After the shock passed, I noticed something very strange about the holes that the other mana beast had left in my side. It wasn't bleeding, and there was no physical sensation of pain, only the aching sense that something was missing. The mana inside me was acting strange as well. I'd have expected the life mana I had flowing from my core to flow to the wound, even without direction from me, but it almost seemed like mana was avoiding the area.

The wound wasn't healing at all despite the fact that one of the Concepts I was channeling was Regenerative. It was worrying. My mind lurched as I felt Curious flare, the strange wound in my side had my full attention. Every other concern fell away. I had to understand what had happened to me.

What I found terrified me to my core. The beast hadn't just left me with a wound, it had taken the Concepts that said there should be flesh and blood where it had attacked me. As the seconds passed, I found myself having to struggle to remember that I didn't always have a hole in my side. I couldn't even picture myself without it.

It seemed like what the Beast had done to me was true, unhealable, damage. The only saving grace was that my body, composed as it was of Concepts and mana, didn't seem to realize that it should bleed or cause pain. The Concepts that would have triggered such things were as absent as the flesh that had once existed.

With my mind focused inward, feeling the edges of the hole. Curious, active and empowered by its connection to Survivor, seemed to grant me the ability to sense what was going on clearly, even without System assistance. I was able to verify that it definitely was not going to regenerate on its own, the life mana seemed to be ignoring it entirely.

Life mana would probably still fill the hole if I asked it, but I wasn't sure I had time to figure out how to communicate with it, not with enemies around.

Enemies, my mind snapped out of the strange focused state Curious had prompted. For a moment I felt disoriented, like my mind was coated in sludge, but I recovered quickly. It struck me that the forest around me was completely silent, unmoving, as though everything was on pause. I tried to open my eyes to look around, but nothing happened.

Then, pain speared through my brain, sound returned, and my eyes shot open. It was a little hard to think with the pain in my head, but Survivor, and Enduring flared together and the pain became almost an afterthought.

It was still too quiet.

Just as I noticed that I no longer heard the laughing of my deathly opponent, the mana beast issued a trumpeting challenge from beyond the wall of shadows. The call reverberated through the mana, I felt it course through my body, all of my cores vibrated with it.

I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that had my System created instincts been active, they would have pushed me to respond with a challenge of my own. Free of their influence, I felt no such need. I still growled as I got my feet underneath me, I knew I had to move.

I heard the beast stomping the ground beyond the curtain of shadows, and heard its excited breathing. I knew it was moments from charging out of the darkness once more, and I needed to be ready to react.

I was immediately reminded that I had two opponents, as I heard the crunching of leaves by my wounded side. I didn't have time to respond before the wendigo made its move, shoving its clawed hands into the gashes on my side.

Its touch burned, its claws tore at the hole in my body, bringing forth the pain that had been absent. A potent mix of life mana, and my newly empowered holy Concept flooded out of my wound, bathing my assailant in a bright green light.

The monster's pained shriek was music to my ears. I could almost see the connection it had with whatever had been controlling it disappear as its eyes lost the spark of intelligence that had been behind them.

I twisted my body, snapping my jaws around the momentarily stunned undead creature, just as I heard the beating of hooves on the forest floor.

I burned where it touched the dry leathery skin of the monster, it tasted so horrible that it made me regret putting my mouth around it. Without stopping to think about what I was doing, I flung it away from me, sending it into the charging mana beast.

I got my first clear look at the beast as the wendigo was impaled on its wickedly sharp antlers. It was a huge black stag, it struck me that while it was smaller than me it was much larger than it should have been. Shadows flowed around it, obscuring its form, they trailed behind it as it skidded to a stop. The flashes of its form that I saw through the darkness, made me feel sorry for the Beast.

Its body was wrong, and I didn't think that was holy influencing me. The mana it was built out of had not granted it the splendid, supernaturally healthy form that I enjoyed. Its black pelt looked patchy, its flesh hung loose on an emaciated frame. Painful looking growths dotted its spine, they pulsed, releasing sporadic puffs of the darkness that cloaked it. It stank, too. I resolved to do my best not to breathe in its presence. I had no way of knowing what sort of damage the shadowy gas it was releasing would do to a creature like myself, who was at least partly made of life mana.

Thankfully, the mana beast had more pressing matters to attend to than continuing to approach me, the wendigo was clearly unhappy, and it was making its displeasure known. I was tempted to sit and watch as the monster tore into the beast’s face with its claws, but I knew the two probably wouldn't keep each other occupied for long.

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If at all possible, I wanted to keep it from returning to its territory. If my recollection of the dream from the young mana beast I was inhabiting was correct, the beast’s connection to its mother crystal would drastically decrease with distance. In the dream, the young mana beast hadn't even considered leaving his mother's territory.

I wanted to try to immobilize it while I attempted to figure out how to hurt it like it had hurt me. The wounds on my sides had filled in after the wendigo went and shoved its mitts in there. The life mana had filled the hole in my side with flesh that felt wrong, it was stiff, and pulled a little as I moved. It was nothing like it should be, but I hadn't really expected the mana to be able to replicate the Concepts that were missing. I was relieved that the mana had filled it at all.

I watched the beast’s struggle, looking for an opening. The stag’s legs seemed like a weak point, thin and spindly as they were, but the cloven hooves at the ends of them looked sharp as knives. They were clearly dangerous, potentially deadly if the mana beast could cleave Concepts with them.

As I evaluated my options, the beast spun and danced, reared and slammed its rack into the ground, all in an attempt to dislodge his unwanted passenger. For its part, after the wendigo's initial vicious attempts to remove the mana beast's eyes, the undead monster was hanging limply.

I would have liked to have used my aura to grow the plants at the mana beast's feet, but it was beyond me. Not only did the absence of the System leave me at a loss for how to do so, but the beast had a small aura of its own. A foggy mix of death, darkness and air mana wafted out of my opponent, the uncontrolled life mana I was expelling into my aura seemed to burn up when it came in contact with the beast’s noxious fog. The life mana did burn away patches of the stag's aura in the contest though.

I growled out my frustration, I didn't love the System, but I could have used its help managing my mana. It was meant to be rebooting but I had no idea how long that would take. I tried thinking at Hash, but the administrator's fragment either didn't hear me, or chose not to respond.

The thought of withdrawing until I regained the assistance every sapient creature had access to floated through my mind, but it was pushed aside. I had a quest from the goddess to defeat the mana beast, and it was right in front of me. It didn't even seem to be paying attention to me.

I quietly waited for the opportunity to present itself, and pounced on the beast when its head was turned away from me. The toxic air around it burned my eyes and lungs, but I endured, my claws tore through its flank but failed to find purchase. A leg landed in my open jaws, as the beast sprang away from me, I tried to clamp down, but failed. My teeth still left their mark. I managed to tear away a strip of the beast’s loose flesh, giving me a brief taste of the mana its body had been formed from.

It was like someone had attempted to cover old meat with a copious serving of mint and honey. It should have been entirely unpleasant, but my stomach rumbled demanding more. The beast let out a furious screeching howl that should not have come from the mouth of a deer.

It spun around to face me, snapping its head in a way that sent the wendigo flying off its antlers in my direction. I sprang to the side and the body sailed past me, I couldn't help but notice how little mana it contained. It occurred to me that the stag-like beast had somehow sucked the monster dry while it had been impaled. The damn thing was eating through its antlers.

Watching the beast as it huffed the air, and squared up to me with its head lowered, I understood what had happened to my side. The marks my claws had left on its flank had sealed, leaving no evidence that I had harmed it at all, while the comparatively light scratches from my teeth remained. Both of us ate Concepts, usually by stripping them out of mana, but like with the core that had met its end in my belly, we could tear them out of other things as well.

I had never been able to tear into Concepts with my claws, it hadn't even occurred to me to try. Judging from how the beast had healed, I seemed to have been correct. But there was a strong mental aspect to how Concepts functioned, I thought of the act as “eating Concepts,” so I went about it very literally. It was very possible that the new beast saw things differently.

I flexed my claws, trying to picture them as a way to bring food into myself. I doubted it would work, which I was already fairly certain made it impossible.

The beast was walking towards me, shaking its head menacingly. I couldn't help but notice its mouth, its lips were pulled back to reveal a toothy maw that would have been at home on an alligator.

It seemed like the beast had given up on charging for the moment. I backpedaled, ceding space in a way that would have infuriated my instincts.

My back feet found the trunk of a large fallen tree, and I carefully stepped over it in my retreat. Being careful to keep my eyes locked on my opponent, not giving it any hints that I'd had an idea.

The moment the trunk was in front of me, I did my best to call upon strong, and batted the fallen tree directly into the beast’s path. It dealt with it the same way it did everything else, by slamming into it antler first. The wood cracked and the trunk of the still living tree gave way to decay, showing me that the new beast had better control of its mana than I did, but the tree had done its job.

During its short distraction I had sprinted to its side, and sprang into the air to land in a very familiar position. The stag's head reared back as its legs buckled under my weight, and I didn't pass up the opportunity to clamp my jaws around the back of its neck. I had to force myself to forget about the disgusting masses I had landed upon.

My teeth weren't met with any resistance, I almost bit my tongue as my mouth snapped shut. If it weren't for the sickly sweet taste of the energy contained in the beast flowing down my throat, I would have thought that I had missed.

The stag let out a terrible scream, gouts of mana infused toxic smoke issued from its mouth, filling the air. It felt like wasps were stinging my eyes and nose, but I just closed my eyes, held my breath and bit down on the beast again and again.

The beast had seemed so strong, but I supposed there was a reason that I had been told I only needed to be level one hundred. It seemed like the mana and Concepts that the beast was made of hadn't fully settled, they were ready to unravel the moment my teeth touched them.

The fight was over, and I tried to put the beast out of its suffering quickly. It held on longer than any normal creature would, only ceasing its struggles when I removed its head entirely.

Everything about the beast made me nauseous if I paid attention to it. Tainted as it was with death mana, it burned my mouth as I ate. A large part of me wanted to pull away, but I couldn't stop myself. I ate everything, I even licked the creature's blood off the ground. The leaves and dirt were almost a refreshing palate cleanser in comparison to the rancid meat and bone.

The Concepts it contained roiled in my stomach, it felt like I had consumed several cores. I knew I would have to sort it out quickly, I would destroy them for energy, I wanted no part of the Concepts that poor creature had been built out of. Before I could do that, though, I had to confirm that the wendigo was out of the picture.

It didn't take me long to find the undead beast, and I was glad I had taken the time to do so. It was mangled and drained. There was no sign of the intelligence that had been controlling it in its crazed, hungry eyes, but it was still moving. It clawed the ground, pulling itself towards me, its withered lips pulled back in an unthinking snarl.

I snapped my forepaw at it, like a cat playing with a mouse. It went flying into a nearby tree. The brief contact brought me no pain, which was good, I had quite enough of being burned by death mana for the day.

I may have taken longer than was prudent to finish the humanoid undead off. If anyone asked, I would say that it was incredibly resilient, but I hadn't unsheathed my claws a single time since I had found it in that state. I did not remove its core, I didn't trust hungry not to force me to choke the damn thing down.

After I had been sure the wendigo was true-dead for a while, I settled down to deal with the churning mass of Concepts in my belly.