I laid there, over the rotting corpse of my enemy. I couldn’t move, my body was in pain, and yet I spasmed and twitched and flooded the area with my magic as I still wanted to fight. There was so much left to destroy and demolish, and I didn’t have the time to be moping around in the remains of previous fights!

  My senses intensified. I could still hear the melodious howl in this place. But more than that was the scent of blood and the energetic din of battle.

  People were still fighting, my friends against the allies of the dead woman below me, and I wanted to be part of that bloody requiem to violence!

  I twitched harder. I forced my body to move. Little by little, with cracking bone and tearing muscle, I crawled my way forward and turned myself around. I rose from my slumber like a rising puppet.

  I fell back on my ass. I could not do it, and I knew that I should not. I took the steps necessary to control the rage, from taking deep breaths, to letting the emotions be spent in solitude and inaction.

  I allowed myself to fall further, into a deep sleep.

  ~~~

  “Hey! You alright? That was so cool!” A familiar voice pulled me out of my slumber, but it was not any of my party’s. A soothing sensation of magic stitched my body together as overgrown grass grew all around me. I raised my head to see that my friends were just about finished with their fight, and I saw the person who had chosen to help me.

  “Elfrafim!” I coughed out blood. “You made it!”

  “Yes! I did!” she confirmed, and Astan squawked as if to say he was here too.

  I just smiled and closed my eyes, waiting until I was whole and hale once more. We had planned to meet up with them here years ago, and I was glad that we didn’t miss each other.

  ~~~

  [Extra-dimensional Demon Blood Storage has Reached Level 20. Would you like to evolve your Extra-dimensional Demon Blood Storage?]

  We all sat down together after everything was done and over with. My last new Mutation had reached the level 20 milestone, and I agreed to evolve it. There weren’t any choices this time, the organ right below my heart simply shifted and became more, and then it was done.

  The evolution did not add any new abilities, but the Mutation was already good for what it was supposed to do. I never ran out of mana or blood, and now I would have even more of the two.

  I just needed to eat a whole lot first to generate the additional blood I could keep inside myself, but unfortunately, our recent prey should not be eaten.

  I asked my friends how that fight had gone exactly, and I got to learn of how Prancine’s party fared while I was too busy with our own battle to pay much attention.

  Moonwash’s opening fireball evidently proved vital as it injured, confused, and outright killed one of the attackers. The rest were scattered and overwhelmed one by one by Therick, Angerly, and Berry all working in tandem, while Moonwash and Granuel tried to keep the other ones distracted. It didn’t always work, but my three melee friends could handle themselves if more came to target them, while our two mages hid behind their tower shields and armor to stall the enemies that tried to go after them. They got out of that fight with serious injuries, but not a single death.

  “So why were you guys even fighting?” Elfrafim looked at the pile of corpses we’d set aside. They would be stripped of their valuables and burned later. That was more common here for the dead. It was not technically illegal to be turned into materials after death, only taboo, so if someone wanted their corpses to be undisturbed then this was the best way. Only the powerful got graves, because they had to be guarded just in case. “I caught some of the fighting, but no context at all!”

  “Oh, well listen to this!” I pointed at the mush that was previously Prancine. “She wanted to recruit me, but then thought that the best way to do that was to manhandle my head, grab my fucking horns, and try to wrench my helmet away that way!” I calmed down just a little, because the perpetrator was already dead. No reason to dwell on it. “Why is it always the helm and the horns? What the fuck is wrong with people? Do they want to die??”

  Elfrafim chuckled awkwardly. “Even I tried it when we first met! That was really bad.”

  “You did!” I gestured and huffed in mock offense. “Ahhh. Why must I be cursed with such beauty?”

  “Because you are a demon,” Elfrafim replied confidently.

  “Flattery will get you nowhere!” I huffed, completely flattered.

  ~~~

  We traveled towards the very center of the wonderzone. The wagons rolled across the untamed magical wilderness as the mountain in the distance grew ever closer and more bizarre. The winds blew stronger, the song screamed louder, and the monsters were higher-leveled.

  We were only confident enough to aim for the very center now because we had a powerful friend with us. All the information we got from the guild indicated that this wonderzone was a lot more dangerous than the Bottomless Oceanlake that I had once spent years near in. Our current working theory was that the wonderzone of watery depths was simply far larger than any other, so the monsters were more spread out, and they preferred the depths. The lake allegedly went all the way down to the planet’s core after all. Not that there was actually any evidence for that. How could anyone know?

  On one particular night, we were attacked by a striger. It was a sort of large cat-bird monster that preferred to strike in the dark. It was utterly silent, and its fur allowed it to blend into the blackness of the night perfectly. I was sure I could’ve easily taken the level 40 monster by myself in a straight-up fight, but as it stood, were Elfrafim not standing on watch, then some of us might have died before we could react.

  Another time, we found ourselves facing off against a chuwawar. It was a level 40 monster in the guise of a chihuahua, and just as vicious if not worse. Elfrafim allowed us to take on this foe upon our request, and the chuwawar began barking at us before we could even brace ourselves.

  The sound seeped into my ear canals and punched my eardrums.

  That was not an exaggeration, but an accurate description of the pain and disorientation that suddenly assaulted me and my friends. Blood poured out of all our ears, and I did not fare any better, for I was not even the most durable of us all, though I did recover before the rest of them because I just didn’t care about the pain. Granuel had it the absolute worst as he was forced to his knees because of how much more sensitive his ears were.

  Still, everyone was able to recover swiftly, because we were strong. The chuwawar kept on barking, and we just powered through it until Moonwash managed to put up her anti-sound barrier. The song of the wonderzone completely stopped, and the barks of the chuwawar came to us at the same volume as that of a normal chihuahua, but heavily muffled.

  The monster finally realized that something was wrong once we launched our projectiles toward it. Our barrier was also heavily disturbed by the assault, and more of the sound got in, disorienting us some more. The chuwawar on the other hand showed us just how quick on its feet it was as it managed to dodge most of our projectiles, but not all. We had blanketed the place with many different elements, and the tiny dog could not dodge everything. It came out of that encounter lightly damaged, unable to fully shrug off even the weaker attacks. Our opponent was not that durable.

  We launched another volley.

  The chuwawar dodged most of it, and then charged right for us.

  That was exactly what I wanted as I surrounded myself in crashing waves of magic. Moonwash canceled her barrier as it was useless now for a variety of reasons. The chuwawar’s deafening barks came back with a vengeance, and it avoided my magic and greatsword before managing a lunge and a bite on my bracers.

  It didn’t last long. My countless offensives drove the frothing beast off, and then I heard its irritating barks once again. I got so pissed off that I manifested the wrath magic in my ears, and just fucking let it rip.

  I wavered.

  The world spun, the song of the wonderzone stopped, and I could no longer tell which direction I was facing.

  Destroying my own ears did not only shield me from the violent sounds, but it also completely ruined my balance.

  “I fucked up.” My throat vibrated, but I could not get the words out.

  “I FUCKED UP.” I shouted the same thing again, then remembered that I literally could not hear a single damn thing.

  I thought I was being clever by getting rid of my hearing, but this was worse than what that chuwawar was doing to me.

  I stabbed my sword in the ground in an act of defiance. I leaned against it to keep myself standing. I refused to be taken out of the fight.

  My eyes scanned the battlefield, and I could not find the chuwawar in my field of contorted vision. I fought off the dizziness for a second, and finally spotted my prey. It had circumvented me and was instead going after my friends.

  My evil eyes pulsed, and so did my aura. The monster buckled for a moment, and was not able to completely evade Angerly’s mace. Granuel and Moonwash locked it down with their nature spells, and Berry dove in there to make sure that the monster could not escape. Her big claw came first, which the chuwawar immediately latched onto, and then the blades of her hand and lack thereof punctured shallow wounds into the creature.

  Our enemy tried to break free and run away as more and more vines bound its speed, but it found Therick’s sword waiting on its way out.

  That wasn’t nearly enough to kill the monster, despite the gash that it managed to leave, but it was enough. The anvil had done its job.

  Now it was time for the hammer.

  I allowed the wrath to overtake me, I relied on my vision to tell me where to go, and I made it there in a single bound.

  The chuwawar whimpered pathetically in that eternal moment before the end, but I did not show mercy and swung my sword.

  My entire might and a lot more was behind that strike, and it entirely broke the level 40 monstrosity into separate pieces of gore.

  I had won.

  The world remained quiet.

  ~~~

  “FUCK,” I shouted when my friends began to heal me, though I did not hear my own voice. “I SHOULDN’T HAVE DONE THAT AHAHAHAHAHA.”

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  They looked confused, so I explained.

  “I ATTACKED MY OWN EARS BECAUSE I THOUGHT I CAN OUTSMART THE CHUWAWAR THAT WAY.”

  They looked at me with incredulous expressions. Many laughed, others sighed, and some just kept on working.

  Finally, my hearing popped back into place.

  “...u’re a fucking idiot.”

  “Why would you destroy your own ears?”

  “What kind of imbecile thinks that’s a good idea!”

  “Of course you lost all sense of balance.”

  “What did you expect?”

  “It was hilarious to watch.”

  “Sqwuak!”

  “The real enemy was yourself all along.”

  “Damn. That’s deep.” I clutched my hearts through the armor, and fell to the ground laughing.

  ~~~

  “I’m taking this one,” Elfrafim said.

  I looked out the wagon window and agreed.

  Standing in the distance was humantis. It was a naturally level 80 monster that looked like a giant vibrant green mantis. Even I wasn’t insane enough to think I stood a chance. So I stood back, made sure I was battle-ready just in case, and then settled in to watch.

  Elfrafim reached the creature, and they both just blurred.

  I felt a gust of wind, but one that was laughably mild compared to the devastation that I saw. It was almost indistinguishable from the constant howl of this place. They moved at a speed that should’ve rivaled an angel, but it did not shake the environment in the same way.

  I wanted so desperately to bear witness to this battle, but my perception could hardly keep up. So I strained my mind and pushed all my senses to the maximum. My wrath magic could not help me here, but I continued to watch until my eyes and my brain could at least process some of what was happening.

  The mantis was faster, I realized, but it almost didn’t matter for how much Elfrafim won in sheer skill. The creature did get some hits in, spreading cuts across Elfrafim’s body, but they were all shallow, and each was paid for in blood as my friend only allowed those strikes to get through so she could smash her staff into her opponent harder.

  The humantis’ movements grew more strained as the wounds piled up, while Elfrafim barely slowed. Eventually, after what had been a pretty short battle, the opening she had labored to create finally showed, and Elfrafim literally jumped on the opportunity.

  She latched herself onto the monster’s head and absolutely brutalized it with her daggers.

  ~~~

  We stopped.

  Me and my friends exited out of the wagon, almost as if in a trance.

  We had gotten as close as we dared to the mountain that was the center of this phenomenon. The winds here were so strong that I had to actively fight it lest I be swept away. And the sound, oh the sounds!

  The song of this place had reached its zenith. It slammed into our ears in the gentlest ways. It whispered, it screamed, it was a melody of a thousand cohesive wholes. I closed my eyes and plunged myself into darkness, just to listen to it for a time.

  And then I opened my eyes again to the wider world. Vision returned and I beheld the foggy skies and the mountain not of earth, but of a brown and grey crystalline structure. It was very steep, almost like a pillar at times, and it was not entirely whole. The glossy mountain was pockmarked by holes and tunnels that went around its entire structure. It was like swiss cheese in the many openings that it had, and it was like a flute as powerful winds flowed through each hole like an elegant dance that created an entire tornado centered around this place.

  But it was not really a tornado. It had the force of one, if not more, but it was not the shape I associated with the concept. No, this was truly a dance as the winds somehow looped around each other with little disturbance, as if creating roads through the air that continued onwards into the wider wonderzone.

  The animals that could live this close to the mountain took advantage of these air currents, from the birds, to the bats, to the fish and snakes that could just wiggle their way through the air. But there was one that lorded above them all. For high in the sky, beyond the ever-shifting clouds, and at the very peak of the mountain, was a truly gigantic serpentine creature. Its long body of shimmering scales coiled and looped through the many tunnels of the mountain, and on its back were a pair of brilliant white wings.

  I had only read about them in books. With a long body of shimmering scales that looped and coiled through the many tunnels of the mountain, and brilliant white wings on its back. I knew the creature to be a basilisk.

  “Wow.”

  I finally allowed myself to speak a single word.

  This was the Singing Vortex.

  ~~~

  “Hey Elfrafim,” I said the next day, when we had just found a small boiling pond. It wasn’t actually hot, but air just bubbled forth from the bottom of the natural formation. “You think you can take me?”

  “Hmm? You’re very strong for your level, but I don’t think you can punch up that high!”

  I snorted. “I have not used my hyperdemon gland since my last evolution. My Demon Harbinger soul feat has also mentioned some improvements in my ability to advance my species. I almost want to just bank on that to become a greater demon or whatever comes next, because it might just be too risky to try anything.”

  “Hmmm… We can still do it if you’d like. I think you might be able to do some damage, but nothing permanent. So it’s okay. Do you still have… that thing where your mana can at least prevent you from killing yourself?”

  “Oh. Well, I uh…” I looked within myself, and I struggled to interpret how my wrath mana behaved. It wished for the destruction of all life and more, and that included me. The framework I’d built before about how I couldn’t do evil things if I died was still there, but it was far less effective with an element that wished for my demise too.

  I conveyed all this to Elfrafim, and decided that I should at least make sure that I would survive it if I ever had to use my hyperdemon gland again in the future.

  “That aside, there’s something else I want you to teach me.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah, so I can fly right?”

  “Congratulations!”

  I couldn’t tell if she was taking the piss or being genuine.

  “...Right,” was what I settled for. “I suck at it though, and I want you to teach me.”

  “Ah. I don’t mind, but you do know that I’m no expert at that either, right? I only use gliders.”

  “And yet you’re still far better than me, and I have wings! I think it might just be my brain and instincts. I don’t think I got much inherent knowledge about how to fly, and my mind is just not built to be in the sky.”

  “And I’ve had centuries to practice. You’re doing fine, Haell. But that is an interesting thought about brains. I definitely don’t have a bird brain either, so maybe I can teach you a thing or two!”

  “Hell yeah! But wait, there’s more. This one I’m sure you’re an expert in.”

  “Well don’t leave me hanging!”

  I went back to the nearby wagon, and produced a bow.

  “Air superiority is absolutely broken. And this will allow me to be even more unfair.”

  “Ahahaha! Yes! Yes it would.”

  In the depths of the Singing Vortex, a new training arc began.

  ~~~

  We spent the next year and change in the Singing Vortex wonderzone, where Elfrafim taught me a lot of things. She could not stay indefinitely in the air during these winds either, but it was definitely easier for her considering that it was by the power of wind that she flew. She could actively interact with and mitigate the turbulence of this place, or even directly ride the wave. All I was really able to learn from her was some tips and tricks about balancing and gliding, but I still managed to improve my flying skills in many more ways simply because I finally had the time to give flying the attention it deserved.

  I never had that. I was often too close to civilization ever since I got my wings, so I couldn’t just freely fly whenever I wished lest I be caught and pursued. It was a great disservice to the wonderful ability that was flight.

  I did have another teacher though. I learned more from watching Astan than from seeing how Elfrafim’s glider worked. He couldn’t speak of course, but there was a lot that could be understood from just having someone who had actual wings slowly show you the process. The limiting factor was that my suprasoar friend also used wind magic to assist with his flight, which I could not easily replicate.

  I did try though. Moonwash made a wind wand for me, and I had a decent affinity for the element. It definitely worked to stabilize me, but I felt that it was mainly because of where I was. So we left the wonderzone for a while, and I confirmed that wind magic helped more in those extreme conditions, but it also always helped regardless anyway.

  All in all, I could see myself using the wand as a flying aid from time to time, but I would definitely not use it to try and fight someone with. It was blatantly obvious how much weaker it was compared to my innate magic. It lacked that innate connection to me that I was increasingly convinced mattered a lot, like how I inherently generated wrath and hellfire.

  Additionally, every moment of my existence was training for wrath and hellfire magic, for as painful as having them in my blood was, it was certainly effective. I just didn’t have that for any other element, and the power I could achieve with each was only underwhelming.

  ~~~

  Elfrafim trained me in the way of the bow just as I had asked. Aiming was made even harder by the winds, so we went out of the wonderzone again a few times just to get me used to normal shooting first. I used my memory core to perfect my aim, just like I did for my flying practice and every kind of training I did in general.

  Once that was done, the wonderzone actually provided a really good training ground for shooting in extreme conditions. But the most important thing my friend taught me was probably how to add an element to each and every shot. Elfrafim’s own bow was an extremely limited magical apparatus by itself, usable only for weaving mana into her arrows. It was a process that I was intimately familiar with, for I always did it with my sword, but there was a stark difference between our methods.

  First was that my weave was almost an extension of my circulatory system, while Elfrafim’s was a series of elegant knots that would not be out of place in either a king’s cape or a ship. This turned out to be a problem for me because arrows were meant to be launched away from my body, which meant that I would lose my connection to it, and the mana would not be able to circulate through my body and back. Worse, so much of the arrow’s mana would just be wasted dissipating into the air, like a severed arm that was still trying to pump blood back into the greater body. I never learned to seal off my weave, as it wasn’t ever meant to function on its own.

  This meant that I had to learn a different weave for my arrows, one that kept the mana compact and unable to escape into the air. I shouldn’t just tie it off, because while that would work, a structure like the veins of a living thing that I had been using would be wholly inefficient for what I was trying to achieve.

  I worked with Elfrafim and even the rest of my friends to come up with a new weave. We had to consider the speed of construction and the amount of magic we could pack into every shot, among other things. I tried plenty of different methods, but in a very ironic twist, what I ultimately came up with was chains.

  I was familiar with this imagery, for it was the very thing that I hated. Yet those emotions were an obsession in and of themself, so I had actually developed an affinity for the structure of the chain. I wasn’t sure about it at first, but I needed more rigid structures like this to bind mana more tightly into an object, so I decided to just go with the method that worked best. Moonwash helped me create a few lengths of chain to deepen my understanding of the structure even more, and I… actually found myself playing around with it as a potential weapon afterwards.

  At the end of the day… I did find the imagery of chains to be very cool, no matter the symbolism.

  ~~~

  A vortex crawled below me, like the pathetic abomination that it was. The monster was a massive octopus, whose body stretched very far across the land. It hunted prey by overwhelming them with a truly massive amount of thin tendrils, each equipped with fanged suction cups that could slurp up some pretty large prey when all put together.

  I continued to float in defiance to the winds as I focused on my task and appreciated the song of the land. I fetched an arrow from the quiver in my thigh, and I suffused its very being with mana held together by chains of hellfire. I aimed my bow, I nocked my arrow, and then I drew the sting with all the wrathful strength of a demon.

  Hellfire was made manifest.

  My grip on the string was released.

  The arrow flew true.

  It fell upon the monster like the judgment of a wrathful deity, and I was pleased to see the fire spread across the vulnerable flesh of the level 40 monster

  The vortex recoiled and tried to slink away, but I did not let it escape. I followed the creature on my wings as I drew another arrow and repeated the same process I had done before.

  A wrath arrow descended like the rod of god, and the wound exploded into gore as rot began to seep deep inside the creature.

  This was a weapon that evidently synergized better with my wrath magic. The arrow would bury itself inside my enemy, and the horrid element would take advantage of its depth by spreading rot and other curses around the affected area in a way that hellfire could not. The wrath embedded within might even be increasing the arrow’s sharpness, for it was an element of magic that worked well with many different methods of inflicting violence.

  I continued my bombardment, the vortex died without ever having a chance to retaliate.

  Subscribe to my to read up to Chapter 152! I just did another double chapter release there, and one is almost 9K words long. The other one is 4k, so together that's 13K words (Maths!) of new content that dropped at once. I did consider if I should also give you guys the double chapter now, but I decided against it, because just like last time, you will thank me later. These are two chapters that need to be consumed together. So wait for that, big things are coming, and you will benefit from the double chapters too once the time comes. But if you cannot wait, then hop on in to my , support my livelihood, and experience some chapters and an ongoing arc that I am incredibly proud of! Especially that very latest chapter. I rewrote almost 9k words in 2 days, and I'm still basking in the afterglow of how I turned something important but doomed to be mediocre because of my lacking skills, to something I am actually very very proud of.

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  Pretty happy with the chuwawar fight. It’s a newer addition to the chapter, but I just came up with the idea for the creature later on, but then thought it would make more sense for the chuwawar to be here. As for Haell’s mistake, I actually had to ask some friends wtf would happen if she just yeets her ears and if that would work. Turns out it won’t, but it’s funny and very believable, so I just had her go through with the very-stupid-idea in-hindsight.

  Not sure about keeping the Singing Vortex name for this chapter. I deliberately didn’t call the wonderzone by name until now because I thought that might be impactful… but idk. It might’ve just been dumb and confusing. Oh well.