LAE [Solo]

Recently, an unexpected problem has arisen for Iota that had racked her brain. When it came to her and her capabilities, recently Iota has been growing rapidly in terms of power. Not only has her general power pool skyrocketed in the past few weeks, but she has felt her mental fortitude increase as well with every second that she spends in the demon realm. Slowly, over time, she has picked up some new bits and bobs but hasn't really figured out how to use them to their full potential. However, what she has figured out to use to its full potential is her magic, mainly the Root portion of it. See, Iota has had a problem. To this point, she has neglected her Metria and any spells which could come from it in turn for focusing on Root spells because though they lacked in raw power, they do supply the versatility in which Iota would need as her being and her ideal world is hard to translate into a physical form or spell. That was until she hit a wall.

Normally, because of the amount of knowledge shared between all the races in the world and the general access to it, this wouldn't be a problem. But Iota isn't a normal demon, in fact, to her knowledge, she's one of a kind. There's no writing that she could go to, no knowledge that she could call upon, so everything for Iota was just trial and error. When she gains new powers, there's rarely a rhyme or reason to the occurrence from her perspective, and it becomes something that she can just do now. The price to pay for uniqueness was high and laid a difficult road ahead of Iota, though it would make it much easier for those that follow once she can get a good pace rather than the sporadic one she has been on. Anyways, because of this plateau, Iota's root spells have stagnated, basically requiring her to pour in way more effort and time into them to achieve the results that she's aiming for. In conclusion, the Root spells have become inefficient.

And that scared her, mainly for the fact that Metria, or Branch spells as she has been calling them, are an untouched land for her. Outside of the one spell that she's known since her rebirth, Branch is a concept completely foreign to her. While the fundamentals of them she has been able to grasp, the actual application of such spells alludes to her. Though frankly, Iota wasn’t going to overcome this hurdle if she wasn’t going to take the risk of traveling uncharted lands. In fact, she was due for a trip anyways. See, Iota has recently figured out that she can draw the properties of the world around her into something physical. When she unlocked this, no clue? Why can she do this? She assumes it is just something that comes with the territory of being a special demon.

With this new ability, Iota has been trying to see what she can do with it. Eventually, she’s stumbled upon a practical application. By using a Root spell of creation to form a crystal small enough to fit in the palm of her hands, Iota can take a single aspect and place it inside of this crystal. If she were then to channel magic through the said crystal, then it will be altered by whatever is in the crystal. This made her mind rack, mainly towards the possibility of what would happen if she were to put multiple crystals together and what if the aspects themselves were more esoteric in nature. Then even more problems arose, like how she was going to test this out and where she was going to get enough samples to test this hypothesis.

And then she realized.

There was a place not too far away that was controlled by 100 different people. These people molded each part of this place as they saw fit, having basically entire realms to themselves that change at their whim. Perhaps, if Iota were to get enough experiments from this place then perhaps she can take that sort of control over the world outside of this one confined area.

And thus began her pilgrimage to Hell.

Or at least it would have been if Iota were an idiot. Hell was nothing to scoff at, especially when you take into account the guardians that called each layer home. That meant there were very well over 100 neutral parties on each level that could try to kill her at any moment. In her current state, if Iota decided to just waltz into a layer and ended up against a hostile guardian, she would die. Even her self-confidence couldn’t deny this fact, Iota would quite literally be in their court. With this realization, Iota was going to have to increase her arsenal. Perhaps even give this whole Metria thing a try.

Currently, the Avant could be found somewhere in the wilderness of the Demon Realm. Where exactly was not incredibly important as she just needed to have the room and freedom to test and develop her spells as she pleased. As much as Iota would have loved to kill demons, she sort of needs them for the foreseeable future. Plus it would look really bad to her mother if she just went on a demon killing spree and Iota was enjoying their relationship for the moment. Once a location was found, Iota would pull out a small notebook and pen from her pocket and begin to write in it.

Immediately behind the cover read the words “Lesser Avantica Enchiridion”, a handbook basically. It should be of no surprise that Iota was a fan of books as they have been the most helpful resource for her to find out what has been happening or what has happened in this new world that she was abruptly thrusted into. Not only that, albeit limited, there was also information on how she can harness her powers. This book was meant to be a chronicle of what she was going to do, to keep it in record for the future generation.

The first task was close range spells. Because of how Iota’s Breaks works, long range magic is essentially useless as she is strongarmed into a frontline role. Iota was supposed to be a sword and a shield while also being a mage. Like usual, she was putting a lot of things on her back, possibly too much for her to handle but only time will tell. For now, she will focus on the sword portion as Empatia basically had her shield part covered.

She stood in that clearing and closed her eyes, focusing on herself and her very existence in that moment. From her feet that touched the ground to her head, then every metria circuit in her body that flowed with power, begging for its potential to be harnessed. Iota had become one with herself in that moment, now the next step was to direct it. The plan was to start small and then work her way up. A point blank explosion that can help her fight both the enemies above her and below, that’s the sort of attack she envisioned. Now that there was a purpose, there needed to be a request, an incantation.

“Light, darkness, pain, pleasure, life, death. The dualities converge at one point, and like everything it will break. As above, so below. Daunted Horizon.” As the final words left her mouth, she could feel everything around her get heavy. Her clothes, the grass, the air. Everything in the immediate vicinity grew heavy and dropped to the floor, everything besides Iota that is. As her metria came together and then burst outwards into reality Iota had stumbled upon a new spell. By this point in her life, crafting these things weren’t necessarily difficult, but did prove to be a chore as Iota could be making spells that already exist and commanding her metria towards a mute goal. In either case, she wrote down the spell in the Enchiridion before closing the book shut and continuing the process.

The next thing that she needed was a reliant form of attacking. Because she’s going to be in close combat but isn’t necessarily built for that sort of thing, having a way of trading blows and keeping Empatia up at almost all times was crucial to her success in serious battles. These spells were going to need refinement once they begin to see actual combat, but until then they would work fine in their elementary forms. Once again, Iota gathered metria in her body, except this time she placed them in very finite and deliberate points on her body. Her elbows, knees, knuckles, and the soles of her feet. This sort of thing spread her thin in terms of raw potency but gave a blanket buff to her overall physical abilities. There was no planned incantation for this, making the spell weaker, but Iota had a plan for this as well. The Avant walked over to the nearest tree and dropped the spell again. Focused, she threw a jab at the tree but in the instant before context she created a pad of metria coating her fist. A punch that wouldn’t have even left a scratch on that tree now split in on impact. A deadly spell that definitely needed a name. “Hm. Split Impact.” With that settled, it went down in the book with a little star written next to it as to denote the fact that it was more of an advanced spell compared to the rest which were going to be placed in the Lesser Avantica.

Now, for what she has been dreading: a branch spell. Because her ideal world was a bit more esoteric in desires, trying to force it out into a physical spell was going to be quite the interesting process. To start from the base, this spell would aid in her closing distances between herself and potential targets in her zone of influence, making her quite aggressive when given the chance. The target for training this spell was a boulder roughly 10 meters away, large and intimidating enough that Iota was going to have a harder time missing it than hitting it. Instead of focusing on the flow of metria in her body, Iota instead went for a visualization root, apply her want into the picture. Her [i]desire[/s] to aim for the rock, to get as close as she possibly could as fast as possible. This desire turned into frustration, this frustration quickly shifting to anger, a yearn for violence and a cry for vengeance. Bearing a glare that could burn a hole in the skull of a man, Iota’s sight never moved from the boulder. A burning sensation washed over her as the metria in her body was kicked into overdrive. Suddenly, Iota was shot forward toward the boulder and stopped mere centimeters from it, abruptly and unexpectedly that Iota tripped and fell into the boulder anyways. A loud smack could be heard as her forehead made contact with it. It hurt, yeah, but didn’t feel like enough damage that it would have to be something she would need to worry about in the long term. So, her hands found their way to the top portion of her face as she winced in pain.

“Ah fuck!” She bent her legs and crouched on the ground, waiting for the pain to pass. It would be a few minutes before it would do so, allowing Iota to regain her composure but not assume the position she was in prior to the incident. In fact, she sat there to think. Perhaps she was going down a road that she will regret, something that wasn’t going to go to plan down the line. Like, just think about: a front lining mage. Being in a spot that is going to require quick thinking and reactions while also having to chant incantations was going to go wrong at some point so Iota was going to have to stay on her toes.

But for now, she was tired, so she slept in the opening of the forest by herself.