An Arcanist in Karakura Town 22 (Patreon)

An Arcanist in Karakura Town
Chapter 22

-VB-

I got an achievement, sort of.

I discovered that “Hollow Siphoning” had a soft ceiling that I could not easily penetrate; each mask that I made from the Hollows had a conceptual limit of a “hundred” before it formed and became something like a cocoon.

It was very odd, or it was initially, until I remembered that Menos were a thing.

Menos, or Menos Grande, was a subcategory of Hollows. They existed when Hollows gained too much power from combining or eating other souls including other Hollows and became more or less “unstable” as different personalities that they had absorbed were never “processed” and remained.

My masks, despite being made with my spiritual manipulation that was slowly becoming better with each subsequent use, were still made from Hollows, but lacked the sapience inherent to Hollows because the consciousness in charge had already been dispersed when I killed the Hollows and used their literal spiritual “ash” to make these masks.

So.

I made a Menos!

…Soul Society was sure to fuck me over if they learned about this.

Unfortunately, my curiosity was getting the better of me so far because I hadn’t destroyed or tossed it away.

I held the cocoon-like mask and flipped it around.

Why did the mask go for a cocoon motif? It wasn’t as if it could think… could it?

I set the mask down onto my arcane analyzer, a basic ritual circle to determine the components of spiritual and magical objects, and pushed mana into the ritual circle.

The circle lit up blue as my mana saturated it, and then dimmed away to red and black motes of light. This was something I knew already; black motes of magic denoted death and red motes of light were innate magics. I waited for the circle to spit out more details as I tapped my fingers away at the edge of the table.

And then the outermost circle of the ritual circle lit up while all else stayed dim.

I raised an eyebrow.

“Dormant?”

So what would happen if I awakened it?

No, before that, I needed to rip out all of its innate abilities so that should the “awakened” mask somehow show sapience and hostility, I could end it quickly without having a mess on my hands.

I moved the mask over to another ritual circle I’ve prepared beforehand. This one was less of a circle and more of a hexagon with “spikes” leading into the center from each of the edges of the hexagon. Pushing mana into it, I stopped when only four of the six edges were lit up.

The ritual circle dimmed before brightening in blue and gripped at the mask. With a pull, red motes of essence tore away from the mask, and I quickly grabbed it with my spiritual manipulation before it could dissipate into nothing. Then I ate it.

I winced as I felt raw rage that began rumbling inside me for a moment before it subsided, and I absorbed the bare intellect but not the emotions attached to the memories associated with these innate essences… and learned how to fire a Cero.

Nice.

… Actually, it wasn’t. Regular cero’s in general were not efficient use of spiritual power. Perhaps I would make a technique to enhance its destructive potential while lowering the cost, but now was not the time.

The ritual circle dimmed.

The mask, no longer bogged by whatever “innate-ness” that came with spiritual essences that tainted it morphed under my watch into a blank mask.

I picked it up.

…

Safe.

I grinned.

‘Alright, what do you do now?’ I thought to myself and moved the mask back to the original analyzer ritual.

Another round of analysis… and nothing. Just black motes of light with sprinkles of blue.

“You’re no longer the primary of anything, are you?” I muttered as I picked it up.

Blue motes of light wasn’t my mana, per say, but rather the analyzer ritual’s method of denoting the “rank” of this mask. As I had mumbled to it, this mask was no longer capable of acting as a “primary” source of power.

I pondered on this turn of events before making a theory.

My basic theory was thus.

Hollow masks I made with my spiritual manipulation were not as empty as I had assumed them to be; how else could they retain the abilities of their former selves? While much of the consciousness associated with the mask truly did disappear, some of the baser instincts had remained. The mask was still a Hollow, so when I absorbed enough Hollows into it, the mask went and evolved into a Menos Grande.

It would have had its own little thing, as cocoons were creatures metaphorically representing a phase in time where change was occurring. However, I had gone and ripped out whatever was changing within.

What I now held in my hand was just power distilled from Hollows into a pure form, and because it was so pure, it would become very easily “tainted” by other things, which was why it couldn’t be the “primary” source of power but rather a reservoir of power for another “primary” source of power to draw from.

…

The whole thing was a convoluted speculation, but I personally liked how it wrote itself out.

Now, what was I going to do with this?

…

…

Well, Orihime certainly could use a power boost.

Hell, was there a tantric ritual I could use this for? Actually, I was an arcanist; could I even perform tantric rituals? Perhaps not as the primary ritualist but a supporter?

Oh, so much discoveries to be made… Why didn’t I focus more on research again?

… Right, assholes outside my home threatening to burn the world down around them.

Ugh.

-VB-

Orihime blushed as Alan told her what they were going to do.

“S-So we’re going to do sexy stuff with magic?”

He looked surprised by her summary of what he wanted, and laughed heartily.

“Yes,” he said as he dispelled the illusion over her stomach. She blushed even as she leaned into his chest while he caressed her visibly pregnant stomach. It was just a bump right now, but it had already been showing. She was so happy that Alan managed to make permanent illusions for her. Otherwise, she didn’t think she would be able to take people’s stares…

His nimble fingers unbuttoned her shirt quickly, sparing her no more than five seconds before he pulled her shirt off of her and pulled her skirt off.

She wiggled her butt a little when she felt his stiff and throbbing cock snuggle between her ass cheeks. She giggled when he cupped her breasts and kissed her neck.

Then he lifted her in a bridal carry and walked to his ritual room.

She spent the rest of the night being on top of him with a mask on her face, riding him til she collapsed from exhaustion.

She loved her husband. He made the best magicks.

Her opinion turned out to be almost a fact when she woke up the day after, wished she was not sore, and her soreness magically disappeared.

She rode him again for the entire day as thanks for such an amazing superpower!