Laid Bare

Waves of whitish blue whisps rush up from around the lone tower in the middle of the unfinished city.

They all gather around a single golden coin that rapidly spins in the air, brought there by a strange force of attraction that left all untouched but them.

Reaching out with her chitin clad hand, Juniper stores away all 3'482 souls, which would have doubled her wealth if not for the fact that all these souls were weak and damaged from the magician's spell, lessening their worth quite a bit.

Despite that, their sheer quantity and the addition of a high-grade fallen soul from the old guy, made this still a pretty nice harvest.

Whistling happily at the total of 6'685 low-grade and 2.5 high-grade souls in her possession, the moth stretches her limbs before glancing down at the remains of the old man.

Snickering at how fast the poor man's dream went up in smoke because of her shenanigans, she gives the headless body a nice kick- *Wham!* *Shatter!* That launched it through the already cracked windows and into a free fall all the way down to the mass of corpses which is all that is left of his grand army.

Turning to the head still lying on the ground, she steps over and places her foot on the thing before slowly leaning forward till her entire weight presses down on it.

*Crack-spalt!"

Giving in under the pressure, brain matter and skull bits paint the once pristine floor of the tall building.

After that she goes around the tower to raid all its rooms clean, shoving anything not nailed down into her inventory.

Soon enough she emptied the top and arrives at the basement where hundreds of shards float around the large empty stone hall.

'Nice~, this is the largest transmission mirror shown in the show. It can allow entire armies to move through.' Sending out her magic power, she easily takes control of the magic artifact as it assembles in front of her.

It is then that the moth's eyes grow wide in shock and surprise, only to narrow in embarrassment right after.

With a cute yelp she uses all four of her arms to cover up her chest and crotch while light rosy tint appears on her pale checks.

"I… I have been naked the whole time!" She shouts while looking at her reflection in the large mirror.

'Did becoming a demon turn me into an exhibitionist or what?' She thinks completely baffled at herself for not noticing this earlier.

It took her moment to calm down from the embarrassment she felt, but when she did and started thinking about it, it wasn't that surprising anymore.

'My early days had been quite hectic, and with the temperatures in the abyss being positively boiling to say the least, I wasn't too concerned with clothing.' Rubbing her face with one hand while still keeping herself covered with her other limbs, Juniper groans in annoyance.

'Not only am I resistant to high temperatures, but I also have a high body temperature myself, making it so that I hardly even notice the cold, keeping me blissfully unaware of my undressed state. Also, there's the fact that I do not have any exposed sensitive parts, it's all covered by chitin… still.' Pulling up her system she quickly designs a new item and hits the save button without bothering about the price.

[Shifting Robe: A piece of fabric capable of taking on all kinds of shapes and forms and stay as such for as long as it is worn. Its base state is a pure white robe. Capable of repairing and cleaning itself when infused with magic. Resistant to elemental effects including acids and decay, does not grant protection to the user.]

Hastily throwing the white robe over her head, Juniper takes a deep breath and relaxes a bit now that she is covered in at least something.

Glancing at the mirror, the moth thinks for a moment before shrugging.

"I already imitated her appearance body wise and took on her name, why not go for the whole set then." With that she closes her eyes and imagines what shape the robe should take.

A low rustling sound enters her ears as the individual threads of the robe begin moving to adjust themselves and morph into different shapes.

Within mere seconds, Juniper opens her eyes and looks at her figure reflected in the mirror.

What she sees there is an almost perfect replica of the lunar moth streamer who she had been a loyal fan before being reincarnated as demon.

She had to get creative with some things, as the Vtuber's design wasn't made to be realistic.

The military style crop top jacket with sleeves that reach just beneath the elbows and high collar lined with white fur, its colour scheme being mainly green with black accents and white diamond pattern at the sides of her chest, remains the same, just like the black straps and buckles running across it, but the gloves were modified to be fingerless so she can still use her claws.

For the pants? Shorts? Whatever, Juniper just went "fuck it" and imagined it as a grey, sleeveless bodysuit with cosmetic armour plates that look like her chitin running up the centre of her front and along the spine on the back, connected together by a strap.

This seemingly leaves her sides bare, only covered by the grey suit, even though her actual chitin surrounded her entire upper body except neck and shoulders.

The bodysuit also covers her hips and bottom, leaving a small section of bare skin between the suit and her chitin thigh-highs.

Doing a spin to get a view of her new appearance, the moth smiles before moving her limbs and twisting her body to tests the flexibility of her new garb.

"Can't belief I didn't notice that I wasn't wearing anything." She mutters to herself, still somewhat in disbelief, especially now that she once again feels the sensation of cloth against her skin.

Snapping forth her mantis blades, the moth is pleasantly surprised by the fact that the gap between her sleeves and the fluff lined wrist cover of her gloves is perfectly spaced, as it allowed for free use of her weapons without destroying the clothes.

Humming happily, Juniper traces a finger across the mirror, causing ripples to spread out as the image it reflected shifts.

Moments later the mirror shows the chaotic plaza of Gresit where Trevor Belmont, Sypha Belnades and the towns folk try to fight off a group of night-creatures with the help of the speaker girls magics and Belmont's military knowledge.

Pulling out a fluffy carpet and a bunch of luxurious cushions from her inventory that she looted at the top of the tower, the moth plumped down and made herself comfortable.

Two arms folded behind her head, which leans up against a bunch of the pillows, she takes out one of the books looted from the old guy's little library and some salted meat with the other two.

"Let's get some reading done while keeping an eye on the plot. Need to get a better understanding of magic anyway if I want to modify the [Crown of Thorns] spell to my liking." Throwing the piece of meat into her mouth, she opens up the book only to frown when faced with the unfamiliar letters.

Lowering the book and placing it on her lap with a blank look on her face, Juniper sighs and rubs the bridge of her nose.

'Right, can't read this shit.' Opening her system, she spends a few dozen souls on making pair of glasses with comically large round lenses before putting it on her nose all the while chewing on the strip of salted meat.

[Translating Glasses: Provide the wearer with a translation of any text in their field view.]

With the glasses on, she grabs the book from her lap and opens it before squinting her eyes like an old person looking at their phone.

As she does, lines of phantom text begin to manifest next to the actual letters, forming sentences that she could actually understand.

Swallowing the meat, the moth smiles and activates [Focus] to boost her comprehension ability.

Then she proceeds to work on deciphering the language by comparing the letters and words with the presented translation of the glasses.

She went through three books like that and by the end she was confident that she had mastered the language… at least it's written form.

Despite that, Juniper kept the glasses on just in case some other language popped up.

And that it did, just not in the form that she had expected.

Instead of some simple language from another country, she found herself looking at a bunch of glyphs and the phantom text translating them for her.

Reading through them, the moth learned about the origin and history of the spell used by the old magician.

The [Crown of Thorns] spell is not something he created himself but merely picked it up after deciphering some of these glyphs that he found in some old ruins.

A few thousand years ago, there was very talented magician who wanted to create his own kingdom.

For that purpose, he created a powerful spell that would enslave the minds of people and make them obey his commands.

This spell would create magical thorns that invade the mind of a target and take control.

But keeping such a spell up for a long duration of time or on multiple targets would be a very draining task.

So, he added a very foul piece of magic to the spell that would parasitize the victim's soul in order to sustain itself.

Reading this piece of information, Juniper's eyes widen in surprise and delight.

"Damn, looks like this spell is a lot more powerful than I initially thought." She mutters before continuing to read.

After making that spell and using it on thousands of innocent people, he accumulated a large population that obeyed his every order.

With them, he built a magnificent city over which he ruled from his tower.

After it's completion, he declared himself King of Thorns, and started to expand his territory.

'This explains that old coot's obsession with his city. He tried to become the second King of Thorns. Heh, too bad for him that I suddenly appeared~." Snickering at this, she finished reading through the rest of the glyphs which explained the downfall of the self-declared King of Thorns.

His spell might allow him to enslave a nearly unlimited number of people, but commanding such a vast population effectively is something else entirely.

Because of the crude method of mind-control that simply scrambles the victims mind to the point that it could only take orders and do nothing by itself, the King of Thorns was unable to lead all of his subjects and got ultimately killed by the neighbouring countries for his evil deeds and foul magic.

After his death all the people enslaved by him collapsed dead, either because of the spell parasitizing their souls, or the bad state their bodies were in after tirelessly toiling away for multiple years.

The city was razed to the ground till only ruins remained.

Only a single hidden room containing large slates of stone engraved with glyphs survived and were later found by another magician that attempted to follow in the footsteps of the first King of Thorns.

Finished with the books, the moth places it aside.

"If I can change the way the spell manipulates the mind, getting rid of its major weakness, it would truly become a terrifying thing to behold." Muttering this to herself, Juniper turns her full attention to the mirror.

The fight in Gresit had played out much the same way that she remembered it.

They killed the glowing and talking night-creature that ate the bishop of Gresit, who is pretty much the sole reason for the state Walachia is currently in, because he captured Lisa, Dracula's wife, and damned her to be burned at the stake.

Then the ground collapsed and caused the two plot important people to fall into the underground hideout of their still slumbering third party member.

While they manoeuvre through the machinery of the catacombs, the demon moth returned to her reading, devouring the words on each page of the books with her mind racing thanks to repeated us of her skill.

Absorbing the knowledge in theses tombs, she tries to get a better grasp on how magic is being cast in this world.

Skills are great, especially if they are focused in purpose and versatile in applications, but having the actual know how about magic is something that Juniper thought the original owner of her cheat had neglected way too much.

Sure, demons gain access to their magic power circuit once they advance to middle rank, but that shit is most of the time some elemental stuff, and while it does grant great freedom to the casters, it does not come with understanding. Yes, you can shape it into all kinds of destructive forms or even use it to create some stuff, but it won't help you understand the magic's of others.

Enchanting, rituals, wards, barriers and artifacts, most of them can be brute forced thanks to the knowledge about splitting one's own soul that all demons gain from their inheritance, but they won't be long term solutions and can only applied on a small scope.

Juniper planed on staying here and learn as much magic as possible until the trio arrives at the Belmont keep.

At that point their actions no longer had any worth to the moth.

Depending on how her modification on the [Crown of Thorns] spell come along, she might even take control of them to spice things up a bit.

Sypha would a prime target as her knowledge is not written down unlike Alucard's in Dracula's castle and Trevor's in the keep respectively, so it would be beneficial to have her spill all those tasty beans before Juniper got rid of the feisty magical girl.

That is of course, IF she can fix the problems of the spell.

Content with her plan, the moth immerses herself in the study of magic, which, luckily, is plenty interesting unlike the stuff she was forced to dig through during her school days.

That's probably the charm of knowledge that grants you actual power.