BOOM

Sounded another explosion arcoss the plane as I got burned and bludgeoned. Again.

Mya thought is was hilarious.

"Well at least you've figured out how to use your spiritual energy" she said between snickering.

Our little engagement worked out to be about ten minutes.

It took about one minute before I tried to fight back.

At one minute three seconds, I realized just how much she outclassed me in every freaking way.

And the remaining nine or so minutes where spent with me getting my ass handed to me while I tried to hit her. Finally I got so frustrated I exploded. Literally.

So as it turns out spiritual power requires a certain emotional aspect to initiate. I'm easy going by nature which apparently was acting as a mental block, and accessing it requires you to need to want it bad enough. Or that's what I concluded with Mya's little lecture on it.

Once I managed to actually use it It was really easy to find. Apparently I was looking way to deep for it because I had assumed incorrectly it was like Mana. Really it's more like right below the skin, ready to be used. It flows a lot easier than Mana, and I have a lot less of it apparently. Or mana is just that much more effective. Anyways, now that I found it, I had to learn to use it. Which Mya thus far has been enjoying my failure to do so as thus far the only 'spell' I can use is "self-destruct"

The first time was right in front of my face and sent me tumbling back...as did the next three times that followed it.

As I said, Mya thought it was hilarious.

"Mya, lets work on something else..at least until I'm not chard and bruised?"

I felt like crap to be honest. Between the ass kicking I'd taken over the coarse of the day and the numerous explosions I'd been exposed to, I felt terrible and I must of looked worse because she agreed.

She still took a moment laughing at my expense before she made an effort to compose herself.

"Yea sure thing. Just remember you need to practice later on. its important to learn how to enhance attacks. Which reminds me, we need to get some weapons, and shelter, and food."

"You only think of this now?"

"Shut up, getting you to not being a complete failure was more important." She snapped.

'Shit must have thought that out loud..'

Her comment pissed me off a bit, but no way could I take her, and the need for continual survival triumphed out in the end.

"So what should we do?" I asked, ignoring her mood swing from laughing at my expense, to snippy for my comment.

"Hmm, well we really need a place to stay, demons can go a very long time without food an water, but we don't wanna get caught unarmed. Going without a shelter comes as a close second. Weapons will let us fight back, though given how week the Mana is in this area there is little chance for anyone else to show up. But having a dependable location to house our forces will let you recruit some more demons. For food..I don't know I always just yelled at some Prinnies and let them worry about it. Also we can throw our Prinnies and anyone who attacks our base, so win-win"

'Not if your a Prinny, Then again I don't know how they feel about being used as an impromptu grenade by other demons. For all I know they see it as a chance to get out of work. From what I recall Prinnies would frequently try to slack off whenever they got a change although, given their employers...' I shook off the thought because it wasn't really getting me anywhere.

"All right we need weapons, so where do we get some?"

"No clue" she responded with a smile, sometimes I don't know if she is messing with me or not...

"Generally," she continued, "you pay a merchant to get them for you. Though merchants are rare amongst the netherworld. Hmm We also need a healer with the resurrection ability. Hmm, well for now I think the best way to start is to make a base of operations. If you build it they will come right?"

'And the sad part is, this is the best idea we have'

"SO how do we build this base of operations?"

She shrugged. "Well you could try making a crapload of Prinnies and letting them do the work, or you could try to wish one out of Mana?"

"Any preference?" I asked. Either way sounded fine to me.

"hmm, well the Prinnies absolutely have to be paied even if its only a tiny amount to get them to do any work at all. Something about having to pay off any outstanding debts or something. You also should expect to pay allowances to anyone under your command, so they don't have to find spending cash elsewhere." she said giving me a look that made sure I knew she was included in that lot.

'Your charity knows no bounds Mya'

"So, unless you have a bunch of money hidden away, the plan is to find somone who is weak enough that we could beat up for cash even without weapons, that going to be a bit tricky to do."

'So we are essentially at the level of beating up kids for their lunch money...'

"On the other hand making anything out of Mana can be very costly. Non-living, physical things are the cheapest category of things you could make with Mana so its doable, but I don't know how much you have."

'So basically that's the only viable option, and if I don't have enough we are back to square one.'

"Hey if it's cheap to make non-living physical things, why can't I just try to magic up some weapons?"

She smiled slightly glad I was at least using my noggin for something other than getting exploded. "It would be nice but anything you summoned wouldn't be any better for us than using a random rock instead of our fist.

Actually our fist more effective than an average rock. Useable weapons are magically reinforced to be tougher than the mountain destroying demons who wield them. Otherwise what would be the point?"

I nodded. 'Damn I was hoping to cheat my way out of that one. Oh well then, might as well start.'

I sat down next to the crater I awoke in, as we haden't exactly moved far away from it, to try and see if I couldn't pull another one out of my ass.

Mya was surprised at my sudden sitting.. "Hey what are you doing?" she asked

I shrugged slightly, "Well I was going to try to make a base, and if I can't we can go from there."

However Mya seemed to be surprised by this, "Wait, don't you want to find a better area first? I mean we can go find a nicer place to start our base of operations. From what I can tell this is in the middle of nowhere!"

I blinked before I replied. "Err, well I sorta think I already sorta claimed this place when I first arrived and made a body. So I don't think I can really choose a different place right now anyways."

She pinched the area where her nose met her forhead. "Ugg you have the weirdest overlord power set. i'v ever heard of you seem to be all over the place.."

"Power set?" I asked despite myself .

She looked at me blankly before hollowed out a response;

"Each overlord has their own abilitys which allows them to rule, its how they interact with their Mana and vassals. It can affect all their subjects in the realm or be completely unnoticeable. Your said you could just wish for things while messing with your Mana and they happened. Your binding yourself to an area. It's weird, even for an overlord."

She seemed depressed "You know, I'm starting to think you're a demon of misfortune or something, everything you do seem to suck.."

'Bite me Mya.'

"Huh guess so, lemme know if there is anything I could do to help with your self image though." I try to play nice, but sometimes inner sarcasm wins out. She realized she implicated herself in that throw away comment, and huffed in annoyance, but I was already starting to tune her out.

It only took a moment to find my Mana this time, given I had seen it earlier over and over again, when I was trying to find my Spirit I can't say I would have any reason to be surprised by how quickly I found it. What was surprising however was how much I there was once I started to try to push it into the ground. Apparently It had recovered a bit from the last time I actually used it. I hadn't bothered messing with it sense the beginning of my Spirit training.

Grabbing the Mana I took as much as I could and let it flow into ground and crater which was already down to bedrock so I figured that would hopefully be enough to make it stable. I'm not an architect but hey gotta use what you do know. Once that was done, I mentally projected.

'I wish I had a fortress'

I paused..and nothing happened. Well, ill try again.

'I wish I had a castle' Again nothing happened

'Arg, I wish this shit was as easy to do as it was in the game!'

To my horror, the Mana responded, flowing like a river back into me, and towards my forehead where a splitting pain was starting to form. My last thought before unconsciousness overtook me;

'Man Mya is going to give me so much shit for this'

Then I blacked out.