"More..."
I bite again. Symbols flicker across my vision, ghostly numbers pulsing in the dark: 39/100... 42/100... What are these? I bite again. There are mumbles, too. Vibrations in the air betraying another presence nearby. Another... prey?
"What are...?"
A voice? Aria's? My mind struggles to tether the sound to a concept. What is an Aria?
48/100... 49/100... 50/100...
I blink. The world snaps into focus. I let out a long, heavy sigh as the fog recedes. My Reason had dropped too low again, falling into that dangerous, red basement where only hunger lives. I don't stop, though. I take one more bite, refusing to abandon my current meal. I don't care about the gore; I only care that it is Essence, and I am not yet finished.
With my vision clear, I can finally see her. Aria is standing a few paces away, her blade aimed at my heart. She is trembling, fearful of what I am doing. Of course she is. I am kneeling over the half-consumed remains of her greatest enemy—Vortigen—and she is watching him turn into the golden liquid that fuels me. I understand now. I know exactly who this was, and I know exactly what I am doing to him.
70/100. The number keeps rising.
The important questions begin to surface in my mind, forming a cold, logical queue. 90/100. I am back.
I look at the discarded scraps of armor. My Reason provides a sharp post-mortem of the battle: I had been inefficient. Severing flesh costs a high price in Vitality, but severing flesh and chainmail together costs significantly more. I had brute-forced my way through their defenses. It would have been far better to sever the flesh and bone under the mail, bypassing the metal entirely. On top of that, I hadn't been able to gather the other corpses before we fled. I sigh, lamenting the loss of all that precious essence. I must be more precise next time, and I must harvest better, too.
Perception: 45/1,000.
The increase in my awareness is independent of my raw power. It is a steady, quiet growth. I realize now that I need to organize my capabilities and the toll they take, lest my Reason drop too low again, blurring my consciousness until I no longer know what I am doing.
I name my primary and most useful skill "Void Gate." For the offensive strike I used to kill the King and his knights, I choose "Reality's Blade." Finally, I name the augmentations to my form "Sovereign's Physique"—a title for the upgrades my body will receive the stronger I become.
Suddenly, my Perception jumps. It surges to 70/1,000, and with the leap, I gain access to the description of a new ability. The name makes me chuckle. It reads: "All That Is Weak Shall Be Devoured."
As the weight of the skill settles into my mind, my Perception jumps again, hitting 75/1,000. I am grasping the true scale of my capabilities now. This skill... it is absolute.
I look at my hands. They should be stained with the blood of my prey, but even that, I devoured. My system informs me that I am now reaching Level 4. This essence gathered is very powerful. The mages of this world seem to be exactly what I need to increase my powers, and now, knowing that I have a locked skill so vast, I want to find more of them. They are all weak. And all that is weak shall be devoured.
"What are you?" Aria repeats, her blade high and threatening. I wonder what steel it's made of. It's dangerous; it could cut through my skin easily, my Perception tells me. The material, however, escapes my grasp—another thing to learn about.
The question, aside from being an expression of her fear and confusion, is also a source of distraction. It triggers an old memory. I see a woman. My mother. She is helping me ride my bike for the first time. Soon, she lets me go and I ride alone. Thanks to my Perception, for the first time, I read in her expression the bittersweet thought of a mother who thinks her child is growing too fast—her world is leaving her behind... alone.
In the end, I did just that. Not because I wanted to. But when does life ever care about what we want? I smile as I recall the gift she gave me. The elusive word that encompasses my being...
A lizard-like beast attacks. It is bigger than any lizard I have ever seen. But I have already moved by the time my Perception detects it. It resembles a Komodo dragon, but with sharper teeth and claws. It's not a creature of the Void, that's for sure, but it is more dangerous than those I've fought so far. A fascinating native species.
"How can a creature this big exist?" I ask her. I am holding her in my arms like the princess she is, having plucked her from the path of the beast's lunge. My mind is now completely clear. "It's massive. Such mass would make it impossible to sustain its own weight without collapsing."
"It's—a basilisk, a young—one," she replies, her cheeks turning red at our closeness. "It eats magic stones when they're small, and that—reinforces their bodies. T—thanks."
That doesn't explain the physics of its nature, but when I note the word "magic," I understand a bit more. Essence can do anything. It wouldn't be impossible for this being to be sustained entirely by it.
I focus my Will on the space between its head and shoulders. A moment later, the creature's massive head—attached to half of its long neck—falls heavily and rolls on the ground. Its twitching body convulses, taking down trees until it finally goes completely still.
I set Aria down and look at the new mountain of essence before me.
I reach another level of understanding as a thought crosses my head. Am I actually devouring these living beings completely? According to my knowledge, mass and energy are the same; mass is simply energy in a different state. This means that every time I devour a creature this completely, I am absorbing a massive amount of energy. Nothing is wasted.
Yet, I am not massively powerful. Why?
Considering the mass of Vortigen and common knowledge, if I absorbed a complete body, I should be consuming more energy than a nuclear bomb releases when it goes off. I can open portals, and surely that consumes a significant amount of power, but I have devoured much more than I have spent. Where did all that energy go?
I walk toward the beast as I try to understand myself better. Am I losing energy? I look at my stats and manifest another screen to display the energy that I devoured, the energy I store, and the energy I spend by the second. The math doesn't add up. The intake is vast; the output is minimal. Somewhere, deep within the architecture of my existence, there is a leak—or a hidden reservoir.
"How did you do that?" Aria asks me, her voice trembling as she stares at the severed neck of the monster. "Basilisks are resistant to magic. It's hard to cut through their scales with magic or normal weapons. Their scales produce an aura that blocks attacks."
I tilt her head slightly. I've seen an aura like that before. Vortigen and his knights had them, and Aria has one too. I thought it was a natural byproduct of living beings with essence. So, it is a protection—a shell meant to defend against projectiles and external threats.
But my skill isn't a projectile. Reality's Blade doesn't travel through the air; it simply manifests at the destination. It makes sense why it couldn't be stopped. You cannot block a door that was never opened from the outside. And this time, I didn't cut scales at all; I focused completely on muscle and bone.
"The aura is an interesting concept," I murmur, my hand hovering over the Basilisk's scales. "But it assumes the threat follows the laws of distance. I do not."
I begin the harvest. My Will reaches out, and the massive, biological impossibility of the Basilisk begins to dissolve into golden essence. I feel the rush of energy—hot, dense, and ancient. It floods my system, but again, most of the energy vanishes into the dark center of my being, as if I am fueling a sun that has not yet begun to shine.
Aria watches as the creature disappears until nothing is left. When I turn toward her, she drops her blade. She looks weak, scared, but more than that, she is unwilling to fight a being she clearly can never defeat. This both pleases and angers me. Is she simply giving up? I, too, once gave up, and my inner self refuses to accept that others would do the same when faced with the absolute weight of life. I am selfish and delusional because I want to pretend it's my thing alone.
"I sense waves coming from the city," I tell her. My Perception picks up the ripples in the distance. "They will be here shortly. Knights seeking to avenge their lord."
"And to kill me," she adds, her voice hollow. "They must have labeled me a witch since I was seen with you."
"Oh! Indeed. This appearance is quite... dramatic, I suppose. It's funny, because I thought it was completely human when I first sculpted it. But now, seeing real humans again, I realize I don't look human at all."
"A demon," she corrects me. I chuckle.
"I can fix that," I reply. Using a small amount of the newly harvested essence, I shift my form. The marble skin softens, the violet glow fades, and within moments, I look completely human. "Where should we go now?"
"Far. But they will reach us. Their gryphons are flying beasts," she declares, her tone fatalistic. "We will have to fight the knights again once they find us. Unless you open another portal."
"Yes, I could. But where to? Oh, I have an idea," I tell her, a smirk playing on my lips as I tear a hole in reality. "Come."
We cross to the other side, and a stone rooftop receives us. The cold wind of the night is delightful, sharp and clean. We are on the castle's highest rooftops, overlooking the very city that hunts us. Aria looks at me with horrified eyes.
"What? They are looking for us out there," I say, gesturing to the dark beyond. "They would never expect us to be here."
"What are you?" she asks in a frightened tone, finally understanding that she is entirely in my hands. My Will owns her life now.
I look out over the kingdom I intend to study—and perhaps devour. I think of the bicycle, the mother, and the gift of an identity that no Void can erase. I repeat the word. The sacred word. The gift. The precious jewel given to me by the most precious creature that could ever exist.
"Vance."