Renaming the balls

As Inei petted the eye, who he now named Eyeball, he used his mind manipulation to figure out his shikigami's personality.

After that, he started to play fetch with Eyeball, throwing his shadow balls as sticks.

'An eye shikigami? It might have been useful for others, but it isn't that useful for me. Eyeball can show a near perfect vision of the environment, but I can already sense the environment using my shadow balls, albeit to a lesser extent.'

While he was pondering, Eyeball had already collected the shadow sticks he threw and brought them back.

As he looked at Eyeball, he felt a strange feeling permeating throughout his body. When he focused on it, he realized that the shadow sticks in Eyeball's mouth were resonating with that feeling.

Suddenly, Inei's sticks turned back into balls and enveloped Eyeball in a black cocoon. Slowly, the outer layer of the cocoon started to harden, resembling an egg.

Inei felt his connection with Eyeball vanish. It was as if Eyeball ceased to exist.

Eventually, the egg started to compress until it was about the size of an adult's fist. It slowly turned from a shiny black ball into a transparent crystal before hovering in front of Inei.

When Inei tried to control it, he found that it was significantly easier to shape and manipulate it. He could also feel a strange pocket dimension that seemed to act like a pocket dimension.

Inei poured a little more cursed energy into the ball, causing it to ripple and grow in size before turning into a perfect replica of Inei.

After playing around with the balls, he started to ponder on the cause of the change, "The only thing I can think of is my third innate technique, Consensual Assimilation. But I didn't manipulate Eyeball's mind, so why would he merge with my shadow balls. Unless..."

When Inei was first reborn into this world, he had two innate techniques: his shadow manipulation technique, and his Consensual Assimilation. It was only until later on, after he had sacrificed the cursed spirits original ego, that he had gotten his mind manipulation technique.

Consensual Assimilation allows the user to either merge or replicate(a weaker version of) a cursed technique, a cursed item, or a cursed spirit. Of course, the other party must either agree for this to happen, or, in the case of cursed techniques, the user has to be hit by it to copy it.

Since Eyeball was a cursed spirit, it means that he had probably agreed to be merged with Inei's shadow balls.

"So that was how it went. Did Eyeball already know that he was useless to me? Whatever, I'll take this as a gift from him to me."

Inei shook away his thoughts before looking at the floating crystalline balls around him, "I should name these balls something different. If my balls evolve again, I'll have to name them again, so I'll just call them Spades from now on"

...

...

...

It had been a little under a month since Inei's Spades evolved. During this time, he had taken a lot of information from the clans' libraries. Then, he had forcefully integrated the knowledge, gaining knowledge of various cursed techniques and experiments they had conducted back in the golden age of sorcery.

One of his greatest boons was from the Kamo clan's library, where the results of several experiments of cursed spirits and humans resided. The Kamo clan complex was also where Inei finally furthered his cursed energy channeling.

While he was searching for the library, he had come across a Grade-1 sorcerer channeling his energy into her sword.

As Inei looked at her, he suddenly realized something.

Cursed energy is said to come from the navel then flow into the limbs. But the higher grade a sorcerer is, the more unpredictable the flow of their energy. Inei had always wondered why this was, and now he finally had the answer: they don't think by the same theory as the lower grade sorcerers.

When he thought of this simple answer, Inei felt as though he had been enlightened.

Cursed energy can't be thought of through the lenses of normal humans. There is no way to easily explain this concept to people who had just been introduced to cursed energy, thus most sorcerers teach the navel theory. Once they advance to a higher level, they will naturally understand this concept and be able to perform more advance techniques.

Thinking back to his advancement and what he was able to accomplish after that, Inei grinned.

"Who will be my first target? I think I'll choose the character I hated the most, although this might complicate the plotline just a tiny bit... MAHITO!"

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A short chapter today since I felt like this was a good place to leave it off. Next chapter will be a 'fight scene'...sorta