The seventh wave reached me, and I was too numb to mourn my staff or check the series of vibrations from my status screen; my body could only move and fight.

I was in a strange state. I did not remember my name or anything about my life, but my thoughts were clear, and everything that was left in me only had one purpose... to move and to fight.

If my mind was clear, I knew that I should be afraid, because it seemed as if my body had been taken over by someone else, but I knew this was not the truth... this was still me, a part that I could not reach until I had stripped everything about Elric the Acolyte away.

In this state, I did not wonder about anything at all; my thoughts were simple: just move and fight.

I threw the broken half of the Stormbound Fuchsia to my left hand, the two-foot length of cracked wood still humming with the dying embers of the transformation that had been cut short.

My right hand was empty, the skin blackened from wrist to elbow, and the nails were curled and smoking. I had not noticed during my rampage that I had nearly burned my right hand to the bone.

My lightning would not come, and I felt the absence of it like a severed limb.

How fascinating that my greatest weapon had been stripped from me in this manner... I was still too weak and stupid.

I had Threadwork. Why did I not think of threading my magic through and around the staff to hold it together?

This was just one of my ideas at the top of my head; there were dozens of better ways I could have fought. Instead, I just cast magic like I was nothing but a magical cannon.

I knew I did not have many spells, but I had enough that I could mix and match to create a better killing field.

The channels that had been singing in my flesh a moment ago were now cold and dark. Lightning Resonance had withdrawn deep into my tissues, exhausted, having given me everything it had and then some.

But Mortal Shell had not withdrawn.

The Adept-tier Endurance that had flooded my body when Demon Slayer evolved was still there.

My bones were still steel. My muscles still coiled with a density that no Acolyte should possess, and my skin still carried the residual charge of a thousand lightning strikes, enough to make the hair on my arms stand on end even though the hair itself was long gone.

With my mind filled with so many distractions before, I would be killed in seconds, but my body was a broken weapon, and it would have to be enough.

The bodies of the demons covering the ground gave me the chance to fight without being swarmed, and I had to take advantage of it.

The first demon reached me, and I swung the half-staff, and it connected with the chitin demon’s head just below its vise-jaw mouth.

The impact was pure, stupid, physical force backed by sixty-four points of Endurance and a body that had just been rebuilt by lightning.

The demon’s head exploded, chitin fragments sprayed backward into the face of the demon behind it, and the body kept running for two more steps before the nervous system realized the brain was gone, and then it collapsed at my feet.

[Stored Essence: 1089]

’Hmm... I am stronger than I thought. I needed to wind down my blows a bit to conserve more energy.’

The second demon lunged for my throat. I caught its leading leg with my bare right hand, which was badly burnt, and I squeezed.

Mortal Shell still held my hand well enough that as I exerted force, the chitin crunched, and the leg snapped.

The demon screeched, and I pulled it forward, off-balance, and drove the half-staff through where its eyes should be, and the staff stabbed through its head until the wood emerged from the back of its head.

Two demons down, and I was just getting started, and a smile was beginning to grow on my face.

I ripped the staff free, and a viscous fluid, the color of bile, followed it.

The third and fourth demons came together, left and right, a pincer movement that would have pinned a lesser fighter.

I had no magic and no range. I had only the broken staff and a body that refused to acknowledge that it should be dead.

I stepped into the left demon, closing the distance so its mandibles closed on empty air.

The half-staff came up under its chin, as I used it as a lever and wrenched upward. The demon’s head snapped back at an angle that chitin was not designed to accommodate as something inside its neck tore.

While it was still thrashing, I spun and kicked the right demon in the side of what should be its thorax.

Demonology gave me an instinctive understanding of Demon physiology, but it was still unregistered, and the understanding of demons was fragmented, but I think that would soon change.

The kick caved in its carapace like a rotten fruit, causing the demon to fold inward and slide off my foot in a spray of dark fluid.

A few drops of the fluid touched my lips, and I licked it. It was bitter and poisonous, but ingested in small volumes could do wonders for my endurance and give me a new skill that could enhance my internal organs.

There were always treasures to be found, even in the deepest pits of perdition.

I placed my body in between the demons I had just killed, causing the two demons coming at me to attack low, targeting my legs.

Like sheep to a slaughter.

I jumped, and the half-staff came down on the spine of the demon on the left, cracking it in half, but I overestimated my agility, and the second demon bit into my left calf.

The demon’s vise-jaw teeth sank into the meat of my leg, and I felt them scrape against my shin bone, but the bone did not break. I drove the half-staff into the top of its head, once, twice, three times, until the jaws went slack.

A demon had climbed over the stack of corpses of demons, and it launched itself at my chest while I was still off-balance from the demon that had chewed on my leg. I could not dodge, only brace for the impact, and the demon hit me like a battering ram.

Its weight drove me backward three steps, and my feet dug into the charred grass. My right hand closed around the demon’s head to stop it from chewing through my neck, and we struggled for a moment before I headbutted it.

The crown of my skull smashed into its faceplate, and something cracked. The tendrils on the face of the demon whipped my face, and I caught it in my teeth and bit through it, flooding my mouth with bitter demon ichor, and the demon convulsed, and I brought the half-staff around and drove the jagged end into the demon’s skull, and I twisted.