Chaotic Craftsman Worships The Cube

Thera’s first instinct was to decline. Even if she’d use her charm from time to time for the convenience of it, it still wasn’t a power she exactly liked having, the years of suffering under it having left enough of a mark to make the idea of doing anything with it feel distasteful, even if she knew that was a foolish, rash reaction. There was her goddess, offering to personally teach her something, she couldn’t just listen to a gut reaction. While the way she viewed gods overall had admittedly grown more complicated in the last few years, she trusted Anailia implicitly, with her goddess lightly chuckling as she listened to all of those thoughts go through her head.

“I understand your concerns, child, but it’s just a spell I want you to learn, nothing more. Whether you choose to use it or not is up to you, but learning it at the very least will do you no harm.”

“I’m sorry, I understand that. Of course I’ll learn it.”

“Wonderful,” she smiled, full of nothing but love and warmth. “I assure you, should you choose to employ it then it will serve you well. While a measure of skill is needed for it, hence why I can only teach to my awakened children, given your own power, I’m sure you’ll be able to display it in a way comparable to myself.”

“Alright, so what is it?”

“You remember when the demidemons were discovered, yes? Before they were found, I’d lured in a group of demons for your little lover to look at. It may have seemed as though I’d found them ahead of time and simply directed a charm out towards them, and while I will admit I was aware of their presence, what I actually did was a bit more complex. What I used then and what I’ll teach you now is a selective charm, able to narrow in on a species or, if you truly master both your magic and this spell, even a specific target to drive them to you, leaving the rest of the world unaffected. While not perfect, given the demons’ frankly annoying level of adaptability, what I’m looking to teach you is a way you can selectively draw in demons any time you go out.”

After the lesson, learned far easier than expected for how her intelligence had been so significantly raised, Thera reported on her quest before going back out into the untamed lands, wanting to test what she’d been taught.

Getting out as far as she could, she got the spirits with her to confirm there were no people in the area before she worked on assembling her spell and binding it to her soul, prepared for something to go wrong and getting it. As soon as her mana was charmed, she heard the woods come alive around her, everything starting to move her way and left her to switch to a simple fear spell before she could be overrun to drive them off.

Alright, I understand it, which just leaves practicing ‘till I get it right, she told herself, accepting that it would take some work. In which case, I guess I should confirm first before I waste too much time in this area.

“Have any of you detected any demons around?”

“A few,” a smoke spirit answered. “Would you like us to lead you to them?”

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“No, thank you. It’s enough just knowing some are near.”

With the confirmation that her efforts wouldn’t be worthless there, she repeated the attempt, finding she got it wrong again. There was a reason that Anailia had told her it needed an awakened holder to do it, Thera doubted she would have managed it at even the earlier levels of her dark magic, her charm weaker for having merged into the other skill than it would be if it had awakened on its own, which was admittedly exactly what she’d wanted at the time and a result she’d never regret. Still, it left grabbing hold of her success a struggle as she continued her attempts, taking all of the longer since every failure meant letting out just enough fear to keep the entire forest from flooding over to her without driving them so far away that she’d lose her targets. It felt like a delicate balancing act she was being forced to practice as she worked to spend her mana in just the right way until finally she found her success.

Instead of the sounds of many creatures rushing over, the beasts of those woods likely dizzy by then with how much back and forth her magic had left them doing, she only heard a few, barely anything really but just enough to tell her that she was getting movement towards her as, one by one, demons slowly came out of the woods to attack, with Thera already prepared and killing them all before they could gather enough sense to fight back, all the while examining the effects of the spell.

While Anailia had told her it could be used to pull in entire species or specific individuals, she’d focused on teaching Thera how to do it for demons as broadly as possible and that was really all she intended to use it for but she could immediately see its value. If she ever knew there was a demon nearby but just couldn’t find it, she now had far better odds of drawing them out, even with the risks it added.

It looks like I should be able to direct it too, instead of spreading it out all around me, but the fact that this would bring any demons that fall within the range of my charm rushing towards me isn’t exactly safe either, she couldn’t help but admit. Even if I’ve been doing well against them currently, it’s not like I’ve never struggled before, and if I were to pull in a contender then I could be in real danger. This is the sort of thing I’ll need to try to use with care.

But yet, she couldn’t deny the use of it either. She could see why Anailia went out of her way to teach her that spell, with the way she could let out passive magics, spreading them out to fill the land around her with her power; there were probably none on the world as suited to that spell’s use. She could act as a central point any time she went out to lure any hidden demons in and, so long as she didn’t run into any outliers, dispatch them with ruthless efficiency.

And the more demons I have to fight, the more I can practice my magics too…

She could already feel herself start to brush past the obvious danger such a spell held. Danger could be planned around and mitigated, she could easily have the spirits surrounding her help warn her or even dispatch any demon she pulled in, and she was well aware of the power she held. Her quests were already typically successful, failing only if she couldn’t find her targets. Why not make them more so by bringing those targets and more beyond them to her?

“I wonder how many I’ll have killed by the time this is all done?”

The thought casually escaped her lips. From her efforts during the second wave it felt like she had to be in the hundreds of thousands at least, working like that in what remained till the third and then whatever sort of slaughter she’d managed when the next wave arrived, it painted a bloody future she didn’t want to imagine, instead pushing it from her mind to focus on the matter at hand. She was working to grow stronger and to help the world, and Anailia had given her a powerful tool to do exactly that, she wouldn’t let it go to waste.