The spot where I had first set foot on my new world had been desecrated. If I had any air in my still screaming lungs, I would have moaned in grief at the sight. A hill of mangled corpses, most of which were hardly recognizable torn and rotted as they were. Death mana billowed off the pile, so dense that I almost couldn't feel the mother crystal buried under the gruesome collection.

For a moment I consoled myself that the dead seemed to be mostly beasts, but it didn't last. I was intimately aware that the animal shaped dead could very well have been people. Their deaths were every bit as tragic as the few humans that were haphazardly mixed in with the rest.

I'm ashamed to admit that underneath the horror, revulsion, and sorrow I felt at the sight of so many dead, I also felt a sense of relief. I knew how mana beast’s bodies were formed. In the back of my mind, I had blamed myself for the sad, corrupted stag form that the mana beast had been born into. I had, after all, dropped a handful of death tuned cores from a herd of zombie deer into its territory.

In retrospect, I probably hadn't been thinking terribly clearly when I used the insatiable hunger of the forming mother crystal as a magical garbage disposal. But I had judged, probably correctly, that the cores wouldn't be enough to make a difference in the face of all the other mana the event had been drawing in.

In the end, all dropping the cores had likely done was help make the fight easier. Cores didn't exactly house the Concepts of the beasts that they had formed inside, not in a form that gave me any sustenance, but they did have a sort of memory of their former hosts. Given the cervine form the mana beast had taken, it was possible that the cores from a herd of deer just might have skewed the resulting mana beast. It may have turned something that could have been much more dangerous into prey.

The elements the beast had been inflicted with though, were not my doing. A flame of rage that had little to do with my Concepts flared in my heart as I narrowed my eyes at the pile of dead. The lich, if that is what the entity controlling the wendigo was, had to have known what it was doing. It had to have some knowledge of what was being birthed.

I had seen mana that carried Concepts from their environment before. Hell, I'd had one of my own cores so thoroughly tainted that I felt the need to remake it. So many dead piled on top of each other would almost certainly taint any mana that touched them with the Concepts of death.

Mana beasts were rare enough that all but the most learned would have no chance of knowing what was happening. Belua had also said she had been shielding the area from notice.

The creature was obviously insane, but it had spoken of “the great mother's plan” with such fervor. I hadn't thought anything of it at the time, taking them for the rantings of a Concept-crazed monster. Maybe they were, but I suddenly thought of the Voice.

I could not imagine a scenario in which the enemies I had just faced could have killed someone who was ready to ascend to godhood. The Voice's Concepts had been so terribly intense that merely being near her had been a trial for me. I couldn't imagine a newborn mana beast being able to take so much as a step near her if she did not will it, but still, she had died.

I wanted to curse the arrogant little godling, whatever she had done could not have been with Belua's consent. I was absolutely certain that Belua would never have made a plan that called for the deaths of her children. The Voice, as little as I had actually gotten to know her, definitely seemed like the type to see that as a weakness. I could easily see an entity with the domineering Concepts I had sensed in The Voice leading hundreds of people to the slaughter if it fit into a greater plan.

But what was the plan? Without a young mana beast to feed, the mother crystal would radiate the mana it contained back into the world, I could feel it doing so already. The territory would expand, fierce monsters would be born from any animals that had the misfortune of wandering into the area. The adventurers in Brightwood would have their hands full, and that was without taking the undead being from the deep mountains meddling with the situation. If that creature got its hands on the mother crystal, who knew what it could do.

Red tinted my vision as I thought about what could happen. It didn't matter what the plan was, I wasn't going to let it happen. I began to look inward, trying to manually change my active core for the first time. My lips curled up, letting out a silent, breathless growl.

It was then that the creature from the deep mountains showed itself once more.

Laughter echoed from all around me, five distinct raspy voices spoke as one.

“Do you like my work little hero? It sets the stage well for what's to come.”

Twigs cracked, and leaves rustled as five creatures that may once have been human made their way towards me, all obviously under the control of one mind. They were all different shapes and sizes, the death mana that tainted their corpses having imprinted vastly different Concepts in each of them. None were Wendigo, I could tell that much. As for what they were, without the System to identify them, I had no clue.

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They ran the gamut from large and bloated, to nearly skeletal. Their forms didn't matter much to me, they all needed to be cleansed. They all shared the same weakness, one that I had been hesitant to capitalize on for fear of the damage I could do if I lost control.

“I'm glad you stayed. I must applaud you. I'm not sure I would have had the will it takes to stand and die, no matter the cause.” The creatures laughed again. “Perhaps I could turn you, how would you like a second chance at life? I'm sure the people watching us would be suitably appalled to see the great mother's favorite son in such a state.”

The undead beasts closed on me quickly then, grasping at my unmoving body. I didn't doubt for a second that the creature could do what it planned if I didn't succeed in changing my core. The many hands burned me as they channeled deathly mana into my body. The life mana I was channeling, even bolstered by Holy as it was, fought a losing battle. The pain was quite literally soul twisting. I felt my body being lost to the death mana, tainted beyond repair.

The thought of what my eternal self would become if I was seen as part of an undead scourge blasted through the last of my qualms about what I was trying to do. My core shifted.

I burned them back.

Flames erupted from my form, then, as the mana coursed through my body, my form lost cohesion entirely. The undead who had piled on top of me fell through the bright white heavenly flames that were my body.

Life mana opposed death mana directly. It was a shield that would prevent its spread, a salve that could mend the damage it had done. But in that direct confrontation, it could lose, more powerful death mana could unravel its Concepts and destroy it.

Fire mana did not oppose death mana. It consumed it without challenge. Fire brought death to the living, and in turn, created fuel for new life from death. The undead minions stood no chance under the fury of my cleansing flames.

I could not tell you with any certainty what Concepts I channeled. My mind had been so muddled with pain and anger when I had made the transition that there was little left of me as I burned my enemies to ash.

I knew only fury, hunger, and the need to destroy what The Voice and the lich had wrought.

I spread quickly, burning away the rot and disease as I moved. I burned the pile of bodies, heedless of who or what they may have once been. Somewhere, deep inside, I lamented that I could not identify the people, could not give closure to any families and friends they may have left behind. Those feelings had no impact on my actions.

When my flames touched the mother crystal it tried to forge a connection with me. I lashed out at it, using the extended tether to burn my way into the crystal. It did not resist, instead, it aided my entrance.

The whole of my being was sucked into the crystal. The mother crystal did not have a mind, what it had was a purpose, written into every facet of its existence. To fuel the newly created body until it was stable, then when the Concepts it contained were drained, it would act as a pure core for its charge.

It was a gift from Reality itself, a small token of appreciation for a being that had been given over to it to be harvested. The pure mana core was a near impossibility, cores that developed naturally always contained Concepts. The core was the engine that allowed me to return to myself free of taint after I channeled mana.

I saw all of that, but it meant less than nothing to me at the time.

The mother crystal offered itself to me, in an attempt to fulfill its purpose. I burned away every bit of it that stank of death. The darkness in it was somewhat diminished by my presence, but shadow was no enemy of fire. Flames created as many shadows as they destroyed.

When I had burned everything that I could, the mother crystal was composed of fire, shadow, and air mana. I connected with it then, unable to resist its call, and my flames spilled out from the crystal.

Fueled by the crystal's reserves I became the disaster that I had been terrified of when I chose to channel fire mana. I exploded outward, my fire projected to engulf my entire territory. For a few moments my territory contained me, but when I raged at the boundaries, I was allowed to spill free.

I left nothing but ash in my wake. The remains of the death-taint was no more, yet still I raged, still I hungered, still I spread. Nothing and no one could stand in my way. Lives were lost in the fires that raged that day, though none of them were human. I felt their Concepts get burned to fuel my blaze. There were no repercussions, my contract, it seemed, was as inactive as the System.

Each life I took shook the hold the fire mana had on my mind, but I'm ashamed to say that I did not come to, it was my children that stopped me. They somehow recognized me, despite there being nothing that I could recognize of myself in my form.

I hadn't realized how intelligent the trees had become. Every one of them was a spirit tree now, every one of them called out a greeting when I came near. They were curious, and friendly. They praised me for clearing out the undergrowth for them.

Then, when their natural mana barriers gave way, they screamed in pain and began to drain my mana away. The largest tree unleashed an aura of protection covering the entire grove. It seemed to understand what had happened to me, that was no surprise, it had previously lived centuries in the thrall of its Concepts.

The former stone tree spoke into my mind with a gentle soothing tone to its thoughts as every tree in the grove worked to drain me of my mana. Because a part of me was still back in my territory, I was still fueled by the mother crystal. It took hours. The smaller trees did not escape unscathed, but following their larger brother's lead, they were unfailingly kind in their mental contact with me.

Even with their support I didn't manage to gain enough control to do more than stop actively trying to burn them until all of the energy contained in the mother crystal had run through me. When the seemingly endless supply of mana was finally exhausted, the mother crystal did its last duty and joined with me. I lost consciousness then.

When I woke, I was back where the mother crystal had been. I was laying in a pile of ashes in my true form, and I was in terrible danger.