The ground was cold against Luciel's palms. That much he could register after an embarrassing fall, but the heat of the lava remained safely within him. It sunk deep past his muscles and into the marrow, filling the hollows of his bone and reinforcing them.
His chest rose and fell. The air tasted sharper and more vivid as usual. He could recognize the rot of Discordants from miles away, and he could see the world in sharper detail.
'What the hell was that?'
Luciel was understandably confused. Out of nowhere, an alien voice pierced through his mind, and his Encore decided to burst in flame.
His fingers curled into the dirt.
'…Your star burns brighter.'
Luciel didn't know what that meant, and he didn't have the luxury of figuring it out. He just had to accept that his Stanza was extremely abnormal compared to others.
Though… that voice, it sounded familiar for some reason, even though he couldn't search for where it was that he had heard it.
'No. I need to get up first.'
Luciel groaned through clenched teeth as he rolled onto his stomach, and ate dirt in the process.
"Ptui!"
After eating his meal, he planted his palms in the dirt, shoulders trembling, and shoved himself upright in one sharp motion.
In that brief window, Luciel was exposed from every angle. The Slitface seized on the opening, launching itself forward in a blur, claws already unfurled in fury.
'Shit!'
Before he could react, a shadow blotted out the mist above him. He immediately knew whose shadow it belonged to.
The ink knight moved like a precise stroke of calligraphy, flashing its greatsword in a vertical arc that split the air before it split the creature. In just one move, the greatsword not only carved out one Slitface that had flanked him, but the whole line behind, leaving only corpses in his wake.
'That's ridiculous now.'
The towering knight then returned to stillness as if nothing had happened, planting its sword into the earth.
"LUCIEL!"
He flinched and turned to the source of the shout, slightly far away from his false promise.
'Damn, she saw me.'
Luciel had been hoping Bambi was distracted enough not to witness this. He knew her already worrisome behavior would spike into something unmanageable.
"Do you really wanna die!? I swear on every Relic I own I will—"
He blocked out the noise and continued looking out for Slitfaces. There were around forty more of them on his side. As for Belynda's side, he hadn't paid much attention — not that she needed any.
Without hesitation, Luciel dove into a group of four Slitfaces. Dawn sliced down the first one clean for a quick offensive. Simultaneously, he condensed the heat onto his palm as all three of the beasts jumped at him.
'Please work.'
He draw his arm back like a pitcher, than raked his vicious fire down the beasts' faces. It knocked back the Slitfaces as flame clung on their flesh. No matter how much the beasts thrashed around, the fire couldn't be quenched. As they succumbed to their death, their mandibles clicked slower and weaker, until it became silent.
Luciel clenched his fist, enjoying the sweet victory using his Stanza for the first time.
Then, just a few seconds later, that familiar voice rang in his head again.
[Your star burns brighter.]
He had a strong urge to check out what the voice was referring to, but another group of six had already pounced on him to avenge the murders of their kind.
Luciel did not once think. He moved according to his instinct, and his sword traced the line that was given to him. In one fluid motion, two Slitfaces were cut in half, and in the next, fire burst out of his palm and struck the rest.
However, one of them slipped through the line of fire and clawed at him. Luciel swiftly reacted and raised Dawn to block the attack, but it broke through a small gap and scratched his hand.
He retreated his arm as the beast's momentum slowed down.
'There!'
Seeing this gap, he thrust his sword with vigor, skewering the Slitface mid-air. Dawn swiped downward and plummeted the beast onto the ground.
The process was largely the same for the rest of the Discordants. Each time Luciel killed a cluster of them, the voice would welcome him with a notification that his star had burned a little bit brighter. And each time it happened, he felt his flame become more tangible and potent, as though his soul was feeding on the Slitfaces' deaths.
However, it also drained his energy faster. While his body and mind were rewired after awakening, stamina was a major problem for a newbie like him, and because of that, he had made stupid mistakes, allowing a few cuts onto his body.
Luciel thought of using the flame to see if it could recover his stamina, but it was rather risky in the middle of a battle, so he put it off. And also, he didn't really need to.
Bambi would shoot blood crystals at Slitfaces on his blind side before the ink knight could even swing its sword. He essentially possessed two protectors, which was kind of lame since he wanted to a challenge.
Finally, after the battlefield had settled down, Luciel quickly summoned his runes.
[Soul Embers: 62/250].
His eyes widened slightly, surprised by the progress he had made. It also confirmed his suspicion — his method of Refrain was entirely different from normal Resonators. His soul purified Hollow Essence automatically and turned it into Soul Embers to feed the Encore.
'How convenient!'
His progression would be many times faster than the average Resonators — maybe even everyone, provided that they also didn't have some unique properties. But who could know? Each Resonators possessed a unique Stanza, so he might not be that special.
But it didn't matter whether Luciel was one of one or not. He now had a purpose, a sense of progression that shattered his previous meaningless life.
In any case, he actually didn't know how these Soul Embers added up. Since he lost count of Slitfaces he had killed, there was no way of knowing.
Luciel assumed each gave him two Embers because there was no way he took on sixty-two of them in that short amount of time. Thirty-one sounded more plausible.
Satisfied, he dismissed the runes and scanned the area.
Corpses scattered in every direction and distance, the earth painted in black blood and detached limbs. He counted at least hundreds of them, and he dispatched around one-tenth while Bambi and Belynda took care of the rest.
"Well done, kid!"
Belynda shouted from afar as she dismissed her dual pistols—
'Wait. She uses dual pistols?'
Luciel blinked, watching the faint shimmer of light dissolve around her empty hands. He hadn't paid attention to due to mania and adrenaline, so he was intrigued to see Belynda not using a Relic.
Although, people might be confused when dual pistols could just disappear like that, but Relics never manifested themselves as modern weapons. Firearms, railguns, cannons — anything of that nature fell under GenTech, short for Genesium Technology.
GenTech weapons were attempts to replicate Relics, and while they didn't have the magical properties of the originals, Heerser managed to replicate one key trait: summoning and dismissing at will.
While it wasn't to say GenTech weaponry could replace Relics, it certainly was the baseline for most operatives in the field due to its non-existent Echo Essence usage.
So Luciel could understand that for someone like Belynda, a pack of Class 1 DDs hardly warranted drawing a Relic.
He thought he might just ask for a GenTech weapon. As an Awakened, his Encore was miniscule compared to those two, which meant he had a meager capacity of Echo Essence to use. Case in point, his Echo Essence was nearly spent, and he could feel his Encore almost empty.
If Luciel could use a GenTech weapon for the small fries, he could save at least fifteen percent of Essence usage.
'Yeah. Dawn needs some rest from time to time.'