When he finished, Serenity slipped out of the rubble and back into the shape of his Crystal Hilt. For all that the dispelling knife spell was cheap, he was low on mana; that had to be because of the secondary effect he was having on the residue. It was like it pulled mana out of him.
It was easy enough to confirm. All he had to do was expand his aura and test his Affinities. Naturally, the first one he picked was Death.
Serenity felt a tearing pain as mana was ripped away from him into the area around him, neutralizing the tainted Night Fire mana. Death mana was clearly the reason the soil was bubbling, but it clearly also wasn’t going to be the way he resolved the problem.
Serenity thought back to his fight against the summoner; this didn’t happen then and he definitely used Death mana then. In fact, Death mana was literally how he killed the summoner in the first place. Why didn’t this happen then?
No, wait. That wasn’t entirely true. They had countered each other then, hadn’t they? Each had been forced to punch through the other during the fight, being evaporated as they went. Serenity had assumed that was simply the presence of another Affinity, but it seemed that it was more than that. He didn’t understand why Night Fire opposed Death; neither Night nor Fire did.
There had to be something about it that he didn’t know, possibly something to do with the stories Blaze mentioned where the originator of Night Fire always got away, sometimes without explanation. Maybe it was some sort of cloning or rebirth mechanism? That would be an odd Affinity in some way, but perhaps some relationship to the Life Affinity was the core of the Affinity and the dark heat that gave it the name Night Fire was simply how it showed itself? There was nothing about Death that made it dark and cold, after all, even though that was a common conceptualization. If he named Death after those attributes because they were what could easily be seen, he’d think it was an Ice relative.
Maybe he’d figure it out in the future. It didn’t matter now; what mattered was that he still needed to get rid of the residue, just in case he’d missed a trap. Once the residue was gone, finding anything he’d missed would be easy; traps also wouldn’t have such a congenial atmosphere.
So what was the best option for a monster? It needed to be something that could work as both a small creature in case some of the mana residue was separate and a large one in case he had to take it all at once. He might have cut off some pieces during his search, but Serenity couldn’t be certain he had. Even if he had, they might have filled back in; there was a lot of residue here.
Elementals were out; they were a bit harder to kill for some weapons, including small projectiles like arrows. That meant bullets were probably a bad choice, and all of Team Two was visibly armed. Two of them carried swords as well as their guns, but Serenity wanted to keep them at a distance if possible. It needed to be something guns designed to hurt people would work on.
That was a broader category than Tier One weapons would usually handle; if they were otherwise unenhanced, guns would lose some of their power, but until Tier Five, anything with a defined anatomy and insufficient armoring could be harmed by a gun. Even at higher than Tier Five, creatures without armor or a shield could potentially be harmed. Serenity himself wouldn’t be; the shield on his robes was sufficient for anything short of a tank-killer, even as weakened as it was by the time between its casting and its evocation. His dragon scales would also stop a bullet, but they didn’t help right now.
There were a lot of options, but for some reason the one that came to mind was simple: the salamander. As monsters, they could be anywhere from an inch long to as tall as a two-story building. He hoped he wouldn’t get one of the truly large ones; while they didn’t have particularly strong skin, they did get tougher as they got bigger. Most monsters did.
It would probably be a flame salamander, given the mana he was making it from. Serenity would try to avoid that, since flame salamanders had a nasty tendency to pick up the ability to breathe fire, but it wasn’t really possible to pick out a monster type that didn’t have at least some variant with a ranged attack.
Well, there were a few types that developed the ability to teleport instead. Most of the time that was simply one variant and others had true distance attacks.
Yes. Salamanders were a good choice. Anything was better than the damned teleporting deer and Serenity didn’t even want to think about the time he’d run into giant teleporting moose. Moose were big enough to begin with. Salamanders were far more likely to come in elemental variants than develop teleportation.
Serenity slid back to Team Two for long enough to inform them of the monster type. The commander seemed a bit puzzled by the choice but appreciated the warning about possible fire-breath. Serenity wasn’t certain but he thought he heard something like “and he’s not even the dragon one” as he skated back to the building.
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Essence fed into the mana residue smoothly at first. Like the previous attempt, the image of what he was trying to create formed. Unlike the previous time, Team Two didn’t wait until the creature was formed to attack it. Serenity had no idea what that would do, but it was too late to tell them not to try it; they’d already hit the salamander’s image several times.
There was no visual effect, but Serenity could feel more essence being dragged out of him with each hit. The ordinary bullets were the least draining. The magical bolts were only slightly worse than the ordinary bullets, but there was someone back there with a mana-enhanced gun or something. It was far worse; each time those bullets hit, he lost at least twice as much essence as from any of the other attacks.
A glance back at Team Two told him he’d been slightly incorrect about the attacks; what he’d taken for mana bolts wasn’t as purely magical as he’d assumed. One of the two swordsmen had his sword pointed at the image of a giant salamander, now approximately the size of a golden retriever, and was flicking it. Something came off the tip each time and flew towards the forming salamander, probably a wind slice or something similar. It was definitely a Path Skill of some sort.
The mana-infused bullets were coming from one of the soldiers he hadn’t paid much attention to. The gun looked just like all of the others, as far as Serenity could tell from here, but the shots were definitely different. They moved at the same speed but seemed bigger. That was probably an optical illusion created by the fact that he could see mana in them, but the fact that they seemed to explode and dissipate inside the framework of the monster was real enough.
The attacks might be working. Serenity wasn’t certain, but the essence drain certainly indicated that something was happening. The most likely outcome was a weaker but intact creature. Serenity just couldn’t tell if it was going to be enough weaker that it would be worth the attacks.
The salamander was about the size of a St. Bernard when the mana flow stuttered. Serenity had to put all of his attention on that to keep it from rebounding and filling the salamander with an elemental attunement like the one the blob made from the summoner’s Night Fire had. By the time it was comfortably under control again, the first one was already moving.
The salamander tried to bite Serenity. Its teeth bounced off the shield from his robes. It was still enough of a distraction that the manaflow bucked and tried to separate. A horde of little salamanders was probably not a good idea; it would be better to have a far smaller number of larger salamanders like the one beside him. It didn’t seem to have any particularly dangerous attacks, after all.
Serenity managed to hang on to the effect until that particular salamander was down, but only because there was no repeat of the odd mana-shake that made him transition the first time. He wasn’t able to pay full attention to the fight, but all he really had to do was let the shield protect him while he cast. Once it fell, Team Two stopped attacking; Serenity guessed that they were probably conserving bullets and mana.
The second one was only half the size of the first when the mana twisted and Serenity had to fight for control. It would probably be very easy to kill, yet it had taken long enough that the first one was dead. That made it the perfect size.
The fight, if you could call it that, was just that simple: one salamander after another, usually with a short break in between. About halfway through, the two swordsmen moved up so they could use their swords more directly. Serenity didn’t argue with them; it was risky but they knew the risks.
Two salamanders after that, only the man with the mana bullets was still shooting. The others were either out of rounds or saving them; it didn’t matter which. Serenity hoped they were saving them; the fight could well attract attention and he was too busy to take time out to deal with anyone who intruded.
Three salamanders later, the pattern changed. Serenity hit a spot in the residue where he was able to smoothly pull more than three times as much mana as any previous salamander before the mana twisted. Serenity kept expecting it to change and it kept moving smoothly, so he allowed it to grow larger than he liked. At that point, he was so concerned about losing the balance and accidentally imbuing the large salamander with magic if the mana flow changed that he simply let it keep going. It turned out to “only” be twice as large as the second salamander.
Fortunately, it was still just as dumb. It bit him then attempted to headbutt him, of all the things it could have tried. Some of the force actually made it through, which was not good news; it meant he was near the end of his shield’s capacity. The next attack from the salamander shattered the shield and left him with no protection other than his robes, which were inadequate armor.
It was frustrating to not be able to do anything to defend himself, but taking his attention off the cleansing was worse. Maybe he should have tried the slow way first, but he really didn’t want to be working at it for weeks and he was pretty certain that was how long it would have taken.
The bobbles were frustrating, too. He was pretty certain they were the result of his travel through the Night Fire before starting the cleansing. It was worth it; traps in the mana would be far worse, even if he could deal with them. He’d almost certainly have issues with keeping things smooth if he were interrupted by then instead of simply the paths he’d cut through the mana residue.
The salamander bit Serenity’s arm. Its teeth were blunt rather than sharp, but that didn’t stop it. Serenity’s robe helped, but he could feel the crushing damage done to his arm. Serenity hung on to the flow of mana so that another salamander wouldn’t form before this one was dead.
Before the salamander could pull away and try to tear away its food, a sword went through the enlarged animal’s head. Serenity called out his thanks to the soldier, then restricted the essence flow and twisted it into starting a new monster immediately; he didn’t want anything close to that big again. Not when he couldn’t fight and didn’t have a shield.
There were a dozen more after the big one, but they were all small and easily handled by the two swordsmen.