With the sound of howling wind, and the crackling sound like that caused by stepping on the fallen Autumn leaves, crushing them underfoot. The city's walls and buildings rapidly decomposed, corroding into ash in.
An old-crypt like smell filled the air.
Only the Adventurer's Guild and the Library survived, the two buildings that I had Spatially displaced using a mid-level Spatial Ward. But surrounding the two buildings was only blackened and dead earth, a grave in which nothing would ever grow without Divine intervention or powerful Magics.
"Wow! My Lord," Soea sounded awed, astonished even. She jumped onto my back, wrapping her arms around me, her soft chest pressing against me.
Through the contact, I could feel her accelerated heart-rate, which seemed to speed up even more as she pressed against me, her tail no longer wrapped around my leg, but now encircled my waist.
Her skin was warm, and her breasts were distractingly soft as they deformed slightly against my back. Her tail was warm as well, soft like the rest of her skin, gently gripping me.
While I liked the feeling, I also felt a mixture of guilt, from forcing her change and feelings, and a feeling of deep pain as I remembered others who had been this affectionate.
I gripped one her hands with my free hand.
I felt her rest her chin on my shoulder.
When I looked at her, I saw that there was a slight fear in her eyes, "Are you okay, My Lord?"
It seems that she was worried about me, since I used such a powerful magic.
I followed a sudden urge to comfort her, so I leant over.
My lips touched hers.
She seemed surprised, but she didn't react adversely, and she returned my kiss.
I couldn't get enough of the soft feeling of her lips against mine, the taste of her tongue as it entered my mouth shyly.
I could feel a tiny drain on my energy, barely noticeable, as she accidentally fed off me.
It seems that she really liked my energy, her responses increased, and so did her sensitivity apparently.
Her, slight, worried trembling stopping.
So, I decided to, reluctantly, part our lips.
Still holding her hand, I gently pried her off me and turned to face her.
"The spell that I just cast is an ancient spell that technically has no name, but it seems to be a combination of the level-ten forbidden spell 'Cursed Soil: Decay' and the level-eleven spell 'Soul Steal: Area'. The second one is a self-created spell by my Master, long ago. Though the results of these spells give me this, a vital reagent for some of my strongest spells." As I mentioned the reagent, I showed the gem to Soea.
"My Lord, what do you mean your 'Master'?" Soea looked confused, though her eyes were also drawn to the gem.
"Master, she was an elf and one of the strongest of the Shureen, 'Forbidden Mage' and 'Soul Witch' were two of her nicknames. You don't think I got this power all by myself do you?"
"Well, you could--" Soea seemed to have an unreasonable belief in me.
"Nah, everyone needs a more learned person to teach them, unless they are the very rare genius...which, unfortunately I am not."
"My Lord, what is a Shureen?" Soea looked me in the eye.
She had never heard this word before, which made sense, since only very high ranking nobles, or the higher ranks in the church had heard that term.
"The Shureen, are a group of the most powerful Beings, just below a deity. Each one specializes in one or two aspects of magic or combat skills. The seven core members of the Shureen, 'The Seven' or the 'Seven Pillars' are Demigods however.
"Master was the Shureen of Soul and Forbidden Magic, she was a High Elf who was thousands of years old before she met me. When she was exiled from the Elven Territories, a new 'Soul Shureen' was selected. But Master trained me as her legacy disciple, she taught me magic that she didn't teach her previous disciple, the new Soul Shureen.
"I would technically be ranked on par with a Shureen when it comes to pure power, but I would be the youngest Shureen by at least ten thousand years, so I lose out in accumulated political and monetary power and wisdom."
"Wooow--" Soea squeaked in surprise.
Her admiration made me feel surprisingly good.
"What happened to your Master, My Lord?" Soea asked innocently.
"She...died, because of a small mistake." I felt a surge of pain and a lump in my throat as I voiced those words. Even though it had been a few years, I still felt the pain as acutely as when she died.
"Sorry, My Lord," Soea squeezed my hands, looking into my eyes.
"Anyway, this gem here was something called an Umbra Gem, a rare gem which can contain incredible amounts of power. Since I used Soul Steal, it is now technically a Soul Gem." I quickly changed the subject and spoke about the gem that was resting in my hands.
Soea looked away from my face and at the shining rock that I held.
Since I still held one of her hands, she only reached forwards with her other, as though she wanted to touch the Soul Gem. But she held back, as though she were worried that I would get mad at her for touching it without permission.
The tip of her tail twitched, lashing excitedly from side to side.
Soea had a surprisingly honest tail.
When it thrashed, she was excited...or horny. However, when she wrapped it around me, well the meaning was obvious. It was either a hug and a sign that she was feeling affectionate, though it may also mean that she needed comfort.
She looked so cute, her eyes darting between mine and the stone, her tail uncoiled from around me and twitching.
Like most women, it seems that she liked shiny things.
She looked at me with puppy eyes.
When I saw her cuteness, and her desire to hold the Soul Gem, I gave it to her with a laugh.
"Well, can you hold this for me? I will need it back later," I asked her, giving her permission, as I passed the stone over to her.
Nodding excitedly, she released my hand and held the Soul Gem in both hands, inspecting it.
"It's pretty, but why does it taste like your aura? Is it just because you are the one who cast the spell, My Lord?"
"That's correct, it's because I cast the spell, and because the souls were modified into a form of energy that is compatible with me."
She was a Succubus, a creature that fed on both Life-Force and souls, and she seemed to find mine especially delicious, so identifying my taste in the gem was very simple for her.
With a smile at her, I started to walk towards the now ruined city, I knew that she would notice this movement and follow along. Which she did, tearing her eyes away from the stone, she darted after me, though the stone was still cradled carefully in her hands.
She was careful as she followed me, it was as though she didn't wish to drop what I had entrusted to her.
The only two buildings that were still standing, were standing right next to each other. The Adventurer's Guild and the Library. There had been no proper Mage's Guild, and I made sure to very carefully eradicate the church to the bastard god.
The two buildings stood tall, three stories, seeming especially tall in the blackened, ashy field, the last sign that there was a civilized city that used to brim with life here.
I walked carefully through the thick ash, and when she saw me do this, and thinking that it had some meaning, Soea followed carefully. She went so far as to only step where I stepped. I felt a little embarrassed because I was only doing this so as to not stir up dust and make myself sneeze.
The first time I was around this spell, when Master cast it as a test on a small town of several hundred, I had a hay-fever like reaction and hives for a few days afterwards; much to Master's amusement.
The distance to the Guild building was surprisingly short, even at our slow and careful pace.
Arriving at the first building, the Adventurer's Guild, I dispelled the Spatial Ward and approached the perfectly preserved wooden door. The door was locked, but that was no problem.
With little effort, I shattered the lock and opened the door.
Of course, there was no one inside the building.
I wasn't interested in anything other than any books on magic that may be around, and maybe the Guild Master's secret treasure stash.
Looking around, I felt a powerful sense of nostalgia, the inside of the building was identical to any other Human Adventurer's Guild. One side of the large space was dominated by a massive wooden reception desk, which was separated into three sections.
The sections were for receiving requests, applying to submit a request to the Guild, and the Trade section, for selling Monster materials or for buying Guild specialized equipment or potions.
Usually, there would be three receptionists working, with two more wandering the Guild floor to make sure everything was fine and on standby.
The other half of the room was a restaurant/bar.
There was a wooden counter, with the alcohol still behind it, which I quickly approached and stored into my Spatial Ring.
Soea was just walking around behind me seemingly aimlessly, she wasn't at all interested in the contents of the room. When she had been a Priestess and working as an Adventurer, she had been in the Adventurer's Guild in the Capital.
Once you have seen one Adventurer's Guild, you have seen them all.
There were tables placed around the floor, where Adventurers would eat meals, forming parties, or relaxing after a request. This place was both a place of social gathering, and somewhere for Adventurers to relax from either requests or non-Adventurers bugging them.
On the stone wall, near the first section of the receptionist desk, was a Board. Pinned on this Board were pieces of paper which listed the details of all available requests.
All of this was the same as how it had been back when I was originally summoned and worked as an Adventurer to train before I went to kill the Demon King and 'save the world'.
I quickly vaulted over the reception desk, the documents which covered it were of no interest to me, but behind it were the doors which lead to the staff-only areas such as the warehouse and forbidden area of the Library next door, and the staff lunchroom.
After checking the doors, I discovered that as I suspected, there was nothing of interest in the warehouse.
But the Library held my interest.
When I entered the room, bookcases with shelves full of books and scrolls of all sizes met my eyes, the musty smell filled me with a feeling of peace and nostalgia.
Breathing deeply, I felt the familiar sense of relaxation that is common in places like libraries.
This was one of the places that I was looking forward to exploring, and after walking around a little and reading the spines of the books and seals on the scrolls, I stored everything in my Spatial Ring to read slowly later.
Now, there was only one last stop before I return to my base.
The last stop was the Guildmaster's office, to find his secret stash of treasure. All Guildmasters had their own vault or secret locker which they kept the most important things in the guild, things which couldn't go into the warehouse.
Because I was so distracted, I had almost forgotten that I was being followed by Soea, she was also so quiet and following completely docilely.
I had to go up to the third floor, the entire floor belonged to the Guildmaster, the second was for high-ranked Adventurers and general administration.
Seeing the heavily protected door, which was covered in all kinds of interesting wards and seals, I decided to have a quick study of it before undoing and destroying the protective magic.
The magic was low-level magic, level-two and three, some of the magic that makes up the foundation of a Mage. An apprentice didn't graduate and become a Journeyman before being able to reliably cast level-two magic, and some level-three spells. Normal Mages could cast as high as level-four magic, an Archmage could cast as high as level-six.
Most of my knowledge of spells didn't go below level-five, and as high as level-eleven, which only talented Shureen and Demigods could reliably cast.
Of course, I could easily break these weak spells with my eyes shut, or even use the speciality of a Hero to slip the wards without setting off even the smallest alarm.
That there were protections like this, was a good sign, it meant that there was something worth protecting, worth stealing, in the office.
All it took was a simple 'Greater Unlock' Rune, a level-five spell, one of the few I knew, to open the door. The treasures were all mine.
The door was ready to be opened, the wards and seals which had been protecting the door were considered fairly strong for a small town like this, so hopefully the treasure was interesting.
I could feel a sense of building excitement.
Opening the door, I calmly walked into the room.
It was fairly large, but sparsely decorated. There was only a few bookcases built into one wall, a large desk and chair, as well as a neat bed in a nook.
On the wall behind the desk was a large painting of a beautiful Elven woman standing calmly in front of the backdrop of a large and very busy city.
Searching the bookcases, I found that there were only the original versions of a few of the books from the forbidden room in the library. Since I didn't plan on selling the books, the expensive originals weren't worth anything to me, but I took them in case some of the information had been removed from the copies, it was possible that they had been censored.
When I went over to the desk and looked through the drawers, I found a book that I decided to store as well, a tome on fairly high-level sacred magic.
Sacred magic was different from Divine magic, but the effects were similar. Based around barriers and healing, as well as purification, these spells could be cast without specifically requesting a power from a deity, and were considered sacrilegious by the church.
I had searched almost all the locations that I could think of and there was only a few things worth storing, then I remembered that some people liked to hide items of great importance in safes, safes that were usually hidden behind paintings or photographs.
Walking over to the large painting of the Elven Woman, I inspected the frame and where it met the wall. It didn't take long for me to notice that there were very subtle marks on the wall which showed that it could be moved and that there was something hidden behind it.
Fortunately, my hunch was correct and behind the painting was a safe.
The safe was much more powerfully trapped, warded and sealed than the door which protected the room itself.
It took a little effort to safely slip the traps and wards before I undid the locks, I had to be careful or the backlash from the magic would destroy the contents.
After I unlocked the safe, I habitually took a quick look around the room, and saw Soea sitting in the Guildmaster's chair and looking at the Soul Gem in her hands.
She didn't see me looking at her, she was peering into the gem, looking at the souls moving around inside it. Suddenly, she brought her face close to the stone, she sniffed deeply.
Well, she did say that it smelled like me.
She seemed strangely fascinated with the stone. Well, it did house a lot of souls, which Succubi fed off, so it was like she was holding a massive and incredibly tasty feast.
Her eyes got damp, her skin flushed slightly, in a way similar to when she was sexually excited. She parted her lips, and after hesitating for a second, she stuck out her small tongue and licked the stone.
She let out a quiet moan and then rubbed her face on the stone for a few seconds before she lowered her hands back to her lap.
Smiling at the cute, but odd actions of my pet, I looked back to the safe.
Once the traps, seals, and wards were successfully undone, I opened the metal door.
Finally, I could see what was kept under such protection.
What met my eyes was much more interesting than all of the books combined, and much more precious. If anyone who knew how to use it decided to sell it, it could buy a massive city, and the hate of every church of the bastard god.
There were three items, only one of them I could use straight away. If I combined it with my Soul Gem and some special spells, I could get power on par with the Ancient Monsters and Elder Beings of the Badlands, maybe even up to the level of the weakest Demigods.
The item which drew my attention, the item which could boost my power by a large margin, was one of the horns of the Demon King. These horns were a sign of the Demon King's rank and prestige, they were also gifts from the Demon God, to allow the Demon King great power.
There was also the feather of an Angel, which for now, all I could do was store away for the future. This was because I would need an Angel's Grace to use this item properly, though I knew a few incredibly powerful summoning or transformations spells I could cast with it if I managed to get my hand on some Angelic Grace.
However, I could use the Horn of the Demon King right away, for a prototype high-level forbidden transformation spell, a spell which Master and I had found a long time ago, but neither of us got the chance to play with.
But it worried me, how could a Guildmaster of a small city get his hands on the feather of an Angel?
Even with all of my traveling, through areas that normal people, no matter their race, rarely went, I had only ever seen the descendant of Fallen Angels.
A two-thousand year old woman called Raven, though she looked like a weirdly attractive fourteen year old.
An eternal Loli.
She was the granddaughter of a Fallen Angel, a Quarter-Blood.
Pure Angels hadn't been seen on this world since the Celestial War twenty-thousand years ago.
How was it so easy to get your hands on Celestial remains that even a Guildmaster of a small city could get a complete feather of a pure Angel?
I could almost taste the sickening Divinity and Purity leaking from it, it made me feel slightly ill.
Though they seemed incredibly weak, almost as though the feather had been used over a fairly long period of time as a battery for Sacred or Divine spells since it had been taken from the Angel.
The Angel would also have been weakened before shedding the feather.
The last item in the safe was a journal.
After taking the journal, the room was properly looted and everything of value was now mine.
Without a word, I walked out of the room, Soea happily followed along behind me. I didn't have to check, she was a highly reliable pet.
I had a new goal, to use the Horn of the Demon King and see what would happen if I combined an ex-Hero humanoid with the prototype transformation spell. The spell was unranked and very high-level, my guess would be anywhere between level-eleven and possibly even a low tier level-twelve spell.
It would be powerful enough that my Soul Skill wouldn't be able to 'repair' my genetics and transform me back into a purely Human form, I would forever be changed.
Though I had no idea what it would make me look like, I didn't particularly care. The worst that would happen is I would look like the previous Demon King, and he was a handsome man with cool horns and wings, but still humanoid.
I doubted that the spell would turn me into some inhuman monster or abomination.
In the case that it did, I knew how to undo the spell, though it would mean that I would lose the powers that I gained from the transformation and would have wasted a precious and incredibly rare reagent.
Even though there was an insane number of potential risks, it no longer really mattered to me how I looked, or what downsides there were as long as it gave me the chance to kill that damn bastard god.
To be completely honest, I was excited, and a little scared.
This would be an incredibly interesting experiment. But, as Master said: 'Experimentation is one of the best parts of life!'
But knowing Master, she may not have been talking about experimentation with magic.
I signaled Soea, who was still following behind me, that it was time to go home.
Following the same path, we ran all the way back.
I was excited about the upcoming magic.
Fortunately, or unfortunately, the run back was uneventful.
Soea and I were the only living creatures within kilometers of the now demolished city.
