achieved the state of observable mana numerous times before, it could do so again without any hitch. That was not the case, however.

The creature was no longer guided by the Skill and while it had achieved the state before, the Malfae was much akin to someone who knew the destination but the not the road that led to it. The creature continued to breathe. In, hold, out. In, hold, out. In, hold, out.

Lost as the creature was, it didn’t notice the moments pass one after the other. And it didn’t notice as it, slowly and steadily, continued to lose the sense of its surrounding until, eventually, all it could sense was it and its body and nothing else.

Serene as ever, it floated within the nothingness as nothing but its body. There was no floor, no stone, no chill, no warmth, no darkness and no light. There was nothing, nothing, but the creature itself. There was it, and its newly acquired, yet ever-changing, body; its Vessel.

Slowly it began to sense the thing that was its body and the things that made its body.

The creature felt the hair on its head and back rustle, as they tried to feel and sense but failed. The creature felt its skin as it stretched all over it and tried to feel but felt nothing. The creature felt its heart beating in its chest, pumping and working without fail. The creature felt the blood rushing in its veins and its wings, never stopping. The creature felt life just beneath the surface, that was its body, and everything else that was there to be sensed.

The Malfae sensed them all and it sensed more than it had ever felt and experienced in this newfound bodice. And then, finally, it felt its mana. Faint at first, but there nonetheless. The mana was there, here and everywhere, just beneath the surface, lurking and hiding, but supporting the creature just as same as its heart. The mana felt alive. The mana was alive. The mana was its.

The Malfae focused on it, as the mana danced surreptitiously within the vessels, supporting the creature and its body. The winged being felt the mana twitch at the sudden attention before it continued with whatever it was doing.

It was beautiful; looking at mana that was. In the ever-expanding darkness, the ethereal blue glow of mana was heavenly. The Malfae focused on the flow of the mana. But as it had noticed when the creature had used [Mana Manipulation], there was no source of mana within the vessels. Mana disappeared and appeared within the vessels all over the place. It was almost as if the mana destroyed mana and mana created mana, simultaneously.

This mana fluxed through the vessels but what was causing the flux, the creature couldn’t find. As the mana moved, it reached the end of the vessels on the skin and was released through the pores on the creature’s body.

The Malfae was amazed. From her knowledge, it knew there were pores in a mortal’s body, through which mana leaked out but it did not know that a Malfae would have poured more numerous than the most powerful mortals in her world! There were pores all over its body, its hands, its legs, its head and its wings. Every part, that was a part of the creature, had innumerable pores and they all were connected to something, vessels containing mana.

The creature had not seen these pores when it had used [Mana Manipulation] to directly enter this state. But now that it had done the process on its own, it could see them as clearly as the stars on a moonless night.

The creature tried to trace the flow down the pores. But it couldn’t. The creature was trying to go opposite the direction of flow and the mana opposed it. It fought the creature. It was an experience for the Malfae, fighting its own mana. The creature felt like it was trying to fight itself.

Ting.

[Skill [Mana Manipulation Lv.1] has levelled up to [Mana Manipulation Lv.2]. Your understanding of mana had increased.]

And then, in a moment, everything changed.

The creature felt its consciousness move. And immediately, it experienced a sudden sense of loss. The creature trembled. It felt lost. The Malfae felt itself travelling through the vessels as it traversed the mana system before it was thrown out.

Disoriented as the creature was, it lingered there for a moment. And as it lingered, it felt the mana surface from the pores and spread out like water over the creature’s body. The creature continued to settle its mind before it finally disentangled itself from the mana. And then, just as slowly it had begun, it felt its senses return to it. With its senses back, the creature began to lose to the sense of loss that that gotten hold of it out of nowhere.

The hearing was the first to return, and it returned slowly; akin to a sound of something approaching from afar. It was followed by the sense of touch, which returned a lot faster, like a feather falling onto the skin; tingling and there but still not. And then, all of a sudden, the rest of the senses followed. One moment they weren’t there and then they were. It was like sleeping, slowly at first and then all of a sudden.

The Malfae smiled as it opened its eyes and saw the notification waiting for it. ‘Finally! Yes!’

The creature had been waiting for this Level up for a long time. It had been waiting for it since it had first received this skill. Which had been back when it had just evolved into a moth. And that was almost eight months ago.

This Skill Level up meant more to the creature than even the general Level ups that increased its HP and MP. If the creature had been a mortal, then it would have cried. But the creature was an immortal, a being of muted emotions. Thus, it laughed and with a lingering joyous feeling, the creature moved on.

This reaction of the creature was just another facet of the sacrifice that it had made for its magic. Not that the creature minded. Even if it had to make the choice again, the creature would still choose its magic all over again. The evolved moth shifted its eyes away from the notification and it frowned. ‘Just how much time has passed?’

The Malfae looked around. There was a lot of light in the crevice; more than it had ever seen, in here, before. But the thing was, it wasn’t the soft comforting light of the moon, instead, it was the warm and too-bright-and-not-inviting-at-all light of the sun.

The creature moved and immediately felt its body protest. Its joints were stiff, its muscles were sore and its back ached as if it hadn’t moved in a long time. ‘I probably haven’t.’

Groaning from the pained protests, the evolved moth shakily stood up and moved over to the edge of the crevice before peeking out at the sky. The concept of Instant Regret was made known to the creature, as its eyes began to hurt immediately and it forced them shut.

The creature waited for a few moments as its eyes adjusted to the bright light before it squinted and searched for the very obvious Sun shining in the sky. ‘Eh?’

‘Why is the sun in the direction opposite to which it rises? …Is it the sunset already??’

No wonder its body was stiff as wood. It had been in one position for almost twenty-four hours! The creature groaned before it shook itself out of the stupor and flew back inside. Overwhelmed as it was from the fact that it had meditated for an entire day, it went to sleep.

0.0

The creature spent the next night sleeping. It had exerted itself a little too much with the Skill and could only rest to recover. But that did not mean that the creature had given up. Buoyed as it was due to the levelling up of [Mana Manipulation], the creature changed its routine to focus more on the Skill rather than search for a suitable creature to hunt.

Though, no matter how much the creature tried, it couldn’t move past the pores. The fluxing of the mana neither allowed the creature to swim against the flux nor did it allow the creature to swim with the flux. Thus, the creature remained stuck where it was for an entire week.

It had initially thought to bulldoze its way through the mana, but those efforts had been utterly futile. The more the creature forced itself, the more the mana resisted. The mana matched the creature, ounce by ounce. The creature had to finally give up its strategy when it even couldn’t move beyond the pores because of the resistance from the mana.

Though all was not in vain for the creature. While it had been bashing its head against its mana, the eggs had continued to mature and develop. And when the creature had last checked them with [Sense Essence], the Essence within them had finished condensing and had begun to change.

The colour of the Essence still matched the colour of the Malfae, a faint blue that seemed akin to corpse rather than the blue sky. The shape of the Essence though clearly did not match the creature’s own. It had begun to elongate and thin down. This, though, gave the Malfae a good idea of what creature would pop out of the eggs.

This development though did not mask the creature’s irritation with the zero progress it had with [Mana Manipulation]. Thus, with its efforts defeated, the creature changed its routine again and discarded practising the Skill all together. It was sick of it. Instead, it decided to resume its search for suitable prey.

But before it did that, it decided to get rid of its frustration, by the only method it knew. Hence, the creature once again flew to the spider hunting field but instead of hunting the prey, the Malfae leaned into its inherent malice. The inherent malice erupted as the creature crushed one spider after the another with its shield. The creature did not eat the spiders. The Malfae did not even give the dead insects a second glance before it flew off in the search of the next. This act did not raise the creature’s Level but it did Level up its Skill, [Malfae Shield] up to Level 3.

The senseless death, that the Malfae was unleashing, continued. Its only purpose was to relieve the Malfae of its frustration. It was the manifestation of nothing but malice. It was just another sacrifice that the creature had made for its magic. A sacrifice that it would gladly make again.

-X-

Within a desolate desert, inside a dilapidated shop, on a simple chair, a youth seemingly slept.

-X-