The knowledge from the Merged body art flows into me, filling my mind almost instantly. A voice, burning with power and authority, rings out in my head. The voice is low and fills my ears, and almost feels as though it’s tearing through my brain. The voice of King Ancalius.
“The Merged Body Art is a technique not for the faint of will. It requires perfection, and nothing less. Sessions of meditation will take upwards of a year to complete for even the slightest gain in power. I, myself, took nearly a century to reach the third circle.”
I sit down on the floor and focus entirely on his words,
“What you may have heard about this art is entirely untrue. It is NOT the combination of Aura and Mana. Rather, it is the product of an entirely different form of energy.”
Oho? I don’t remember this part of the book. So I’ll have to use a different form of energy? I reckon that may be the Eldritch energy I’m sensing from it.
“The Merged Body Art, or to say it’s true name, The Eldritch God Eater Technique, is much more incredible than any technique a single man, woman, or god could create. To create the first circle of the technique, one must first reach the Tenth circle in either mana or aura, create a body composed entirely of mana, and have access to a small source of Eldritch energy.”
I can’t help but smile as I hear this. I already have everything I need in order to begin this technique. At least, if the energy coming from this book is actually eldritch.
“Eldritch energy is the energy that is released by the bodies of dead gods, and to a lesser extent, demons. In order to collect the Eldritch energy I needed, I traveled into hell via a portal created by myself using a technique that shall not be named. I managed to kill several different types of demons, but they never gave me enough energy. It was then that I stumbled upon a large gathering of Druegar surrounding what appeared to be a large tower. This tower emanated the exact energy I needed, and so I snuck upon it. Using magic, I managed to carve a small hole into the side where I hid for a century straight, absorbing the energy coming from the tower.”
Dead gods and demons release the same energy? I suppose that makes sense. There are demonic counterparts to gods, so I would assume demons are just the demonic counterpart to angels. Which means I could likely gain the same energy from a dead angel as well.
“After this century was over, I had broken through to the third circle of this technique, and my word, was it powerful. It was at this point where the tower began to move, and I realized that I had been living inside of the shell of some demonic hermit crab. Naturally, I assumed that if I were to kill this beast, the amount of eldritch energy it would generate would be immense. But, I was wrong. After killing this beast, the thing that it had released was not, in fact, eldritch energy, but instead a wave of miasma. The energy filled my body and led to… Irreversible effects.”
King Ancalius was infected by miasma? That wouldn’t make any sense… The man lived for centuries after creating this technique…
“However, this book is not an autobiography. I’m sure books about me shall be studied for centuries to come.”
Yikes. That didn’t age well. I’m probably one of the few people alive today who even know the name Ancalius.
“To begin learning this technique, I have left you a strand of the hair of a dead goddess. It should contain enough eldritch energy to help you get started. First, you must force out all mana or aura from your body. This should bring you near death. Quickly, you must begin to absorb the energy coming from the hair strand. This process will be painful. Much more painful than when you destroyed and rebuilt your heart. The energy will run rampant throughout your body and will begin to destroy your entire being. Let it happen. Allow this energy to destroy everything inside of you, and you will find yourself born anew as a first circle practitioner of the Eldritch God Eater Technique.”
His voice quickly disappears, leaving me with the sound of wind blowing in from the entrance to the tomb. So, I simply allow a rogue energy to ravage my body from the inside after weakening myself to the point that even a child could kill me? Sounds like a fun time, to me. The only issue is that he never stated how long this method would take to complete… I could be here for as little as a minute or as long as a century. He never clarified how much of his time in the tower was spent starting off the technique versus growing in strength.
I have people to worry about back home. I have a war to finish. I have a demonic and divine invasion of the world to fight against… But I can’t do anything with the power I currently have.
Fuck it.
I begin to rapidly release the mana from my body, instantly filling the air around me with a dense collection of mana. Rai on my arm quickly slides off my arm in a drunken state as the energy fills her stomach beyond what it's ever been before. This energy quickly grows to cover the entire continent, making weaker magic practitioners feel nauseous, while filling the bellies of any monsters around. As it reaches halfway through the ocean, I feel the last drop of my mana dissipate.
Immediately, I feel as though everything is wrong. It’s as though I’ve spat out my last bit of air while floating through the ocean. My entire body screams at me to fill it back up even a little. I grab the golden strand of hair from the book and begin to absorb the energy within, nearly recoiling in pain as it forces its way through my skin and into my body. Its pathway through my arm feels as though plasma is being forced through me without burning away my nerves. It feels as though millions of daggers are flaying my skin, waiting for it to regrow, and then flaying it again. It’s as if lightning is tearing through my body. I’m unable to keep my arm still as my muscles begin to flex on their own. I can see the fibers being torn through under my skin.
I become unable to take the pain silently any longer, and release a guttural wail of pain. My entire existence becomes an inescapable torture as the energy beginst to tear away at my Dragon Heart. As the last bit of eldritch energy is sucked from the lock of hair, it turns into motes of light that drift off and disappear into the air.
Slowly, the pain begins to subside and leaves my entire body sore and exhausted. I nearly pass out onto the floor before the energy within my body settles. I take a few seconds to catch my breath as the exhaustion slowly dissipates. I reach out and pick up Rai, placing the limp, drunken snake over my shoulder. I go to stand up, feeling my legs turn to jelly.
Paypal
Oh, I’m so excited to see what will happen next!
Well I'm shocked.
First of all R.I.P. Yuri. She managed to tell us Rosie was hiding something and then promptly got axed. She also seems to be silent here. That doesn't exactly bode well... Maybe Rosie decided to use a stronger seal on Yuri because they knew they were about to enter a weakened state? If she didn't, I could easily see Yuri managing to take control over Rosanna's corpse at least temporarily.
Second of all I suppose we got the answer on how Ancalius had demon materials. He ended up going to hell before the demons came to the human realm. I have no clue how he managed to stumble upon them first, but I have a feeling his actions might be the very reason demons managed to worm there way here. Perhaps it's because of the miasma he absorbed. Looking back to the demonology chapter we learn that demons are spirits who form around miasma rather than mana so I imagine they're apt at manipulating it. My question though is, what exactly IS miasma. We know mana is dark matter, so what would be the counterpart for miasma? Does it have a completely different magic system? High levels of mana are poisonous to the weak, could miasma poison be a similar issue? I.e miasma is super power dense? Questions, questions, questions.
Third, I feel like pain nullification magic might've been real useful here. Maybe even just remove the nerves entirely before going into the super painful process. No? Just A sucker for pain? Alright then.
Fourth the huge mana push that Rosie did could potentially have some disastrous consequences. Every monster on the continent just got a massive power boost and the humans didn't... a perfect opportunity to cause some chaos!
Finally, I'm starting to have a lot of questions as to what came first, the story Rosie read or the world she is in now? Why was the merged body art skimmed over so much? If a human on Rosie's level of reality wrote the book first, does that mean people on Rosie's meta level able to create gods on this world's reality level? What level is Yuri on in this convoluted layer cake reality? How about Rosanna?
The people of this world always knew about demons, as there were several cases of people forming contracts with them using their souls similar to our world. About the pain nullification magic, hindsight is 20-20. And the mana push itself won't actually affect monsters all that much. At least, not in the short term. Monsters do grow stronger by feeding on mana, but the amount she released was so dense that most monsters will only see a small increase in strength. Humanity will also see a small increase in strength, as the amount of mana she released will pretty much permanently increase the amount of magic available in the world for anybody to absorb.
After putting some more thought into my last question, I think I've found my new favorite line in this story.
"Lazy writing, I suppose.”
No matter how I try to interpret this line, it reveals a whole lot about the world. At first I thought it was rather innocuous. A minor self aware joke to explain why Rosie understands the words in the tomb. Then I realized king Ancalius shouldn't have demon materials to make the book and received the author's response.
This lead me to my second interpretation, that being this line was foreshadowing to the fact that king Ancalius could potentially be a time traveler of some sort. Ancalius having experienced present day would perfectly explain both the modern language and demon parts. Honestly even with the explanation we got this chapter for the demon parts, this possibility is still on the table. We didn't get any information that would allow us to date when Ancalius went to the demon realm. It doesn't even take a full decade for a corpse to decay into naught but bone. (Don't ask why I know that) we don't know for sure how old this corpse is and as of current, there is no explanation for the modern language in the tomb.
Now that's one way of interpreting the line, but you could also take it at face value. 'It was that way in the book, so even if it doesn't make sense, it's that way in reality'. That would be undeniable proof that the book came first! If the world came first, there wouldn't be any lazy writing because the characters would be actual people and society and language would evolve naturally. The writing would just be a reflection of the world. The world would be coherent, but last chapter we were shown it's not.
This has a whole lot of implications to sort through. The first one off the top of my head is whether or not the characters actually have free will. Characters are written to fulfill a purpose. They act out a role in a story and often work as a mouth piece for an idea or way of thinking. Let's look at the prince for example (was his name Landon before being thrown in the brothel? It's been way to long.). His role in the story was to serve as a punching bag. Rather than a human, the prince is a collection of negative character traits that would make him hateable to the widest possible audience. This is so that when horrible things are done to him, the audience doesn't feel bad. 'He's done so many horrible things, so he deserves what happens to him'. With this revelation we are now forced to ponder whether the Prince Rosie tortured did those horrible things because he wanted to, or because the author wrote it so he did those things. If it's the latter, well I think that makes the atrocities Rosie has committed significantly worse. Evil would've been the prince's nature. They couldn't choose to not harass and kill Rosanna, it was the only thing they could do. Sure putting them down would be for the betterment of the world, they couldn't be good after all, but to go to such extremes? Is that still what they deserved?
I think making me ask a question like that makes a story great, and "Lazy writing, I suppose.” is the reason I asked it.
@Afewconcepts65 Bruh you should be a youtuber with these deep dives.
In all seriousness, I'm glad my shitty cobbled together mumbo jumbo has you so interested
any reason for the 60%
it saves space on my desk
Tftc
I wonder if the "Original Heroine or Villainess" (The body that our MC taken) might play a bigger role later? Also, if their Love Interest (I think they were the Former Heroine's sister?) might play a important role from the Novel that the MC read.
TFTC