My Servant System

It took me a few moments to relegate my emotions back to normal levels again, with that euphoric high that I had felt slowly fading as I emptied my mind of anything I could, leaving it blank and allowing myself to relax again.

My Core alternated between hot and cold as it rode out that wave of euphoria, until it too faded to a normal level, leaving the mana inside to mingle with the new pink energy that I had managed to harness somewhat.

When I inspected the interior of my Core again, I sighed as I took note of what exactly was inside; my Water Mana swirling around at the bottom, forming a pool of frigid dark liquid that promised to steal your breath away, all while a sharp gale of Wind Mana roared above it, forming a tornado that scratched the surface of that pool.

Around it was a sphere of solidified, freezing Ice that encompassed the entirety of my Core, which was a combination of deep blue, green, pale cyan, and now... pink.

But, where the deep blue, green, and pale cyan were thick and viscous, dripping with power and completely opaque, that pink was transparent and thin, drifting around lazily between the Water and Wind Mana before finding its home inside the Ice Mana, swirling around my Core languidly and enjoying itself as it did so.

Tapping it, I injected it into some of my Ice Mana and moved that out of my Core and into my hand, tracing out runes and noting instantly that the coloring was different; cyan laced with a pink outline and middle appeared at my fingertips, and I could tell instantly that the power difference between this and a normal rune was immense.

However, that source of power was quite clear; the pink energy that I used wasn't replenished like my Ice Mana was, meaning that it was now a limited resource that needed to be cultivated and harvested regularly.

And since it wasn't as thick as my mana, that made me think that the pink energy wasn't on the level of being Lust Mana just yet... or at least not a true mana like what I had already; perhaps 'Mana Lite' if I was going to be generous, but nothing else.

Which begged the question: what did I need to do to get Lust Mana itself?

True, proper Lust Mana, and not this trial version of it that I had now; did I need more of it, or perhaps I just needed to acclimate myself to it to extract more of the power from the Pleasure I had gathered before?

Both were incredibly feasible possibilities that I needed to investigate, but for now this was a significant gain on its own, amplifying my abilities by quite a fair amount, but...

To say I was satisfied with what I now had would be a lie, since I was rather annoyed that I had not only lost two bundles of Pleasure but also that the rewards I got for this was rather... minuscule in comparison.

I wanted more.

I NEEDED more of this power...

Sadly, the source of this power was empty inside my crest, leaving me with no way to gather more pink energy to give me an edge over whatever awaited us around Custodia, so I stood up and brushed myself off, coming to terms with it and walking into the Wind Dome to check on Anput and what she had done during my meditation.

The instant I stepped from outside of the barrier to inside of it, I was greeted by the wave of sound as Anput hammered away at the ingot on her anvil, the heavy metal mallet in her hands rising and falling rhythmically as she shaped the metal from a simple ingot into a flat square.

Beside her, sitting on a stone table that she had made for herself were a half dozen completed blades, each one waiting to be fitted with a handle and sharpened to a keen edge.

Looking up from her forge, Anput rested the hammer on the anvil and gave me an enthusiastic smile, her olive skin slick with a thin sheen of sweat as she asked "Finally done meditating or whatever? Could use some help to round out this batch here."

"Yes, I finished my... 'meditating or whatever'..."

The Jackalkin just chuckled as she moved the ingot back into the flames, her ebony hair glimmering in the firelight as she said "Did it go well? You seemed to have rather fluctuating emotions there for a minute."

"It went wonderfully, though it could have always been better. You want these sharpened or fitted first?"

"Fitted. What went 'wrong' with your meditation? Mishap on your end, just not get the result you wanted? Still feel stressed or something?"

I picked up a block of wood and laid the tang of one of the blades on it, using a needle of ice to carve out the outline before thickening the needle into a chisel, which I used to begin chipping out the section I outlined to allow me to rest the tang inside.

"A mishap. There were these four bundles of energy that I was trying to convert into mana, right? Well, one of them escaped from my grasp before I could even try to convert it, whilst another battled against me and won, though the remaining two were cooperative enough... but that still wasn't ideal."

"Got half of them though. Cup half full, no? It could have been worse, and now you have a better idea on how to convert this... energy. Is it that Lust Mana that Sla'Caligo uses?"

Resting the tang into the block, I nodded as I started on the next, which would be glued and pinned together to create the hilt.

"Yes. Whenever I have... a lust fulfilled, I receive 'Pleasure'. An energy that collects inside that crest I have. Trying to convert it into Lust Mana is difficult, but I managed to do it... sort of. It's rather thin and weak at the moment."

"Well, again, you DID get something from it, no? That's a start, and if I am understanding this correctly, well..."

The Jackalkin just grinned at me, winking as she let that part remain unsaid before she returned to shaping her ingot, flattening one side and beginning to taper it to a crescent as she created an axehead.

That just made me roll my eyes, but I smiled back at her as I shook my head, finding it amusing that the rather 'childish' woman was the one reassuring me instead of the other way around.

But, it was something I had come to expect from her, these moments of reassurance and positivity, even if sometimes they were accompanied by either her own crassness or a slight.

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