Magic

The first thing Juniper did once back down in the Belmont's basement filled with the gathered knowledge and materials of generations, is setting up one of her transmission mirrors and use it to visit another unfortunate village.

Eager to recover her strength and get rid of the stinging pain accompanying her every move, the moth slaughtered the random village, draining the vitality from the people's bodies to replenish her own.

"Phew~ It took more than 20 guys and gals to fully heal my wounds. Regrowing lost appendages and large chunks of flesh seems to take quite a bit of energy." She muses while stretching her healed body.

The hole in her thigh, the puncture in her gut, the almost severed arm and the actual severed antenna have all healed and regrown.

Full of energy and inventory stuffed with a fresh pile of corpses and other random shit, she returns to the basement and begins to loot everything there too.

Shelves of ancient books and tomes, materials and potions, trophies and weapons, all stuffed in the systems storage space to be sorted through once she had laid claim to Dracula's castle.

It took her most of the remaining night, but thanks to the earlier massacre, she felt no exhaustion at all.

The magic power in her demonic heart also recovered, allowing Juniper to once again cast [Focus] to refresh her mind and repair the damage done to her [Shifting Robe].

With a large cleared-out space at her disposal, the moth pulled the tome imprisoning the souls of Sypha, Trevor and Alucard from her inventory and began her study.

The main focus lay in Sypha's knowledge and skill over the arcane, as she is very interested in learning more about it after getting teased with something broken like the [Crown of Thorns] spell and some novice blabbering.

Sitting cross legged on the stone floor with the flipped open tome on her lap, she stares unblinking into the ink flooded pages where the soul of the speaker girl remained trapped even after her death.

Gaze burrowing deep into the crystal-clear noble soul, Juniper greedily devours every tid-bit of information that she could from within, quickly expanding her own pool of knowledge as new pieces get added to the things she already knew and solidify her understanding of the arcane arts of this world.

The level of detail, amount and quality of information through which the moth finds herself digging put everything the old magician had to offer to absolute shame.

Within mere hours she went from an amateur to an actual legit magician.

Be it rituals, natural occurring magical phenomena's, creatures, runes and ancient languages, she suddenly finds herself at least somewhat proficient in all of them.

Sure, all of this knowledge did not reach down to the fundamental forces of magic, after all Sypha is a speaker, they record what already exists, not break it down to gain complete understanding.

That is something that Juniper hopes to find in the libraries of Dracula's castle, he had a lot more time and resources to perform actual research on how and why magic works as it does.

But for now, the moth has to be satisfied with the extensive surface knowledge from the speaker magician.

With that knowledge comes the means to create and manipulate the three elements, fire, ice and wind, like Syhpa had in their fight.

Blinking her dry eyes for the first time in over an hour after being immersed in the study of the arcane, the moth put the tome away and eagerly begins to test her new magics through practical application.

Channelling her magic power out of the demonic heart beating in her chest, she narrows her green eyes before performing a set of hand gestures while making sure that the magic flows along with them.

After a few seconds, a golf ball sized sphere of concentrated magic power turned fire hovers between her index and pinkie.

'Huh, this kinda reminds me of Naruto with all these fucking hand signs.' Smirking amused, she raises the hand with the fire magic sphere to her mouth.

"Fireball no jutsu!" She calls out before blowing with puffed out cheeks.

Of course, this would have done nothing if she didn't control the fire to expand and shoot out as an actual fire ball with her magic.

Watching the blazing sphere fly across the large empty room and crashing into a wall where it explodes in a flash of fire, she can't help but cheer in excitement as her mandibles clack loudly.

"This is AWESOME! Actual bloody magic!" Hyped by her success, Juniper goes wild with the spells that she knows.

Soon cones of fire, pillars of ice and cyclones of wind ravage the underground space as our demonic moth burns through her magic power at a rapid pace, only taking a break when she was bone dry.

Looking over the destruction caused by her rampage, she turns thoughtful.

'I got a pretty good hang of the element spells thanks to the help of [Focus]. All those hand signs and movements only serve to help visualize the way that the magic power needs to be shaped in order to take on an elemental attribute. In other words-" Having recovered a tiny bit of magic power, the moth raises a single finger. "If I master the movement of my magic power, I shouldn't need those anymore."

With narrowed eyes, she drags out the small amount of magic that she had recovered and slowly guides it out of her heart, up her arm and out of her raised finger.

She could not strictly "see" the supernatural energy shaped into a small ball atop her digit, instead she sensed its presence in a weird mix of all her basic senses.

It's as if a light is in its location but does not illuminate anything, as if a distinct smell emits from it but she's not smelling it with her nose, as if ethereal wind blows out against her skin only to penetrate it and is felt even by her bones, as if a humming sound constantly comes from it in visible waves and as if she could taste the power it contained resting heavy atop of her tongue.

Moving the gathered magic with great focus, the small sphere turns into a stream that twists and turns in a specific pattern while flowing.

Once the pattern is completed, the invisible magic sparks and turns into glowing orange fire.

Grinning widely, Juniper releases her control and lets the arm flop to the ground as she continues to recover her reserves.

'Looks like I'm correct. Its most likely also this movement pattern that we demons call magic power circuit. Instead of having to consciously control the magic power flow, a demon with awakened magic power circuit can simply pump his magic through the channels in his body to complete the process of adding an attribute to his magic power and then merely shape it into whatever form he desires.' Finished with her pondering and fully recovered, the moth gets back up.

For the next few hours, she worked on mastering the shaping of her magic power into all three elements without assistance of body movements.

Once she had a firmly grasped this, she went on and started to try and combine them.

This surprisingly wielded results rather quickly and she achieve things like blue fire and steam.

From there on it escalated further to blizzards and fire storms.

By the time midday arrived, the underground keep got reduced to rubble and the entire thing collapsed into itself because of the damage.

Not worried in the least by this, she smashes and pushes the falling rubble aside with haki reinforced punches and psychokinesis, remaining completely unharmed by the collapse before returning to the surface.

Out in the fresh air again, Juniper goes over to a lush tree and sits down underneath it.

"Hmm, I got everything of interest out of Sypha, from here on it is up to me to master this knowledge." Pulling the [Soul prison Tome] from her inventory, the moth flips it open and watches the ink flooding out, bringing with it the three noble souls imprisoned within.

"Maybe the other's also have something interesting." Focusing on the soul of Trevor Belmont, she begins to dive into it in search for things of interest.

As she skims through his memories, she learns about some of the occult shit and a whole lexicon of monsters, but the thing that truly caught her interest is the training on how to wield a whip.

It is what had allowed that drunkard to continuously put pressure on her during their fight.

She was constantly on edge because that fucking weapon moved in such unpredictable way's that it seemed to have a will of its own.

Deciding to try it out, she absorbs everything that Trevor knows about wielding a whip.

A bit more than an hour passes till Juniper had learned all the little tricks and secrets that made the Belmont's so formidable with that weapon.

Ready to see how much of the monster hunter's skill she actually acquired for herself with the help of this Tome, she put the book aside and spends a few hundred souls on adding a modification to the whip so that it no longer harmed her.

It is unsurprisingly quite expensive, after all the whip's attribute is Juniper's weakness and would do quite a bit of damage normally.

After that is done, she pulls the blessed weapon out, handle firmly gripped in her chitin clad hands.

Recalling the basics Trevor's parents had drilled into him, and which she had learned for herself from his soul, the moth swings the whip.

The first attempt ended in failure as she used to little strength and failed to bring the entire chain into motion.

Trying a few more times, she got a feel for how much strength she needs to use and moved on to try and hit a target.

This practice continued for a while in which Juniper made quick progress in her mastery over the whip.

With a deft flick of her wrist, the silver whip lashes out and the flail end crashes into the tree, sending splinters flying all over the place.

With a smooth pull and spin of her entire body, the whip pulls back and swings around her before rushing out again.

Right before hitting another tree, she twists the handle, sending a ripple through the chain, causing it to alter its path at the last second and wrap around a branch instead.

Pulling back, the chain spins around the branch and the flail smacks the back of the tree, leaving a deep dent.

"Fascinating." The moth mutters while skilfully manipulating the silver chain of the holy relic to once again return to her.

Swinging her arm over her head, she creates a cyclone with the whip.

Narrowing her eyes, the silver chain turns black with a metallic sheen as armament haki quickly covers the entirety of it.

Attacking another tree, the trunk this time exploded completely under the enhanced power of the Morningstar.

'The whip surely is a terrifying weapon when wielded by a skilful person, even more so when coupled with something like haki.' Nodding to herself in satisfaction, she coils the whip up and stores it away.

"Time to check up on the situation of the castle. If things are moving the same as in the show, then I'll make my entrance when Carmilla's forces drive Dracula's court back into the castle's main hall." Pulling out a transmission mirror and assembling the shards into a large mirror, Juniper flicks the surface, causing it to ripple like water as the image it showed quickly changed to that of a magnificent black castle sporting tall towers and narrow bridges.

"What a piece of art." The moth whispers in awe upon seeing the abstract architecture of Dracula's home.

'A marvel of science and magic. Filled with all the knowledge of the world, and probably even some more than that.' Lips stretching into a thin, creepy smile, she barely contains her excitement.

"And it will soon be mine kekekehehehahaha *clack* *clack*." Crackling as her mind gets filled with all kinds of ideas as to what she could do with that castle which can move all across the world in an instant, Juniper takes a moment to calm herself again.

'Soon, but I first need to get ready for my showdown with the current owner before claiming everything he built as my own.' With a dangerous glint in her eyes, she uses the mirror to peek at the two human Forgemaster's that wandered outside of the eerie castle.

Confirming the progress of the plot regarding Carmila's coupe against Dracula and quickly dismissing the idea of snagging those two humans right now, the moth turns her attention to the system's creation menu.

'I have no real need to deal with them right now. I can just throw their souls into my book once I kill them or something like that. On another note, there will be a lot of fodder standing around when I arrive. I have two options to deal with them. A, give myself a power-up that allows for mass destruction, or B, make an item with the necessary ability.' Tapping a claw against her mandible as they clack away, she ponders for a while.

"Hm, I just learned magic and how to use the Morningstar. Want to use them in an actual fight first before getting something that would make them irrelevant. Can't just go for the easy solutions after all, that would make things boring." Chuckling at this, Juniper's eyes narrow as she designs an item that will deal with the pests that would be seeking to interrupt her big entrance to challenge Dracula.

[Sun's Tear: A crystal orb capable of absorbing the light of the sun and release it at a later date. Duration is equivalent to the amount of time it has been exposed to the sun in advance to activation. Can be recalled to the system inventory. Floats in place upon activation.]

The orb is about the size of Juniper's head and currently completely transparent, something that will change once it starts to absorb sunlight.

Spending the 200+ souls, she takes it out and places it on a boulder before looking up into the sky where the yellow star slowly makes its way towards the horizon.

"A few hours should be more than enough to deal with those vampiric vermin and keep them away from my stuff till things are sorted out." With that the moth goes back to training her new abilities in preparation for the great showdown between herself and the king of vampires.