Chapter 18: It feels like magic

Just as Ethan was disparaging himself, Hiamel popped back into existence. " Having trouble I see" he said with an amused expression " I could help, but first I want an apology." Hiamel stated flatly his mood doing a 180.

"Eh? Were you really upset at my comment? When considering you were trying to talk about my lack of stones... which is harsh considering that I am in a female body.... And you get upset about me making a joke about legs?" Ethan exclaimed in surprise.

Hiamel chuckled darkly " I have my reasons. If you want help, you know what you need to do."

Ethan sighed " Fine. I am sorry that I made a joke about you having legs" Ethan said while thinking thoughts only about getting revenge for this later on.

Hiamel laughed and said " I'll explain a few things. With mutation magic, you do use mana but you have never circulated it before so I will need to awaken that within you, not only that but mutation magic requires you to be in direct contact early on. I do believe that you can change that later on depending on how hard you work at it." Hiamel paused and allowed Ethan to digest that.

" Now, mutation magic is different from all forms of magic. Which is why not many people attempt to utilize it, mainly because it does not use spells per say you can create spells for it later on, but basically you are writing programs in your victims body that your magic will follow."

That was when Hiamel reached out towards Ethan and a purple beam shot from Hiamel's hand and into Ethan " I have forcefully unlocked the rest of your checkpoints so that you can circulate mana throughout your body, before you would have had to work on channeling mana and break through it yourself, it could take months of practice but we don't have that time. You are going to have to catch up. That being said, before you can even really cast your magic you will need to get used to your mana. So focus on that first!"

Ethan diligently started working on channeling his mana and getting accustomed to it, to Hiamels surprise he was an extremely quick study and was able to figure out his mana and how to distribute it throughout his body.

Within a few days Ethan had mastered his mana circulation to the point where he could send any mana to any part of his body within a second. It would have taken less time but Ethan had to take frequent breaks due to having to rest his mind and body.

Hiamel was just flabbergasted "who is this guy?? It takes most people a month if not longer to really begin to move their mana around. He is on day 3 and has basically mastered inner body mana manipulation "

Hiamel rubbed his face with his clawed hand "I think it's time to learn how to use your magic Ethan, I will warn you. This will be much harder than mana manipulation. "

With that Ethan perked up " finally! I want to see what this does." With that Ethan summoned 6 minions in front of him. "Okay what do I do?" Ethan asked unexpectedly

Hiamel smiled wide, his grin almost covered his entire face. " This will hurt." Suddenly Hiamel shot a tentacle into ethans chest and the tentacles grew suckers so that it could not be ripped out as they gained purchase on Ethan's carapace. This had been planned.

The tentacle began to fill with energy and liquid that began filling Ethan with extremely cold feeling almost as if the void itself was being pumped into him. " What are you doing?!" Ethan could finally yell after the shock wore off and pain began to fuel his anger. Hiamel chuckled "Normally you would have to activate your mana core naturally, it would take you probably a few days whereas most others would take weeks. But we don't have time for that so I am forcefully awakening it with some bonuses aside."

With that the pace of the energy and the liquid increased to the max and Ethan passed out.

Ethan awoke or... at least he thought he did. He couldn't move his body..in fact all he felt was cold and a sense of being adrift. All Ethan could do is wait and think. Strangely, he was oddly calm about this. He didn't feel threatened, he just was.

Then Ethan felt something else... fear. The dark god, the unknowable entity was here. He felt the presence close around him.

"Hello ettthan.

You will not go against your callllinngg. To ensure. Will now link to you and impart knowledge of the world of Brutalis.

The crucible of life. You will be victorious. "

Ethan felt the knowledge begin to flow into his brain and slowly blanks began to be filled. Along with the knowledge came pain, ice cold pain in his head.

The knowledge contained everything, the background of each faction. The church of light. The antithesis of the cult of the dark god. They have a massive army that is full of different classes, paladins, juggernauts, rouges, and lets not forget the different types of mages, primal mages which focus on elemental spells as old as the world itself. Void mages work with spells that handle the elements of the void. Gravity, entropy, and for one mage in this specification Celestial magic. They enhance their soldiers by feeding them monsters to increase their power.

Their leader was St Augustus... he has been their main powerhouse for as long as the Church of light was created. He will do absolutely anything to retain that power, he is not to be trusted.

In fact, the person who started the practice of eating monsters was none other than St Augustus. What he did not tell them is that if their body cannot handle the influx of Mutogene that they would turn into abominations and kill and eat anything in their way. Not only that, but even though they state they are beings of light... this infuses darkness into their bodies to allow them to gain power from monsters... so ... the line between human and monster is being blurred over time.

Whereas the cult of the dark god Zaggoth is few but powerful. They are all monsters, some of the older members have been here for 10 years or more. They have been hunting and killing and growing in power since the beginning. They are supremely powerful, which is spoken to by the fact that they are still alive. The main strength of the monsters is the fact that they can grow so powerful so quickly...Just goes to showcase the power that the dark god zaggoth wields. They will eventually become cataclysmic disasters.

The main single point that makes these groups similar is the fact that they both are here to contest each other to prevent one group from controlling the power of the Diablos Cube. A missing piece of the soul of Zaggoth. With his power complete he could easily enter into the material plane. However there is one other group that is actually native to the planet The Forest. The forest is not a people per say, it is a race of plant humanoids. They are a collective and are completely connected and their only goal is the protection of their planet. They can move between the different layers of Brutalis even coming to the surface for short amounts of time which most creatures cannot do as they grow in power, as it would make them extremely weak due to the levels of mana that decreased as you rose up in levels and increased as you descended.