I woke up from the best sleep I'd had in a long time. My head throbbed for I was already being pulled in a thousand vile directions. I got up from the hard bone floor with my hearts continuing to beat ever faster. My evil eyes darted and scanned my surroundings suspiciously, from the bare functionless room, to the set of items set aside in one random corner. This was not my new bedroom at all, because of how dizzying and weird it was to my senses, especially for the new spatial one. Instead, I decided to stay in one of the many empty areas inside Pandemonium.

It was still a paradise compared to my previous accommodations. Duke Astro's dungeon would receive no stars from me and also the worst reviews. It was fucking shit.

Gradually, I calmed. I settled into a more normal state of stress. I sprung to my hooves and stretched. My motions were wider than I intended, for my body was different now, and a big tail with a spade-like end swished back and forth behind me. The year of isolation and chains did not help either.

I went to the corner of the room and inspected the items that had just been left out. One was a large box, more like a chest, and the other was a much cleaner change of clothes folded nearby. I shimmied out of Angerly's armor, and into the bright tunic and skirt that were somehow just the right size. It felt good and comfortable anyway, though without any special accommodations for my tail. I was very happy about it anyway, and I made the effort to smile.

My friends had prepared these for me so I could start to feel like a person again. I appreciated the gesture, so I had to try and put in the work too. I wouldn't heal without doing anything, and I did not intend to be some violent cave demon who lived only in the wilds. As tempting as the prospect might currently sound.

I turned to the next item on my list. Aside from the clothes, a large box had been left for me. It was a weird box full of illustrations and real flowers growing out of it. I realized that it was enchanted, and that I recognized the artstyle. Moonwash created this, and it was full of food inside when I opened it.

It was a simple fucking lunchbox, if abnormally large. I'd spent so long under a fucking rock that I couldn't even recognize that.

My stomach growled. The remaking and evolution of my body had banished the ever-present hunger somehow, but the need for sustenance crept back in with a vengeance the moment I spotted the sandwiches and soup inside. It was like a year of starvation crashed into me all at once, and before I knew it I was tearing into bread and meat like a demon possessed. It felt like I might lose it, lose everything, if I dallied any longer. I had to consume, to overconsume, before the famine once again hit. I was about to drown, and I had to gulp down all the air I could.

Gradually, slowly, I came back to my senses. I realized that the food wasn't going anywhere. I remembered that it was supposed to be a more fun experience than gulping down weird gruel. The taste finally registered, and I moaned. It was delicious. Moonwash made this too, and there was only half remaining because of my stupid fucking impatience. I wanted to cry… and so I did as I pleased. I allowed the tears to fall down my face. I experienced the sheer pleasure of partaking upon good food. I felt relieved that I had not completely wasted what my friends had so thoughtfully prepared for me. And I did… feel regret, for what portions of it I did waste unsavored. But what was done was done, and all I could do was make the best of what was left behind.

I heated up the metal container of soup carefully with my hellfire. There were skewers of barbecue here which I loved, and I asked Pandemonium for a hot piece of stone. "But not too hot," I emphasized. I touched the elevated surface that popped up, and judged when the flat piece of rock was finally just the right temperature.

"Please keep it around this hot," I requested, and the slab acknowledged. I continued to snack slowly and carefully on a sandwich, while the rest of the food was slowly brought back to a softly smoking heat. I savored everything that was left after my uncontrolled rampage, and thankfully Moonwash had allotted so much food for me, so I still got to enjoy a pretty fun breakfast. This experience was almost worth the year of fasting.

I collapsed. I willing fell to the ground and just laid there, staring at the dark grey ceiling. I took a moment to just appreciate life. It was amazing. Food was amazing. And I'd had it for a long time until I lost it.

I got up and left through the doorway. Pandemonium did not have any actual doors yet save for the big double gates outside, for some reason. I peeked into the next room over after hearing a faint snore, and found Moonwash sound asleep. This place was once empty as well, but now one side of it had been stuffed full of her things. My girlfriend had already decided to move in and brought all her tools, though she still only laid down atop some blankets on the floor. I could just tell that she wouldn't wake up for quite some time, for she had stayed up way later than she promised. I was sure that the last few months at least had been hell on her too, if not to the extent that I had suffered…

The walls began to elaborate on when exactly Moonwash chose to sleep, but I silenced Pandemonium with a tap.

Don't wake her up, please.

The house gave its silent assent.

~~~

I arrived at the courtyard. It was big and empty and open, which made me want to move around.

So I did. Nothing was stopping me. Nothing could stop me. I was no longer shackled. Soon, my hooves were moving. My legs pumped faster and I rapidly accelerated. The wind whipped against my face. My tail swished behind me, and I nearly stumbled from unfamiliarity, but I had enough imprinted instincts to not outright fall. The wall rapidly approached, and my hooves dug into the hard black ground a moment before my thoughts had fully coalesced. I stopped well short of the thing, I'd run the length of a full manor in only a scant few seconds.

I breathed. My hearts were pumping faster, and I felt the influence of three different elements. But I was yet far from hitting my limit. I could go even faster. I had not even unleashed my wrath just yet.

Except… it was no longer wrath. It was curse. The purest form of one of the most dangerous kind of magic. And it was wrath too. It was the menace that came before. It was so much more. From well-laid plans meant to topple kingdoms, to one explosive suicidal act meant to take anyone down with me. I hated, I envied, I looked down upon everything, and I cursed everyone for leaving me behind.

The curse was the culmination of every single element in that tree, and it was tearing me apart. It was all I could do to ignore it, I was surely so very far from unlocking its full potential.

So I fell back into what was familiar. I allowed the rage to build through me as I cursed the entire world. I cursed what had happened here. I cursed the torture I suffered.

I broke off into charge. The wind nearly slammed into me with solid physical force. I reached the other side of the wide open space way faster than planned, and I was barely able to stop fast enough to not outright crash into the wall.

It almost touched my nose. I panted hard. My muscles ached from overuse. Inside those walls were both hard metals and soft organs, and I wondered how it would have held up to a collision test. But I was in no hurry to try.

I took a deep breath and limbered up. There was still more to test. I felt the blood flowing through my veins. I felt how it circulated throughout my entire body. I imagined how easily it would flow out with a single clean cut.

My hooves snapped into motion, and I ate up the distance so rapidly that the wind roared in my ears. I came to a stop just before the wall, but this time, I was able to react with more leeway. I judged that I had actually moved slower there than the last time, but in exchange, my body felt far less broken than I thought it would. Blood magic didn't batter my body in the same reckless way that curse did. It improved my body's durability just as much as it improved its raw power.

"Interesting," I muttered. My smile widened. I felt so free to just be able to run like this. I adored the stinging pain in my legs. The freedom I now possessed. I'd once thought that my life on Earth was restrictive, but you could always go so much lower.

I took a moment to just jog. I didn't go too fast, and instead kept my attention on my tail. I allowed it to swing left, and my hoof pivoted right. The turn was easy to make, and I barely had to exert any additional strain. I repeated the same motion from side to side, until I had gotten used to it. And then I upped the tempo, only to feel as though I was being yanked sideways from behind.

I lost balance and fell flat on my face. The largely even and solid ground of Pandemonium's courtyard pressed into my nose. I jumped back up with a stormy expression that quickly turned into a laugh. I repeated the same exercise, until I could at least keep my hooves on the ground.

The tail was weird. It was already heavy, but it felt as though an additional force was yanking it whenever I moved the appendage fast enough. It also felt weird and silly to the touch, but that was probably just because the thing was new. If anything, it was less sensitive than my other limbs. It might be fun to play with anyway, and my thoughts went back to Moonwash. I didn't think I was quite ready to have sex again just yet, but this promised to be fun. Those daydreams were marred by the many times they tried to force me to bear children, but I refused to allow that to take away one of the pleasures of life. They were already dead and I killed them.

I ran. I sped up and looped through the courtyard with heavily uneven pathing. I whipped my tail to the right, and felt myself immediately pivot left. Soon, I was zigzagging unreasonably sharply through the grounds. My turns became instant and immediate, all without breaking stride. My hooves were free to continue charging in a straight line, though I did still have the existing momentum to consider. I stumbled into a wall because I tried to turn at the very last second.

"Ow," I chuckled. My body had twisted sideways just as I intended, but that didn't stop me from continuing to hurtle in the same direction. It did slow me down though, and I would need to learn how to get all these timings right. I continued the same training, until I could reasonably do it at max speed, or at least my normal max speed. I never stopped tripping over myself, even as the sun continued to rise higher, until it was right above my head.

I'm ready, I decided anyway. I couldn't wait any longer. I braced myself from one side of the wall, and aimed for the opposite end. My muscles began to burn at the activation of my curse magic, but I wasn't done. The blood mana too began to work to improve my physique, and in a way that wasn't quite so destructive. The two elements worked together inside my body, and as if by the starting signal of a race, I charged.

My body rocketed forward. My brain struggled to keep up. My newly improved nervous system picked up the slack. Something slammed into me, more solid by the millisecond. Soon, it felt like solid stone, and I smashed right through it!

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A few more bones broke. The expansive view disappeared and I was almost at the wall. My nerves fired on all cylinders, and my tail turned me around so I could attempt a sideways brake. I still bodily slammed into the solid surface, and I felt so many of my right-side bones break. I had cracked the wall just as I had cracked myself, and some of Pandemonium's chaotic innards peeked out. The house bled just as I did as pieces of wall fell like broken tile.

"Fuck," I muttered and sat down. I was in pain, and that stimulated the magic inside of me. A burning sensation. A wish to repeat it, to myself and onto others. A desire that was both right and wrong, like this was meant to happen and was not. I focused on that last one, the blood wished to flow out, but it was supposed to remain inside. Having the heart, and having the magic flow unimpeded inside of me told a greater story than a thousand pictures ever could. I imagined blood clotting, I pictured how it flowed through my system, protected me, gave me immunity, the soup of life, the lifeblood.

My bones began to mend. I felt the telltale sensation of healing, but of a different flavor. The cuts closed and sealed, scabbed over and scarred, until all traces of it finally disappeared and left only my red skin and the equally red blood that covered it. My insides took only a few moments longer to repair, and soon I was getting up, healed from all the damage of the collision, and the massive amount of strain that I had put through my torn muscles well before.

I could heal.

I could further counter the drawbacks of enhancing my body beyond what's reasonable.

I had broken through the sound barrier.

I had achieved mach speed.

Mach Haell.

"That's amazing!" I jumped for joy, the subtle shadow of despair that remained dissipating just a little more. It felt good to be me again. It felt good to move. It felt good to be strong. It was an important thing to be able to protect myself and kill my enemies, but more than anything, I found the sheer sensation of power to be more intoxicating than any drug or poison.

More. Give me more. I need more!

And I did.

I did have more.

There was so much more power inside of me left untapped. Undiscovered. Leashed.

I release more of that potential in the form of a floating blob of blood. I had willed it to cut through my own skin, and the red liquid continued to stream out. I had so much more of it inside of me thanks to my blood storage, so I made the blob even larger, like a vampire gorged fat on my essence. The liquid shifted and changed in shape, for the mana within and around it allowed me control. The lifeblood resolved into a spinning chakram under my ministrations, and I brought it against Pandemonium's floor like a saw blade.

Dust flew, and the bloody construct began to burrow, but it would've absolutely made only a small difference in a real fight, before dissolving into a wide and useless spray.

"Hey, This isn't too painful for you, right?" I realized I should ask.

The air shifted. The ambient mana around me danced.

It could be mildly discomforting for Pandemonium, but not nearly as much as anything I had put myself through today, and it wasn't even worth comparing to the torture I suffered deep inside what it used to be.

"Oh, Pandemonium… Are you feeling guilty for that? Definitely don't be. I gave you life. You do not hold any responsibility for the inanimate object you were before. Hell, you can even blame me for the slaughter that happened here. None of it has been your fault, and I'm an idiot for not saying this sooner. But you can do what you want. I'm not your master or anything of the sort. You can kick me out if you wish. You are free."

The roofs told me thank you. It would continue to stay with me, and wished for a wonderful partnership between us both.

"Likewise friend," I smiled.

I'd only gotten through a centimeter of Pandemonium's floor, when I finally decided to call it quits. My blood saw returned to my hand, now diminished, and back to being an amorphous blob. I added more mass to it from within my body, before immediately closing up the small cuts. My blood magic was yet at its infancy, but it was also true that Pandemonium was fucking tough. Its powers rivaled my own. I could much more easily cut through my skin, especially from the inside, than pierce right through its floor.

The small collection of blood in front of me shifted, its surface rippling sort of like an amoeba. I strained my still rough fine control over the element, until a 2-dimensional 'circle' floated in the air, with an even more malformed illustration of fire inside.

"Hellfireball."

I spoke the words. The greater magic thrummed like a string that just broke. The magic circle I formed evaporated, and mana danced in the air.

…It dissipated.

Nothing else happened.

"Well, that was a dud." I crossed my arms. But even with such a failure, I could tell that my idea should be possible. Feasible. I could make rituals in the air. In the middle of a fucking battle. The one bottleneck was my own current incompetence. It was a skill issue. I just needed to get good.

"It's very interesting," Moonwash countered. She had just woken up, and no doubt came here because of all the commotion. I knew she was here before she spoke, because my instinct alerted me to her presence, I had a very vague sense of whatever was happening within Pandemonium, and my dimension scanner came into play once she was close enough.

"That it is," I agreed and stood up. I walked up to her, hesitated for a moment, before initiating a hug.

She reciprocated, and I stayed like that for as long as I was able. Resolving the issue of my mental state was far less attractive and exciting than discovering new abilities and wielding my new powers, but it needed to be done. I knew that. And so I continued to put in the effort.

~~~

Moonwash created lunch for the both of us, and we ate it in the middle of my desolate domain. All the ingredients she'd bought from outside were sealed off in enchanted containers because things did rot faster inside Pandemonium. Not to a totally crazy extent, but around several times faster, give or take. Among the tools that she'd brought in were all the necessary utensils, and even stoves and grills. But she opted to use the ones Pandemonium could make out of curiosity once I told her about them.

"How've you been?" I felt ashamed that I only now thought to ask.

"Not good. But better now that you're alright."

"...Yeah. Thanks. I've heard a little bit about it, but can you tell me what's been happening while I was gone?"

"Sure," she said, and began to spin her tale. I learned of how they immediately ran in pursuit of me, and how New Grandera agreed to mobilize so fast. My girlfriend spoke of the long war that followed, and the terrible tactics that she invented to whittle down the enemy layer by fucking layer. That lizekto we once caught and tried to raise had grown a little now, and it was a largely independent creature, but one that at least came by every so often. It had learned not to attack people because we would feed it. And it had learned that giving Moonwash poison mana would earn it the best cuts of meat. A little bit of mind magic was involved in its training, but this was the extent of what my girlfriend was able to do for she was no tamer. It was more than enough for her purposes.

"Speaking of that," she looked at me with those bland but piercing eyes. "You have blood magic now." She brought out a few focuses and some other materials. "I need some samples." She thought for a second, "If that's fine with you."

I smiled and poured out my blood into a cup. "Of course."

~~~

What followed was a bloodbath, which our friends walked right into. But they were used to it, so the three of them just talked to me while Moonwash and I did our bloody experiments.

Berry greeted me, Angerly made sure I was doing fine, and Granuel spoke a little about the political situation outside. I decided to deal with all that tomorrow.

My friends stayed to hang out after that small chat, though they also began to haul some stuff inside once I and Pandemonium had given them our permission to stay. Pandemonium too was still learning, and it thought that it could learn how to largely insulate select targets inside itself from the effects of the miasma.

My own experiments also continued, as I literally drank blood. Pandemonium gave me his own, and I confirmed my blood eater's ability to heal myself, replenish my stamina, create nutrients to keep me healthy, and make straight-up blood mana that I could use. I had to use it immediately though, for the mana could not be stored indefinitely in my mana-infused blood. My blood Mutation was very particular, and would only bind and compress mana pumped into it by a heart.

It was unlike normal repositories in that regard, which Moonwash had me replenish plenty of. She did not yet have a properly made blood staff meant to hold my blood inside, but she did have some normal blood wands that only needed to be recharged. I also filled up her Hellfire and Wrath staves with my blood, and she immediately began to get lost in her own work once I had provided her with all the new tools and toys she wanted. The wrath staff was an interesting case, because the curse mana could be wielded by it, but only to a limited and weaker extent. The kinds of spells she could cast with it were limited too, only able to manifest as curses closer to wrath.

Moonwash ultimately decided that she also needed to make a new staff for this evolved element. But she was very excited at the unlimited prospects of curse magic. Pandemonium contained many of my same powers, and some I didn't even possess, but she was pretty sure that my then wrath mana had to be the most instrumental element for this one momentous event.

"Eh, the hellfire was much more distinctive for most people watching from the outside, I feel… Or for those burning alive inside."

"The dark aurora was more distinctive for us on the outside, I believe," Moonwash replied without pausing her work. "But I just don't see your hellfire magic creating Pandemonium. Maybe blood, but you did not have that element before."

"That's true. It might have played a role in giving Pandemonium more… permanence, but I didn't spend a year infusing blood into the bones of this manor, so I doubt it. Rather, I'm pretty darn sure because my perception of the world was on an almost transcendental level back then, and I did not feel like my blood magic had much to do with that part of the event. Though it did give Pandemonium some new features and rooms…"

~~~

I asked Moonwash to give me some of her blood, and she readily poured some into a cup. I drank of her bounty… I should not phrase it so weirdly even in my head. I conducted my logical and rational experiments by consuming 'the substance,' and then processed it through my new Mutation. The Blood Eater converted it into my kind of blood, and I was able to generate so much more of it than I could before. I did feel that there was something weird when I needed to drown in so much of Pandemonium's to make a fraction of my own. With Moonwash's blood, however, I still lost a significant volume of blood during the conversion process, but not nearly as much as with Pandemonium's own. I felt like I got mere droplets for every liter consumed. The same ratio roughly applied for all the other kinds of resources my blood eater could create, such as healing, nutrients, and more.

I asked the rest of my friends for their blood too, and as I thought, the conversion rate for them was worse than Moonwash's. They were lower level, therefore their blood was 'weaker,' and yielded inferior results. Pandemonium's blood, on the other hand, was just weird. It had so much of it. It could make more on a whim. But the parts of its body and structure were only powerful within its own domain because of some weird magic bullshit. The quality of the raw materials themselves were poor, therefore I couldn't get much out of consuming them.

I had the bright idea to do the same test with my own blood next. This might be considered cannibalism. The first demon to ever consume another demon. I easily made a hole in my esophagus, and poured my own blood inside. Some of the blood also escaped out my mouth, but the passage to my stomach could at least be sealed off. The blood was then converted into the same kind of blood again… and in greater quantities than what was sacrificed! But… the mana within was also wholly consumed, and definitely not replaced. Then again, this still meant that I could indefinitely subsist and sustain myself without food. My hearts produced mana naturally, just by beating, and if bound to my blood then it could be turned into a different form. The excess energy from that reaction could then become the nutrients that I needed, among many other things. I would never have to starve again. I was a perpetual motion machine.

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