AN:This is a sort of side story for me. It's got no schedule and I'll update it as I please. It's not being beta'd or anything either so expect subpar grammar as well. It's not really a re:monster crossover either so I'm not marking it as one but it uses an aspect of that franchise, namely the consumption ability, or at least my take on it. In the manga the protagonist also has some sort of game reality stuff going on but I'm not doing that. This isn't a gamer fic. However, for ease of remembering what abilities our main character has I have a little list at the bottom with a rough list of her abilities.

EDIT: google doc's line break didn't work around the fight scene for some reason. I did some stuff so it should be properly divided now.

EDIT 2: Now with line breaks! FF apparently deleted all of them so when I posted it there was no seperation between the scenes...

Chapter 1

God's human resources department

"Wait I'm dead?" I frowned in confusion. The cheery looking guy in a dress shirt smiled like a used car salesman in front of me. Hearing all of this stuff he was saying was clearly crazy.

"Yup! Wanna know how, Miss Gellian?" I opened and closed my mouth a few times, having no idea what to say after I was just- "Great!" He said happily, ignoring my lack of response.

"While you were walking under that tower the window cleaner guy was opening a new bottle of cleaner. He had some cleaner on his hands already and the stuff is pretty soapy and slick. The full plastic bottle slipped from his hands and the bottle fell from the tippy top of the building, caving your precious little head in just enough that you didn't get to the hospital in time.

"The fellow actually committed suicide about four months later. He was broke after your friends and family sued him for all he was worth in postmortem expenses. Your gravestone is in that park behind your house with the words 'Here lies Fess Kennedy' in some really nice handwriting. It was definitely better than the coroner's usual work."

"That… that… huh?"

"Yeah that's the normal reaction for being dead." The little G god, or so he had earlier claimed, waved his hand and a large wheel like the one used in wheel of fortune popped up. "So I'm going to be straight with you. Heaven's full and hell is too bad for you considering that you were an okay person for most of your life. You've got to visit an alternate reality instead. Heaven's going through some expansion - absorbing dimensions and the like - so it'll be ready for about a hundred times the occupants in a while but it's sort of slow going. So for the last thousand or so years people have been sent to alternate dimensions so heaven doesn't get overcrowded. It wouldn't really be heaven if it was uncomfortable, you know."

I stayed right where I was. The god waited patiently for a moment and I hesitantly took a step forward. My feel felt like lead beneath me. The god smiled encouragingly at me like I was some toddler taking her first steps and I ignored him as I took a few more.

I was rather surprised I haven't had a panic attack or anything. I mean I just died. Sure I didn't have much but I had a few friends, my mother, and my brother as well as a few cousins I never really talked to. I had a nice job to slack off in and enough free time and money to do as I pleased for the most part. I was a lucky person indeed.

Well, excluding death by windex.

I tentatively touched the wheel and breathed deeply. A look over the wheel showed some 'dimensions' I actually knew. There was Pokemon, Digimon (please no), Star Wars, RWBY, Fallout, Akame ga Kill, the Stephen King 'verse' such as IT and The Shining (Back to digimon please), The Elder Scrolls, and a hundred other franchises both mainstream and obscure. I wonder if I'm picky because most of these sound terrible. Killer clowns, giant spiders and angry gods, genocidal shadow beasts of the apocalypse, an actual nuclear apocalypse, and more. Then again, Steven King's universe seems to take the cake as the most horrible. I didn't think there was much that could top that.

With a little steeling myself and self motivating I grabbed the rim of the wheel and swung as hard as I could with a private little prayer for good luck. Franchises went by as fast as I could see. With how many different ones were on the circle I couldn't quite catch them as they flew by.

"Oooooh what're you going to get?! It's kind of exciting, right? Oh by the way you don't just die and go somewhere terrible. You get like a special power or something fit for the universe. We have a second wheel for that."

"Special power?" I questioned. But then I stopped when the wheel slowed to a halt. It went between one more peg and landed on a TV series I remember seeing as a kid. Adventure time. Oh that would be really nice! Sure the place is weird and random but people don't just die off or anyth-

The wheel just barely managed to click over one more time… what the blazes is high school DxD?!… Wait my brother watched that. Wasn't that a pervert anime thing? Who the hell thought to put a harem male fantasy on the goddamn wheel of fate?!

"Oooooh… okay that's pretty bad. I mean if you were a guy it would be a dream come true but for you…" The god gave me a once over and I looked myself down. Fair and pale skin, a fit physique, C-cup breasts-oh shit it's an ecci anime I'm going to get thrown in a harem aren't I? I'm a fairly attractive girl of course I'm going to be in the harem! "Attractive girls usually become harem members." Fuck!

I stared wide-eyed at the god and dizzily sat down. A chair helpfully appeared beneath me. I absently noted that my butt was pretty nice too. Big an firm. I never thought that could be a curse. Why couldn't I be ugly?! "Look it's not… not that bad," The god seemed somewhat troubled. "Look lets just see what power you get. It can't be all bad. If you get something really good you can pretty much do whatever you want. Hell, you could get your own harem! … Um, I'm required to ask whether you want to hear a summary of the dimension's 'protagonist' as you call them. The storyline and all."

"Yes please." I muttered. "And an ice pack." The god nodded.

"Sure. So here's the infodump. The world is full of a ton of supernatural factions. Yokai, dragons, devils, angels, fallen angels, vampires, werewolves, and basically all of the above. The protagonist is a kid names Issei Hyodo I think. He has something called a sacred gear - a longinus sacred gear actually, which is like the most powerful gears. It's like a super power. His boosts his… power, I suppose you could call it, by two times every once and awhile. He gets twice as powerful then four times and eight times and so on. Of course he can't handle all the power all the time so he does some explosions and a sort of special move called a balance breaker and eventually a sort of super saiyan form called juggernaut drive. So yeah he's powerful. He was a human but he got reincarnated as a devil through a sort of magical chesspiece into what people call a peerage. That means like a collection of servants. Think of them like servants that fight and stuff. Sometimes harems because those are common in devil society.

"The kid wants a harem. Badly. It's like his driving force in life. It's kind of pathetic but weirdly admirable in how hard he's willing to work for it. He gets super strong and fights in a sort of war thing I'm not allowed to tell you about. He gets some generic enemies but they're really just plot devices to see some clothes ripped off for glorious fanservice. Being a protagonist of a harem anime he crushes all those bad guys eventually or befriends them with the power of determination or whatever. In reality it's just fate playing her games. She'll draw you into the plot by the way. It's basically inevitable that you have to interact with the cast at some point. Fate has it in her stipulations that allow us to access dimensions freely. I'll hooko you up with the contract when you get to the world."

I frowned and tried to process all of… that. "What about humans?" the god winced.

"Humans are… cattle," I stared at him incredulously at the sudden shift in tone from boobies to slavery and he hurried on. "Not like slaves! They have a society and such and get on by doing as humans do. Most people live and eventually die just living their lives as they do. But humans have only got a few ways of fighting back. The species is inherently weak compared to the supernatural world. The angels try their best to protect humanity but… well the big G God died a long time ago in the world and humans are sometimes used as things to torture or just be punching bags for a lot of the real horrible members of most every species. All off camera, of course. Wouldn't want to disrupt the pervert's hunt for boobies with some dark truths or anything."

I sighed and leaned back. "And I'll be a human in this world? Damned to eventually meet the supernatural and either fight or die?"

"Well… maybe." I looked to the god hopefully but he shook his head.

"Look just spin the wheel and if you're powerful great. You'll probably come out mostly alright with some elbow grease and effort. It might even be a nice life. If not then… just go." A wave of the god's hand and the wheel moved towards me and changed a few colors. I didn't read the words and just spun the wheel as hard as I could.

The wheel spun around and I closed my eyes and kept wrapping my head around just what was going on. "Oh great… so it's time to talk options." I opened my eyes at the god's voice and… that's bad.

I saw the wheel stopped on 'consumption absorption' from Re: monster. Eat things and gain cool powers basically.

"Remember how I said that the factions were around? Well most of them are humanoid with mostly human thoughts and feelings and such. Not all of them but most of them. There's magical creatures but any decently powerful ones are sapient and probably humanoid. I can't really see you munching down some Fallen Angel intestines or anything and even dragons, which are way out of your league in all likelihood, are thinking, speaking creatures you won't want to eat." I rubbed my eyes. So I would be a cannibal…

"Normally if some situation is REALLY bad like if a good person was stuck in fallout with nasuverse magic, which is shit powers in the literal apocalypse the person would get to spin again. But that's not a common thing. Technically highschool DxD is classified as a paradise world. You get what powers you get because you'll probably die and get stuck in the peerage of the Gremory or Sitri girl as a devil, which is good enough that you'll live a long and happy life.

It's called a paradise world because of both that inclination to become powerful, which is facilitated by Fate, and that there are plenty of powerful people willing to defend the weak and all. There's plenty of good guys. There's no evil empire or anything out to murder everyone. But you would be a pariah since your power, which people would figure out eventually, involves eating other people or sometimes things. You might even be put to death in some extreme cases. I mean, in your world people would totally be put to death for being a cannibal."

"There… what can we do about this? I can't just spin again?" I asked shakily, hoping there was some sort of loophole. He had already said that there was no way to spin again but maybe there was some sort of loophole or price I could pay? I was still a little hung up on the cannibal part of the world.

"No you can't spin again. Now, I'm called a senior soul resources officer," The god explained, taking a sudden shift in topic. "In my line of work I get rewarded if my charges do well in their new lives. I have to balance some stuff behind the scenes like the worlds on my wheel and the powers on the other one. But there's another option that's a pretty popular gambling activity among the new recruits. I can… sponsor you." The man scowled, clearly not liking the option. At least he dropped the used car salesman smile.

"Sponsor me… can you explain?" The god sighed wearily.

"I give you a little extra power and you just don't… don't screw anything up horribly and live your life as best you can. You're a bit of a gamble but in all honesty I kind of pity you." He explained. "I know you had a nice life and you actually worked for it, unlike a good many others. And then it just gets taken away in an instant. I know how frustrating and generally terrible that feeling is. So I have a small compromise."

I frowned but this sounds like my best option. "The benefit is…"

"Well another wheel spin for one thing." Of course there was one. "So that you can become a magical creature."

I blinked a few times and thought about it but didn't see the benefit. It didn't matter if I was a tiger that farted rainbows. Eating people was a definite no no either way.

"Okay so listen," He started explaining. "As a human you could be born from Ohio to China. As a magical creature you would be smart; human levels of smart, something not many magical creatures are. You can get strong reasonably quickly due to a better body than the plain old human standard. Beyond that you'll definitely be born in a place where there's a lot of magical creatures to eat and grow strong from. I can change where you're born so you don't pop up in a desert as a frost elemental or something. I've got some wiggle room to give you a better deal in other words."

I considered it. That sounded really good. I could get strong enough to avoid being one of the protagonist's harem girls and live through the plot that it sounded like I was going to get dragged into. It sounded like an opportunity. Too good to be true, in other words. "What's the catch?"

"I can't specify what kind of magical creature you're going to be. You could be a dragon god or a particularly magical snail," The god looked at me seriously. "It's your choice. I mean it could be terrible as a human or a magical creature but at least as a human you're human. As a magical creature you would most likely have a better chance of survival and, more importantly, success, but you might just die in a jungle somewhere. It's your choice in the end."

I leaned back and really considered it. I liked being human. I liked it a lot. It was what I was used to, after all. But I knew that I was nowhere near the apex species in this new dimension. I would have the potential to get strong enough to stand up for myself quicker than I would get it as a human but could I really survive something so unfamiliar and risky? I would most likely get picked up for that pervert's harem and thrown into whatever hijinks come towards the protagonist as presented by fate as a human but was that so bad? It was predictable at the least.

I thought for a moment and made my decision. I didn't shy away from work before so why would I do so now? It was more a matter of just reaching out and taking the risk. "I'll be a magical creature. Just… show me the wheel." The god smiled grimly and and waved his hand. It seemed like a much more weighty decision than when I was new to this reincarnation deal five minutes ago. The whole death deal was getting more real to me.

I spun the wheel like the ones before it and closed my eyes, again not looking at the choices and stressing over what I could be. I opened them when it slowed and saw a number of creatures. A purple slime-like being dissolving some clothes. A bird with wings of thunder. A tiny eastern dragon the length of a pencil, as showed by the pencil next to it. Some glowy spirits and ghostly things. Oh, there's a kitsune like from Naruto!

I glanced at the god, who was looking intently at the wheel. I glanced back and frowned at the image displayed as my creature. It just looked like smoke. "What's that?"

"An enerena," He said with a small pleased smile. "They're like campfire spirits. They're kind of a weird magical creature. They can look like smoke or take a more physical form. As a mostly formless smoke spirit they have a pretty formidable supply of magical energy, as most spirits do. The problem is that they have a hard time outside of their aligned element, being smoke and fire in this case. In their physical form they're not really weak but even the strongest wild enerena would be outmatched by something as lowly as a mid-class devil, of which there are a ton in the world. As spirits and spellcasters they can be extremely strong, though, given some work. Think of them as sort of downgraded djinn but without the need for a host like a lamp or something. Strong magic but limited by needing smoke."

The god turned a little more grave then. "Lets get to pros and cons. Cons first. Enera eat smoke and turn it into magical energy. It fuels them like delicious food. You can live outside of a fire but you'll be using any magical energy you acquire to fuel yourself by moving and existing and all that.

You can eat creatures, of course, don't worry. You can turn your smoke caustic like a weak acid and eat through a beast by hovering around them as an acidic smoke cloud for a while. You're also a spirit. This means you're weak to magical attacks and practically immune to physical attacks unless they're by an enchanted sword or something or you're physical."

"Now for the pros. You're absolutely a TANK of magical energy, just like most spirits. Seriously, a decent enerena would have the reserves of a trained high devil, which is pretty damn good. Your physical form leaves you weak to physical attacks, which are the most popular form of attack, but you can blend in and talk with it at least. You can walk the walk and talk the talk of a magical human. Any wounds you get while tangible will hurt your magical reserves, though. Slashes and cuts literally make you bleed magical energy so long as you're physical. So don't use your physical form that often since you'll be vulnerable.

As a spirit you won't need a lot of things like light to see or sleep or real food, though you need smoke to refill your magical reserves and you need magical energy to fight whatever deems you worth killing. And the best part, though it's long term, is that all spirits can learn senjutsu, which is… complex. It's also powerful. Very very powerful. I suggest you learn about it. It's really unknown that spirits can learn it since almost all of them are primal and stupid and you need actual know-how to use senjutsu."

I nodded slowly. So don't be physical and somehow use magic to fight things while eating bodies by being… acidic smoke. Somehow. And eat smoke to not run out of magical energy and die. "I think I get it," I said. "It's not bad, really. I'd call it lucky even. But… how do I use magic?"

The god grinned a bit, looking just a little bit happy for me. "Magic is determined by race typically. Religion and such can change it. As a spirit you cast what could be called raw or primal magic. It's not so-called 'real magic' since it doesn't use magic circles or runes or alchemy or whatnot but that just makes it more dangerous. You think and direct your magic with a purpose and it obeys.

"Of course it's not refined at all. You throw magic at something and the world bends to your will. It's simple. It's also horribly inefficient and somewhat weak but it's fast, instinctive for you to learn, and it gives you a connection with the Earth for Senjutsu and some more esoteric stuff. It's basically thinking what you want to do, throwing mana at the concept and making it happen. And no you can't think something like banning a concept. It's PRIMAL magic. Think fireballs and the like."

I raised an eyebrow. That sounded simple enough. Go whoosh and a fireball is thrown, so long as the god was being honest.

"Anyways… Ready to go?" I frowned and just ran over what had just happened. I was being reincarnated as a sort of smoke spirit in a fantasy pervert world that was actually extremely deadly… And I had the power to gain strength and abilities from what I eat.

"Will I get those messages and things like in the Re:monster manga?"

"No of course not. That was a part of the world that goblin kid lived in. Not his ability. You'll just get a feeling that something changed if you're compatible with the sort of upgrade. In all honestly it isn't so bland as receiving heat vision from a snake or what have you. Your abilities only form when you can actually incorporate them into your magic or body. You'll be getting a whole bunch of magical upgrades but increased strength or the like would be worthless for you since you're smoke and magical energy."

"It seems rather useless." The god grinned.

"I never said that you couldn't learn more kinds of magic." My eyes widened and I imagined the possibilities. Didn't he say that a lot of magic was determined by race? But the god snapped his fingers and with a strange sucking feeling I was gone.

I felt myself sort of… Pull together. My body didn't really form as much as it did collect itself.

Strings of energy were threaded through me like I was a tapestry of power. It felt good. Really good. Around me was a comforting blackness that seemed to flow through me; empowering me. It caressed me and something said to me that it was good. Safe. A happy place.

I felt myself thrum in contentment somehow and I sunk into the comfy blackness…

Whoa hold on a second! I snapped to attention, away from the warm blackness. I couldn't see but I could kind of feel around me. A breeze passed through me and I could see it and all it touched. Motion based sight? Air based sight? I didn't know. Another breeze passed and I realized that it was indeed air based sight, however that worked.

With that realization I saw myself in a small brush fire. I was the smoke…

Ah… Right. Enerena…

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhh!

I finally calmed down after a good hour of freaking out and crying, though I didn't have eyes, a mouth, smell, or… anything. I was nothing if not good at compartmentalizing though, although bottling up my panic was a bad idea. A very, very bad idea. But I didn't have a choice. I had things to do.

It was surprisingly easy to control my new body. I could compress myself, spread myself out, float around rather quickly, and I even put my first pinky toe into magic.

I had imagined a small gust of wind blowing and reached inside of myself. I could sort of grasp a core in me and draw out a power. It was a little weird to control but not hard by any means. Doing it quickly and drawing out more power was slightly harder to do. I had to push it out harder and stop the flow of it quicker. It was like a faucet in a way.

I had grudgingly gone a little away from the awesome smoke, which tasted like raspberries, and tried that little gust of wind again. It was really easy to use and let me see things easily. I tried keeping a light breeze around me all the time and got really excited when I could keep it up for a long time, though I didn't know how long. I could feel how much energy I had in me but not particularly accurately. Nevermind that I was still half panicking because I became a fucking smoke monster.

To be a little more ambitious, I tried to make a small fireball. I just thought about it with a little flow from my imaginary faucet and in about a second a fireball flew out of my smokey body and hit a tree where it burned the trunk and left a bad scorch mark but didn't do much else.

Making that fireball had cost a bit more than a twentieth of my energy. I could defend myself at least… Sort of. The god wasn't lying when he said that the magic I had was horribly inefficient. At least I could make a slight breeze? That wasn't much in the way of defence.

Just a minute and a half in the amazing tasty smokey bush of wonder brought my energy back up to a full tank. The brush fire was wearing down near the end of the hour. Well, a half hour of panicking, fifteen minutes of calming down and planning and fifteen more of playing with magic while distracting myself from the loss of my family and friends.

With a little casual ease I shot a small stream of fire at the nearest isolated shrub. It caught fire and began smoking like my own bush. Come to think of it couldn't I hop from bush to bush? But I didn't want to start a forest fire. That could be bad not just for the environment but it could attract the attention of something scary.

Staying in the smoke made me instinctively feel like I was slowly getting stronger. Little by little sure but I believed I was. It would just take maybe a day or so to make any noticeable difference. Maybe I could eek out an extra fireball after two days. Was that really worth it, though?

The smoke was great and all but I'm not looking for a boring wait in smoke until something tries to kill me. No… I should try the hard way while I still could and wasn't trapped in a fight I couldn't win. I didn't really care about strength personally but I wasn't going to turn my nose up at the prospect of assured safety.

With a sort of eerie soundlessness I left the second dying brush fire and went to just below the treetops. Moving felt so weird. It was natural to do but thinking about it and consciously controlling it was almost too natural as compared to walking. The whole situation felt like a bad dream but something told me it wasn't.

Oh! There! A creature squirmed around on a tree branch! It looked like a large centipede with added spikes. With a soundless and discomforting ease I floated down over it. The only problem is that I didn't know how to do the acid thing.

The centipede seemed more confused than angry or anything. It snapped it's mandibles a few times and seemingly dismissed the new darkness I brought. I hoped that all magical creatures were as dumb as the centipede. It would make my effort a lot easier.

I tried a lot of different things from willing myself to moving around my magical energy really fast. After a while, though, I was getting really frustrated.

For the love of god! I had been just torn from my life, gone through that crazy stupid cycle with the wheels and crap and now I can't even do something so basic as eating?!

I almost drew back as the centipede jerked and twitched. It danced around, flailing it's many legs wildly, and fell down to it's side before curling up into a ball. And was it just me or was it smoking?

I stared at it for a moment before a little satisfaction ran through me. I had a feeling sort of like a fist being clenched inside my body. So that was how I turned caustic.

I focused on the centipede for a few minutes while holding that image of a clenched fist. It decayed pretty quickly and I felt a tingle run through me when the centipede was completely dead. Was that one of those upgrades or just a bit of satisfaction? I was pretty sure it's the second.

So… What do I do now?

It was living wild and free. Free from the constraints of society and the pressures of simple existence. It was completely and utterly free.

Unlike me of course.

The giant evil looking pterodactyl with a multitude of snaggle teeth thrashed and screamed down below while the carnivorous plants holding it strained to hold it. It's wing beats shot out blades of wind and were strong enough to crack trees at such a close range. Not that I was in danger of the wind blades. I was hiding like a bitch from it. A very safe bitch.

One loud shriek and it opened it's maw. A pillar of red hot flame roared from it, singing half the plants and burning a few too badly to revover. Because of course pterodactyls spewed fire.

The carnivorous vines holding the beast gripped harder and harder around it's neck, cutting off the flames in a moment. The choked shrieks of the evil pterodactyl slowly died off in the next twenty minutes or so. God, those were big lungs it had. After the fifteenth minute it was safe for me to go down to finish the job the vines started. I knew from experience.

I happily went down and spread myself out over the pterodactyl. I felt the fist inside me clench and the pterodactyl whined pitifully in pain, sounding like a hissing balloon minus a few octaves.

I had been pretty happily living for a while now. Most of the predators in the forest could just insta-kill me with their magic but they sure could kill each other well.

The vines, for example, were just a nuisance for a few other big predators. There was a sort of armored bipedal rhino that looked like the Pokémon Rhydon. With stomps of their feet they could use earth magic to shake the ground too, making me think that they were sort of a ripoff.

The Rhydon were too big, heavy, and tanky to be caught in the vines. The vines break or, if in large amounts, were uprooted by magic.

Just about everything in the forest used magic in one form or another. A lot of them looked like they belonged in a monster hunter game as well.

Only a few different monsters could really hurt me. Wraiths, which were like skeletons in cloaks that were sort of shimmery, other spirits, which were pretty rare and I had only seen some water spirits talking by a river, and some sort of floating lizard/pufferfish things that spat bolts of magic at everything. Those really stung.

The most dangerous ones were the spirits of course. Spirits, as I found out, were territorial. Very, VERY territorial. And dangerous. It was like their primary feature to me; being able to one-shot me in an instant. Frankly it had been a huge stroke of luck that none of them have killed me yet for wandering into their territory.

The worst part of them was that they were smart. They weren't sentient but I had seen some crude traps around to ward off beasts. Speaking of, there was a place deep in the forest that was just dead silent. There were no birds, beasts, or anything. It was just silent. I stayed the hell away from there. My new magical intuitions I had picked up from a purple squirrel were not liking that place one bit so I steer clear.

The silver lining was that the spirits and such were pretty rare. They were apex predators of a sort and the environment couldn't support too many of them at a time. Or maybe they had a low birth rate or something, if they even had a birth rate. Whatever the case there weren't many of them. That wasn't to say they were uncommon to see but I had only seen two spriggans - nature spirits - and seven more miscellaneous spirits like a fire snake thing. So they were bad but manageable.

I had been leeching off from the big predators for a while now. They were all fast enough to run away from me and my dissolving smoke alive and my magic was, while fairly powerful by now, very limited and kind of draining to use. So I ran them into the predators that could kill them but couldn't kill me like the vines.

I got a nice body to hopefully gain some sort of upgrade from and everyone else did all the work. It had been a good life so long as I was careful.

Eating monsters with actual strength was incredibly useful at first. I gained new abilities aplenty. I could turn my smoke hotter or colder from a type of lava golem I only saw one of, I could transmute some materials slowly into another gained from a blobby slime with a metallic tint to it, and more.

The main benefit of eating beasts, however, was the power. I didn't just eat their bodies. I ate their magic. That magic was then incorporated into my own magical reserves. Well a part of it anyways.

At the moment I had over thirty times what I had before. Even so it was only maybe three times more than a typical rhydon, which was one of the least magical creatures in the area. I was still a wimpy little newborn compared to any other creature.

An evil pterodactyl had more than five times what I had. I had never caught one in the vines before! It was going to be AWESOME!

I ate through the scales of the pterodactyl and just soaked in the energy as the corpse released the magic stored within. It tasted like warm fresh air with a salty tang. The magical energy suffused into me, expanding my reserves and making me feel all warm and gooey inside.

I lingered around the pterodactyl for about forty minutes. The vines couldn't hurt me anyways. Sure they had some earth and water magic but they were plants and incapable of the raw energy attacks needed to actually harm me. They were magical plants for sure but they had nothing that could actually hurt me unless I got physical.

With that meal I felt my magical reserves swell. I had almost fifty percent more than before, a huge increase compared to normal! Although it might have been more like a forty percent increase. It was kind of hard to tell but it was definitely significantly bigger.

In all honesty I was enjoying myself. Sure, life sometimes sucks. I've had to run from an angry spriggan or some other nature spirit that was throwing around spells like they're free candy at least ten times now and I've had to adjust to a lot. Luckily, though, I've had so much free time without a need to sleep that I really get time to think.

I really hoped the peacefulness of my life lasted. I was getting stronger fast. Very fast. I didn't think I was anywhere near the level of those spriggans or anything but I was proud to say that I wasn't weak and could make decently sized fireballs and could hold a flamethrower for about twenty minutes, though that might have been more like half an hour now.

"Oh? An enerena?" I snapped to attention at the new voice. Who the hell was here?! It was a feminine voice, obviously, but the air currents were mixed up and scattered.

"Your kind are rare. Valuable too. Shape shifting is such a commodity these days… You're so weak though. I suppose you're young. Maybe twenty years old? Perhaps you'd match a low devil… Say, I'm here to acquire a familiar. I'm no devil but I'm a rather prodigious Magician. What do you say?"

I could speak with wind magic. I had done so before but I knew that the answer to that spiel of the stranger's was a big fat no to whatever they were offering. The word familiar made me think of 'pet', like Hedwig from Harry Potter. I knew fate would pull me into the plot, whatever it was.

"No? Well then…" Wait, what? How could he understand me?!

"Confusion?… Oh. You are REALLY young. I've an empathy ring. They're used to understand beasts like yourself."

I didn't like being called a beast but technically he wasn't in the wrong here.

"Hm… No. I suppose I could just leave you but in all honesty I need a strong familiar. A spirit, due to your connection with nature. All the other spirits ran and I honestly can't bother to track them down. Whether you're willing or not the familiar bond will be established and you'll follow my orders. It's not a mind manipulation effect like the devils have with their peerages but I'm no slouch. Now… Submit."

A cloaked red form appeared with several spinning circle things around him appeared in another circle thing in front of me. I could feel that tingle of magical energy from him. He was clearly a badass judging from the way his cloak swirled around him and how he pushed up his glasses anime-style.

Oh shit!

AN: I'm putting this little list here to keep track of abilities and stuff gained. Don't worry too much about it. This isn't a gamer fic or anything but I don't want to bring up new abilities from nowhere and I don't want to spend time 'hunting' too much. So here. Little stuff like magic capacity and such aren't listed and specific stuff isn't here either but major important abilities like magic styles are gonna be listed.

Abilities gained so far

-Smoke form/physical form (Natural ability)

-Raw/primal magic (Natural ability)

Upgraded potency via numerous monsters

-Shadow control (Minor)

Gained from a Mantis (shadow affinity)

-Shadow walking (Minor)

Gained from a Mantis (Shadow affinity)

-Telepathy (Minor)

Gained from a Psychic imp

-Natural instinct (Minor)

Gained from a Horned rabbit

-Transmutation (Earth based) (Minor)

Gained from a Metallic slime

-Temperature control (Moderate)

Gained from a lava golem (Infant)

-Magic sensing (Innate) (Medium)

Upgraded from (Minor) via numerous monsters