Journey of the consumer

"{devouring swarm}"

I call out, my voice echoed by the pitch black mass of darkness right in front of me that appeared out of knowhere in the middle of the room.

….and out of the shadowy darkness, a horde of rats spawned.

Though I know what was going to emerge as well as what to expect, as the saying goes, seeing is believing and what I am seeing is shocking in its own right.

The swarm of rats in question though, just stands there after its summoning as if frozen. Perhaps waiting for my command?

With a thought I order an individual to come to me as I want to inspect them and see what they look, feel and even smell like as I don't want them stinking up my room. But due to inexperienced or perhaps it being a skill to command them as a whole, I give the order to the whole swarm.

What happened next was a pure dog-pile, or perhaps in this case a rat-pile, of exited cute little animals. Although usually intimidating, due to me being their master they drop all blood lust and everything that makes them scary. So they are just a bunch of bigger rats that have the personality of puppies.

Letting out a little laugh as they little murder machines tackle me to the ground and show their love by licking, climbing all over me and burrowing into my clothes to get as close to my body as possible. After such close proximity I can tell you that no, they do not stink. They smell fairly nice even, like a blanket bathed in the sunlight. After hugging them back a for a little bit though, I finally decide it's time to stop playing about and go see mother now.

Reluctantly, I de-summom the swarm. I watch the playful rats turn into darkness and merge into my shadow and I finally realise how much mana they drain. Just a minute and a half with them was able to drain 95%.

And so, I get up from the floor and fixing my clothes that were messed up from my summons, I get moving.

_______

Finding myself outside of the building were Mary's office resides, I notice her window is open. So I decide to take a little short cut and use a faster method to get in.

But before that I spread my mana sense to the room and sure enough, I'm hit with a powerful magical presence, pretty much shouting it's her even from a distance away. My {dark vision} almost activates on its own, but I let turn it on anyway just to check if anyone else is currently in the room. Due to the sheer magical presence Mary emits passively, it renders mana sense practically useless.

And sure enough I see one more person currently in there with her. From the silhouette of the body shape it is most likely Arina.

So without anymore reservations, I activeate my skill.

'{blink}'

I appear in the office behind my mother. To the ignorant, it's as if I appeared from think air. While holding a bit of truth it's still false. Apparently I came too suddenly to notice me, combined with my usual habit of surprising my presence no one detected me. And so feeling that it will be bad scaring them, I prepare another blink. My mark glowing dimly as I approach.

Though seeing as they were so distracted that they didn't even notice me even after a couple of seconds, I decide to be the gentleman I am and walk up to tap on their shoulders and inform them of my presence. What followed next was spears of earth shooting at my vitals from all sides and spikes of ice following soon after. But having already expected something to happen, by that time I'm already gone with a blink, appearing on the opposite end of the room.

"Wait! It's me."

I shout to them quickly. Although I expected something to happen it's still quite shocking to be shot at so quickly by magic and by family none the less.

They notice it's me quickly as well, luckily, and rush to me to check my well being.

"OH NO! Az I'm so sorry!"

"AZ?! Are you okay?!"

They stammer out in panick, thinking they injured me. And although it's quite mean it earns an amused smile from me. They notice that as well so they stop worrying almost instantly and flop back in their chairs, releasing big sighs of exhaustion.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to scare the both of you."

This though earned a glare with no heat from Arina and a small tired chuckle from Mary.

"Haaaaa. Azrael you nearly gave your poor old lady a heart attack."

______