Discordant Note: Crescendo | TBATE

Chapter 301: The Serpent in the Garden

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Seris Vritra

My dark mana blade cut deep into my flesh.

The moment the saber of black energy bypassed my skin, seeking a vein deep in my hand, I could feel the instantaneous reaction of the infection coursing along my blood. Hot lifeblood seeped from the wound, the red intermingling with particles of discordant white.

Those white particles tried to leap onto my mana blade, like a pack of world lions sinking their fangs and claws into unsuspecting prey. It was in its very nature, after all, to try and rip and tear and wither anything of the basilisk.

Before that bloodborne energy could take root and travel along my blade and back to the hand that gripped it, I relinquished hold of the spell. The inverted decay, without anywhere to go but to continue to cannibalize my own blood, returned to its feast. The white-flecked red liquid dripped into a waiting beaker, little gray-white flames dancing on the rims as the blood boiled.

My lips settled into a thin line as I forcibly calmed my breathing. The infection had rooted itself deep in my heart, and every pulse sent little motes of inverted energy coursing along my veins, sundering every inch it passed.

I had learned to direct that flow. The ravenous energy tore at me from the inside, but it still followed patterns. It feasted on flesh and mana alike, but it gravitated towards areas of high concentration. By using mana rotation to constantly refuel my reserves and concentrate the energy on specific points of my body, I could focus on healing and mending parts of my physique with my healing factor, while directing the baleful, gnawing force somewhere else.

And once that energy was concentrated, it could be extracted.

As the infected blood continued to bubble and boil inside the glass vial, the mana within cannibalizing itself in a slow, methodical destruction, I gave myself a minute to recover. With every breath, the mana in the atmosphere slowly cycled in through my weary mana veins, and into my core.

I leaned on the experimental table, feeling ever-so-slightly dizzy from the constant state of exertion I had been under for these past few weeks. I ground my teeth, forcing my vision to stop spinning and focus. I was forged in Taegrin Caelum itself. I was made Scythe through trials more gruesome than this petty infection.

It would not see me broken.

When Toren returns, I will have to speak with him regarding a more permanent solution to housing this energy in my blood, I thought. Loath as I was to admit it, I couldn't continue like this forever. The wear and tear was starting to show, and every time I pushed back the inverted energy, it surged again, stronger and more ravenous than before. It was learning how best to counteract my restriction attempts.

I couldn't let it continue to adapt, but neither could I let it disperse. It was a monumental discovery. A deviant of mana that specifically targeted those of Vritra blood and cannibalized their arts? I could think of nothing more advantageous to my goals.

But if I wanted to purge myself of this infection, every ounce of this wondrous deviant would disappear forever, and I was uncertain if it could be found again without finding another basilisk horn and repeating the process to change it to something Inverted, and then ramming that into my heart again.

"I would rather avoid such experiences again as best as I can," I muttered to myself, tracing my eyes across the makeshift laboratory that was haphazardly set up in my castle rooms. "So here we are once more, trying to make history."

On the far end of a setup of heaters and conductive material, another beaker of my blood sat stagnant. This one was entirely drained of blood using the best techniques I could manage, then further isolated from the ambient mana.