The Greatest Sinner

For some time after this strange occurrence, Evan tried to understand what had happened to him. All the strange energy had already disappeared, but Evan remembered every moment clearly.

<I can't think of anything, I can't think of any reasonable explanation this is some kind of nonsense. There aren't even spells that could pull something like this off. That energy turned pieces of stone into swords and my flesh and blood into butterflies. I don't understand it.> Evan thought and left the room.

He decided to take up training. Evan got stronger, but his spells stood still. Even though he had long since learned and used Level 1 spells, he had yet to increase Awareness in any of them. Evan was curious to see how to improve "Ball Lighting," "Ghost Step," and "Touch of the Abyss."

Evan decided that he had to fix this disappointing situation.. While he had no plans to return to Vextin, he was fine with Darkfil. Evan wasn't worried that anything could happen to Malespera, he had warned her long ago that he could disappear at any time for his own reasons.

This girl was not yet strong enough to be useful to Evan as a living weapon. Moreover, Evan had no idea how to make Malespera feel truly desperate again. Attacking or killing her would not have had the same effect. First, there would be misunderstanding, then resentment, and then death.

But, Malespera was only a unique specimen, Evan wasn't going to build experiments using her as a core. He wanted to gather many ordinary people in one place and make them experience different emotions, but mostly negative ones. It was much easier to evoke pain, anger, or apathy than joy or happiness. For the same reason, Evan decided not to leave Darkfil for at least a while. He was confident that Virion could help him with the fulfillment of that goal.

"When mage raises Awareness, the spell becomes stronger and gets a special effect. I hope I won't be disappointed." Mumbled Evan and began training.

He could have used the power of the 71st demon, Duke Dantalion, and forcibly increased the "Awareness" of his spells, but it would have cost him at least twenty years. He had already broken through the second "Barrier" and was much stronger, so the cost would have been much less.

But, Evan didn't want to spend that much life force on raising Awareness by just one stage, it was too wasteful. Also, just recently, Evan had sacrificed a hundred years of his life, it was necessary, or Virion would have killed him, and he wouldn't have gotten the blood magic spell. But still, a hundred years was a huge amount. That's about how long the average person lived. He also wanted to figure out what his Class was and if he had one at all. 

...

Evan spent the next three months training. It took him about a month per spell, but he increased Awareness in each of the three spells to the first stage.

Touch of the Abyss became significantly stronger. The corrosive effect of the darkness became longer lasting and more severe. The darkness would easily corrode a metal dummy or a thick tree trunk in a couple of attacks. Evan was sure that flesh and blood of his enemies would be destroyed in just a few seconds. But, Touch of the Abyss received no external or unique changes, all parameters of this spell went to the next level.

Next in line was Ghost Step. When Evan cast this spell, he could travel three meters in one step, but now that value had increased to five meters. What's more, Evan's speed had increased, and the spell cost a little less mana. But Ghost Step had one major improvement. The gray haze around his feet now had a special effect that made Evan no longer leave traces.

Evan would now be nearly impossible to track down with unique spells relying on the target's left traces. Unfortunately, this only applies to Evan's footprints, if he breaks a branch or destroys something, he would quickly be found.

Evan was pleased with this kind of enhancement, he increased his speed and stealth, but the most interesting change came with Ball Lighting. It was the most powerful spell in Evan's arsenal if the fight was one-on-one. Last time Evan spent a lot of time learning how to use this formidable but dangerous spell.

Ball Lighting had not become more powerful, on the contrary, Evan was surprised that the spell was now less steely and even somewhat weaker. At first, he didn't understand why this happened and why such a powerful spell suddenly became weaker. But when he realized what the change in the spell was, he was truly thrilled.

When he cast Ball Lighting, Evan noticed that he saw several red lightning bolts in the center of the blue electrical discharges. It looked like a small sphere the size of a fingernail. It took Evan a long time to figure out what the purpose of these red lightning bolts was. At one point, he lost his temper and used more mana than was necessary.

Usually, in such cases, the spell would destabilize and explode or dissipate. A certain amount of mana had to be used for each spell, the mage couldn't use more mana to increase the spell's power. In that case, the whole system would collapse.

But, in Evan's case, the spell did not collapse, on the contrary, he saw the amount of red electrical discharges begin to increase rapidly. But, and the mana was rapidly leaving Evan's body, he decided to see what would happen next.

After a couple of seconds, Ball Lighting completely changed its color to red, Evan spent five times more mana, but he felt that this spell had become several times more powerful. Every crackle of lightning sounded like Evan was in the middle of a night storm.

When Evan threw the red Ball Lighting at the dummy, a deafening explosion destroyed half of the room where Evan was training. From the middle of an explosion, a few red lightning bolts flew out, one hitting Evan. He managed to react and defend himself with his arm, but the lightning still burned through his flesh to the bone.