As a grey film overlaid the world, I emerged from my physical body, and looked around.

Nothing had changed from when I initially investigated. Same menu and everything.

The first thing I wanted to do try was Channeling Mana, through Mya and myself to see what happened. It might give me an idea how much Mana it cost.

I pressed the Channel button, and pressed my palm against myself as the Mana charged up in my hands. Immediately my status menu popped up, however it only showed a picture of myself and my ability "Mana Savant"

'I guess I need to select what I'm channeling' Seriously, how long would it of taken me to figure all this out if it wasn't in game format? I'd probably be eaten by dragon or something long before I ever figured it out..

Well Mana savant said it couldn't be altered no matter what I did, so I clicked my portrait.

Have you ever stood over a really deep hole? Just kinda looked into the void and you had to seriously wonder just how much it would take to fill it? That was the feeling I suddenly had.

'Holy shit' more or less summed it up. I didn't know how much Mana I needed, but I knew how much I felt I had, and how much it would take to actually Soul Channel myself. There is a very, very, big difference between the two. There is probably some deep meaning about learning about ones own soul in all this, but honestly I was a bit overcome by how vast the void was to actually do so that I couldn't really appreciate it.

'Well fuck, if it takes that much to channel every time, it's going to be a long ass time before I can do so.' It would be a good idea to check that out. I'll try channeling Mya, and see if it normally takes that much. If it does ill have to bring it up with her after I draft a few more demons to the cause. It's just not going to be a viable option if it does.

I moved over near Mya who was lying down at the moment.

{I wonder what she is thinking about?" I mean I have all kinds of shit to be trying to work out on my down time.

'Then again she probably spends most of her time worried about me screwing up' I thought, a bit sad as that is there is a good chance its true. I don't really know her that well come to think of it, and she's more or less stuck with me.

'Well, demons live for hundreds of years and shes stuck with me until she want's to leave, so no real rush I guess' I couldn't honestly even humor the idea that I'd try to get rid of her on my own, even at the times she is pissing me off. Being stuck without a body sounds like it really sucks, even worse than what I had to go through. Not to mention how I've seen how she's helped me so much, and how I've nice of a persons she can be, at least when she isn't aggravating me.

I put my still charged hand on Mya which caused her own window to show up, same deal. Just a large picture on the left, and a list of her Abilities on the right. Although it would be fun to see what Gun Bunny upgraded too, I selected the portrait. To my relief the 'emptiness' I felt was significantly smaller, and I knew I had more than enough Mana to fill the void this time, with plenty to spare. I did so.

Mya had a rather odd reaction during the few seconds it took to channel. Here eyes glazed and her body tensed as if she was expecting to be struck. However I finished my channeling quickly and the Mana I spent 'jumped' for lack of a better word, back to me and settled into my brain.

My mind raced as new concepts flew about in a disorderly mess. I now understood why she felt not having normal demon instincts was a massive handicap to say the least if this is her level of understanding for all this stuff. I know with absolute certainty she gave me the 'Rifle' Form. I know more about Makai-Rifles than any object I ever knew about when I was alive. I had perfect knowledge on how to calibrate a spirit recursion chamber, which was where you 'loaded' your spiritual power into it. I knew exactly how the recoil dampener was supposed to be setup so if you put in a lot more spirit than a normal shot, like if your using a special move with SP, you wouldn't blow off your arm with the recoil.

My thoughts where interrupted however

WHAM

I flew back and unfortunately cracked my head onto a rock sending a jolt of pain into my brain.

"Oww," I groaned before the reality of the situation hit me.

"What the actual fuck Mya?! What the hell did you do that for!" I yelled angrily.

Funfact: I almost never yell. My voice carries well and I'm a natural at projecting. When I do though it really gets peoples attention because its so out of character. Also its loud.

This apparently still held true because she halted mid stride, apparently she was going to hit me again, 'I'm dealing with this shit. Here. And. Now.'

"You tell me, what the fuck where you doing to me?!" she hollered back, but not as effectively as I had, which made me childishly happy.

"I was channeling! You know, the thing we just discussed not ten minutes ago. You know the one where you specifically told me I should do that to everyone I could?"

She got an odd look on her face, and spoke out loud, but to herself. "I thought...Sorry" she added.

I might of let it go, but I felt a warm trickle down the back of my head, I think I had a cut on my forehead too from when she checked me., and I used my hand to check them.

'Yep, I'm-a-bleedin'' I noted. I was going to let her off once again, and just chalk it up to her being a Blue-Haired-Demon-Bitch, but blood has been drawn.

I'm not going to worry about fighting every demon in the netherworld, and Mya.

I'm not really what I'd call leadership material, but I'm very direct when dealing with problems, which can substitute in a pinch.

There was a problem going on here, and I needed to deal with it.

I walked right up to the girl, who looked very worried if I was going to attack her or not. I'm sure I looked angry, I could feel my face contorted into my angry face. I almost never wore that expression so the muscle group tension felt out of place.. I know for a fact it's pretty intimidating At some point my spiritual power had started putting out a fairly impressive malicious aura as well, at least I'm assuming it was.

I noted abstractly that if I still couldn't use my SP before, I could of now. Which might have been her goal earlier, though that's neither here nor there at the moment.

Standing in front of the girl who seemed very unsure of herself for the first time. I don't know why, she could easily kick my ass, but this would not be the time to point that out.

"Sit down Mya." I ordered as calmly as possible. We had a stand off for half a second before she backed down, and sat right on the spot. The blood dripping down the left side of my face likely didn't hurt on the intimidation factor.

The reason I asked it was three fold.

One I wanted her to do something that had her listening to me. In theory I was the quote-unquote superior officer, regardless of experience. If I started the conversation from that position, it would be easier to keep it, and would be a lot more productive.

Two it made it unlikely the situation would escalate into a fight, which I would loose. That would set a very bad precedent of she gets mad, its okay to hurt me. And I wouldn't be able to do anything to stop her except threaten her, which was something I didn't want to do to anyone. So it would be a no-win scenario in my book. I might never be a great demon, but I'd like to be an okay person.

She looked up at me looking very unnerved, which I guess stems from my apparent 180 in personalty.

I closed my eyes and took a few breaths and calmed myself as much as I could, causing the malicious aura to fade away, and as for the Third part, it set me up to sit down across from her. I didn't want to deal with this problem while standing as it would put her on the defensive, and given I needed her to talk, wouldn't be very productive. Letting me come down to her eye level would help somewhat.

"Mya" I started, which caused her to flinch slightly, I didn't like that at all but continued, focusing my anger calmly into words.

"I need to be clear about a few things. The first is I am not okay with other people hitting me. There might be some leeway for teaching, but I do not consider this acceptable behavior. I am not going to fight a war on two fronts with one side being all the demons of the Netherworld and the other being the people who are supposed to be my allies. Only a fool picks those kinds of fights, and only an idiot accepts allies that do so. I do not consider myself either."

"This fascination you have for hitting me needs to stop. At this point in time I am not physically capable of simply shrugging off your temper tantrums. The only reason that last blow didn't kill me was because as a Demon, even a weak one, I am still more resilient than I was when I was alive. So it needs to stop. It pisses me off, It is counter productive, It is dangerous. Do you understand."

Mya nodded, but I waited for her to say it.

She eventually mumbled out, "Yes, I understand.." She looked like she would rather I of hit her instead which while It didn't make me happy. Did a lot to vent any remaining harsh feelings.

I took a deep sigh before nodding and continuing. "Okay, I think you do. Now please tell me what set you off."

She hesitated for a while before answering. "Under my last overlord, He said he wanted to reincarnate me into a commander because I had an 'aptitude for running the base' I was excited because I thought I would finally get the instincts to help me do what I already was trying to do."

"Running his forces was a nightmare, everyone was always fighting about something or another, the only way I could get anything done was with bribes and threats."

'That actually sounds par for the course to how you get demons to do stuff from what I remember from the games...'

"So he dissolved my body in order to create me a new one, I was so excited..." she trailed off

"I'm guessing something went wrong?" I said to get her to continue.

"You could say that. He didn't realize how much it Mana it would take to reincarnate me while keeping most of my skills. Apparently he decided that it would be cheaper to simply make a new unit as a Commander. So I was more or less dead and well.."

"Being dead hurts" I added numbly. Man that was so messed up. The asshole probably didn't even care.

'He better hope I don't find him' I though murderously. Treating anyone like that would piss me off, much less someone I know.

"He did reincarnate me, but it was years later, and his Commander was off attacking someone with his main force and he needed someone to man the defenses while they where away. Turns out he had enough mana to reincarnate me for a long time, he just forgot about me."

'Fuck, and how many other people did this shit happen to, with other Overlords?' The idea of killing off other overlords just to save the souls they might be neglecting was starting to gain appeal. I knew they would just get turned into another wondering spirit anyways, so I wouldn't even have to feel bad for offing them.

"We where being overrun by a completely different Overlord he'd attacked recently. He didn't share your openion on fighting on multiple fronts" she said sardonically.

"I think I get it, so why did you attack me?" 'By now I think I had a vague notion based upon one of the descriptions of my abilities.'

"When you where channeling, it felt like a stronger mix of what it felt like both when I had my body disbanded, and when I was reincarnated. I didn't know what was happening but I wanted it to stop.."

'Yea that was more or less what I expected. The description of Mana Savant clued me in when it said normally the "Object" would be destroyed from channeling, but being a Savant I avoided that.'

I rubbed my eyes a bit, trying to suppress the headache from forming. Mya was a tough girl, but I had accidentally jabbed her in a weak spot and she just reacted naturally..

"Okay, I get it. At some point we might want or need to upgrade your basic abilities, and it will likely feel exactly the same." That made her tense up. "However, I don't see that happening in the foreseeable future. I'm just giving you a heads up. Remember my own ability is Mana Savant, which more or less says right out that you don't have to worry about that. I'm sorry that it scarred you."

"I wasn't scarred." She stated indignantly.

I gave her a look that clearly said 'You are so full of shit' . But I let the comment pass otherwise unremarked upon.

"Well now that that's out of the way" I said with a bit of nonchalance to break a bit of the tension. "Some good of this came at least." That perked her attention.

"Hmm, whats that." She asked leaning back on her hands and taking a bit more of a relaxed posture now that the proverbial storm seemed to of passed.

"I think I learned how to make Makai-Rifles" I said casually.

She smiled as wide as I ever seen. It seems tools of pain and death beat out even chocolate, for cheering up Cute-Military-Girl. Which is good because I don't know how to make chocolate. If I did we wouldn't accomplish nearly as much though, I have a bad sweet tooth.

"That's great news, when can you make us some?" eager aren't we?

"I'll guess I could give it a shot. Right now." That pun wasn't intentional..at first. Luckily she either didn't catch it, or didn't care. I don't know demon policy on the beating of punsters yet, so I might wanna hold off for now.

Besides giving Mya something to shoot people who attack me while I'm doing my ghost impression sounds like a winning idea to me. I drop into my, I don't really know what the actual name is for what I'm doing technically. I guess ill just call it my Magick whenever applicable, mostly because its still all magick as far as I'm concerned, and I don't wanna have to waste time thinking about it.

I pressed the infusion button the moment I saw it while putting my other hand on the ground at the same time. Mana flowed into the ground when a new screen showed up.

Select a 'Form'! The only one available was [Rifle], but I knew it was a Makai Rifle. No one uses the regular kind here that im aware of. Based upon what I know thanks to the form, it probably because its easier to shoot Bullets made out of Spiritual Power at each other, rather than finding or making ammo.

I pressed it and to my surprise, Instead of just starting to draw on my mana, another window popped up.

Would you like to apply any Rules? Huh, so I could add rules to items as they spawned. That was interesting. Though I didn't have any at the moment so I pressed no. I felt the Mana being drawn out of my pool. It was about as much as Channeling had taken. When all was said and done. I saw a very sleek looking greyed out gun underneath my physical forms hand. Mya had taken to leaning forward and watched with wonder.

'Its about time I did something impressive'I'd gotten a lot of ridicule from the girl from the moment we met. Its nice to impress for a change. My ego had needed a good cuddle by this point. I popped out of my Magick and closed my hand around the rifle. The thing was damn heavy, and felt more like a miniature cannon than a gun. I lightly tossed it two her with both hands, to my chagrin she caught it one handed. She looked like she just got the biggest piece of candy in the store. "This is amazing, Its a lot better than the gun I had used before. "

'Man I wish I would have thought to check its stats. Actually I wish I could check things stats without having to enter my magick. That's something I might wish for in the future.'

Mya decide to try it out. I had been near a gunshot before when I was alive, and to my surprise the Makai-Gun was a lot quieter, The bullet was also a good deal bigger.. I suppose its because its made of Spirit energy. Either way Mya had taken to practicing her shooting an a poor innocent boulder some fifty meters away. I had planed on waiting for her to stop fan girling before I made any new units as spawning someone next to the Crazy-Cute-Gun-Bunny (Interpret that however you'd like) and the apparently sleeping overlord would be a bit confusing. However realizing it would be a long time before her to do so naturally, I force myself to interrupt her fun.

"Hey Mya, I plan on making some backup now and I need you to be here to greet them, while I take care of business." She looked chagrined, but nodded and took up a defensive position on top of a rock. Her new gun sitting on her lap.

'Fifty HL says she names it before the week is out,' I thought with amusement.

I hopped back into my Magick in record time. The first thing I did was check out the stats of the Gun I made. I was curious, sue me.

A menu screen popped up .

To my surprise it looked a lot like a character screen with only a few exceptions. Firstly it didn't have any stats. Instead it had a Damage Bar, along with a little colored dots above it.

And it had two aptitudes listed. 'C' Tech, 'C' Aim. I was going to remark on my confusion when my offhand accidentally brushed against Mya. And to my surprise a portion of the damage bar of the gun highlighted. It took me a minute to figure out what I had done.

Apparently I could compare two things, or see how they affected each other by touching both at the same time.

I think that every one of the Stat Bars I've seen have been comparisons of sorts. I think mine where relative to Mya based upon our during our fight which is why they are so low at least I I hope so. 'Because then there's hope I don't completely suck, if my stats where based upon my actual ability AND my preconceptions.' I'm still definitely weaker than she is though.

Though my aptitudes seem to be set in stone unfortunately.

Two I think the gun's Damage was showing its output of damage verses my unarmed damage. . I think it was trying to compare damage between my unarmed weaksause attack, and Mya's mini-cannon and had to resort to logarithmic progression.

It jumped around a good bit while I was comparing but I think that's because I'm trying to force reality to fit into an abstract representation., but gave a generalized idea on how much power the gun was putting out relative to my own. I think the colored dots represented the fact that it was at least one order of magnitude above me. Given how much damage it was dealing to the boulder I could believe it.

The aptitude was how much those stats improve the guns damage. Made sense to me now that I had the guns Form. Makai-Guns need a LOT of calibrations to really be effective, I suspect better version would only increase the return of a skilled soldier. I could be completely wrong of course, but based upon observations it seemed to fit.

So yea, bottom line, I need to get a weapon if I ever plan on getting into a fight.

A thought occurred to me, and I checked my own stat screen again. There it was and I hadn't even noticed. Gun Proficiency 'E'. Apparently getting a Form is enough to make you able to use a weapon. Granted 'E' was terrible but its better than an 'F' at any rate. It was something.

I also noticed a pattern as well. I only had two open slots, and Mya only had one open slot, The gun had two open slots. The gun didn't have a base ability so just had two open slots. Both of us had two ability/rule slots, plus our base abilities. Mya had picked up leadership at some point, 'And her idiotic previous overlord completely threw that talent away.' I thought acidicly.

Well so far it seemed the two abilities in addition to any base abilities was fairly set in stone. Realizing how much time I had spent working all this out I stretched while floating in midair.

'Well I guess I wasted enough time investigating better get a move on.'

And so I clicked infusion and set myself up to get my newest minions.

[New recruits next chapter.]