Leone PoV
Standing in the middle of the square, I couldn't help but sigh as I looked out over the various charred corpses that littered the ground, each one a result of my own actions as I cleared this city of its current insidious infection, but that did little to make entirely pleased with what I was doing.
It also didn't help that I was also wondering if I could have done anything differently a little earlier in that library; was there sothing I could have done with my Moon Magic to make the fight easier for all of us involved?
Sothing that I could have done if I had actually taken the ti to sit myself down and study this wonderful power that I had, one that only a handful of people in the world had access to using?
It was another part of my skillset that needed to study, and I couldn't help but feel useless for not being able to split my mind off into an infinite amount of directions to pursue each and every single little thing possible, which was utterly irrational of .
Obviously I couldn't do that; no one was able to take in that much information all at once without frying their mind, but it just... felt like I needed to be able to do that for this to work; we had so much talent - each of us were blessed with a surplus of it - and yet we had no damn ti to work with it!
No ti to start exploring different routes, no ti to try sothing new or polish sothing old; it was just one thing after another constantly for us, and if we weren't burdened by sothing that needed to be done right that very mont... we let ourselves relax finally and do what we needed to stop ourselves from cracking beneath the pressure.
Could we be 'more efficient' whenever we relieved ourselves of that pressure?
Most definitely, but that wasn't the point of what we were doing, and that only made more irritable and angry as I slowly walked around the square, inspecting each and every corpse as I idly sent a fireball from hand to hand to ease so of my mind.
There were young and old faces beneath the char, n and won who had all made the sa decision for very different reasons; they decided to do bad so that they could achieve 'good' for themselves, be it wealth, power or pleasure...
All of them ca to that conclusion, and I wanted so desperately to ask them why they couldn't just put the effort in like the rest of us, why they were trying to steal it from soone else instead of earning it for themselves, but even that made pause.
I an... could I really talk?
A silver spoon wouldn't even begin to describe what I had at my beck and call when I was born - hells, even when I was a re thought in both of my parent's mind I already had more power and wealth than these people could imagine - but still, even with that I wanted to just ask them... why?
Why couldn't they have worked, why couldn't they have put in the sa effort into being lawful citizens, why were they so eager to throw away any chance of living peacefully for ager earnings?
Why would they decide to do such terrible things to people for their own benefit..?
And even then, I had answers, ones that I didn't want to say I had, but ones I had anyways; it's so much easier to take then it is to create, isn't it?
It's so much easier to constantly take whatever you want instead of earning it like everyone else, it's so thrilling to force soone to do sothing for you, it's so arousing to take soone whenever you want...
Isn't that why they do it?
Nudging one of the young n with my boot, I stared at his twisted expression of sheer agony and sighed, adding another to that list, one that I knew all too well; wasn't it so much fun to bully those weaker than you?
Wasn't that thrill of utterly overpowering soone so damn addicting..?
Isn't that why I was so keen to hone my flas as much as I already had, since the hotter they got, the harder it was for anyone at all to compete with ?
The stronger the fire the worse the burn, and few people could quench my flas easily anymore; honestly I doubt Kat could deal with my flas either, and she was rather talented and crafty with her magic.
Didn't I pride myself so much for being better than everyone with my magic?
Didn't I-
"Hey! C'mon, stop ignoring now Leone, or I'm going to have to do sothing you won't like~!"
The cheery voice of Anput drew out of my thoughts, and I turned towards the sound of her voice to find the Jackalkin sauntering into the square unbothered, her tal rod - now in a staff shape - resting on both her shoulders as she made her way towards .
I noted that the ends of her staff were caked with gore, and as she stopped to stand in front of I sighed and reached for her cheek, where so blood resided, though that only made the Jackalkin smirk at as she turned to kiss my hand instead.
"So, what were you moping over, hm-? Can't be that they got away, right? You saw all those damn talismans and rings and all those other goodies they had; it was like a damn arsenal strapped onto each person! Yeah, we weren't gonna manage against them that easily."
For the one who loved fighting - and winning - more than the rest of us, hearing Anput so casually brush off this 'loss' of ours was rather shocking, though considering how she tended to swap around her emotions so regularly whenever dealing with actual issues, it wouldn't surprise to learn she was just as disappointed as I was.
"Even then, Anput, there was so much I could have done! And yet-!"
"Nope~! What's done is done and while looking back is nice, how about we focus on the future, hm? C're, I got sothing I want to show you. And no, before you beco little miss skeptical, it isn't my cock."
That made raise a brow, and Anput paused for a mont as she glanced at and added "Yet, anyways; I do want to have a quickie before we finish up, so there is that..." before
grabbing my hand and pulling back to the library.
She didn't say anything else after that, but when we entered she led straight to the second level, where that Caliph and Kat had been locked in battle just minutes ago; letting go, Anput crouched down and scanned the various books before nodding and tossing one to .
"Open it up and check it out. You are fluent enough in our written language, aren't you? It's different from yours, I believe, at least the older language we used before we commonized
it."
"Yes, I did study your language a little, but... why should I be scanning through this right now, Anput..?"
Even as I asked that, I opened the book and tried not to wince at the various charred and or torn pages, the book lover inside of finding this area to be rather sacrilegious at the mont as I began to scan over the pages, skimming the information and trying to piece together this puzzle my not so academic lover was giving .
"There's things in here that have... controlled mana changes in items... how to extract one mana and replace it with another... theoretically sound and possible, but tedious and rather... oh. Yeah, that makes sense... But still, the difference between this and what they want to do is astronomically different thanks to the scale."
"Uh huh, so take a peak at this one next. Good thing these damn libraries were organized by theory and subject instead of by date or author..."
Closing the first book, I caught the second and began to skim that one as well, parsing over the various Ritual Circles and diagrams inside as I said "I still aren't really understanding what you are trying to piece together here, Anput... we know their goal already, and while the thod would be nice to learn, I don't know how much it changes..."
"Mhm, mhm... So these books have what in them? Just give an idea, alright? Like I've never heard of this before in my life."
Sitting down on the ground and crossing her legs, Anput stared at intensely as she waited for to begin teaching her what was inside of these books, which made sigh before I
decided to play along with her for the ti being.
"The theory in this first one is discussing how to go about successfully changing the mana type of a material or an area, and the various processes behind it. You can try to either wash away the elent and turn it into raw mana before imbuing it with the elent you desired, or you could completely sap away the mana and replace it entirely. A lot of this is... not outdated, but extrely basic and not that efficient in practice.
The second book is all about how to be more efficient with your mana, and the specific theory is how to use raw mana as a power source for all of the elents since, in theory, mana is universal and it just has different 'versions' of itself. Like how we are all mortals at the end of the day, but I'm a Vampire and you're a Jackalkin, so we have different pros and cons but a
similar 'base'."
"Sure, sure, that makes sense. Now, sexy teacher, please let know what those books all seem to have in common, will you? What is the main string connecting them to one another, and what connects them to the people who wrote them, perhaps."
There was a clear direction she wanted to take this, but she refused to give anything at all to work with besides that 'hint' of hers, so I sighed again and answered "The common the is replacing mana with a different kind of mana, and the idea seems to trend primarily towards swapping out enchantnts and other sorts of imbued spells, though there were brief ntions of overriding the world's predetermined 'bio' and replacing it with a 'domain' instead; like taking a chunk of desert and making it into a tundra, perhaps." "Yup, but... whatever, fine. What KIND of MANA are they using?" "Mana, Anput, they're using mana. Fire Mana, Earth Mana, Wind Mana, Water Mana! What
-other-!"
I paused, and she clapped her hands and fell back into the pile of books as she said "And she gets it after a few monts more~! Tell , if you had so other kind of mana, like... oh, I dunno, the mana that the Tza Fiend's use that revolves around... what was it again? Oh right, Change. Or perhaps if you had a Nua Fiend that used that nifty Decay Mana to do... oh yeah, get rid of so other mana and allow you to insert another kind of mana into the world!"
"Oh."
"Yeah, 'oh'. We kinda brushed it off at first, didn't we? 'We wanna change the Sultanate!' sounded so stupid at first, but these dumbasses are actually capable of doing just that, aren't they? Still, no matter how many Fiends they have, the Sultanate is huge, and this sort of event is gonna be flashy..."
The realization hit rather hard, and I looked down at the two books in my hand with a new light and understanding, ones that made rather... worried for what was to co, though Anput just sat back up and rubbed her hands together as she looked up at with a smirk.
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