Others with twitching tongues or strange organs that didn't belong in anything human.
It was like his body wanted to scream from every direction at once. And still, he smiled.
He kept speaking with only one mouth, even as his body writhed beneath his skin. "So I had a thought, just a little idea. If I wanted to reach a higher form of art, something above even life…"
He paused mid-motion.
Someone knocked on the door.
He froze, face darkening. Inspiration, once broken, was hard to get back. Still, a true artist didn't panic. He smoothed his hair, pulled on a heavy black wool coat, and placed a ceremonial cap on his head. Grabbing his cane and the oil lamp, he turned toward the stairs.
"This land should've been sealed. Who would knock?" He climbed the stone steps slowly, unhurried. Maybe it was someone who had recently joined. A family member? A follower? Had he forgotten to manage his relationships again?
He sighed. He'd been so consumed by his work lately. No matter. If they disrupted his flow…
He might as well use them for practice.
Thinking this, he adjusted his collar, locked the chamber door behind him, and let the oil from the lamp drip over his fingers, erasing any signs of his latest project. He moved forward, footsteps echoing softly on the stone floor.
Tapping his cane, he said calmly, "I wasn't told there would be visitors today. So if you're not a guest…" He passed beneath the mounted heads of old beasts and stopped before the door. "Then who exactly are you?"
No answer. Just another impatient bang against the wood. He frowned. 'Rude.'
Something felt wrong. "…Such impolite visitors. Maybe you're not visitors at all."
He pulled a talisman from his belt and expanded his sensing field.
At once, he caught voices, two young girls, arguing softly outside. Their tone gave them away, likely fifteen or sixteen. One had faint traces of magic. The other…
"…Huh?"
Before he could finish reading them, a chill stabbed through his chest, like someone had poured ice water into his heart.
His domain shattered.
"No, !" He instinctively stepped back.
CRACK!
A freezing spike of ice blasted through the floor and door, swallowing him in a prison of crystal. The entire room iced over in a blink, even the ceiling frostbitten and brittle.
Hovering just above the glacier…
A girl with hair the color of glacier mist stared down at him, her gaze sharper than winter.
"…This little girl."
From the ice, a monstrous hand rose, fused limbs twisted together, blooming into a thousand fingers like a horrifying flower.
The man, still fixing his collar as if nothing had happened, looked up with a composed smile. "Allow me to introduce myself. I am the greatest,- "
She didn't wait. With a flick of her hand, the frost came crashing down like judgment.
His jaw split open to his neck, and from beneath his robes, dozens of throats and tongues howled together, chanting an ancient ten-word phrase.
The ground answered. The ice cracked. And from the depths, limbs surged up, ripping through earth and stone.
****
Let's rewind the clock a little.
We return to a small room, quiet and still.
Sitting cross-legged on the bed was a black-haired girl. Her hands rested gently on her knees, eyes tightly shut, her breathing slow and steady.
Every bit of her focus was turned inward. If the lighting had been a bit dimmer, you might have seen it, a faint aura surrounding her body, glowing softly in shifting shades of crimson, violet, green, and gold.
It looked like a gentle, rippling halo. Mana flowed around her like water, lightly brushing her skin before being drawn in and absorbed, slowly growing denser with each breath.
This was the Mana Refinement Method, a technique Elara had traded for with just a single bottle of Bryella's saliva. A method that refined not only mana, but also spiritual energy at the same time.
In this world, mana was everything. Unlike the energy systems of her previous life, this one could be shaped, guided, even bent to your will. Everyone had mana in their bodies, it was part of being alive.
The difference was control. Just like how everyone has electrical signals in their brain, but not everyone can shoot lightning.
Some people were born to just watch. Others? They turned that energy into real force. That's what separated the strong from the average.
And what you did with that power, whether you used it to rise to the top or got knocked out like a bug, came down to talent.
Elara had brought over more than just her memories from the old world. Not everything she knew had been written in the novel.
For example, in the early days of this world's mana development, only mages existed. Warriors, those who used their own form of energy called aura, came later. The training looked the same on the surface, but the paths split once you reached the next Rank.
Elara had picked the mage route without even thinking. The reason was simple: she was lazy.
Warriors had to work out all the time, swinging weapons, building muscle. Mages? Mages got to sit around and read.
Sure, becoming a mage was technically harder. It needed higher talent, way more bookwork, and the theories could make your head spin, alchemical formulas, runes, arcane calculations that made textbooks look like children's books.
But she had an edge. Thanks to her knowledge and a few lucky items, she skipped a lot of the early grind.
Less time needed, more power in the long run. Easy choice.
Of course, the downside was clear. Mages were powerful, but fragile. When something went wrong, it went really wrong.
But if mages weren't terrifying, they wouldn't be mages, would they?
Right now, she was using her spiritual sense to draw mana from the air, guiding it through a process that purified and condensed it inside her body. It was complicated, sure, but the payoff was huge, both her spirit and mana grew stronger at once.
The method had been hard to learn. She still remembered Bryella's shocked expression when she first asked to try it. That alone almost made her laugh.
Still, she was genuinely excited. This was real superpower training! Stuff straight out of a novel or a movie.
Though, now that she thought about it, she hadn't eaten in, what, twelve hours? Her stomach let out a low, angry growl.
"Focus… follow your breath… feel the beat of your heart…"
She kept her position on the bed, murmuring to herself, trying to sync her spirit with the flow of mana around her.
BANG BANG BANG!!!
A thunderous knocking slammed against the door.
BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG!
CREAK, CRACK!
Came the sound of metal twisting and wood splintering apart.