I immersed myself in the heavenly sensations that accompanied my first encounter with free flowing tier two mana. At first, I gulped it down mindlessly like the starving beast I was, unable to pay attention to anything but my desperate need to restore what I had lost. Unfortunately, I had lost a lot.

I hadn't been able to put my full attention on exactly what had been happening to me during my frantic run, but a part of my mind had been paying close attention. After consuming the mother crystal, the pure mana in my core along with the bulk of the mana that my body was made of had tiered up. Once it made the transition, it began to react, bubbling up like water in a vacuum, sucked away into the world around me.

By the time Thorn found me, much of my body had begun to lose its physical presence. The reason I had been unable to run without tripping was because my paws were phasing out of existence when I moved them too quickly. Torill's spirit had truly saved me, if things had been allowed to progress any further, I would have been reduced to little more than a ghost.

What the spirit had done was gather up every bit of me that remained and surround it in a layer of stabilizing Concepts. The spirit’s ability to manipulate Concepts was awe inspiring, it was as though the entity had weaved them into existence from nothing. From my experience, even gods didn't seem to have the same ironclad mastery, Belua certainly did not.

I could still feel complex threads composed of intricately linked Concepts that the spirit had evidently woven through my body while I was talking to them. Even with Curious aiding me, I couldn't sense the individual Concepts they were built from. I could however, see what they were doing, they were making sure every mote of mana I consumed was immediately put to use to restore my body to full functionality.

I had to wonder what the kind of service I had received would cost, and dreaded the answer. The spirits seemed to like me, seemed to view me as family, but nothing they did was ever free. I remembered Torill telling me that they were quite literally unable to impact anything in the physical world without taking some sort of payment. The more complicated the service, the more severe and lengthy the fee had to be.

Unfortunately I couldn't ask Torill. I couldn't even perceive anything beyond the incredibly dense mana that was pushing in in me from all sides. The mana was so overwhelming that it took me an embarrassingly long time to notice how different tier two mana was from what I was used to.

At first, I was only aware of the potent power the mana contained. For the first time in my new life, I felt like I was eating a full meal. It occured to me that every other meal, be it meat or mana, had been no more nutritious for me than potato chips.

Eventually the blinding need for sustenance was quelled, and I became acclimated enough to the new mana to be able to pay attention. The real difference in the higher tier mana was the Concepts they contained. There was an intensity to them that threatened to exert their influence on me the moment I looked at them, a weight that might have felt impressive if I hadn't been exposed to Belua's aura so frequently. As it was, I found the pressure easy to bear.

Once I got used to the strength of the Concepts, I noticed something very peculiar about the mana I was consuming. I tasted no less than three different flavors of life mana. As I turned my mind to them, their names floated in my head. They were empowered with the Aspects of Nature, Vitality, and Communion.

I suddenly knew what my elemental cores needed to fully transition to tier two, it had to become aspected. At first I felt a pang of loss. The new mana was strong, absurdly so, but it seemed so limited compared to what I was used to.

A part of me screamed that tier one mana could do everything those three could do, and more! But a quick look at my life core told me I was wrong about that. The mana inside looked to my mind's eye like a pale green cloud of gas. The Concepts in the mana I was used to channeling would be as effective as a fart in the wind.

The mana in my core seemed to become agitated when I touched it with my mind, it seemed to be one small push from transitioning into a different state. I was astonished that it hadn't done so on its own, until I noticed the spiderweb thin threads of concepts that the spirit had apparently woven around my cores.

I mentally cursed as the force of my perception of the threads caused them to fall away from my life core. The reaction was immediate, and unstoppable.

The life mana that had been clinging to me flooded into my body, drawn in by the irresistible suction of the freed core. I tried to stop it, to guide it, to will my core to stop, so I could have time to make a choice. There was no stopping it, the choice was made for me.

Vitality mana had been densely gathered around me, likely because I had subconsciously been calling to it, given the state of my body. Because it was so dominant, that was what my core became. I watched as my core turned to a vibrant green with a red center that pulsed in tune with the rapid beat of my racing heart.

I was spitting out growling garbled curses, making the gathered friends around me who I was dimly aware of jump to high alert, when reality decided I didn't have enough to curse about yet. My other cores started to vibrate one after another, and my world was filled with mana.

It felt like an eternity passed as all of the mana around me crowded into my body. For a while it felt like my cores became a warzone. In reality the mana around me wasn't very diverse, and my cores found their new aspects over the course of only a few minutes.

They were largely not what I would have chosen for myself, given that I was meant to make my name as an adventurer

Energizing flowed into air, Hearth replaced fire, Illumination spread through light, Terror filled darkness, Stillness claimed earth, and Ice crystallized water.

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I growled out more feline curses as the mana around me settled down, only to be stunned into silence by a nose being pushed against the side of my head, followed by a few licks from a warm tongue.

It smelled like Torill, it looked like Torill. But she was bigger than me, and I was absolutely sure that I had reverted to my full size. I blinked as I turned my head to stare into her eyes that had become opaline when her body had changed. I wondered for a moment if she blamed me for her new form, it certainly wasn't what she signed up for, but I saw only calm concern as she looked back at me.

“What was that? Are you okay? The spirit said you were stable.” Torill's mental voice sounded a lot less calm than she looked, she practically screamed the words into my head. Flashes of images, emotions, and full scenes accompanied the words.

I saw a cavalcade of intimate moments that the two of us shared. I saw Thorn running up and telling her I was in trouble, I felt her heart clench when she heard it. I saw her contact a powerful spirit, and make her request for aid. I felt how she had been bound by a contract that she knew would change the course of her life, though I didn't get the specifics. I felt her worry that she hadn't done enough.

It brought tears to my eyes as I was struck silent by what she had shared, which only served to increase the worry in her eyes. I was about to respond when Pierce's voice ruined the atmosphere.

“What the hell was that light show? Scratch that, what the fuck is he? I've always wondered about him, but I've never seen anyone react that badly from being stuck down tier. He looked like a damn ghost, now he's turned into a rainbow.”

“Calm down, it's nothing we need to worry about. Whatever he is, he was sent by the great mother. Isn't that all we need to know?” Ivo's calming voice was followed by a long, heavy sigh from Pierce.

“I believe I have some idea what he is, which is good, because I believe the cub does not.” A deep voice that sounded both foreign and familiar rumbled.

“Well that sure as hell makes me curious. Would you be willing to share?” Pierce’s voice had none of the commanding tone that I expected from him when he spoke to the newcomer.

“Do either of you children know what an elemental is?” The man asked, his voice rumbled, like rocks being ground down.

“I read about them in an adventurer’s bestiary once. They pop up, rarely, in high mana zones. They are pure coalesced expressions of elemental mana. They can be pretty nasty, or calm as can be, depending on where they are.” Ivo answered

I pushed myself up to look at the man as he hummed before he responded. He was sitting some distance away from the campfire that had apparently been set up while I was recovering. He was imposing for a human. It was hard to tell how large since he wore a hooded silver robe, and sat in the shadows, but something about him made me want to bow my head.

“That is rather more well informed than I expected considering your territory. But predictably incomplete.”

I saw Pierce open his mouth, but Ivo put a hand on his shoulder to silence him.

“Those of us among the first beasts consider them to be cousins… they are so much like us. A human might call them the other side of our coin. We are beasts who have been altered by elemental mana, and merged with a young spirit. The element of our rebirth changes us, empowers us, and though we often hide its extent, changes our form. This is well known.”

As the man paused, it clicked in my tired mind exactly who he was. Snow had shown up, likely to make good on our agreement. I wondered how he knew so soon.

“Elementals are mana constructs who fuse with spirits, and take on shapes that are based on what is expected to live in their place of origin. They are far more unstable than spirit beasts. Far less likely to somehow pass the trial for sapience, for them, I believe it relies on the strength of the spirit. I believe that Angel is such a cousin, but one of a type I have only seen a very few times recently. A pure mana elemental.”

Snow looked me in the eyes, a question, and a challenge in his gaze. If I could speak out loud, I would have spilled everything about me, but my form of communication allowed me time to think. It occured to me that he was technically correct. So I bowed my head and closed my eyes.

“An elemental!? But he's so…” Pierce started.

“Lifelike?” Ivo finished.

Snow chuckled.

“He would be. Nearly indistinguishable from the ideas he was formed into. However as you can plainly see, his state is far more malleable. I would assume that is the weakness of being built of pure mana. Pure mana is easily influenced by its environment. That is where elemental mana comes from after all. I would hazard a guess that the ritual that brought them into this world helps with their stability somewhat.”

“Ritual?” I couldn't help but ask.

“Has to be, both of the others like you had giant mana crystals powering them. It was strange that the crystals were elemental in nature, but I think they had some sort of grounding effect. I'll admit that particular aspect confuses me.”

“You've seen two others? What happened to them?” I asked.

“One of them was in my territory, I destroyed it. The other, I watched you deal with.”

I blinked.

“You cannot blame me. You made my form a part of you. That had made us family. You are also a most peculiar cub, so I watch.”

“So uh, he was turning into a ghost because he’s an elemental?” Ivo asked, I was fairly sure he felt my discomfort at learning that I had been stalked by someone who called me family.

“He was turning into a ghost because his mana control is terrible. We will fix this over the next month, among other things.”

Something about the way the words came out of Snow's mouth absolutely terrified me.