Scarlet

I can’t help but smile as I feel myself devouring every last void creature currently on Earth in one fell swoop. A sensation that is positively divine. Literally, in some senses.

After I finish up, I open my eyes and look at Earth below, deciding to leave all of the Corrupted Fractures be for now. Strictly to give the Guardians some fodder to use in ascending. Since I kept taking most of the cores for myself, even if I handed a lot of them out.

Would benefit us to have our Guardians and demons stronger than they are now after all.

Well, anyways, now that I’ve finished that, I float myself back down to the fanatic. And what I find gives me more than a few goosebumps, since the man is literally prostrating himself to me.

“Please get up…” I mutter to him, and he immediately gets up at my request. Thankfully.

Then he raises his hand and makes some strange symbol appear above his hand. One in the form of a crescent moon split between two sides.

In one side of the moon, it’s a pure golden color. And in the other side, it’s red and black.

Clearly separating creation and destruction magic.

“This is the symbol attached to eclipse magic,” Isaac begins right away, not beating around the bush in the slightest. “Every type of magic has a symbol, and to use magic you have to wish for what you want to happen. To believe that it will happen. But other than that, you also have to know what it is exactly you’re doing” The man takes a step back before lowering his hand palm down and meeting my eyes for a second.

“For example,” he starts as the symbol glows – a symbol that followed his palm and is below his hand now beneath his palm – and white sand begins to fall down to the ground, “sand is often made by the erosion of rocks over countless years. All the way till it’s down to nothing but small, fine particles like these.”

He snaps his fingers, making the sand stop falling. Then he turns his hand over again, with the symbol once more following his palm.

“And bone,” he says, making what looks like the bone of a human being appear the moment he says that, “is clearly made from the human body. By the blood cells within it. The bone marrow. The human DNA. And everything that makes up it.” And just as quickly as it appeared this time, he snaps his fingers and it disappears again.If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

But this time it doesn’t just fade out of existence. This time the bone slowly turns to black dust.

“Because I know how the process works, I can create things with the creation part of eclipse magic, and destroy them with the destruction part,” he continues while focusing his gaze on me again. “All simply by willing it to happen.”

Oh. So that’s why he spends all of his time studying.

It’s all to advance his abilities in magic.

I frown for a second as I look at the symbol.

“Are you wondering if the symbol being out and displayed like this is necessary?” Isaac asks, clearly seeing where my eyes were pointing. And I just nod my head in response.

He was using magic before without that symbol out as far as I know, so it should be possible. Unless he was just hiding the symbol somewhere hard to see. Or just out of sight.

“Well it isn’t necessary,” he says, making the symbol disappear before more sand begins to float in the air above his hand. “But it does make it harder to use magic without the symbol directly out.” He meets my eyes again. “Think of the symbol like a crutch. It takes your desires and manifests them. So without it, you have to do all of the manifesting yourself.”

Hmm.

I raise my hand and try to manifest a symbol. But nothing appears. Probably because he hasn’t taught me how to manifest it.

“To manifest your symbol, simply push some of your mana out of your body and direct it to manifest with your will,” Isaac says, giving me directions again without my asking. Proving himself to be a rather good teacher, putting his arrogance and fanaticism aside.

There seems to be a lot of willpower used in basic magic.

Then again, my time in the System really is making this a lot easier. Since it already expanded my mind beyond what was considered normal.

And willing something to happen was how some skills were activated in the first place. So I guess that was just like us using normal magic, but with the System to guide everything instead of us.

A rather interesting process overall.

Anyways, I raise my hand, palm up towards the sky, before pushing some of my mana outside of my body. And immediately flooding the area with a bright red and black light that blinds both me and Isaac.

“Bit too much mana there, Scarlet,” I hear Tar’s voice amidst the blinding light, but I ignore his comment.

Instead I significantly lower the amount I put out. Then lower it more, and more, and more.

And I soon come to the realization that I have a lot of mana.

The System never really has you moving your mana outside of your body. It just kinda drained the mana from you and did whatever your skill did for you.

I keep decreasing the mana I put out until it’s down to just a small sphere above my hand. Then I will that to manifest a symbol.

And what appears isn’t really what I was expecting.

Instead of just one symbol, there are three. And each of the symbols are symbols that I recognize.

After all, they’re symbols on my body.

The flames in my eyes. The wolf head on my back.

And the moon on my chest.

Before I can admire them though, Isaac’s eyes – which were looking at the moon symbol – suddenly explode into blood that splatters everywhere around his face, making me back up with a slightly disgusted grimace on my face.

What the hell just happened?