By the time I finished very thoroughly cleaning my fur of the venom, I was feeling the pull to hunt so strongly I had to strain to maintain my form. I was in such a hurry that I crushed two out of my ten water crystals to magic the water out of my fur.

I practically ran out of the arena building. Ivo and Pierce were armored and, it seemed, ready to go.

"Come on, we'll talk about the plan on the way." Ivo said, as the two of them started jogging towards the guild gates.

I caught up to them easily, and Pierce started talking.

The first thing he told me was that they were able to get a couple warming amulets from Nefen, they offered me one. When I looked at it, I knew it wasn't an option, the enchantment on it looked delicious. If I tried to wear it, I'd likely eat it without thinking. That wasn't even considering how it wouldn't shift with me, all my forms were too big, or too small for it, and I wasn't going to be fighting in my demihuman form.

I told them I'd just use my snow cat form for the hunt, it wouldn't mind the cold at all. They agreed that it was probably the best way to go.

As we jogged down the streets towards the town gates Pierce told me the plan, what little they had, anyway. When we got close to our targets, I would do another flyover, to find out where the alphas were situated. The three of us would split up, and each take an alpha and their troop.

We wouldn't separate too far. but with my lack of experience working with a group, and the high potential that whatever I ended up channeling would worsen the environment around me, they didn't want to take the chance of us hurting each other.

They did ask if I would want to try channeling fire, since they knew I had access to all the elements, and they thought it would likely be very strong against the ice creatures. I told them my fire core was just too small to touch all the ice that was around. I'd be better off using my air core, they weren't directly weak to it, but shouldn't have any specific defense against it either. Besides, I truly didn't think I had enough control to channel a combat oriented fire core in the middle of the forest.

When I began to consider it, I instinctively knew I was going into it with the wrong mindset. I was not meant to pick one core and stick to it, I was meant to shift between them as needed.

I practically slapped myself in the face, of course I wasn't meant to be only one thing, in fact, I had an idea. It came out of nowhere, and it definitely wasn't something I would have usually experimented with. In fact, I had a moment where I screamed at myself about how bad of an idea it was. But my instincts were insistent, it would be perfect. I was glad I had shifted away my venom glands, because I felt like my body was trying to activate them.

There were so many creatures, what if I could cut them down a bit before we even started?

It would need to happen with Ivo and Pierce at a safe distance, I wasn't sure what the core and form would do. But I was suddenly certain that it would make a hell of a splash, and it shouldn't care about the cold.

After we exited the gates, Ivo looked over at me. "I suddenly feel a lot of aggression and expectation from you, what's up?"

I told them what had occurred to me.

"Well that should at least get them out of their territory. You'll probably be able to lead the alphas right to us after an attack like that too." Pierce said, thinking about it. "How sure are you that you can control yourself with that core?"

"Not sure at all, but as long as I focus on killing the primates for three minutes it won't be a problem." I grinned, I didn't understand why I felt so excited. I hated that core, and it was my smallest one. But it felt so right.

We kept moving towards our targets, and the pull didn't grow any stronger, but it was miles away. Ivo and Pierce were so slow, I began to feel frustrated.

Then I had a thought. I was capable of moving way faster than them in any form, and I had one that had a saddle.

"Hey guys? How heavy would you say you are with all that armor?" I asked, a part of me rebelled against the idea of even considering what I was going to offer. But another, bigger part of me wanted to get to the hunt faster, and it won.

"Not sure, we both use abilities to stay grounded in fights. I don't think we're any heavier than we look, my armor and shield both weigh as much as I do though." Ivo responded. "What are you thinking?"

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"I'm thinking we are taking too long, and I want to see if I can speed us up." I shifted to the ram form, switching my core to the growing life aspect I had found in the arena. It should be strong enough. It was certainly large enough, we'd have to use a road that led towards the target. There was no way my ram form would squeeze through the trees in the forest at any speed, but we had been planning on using the road anyway.

"You sure?" Pierce looked at me dubiously. "I mean you're not weak, but you shouldn't tire yourself out before the fight."

I nodded, as long as I ate after we reached our destination I thought I'd be fine.

Pierce hopped into the saddle, I barely felt his weight. Ivo handed him his shield, and hopped up behind him. It was amazing how they could move in their plate armor. But I supposed that everyone was pretty superhuman. I felt the weight of the two of them, together with the heavy metal shield. They would slow me down, but it was far from unbearable.

I felt their legs tighten against my sides, and Ivo said they were ready.

I started off at a trot, and slowly increased speed until I was eating the ground. My form wasn't built for speed, and it wasn't particularly built for endurance. But I was a whole lot faster than two men in plate armor. I was also channeling mana that was both regenerative, and made me stronger.

Thankfully for all involved, the road we were on didn't see much traffic. My senses were keen enough that I heard the one cart we had to make our way around in time to slow down. The man driving what looked like two oxen type creatures stared at us openly as we passed. I'm sure we made him pretty curious, I was certainly no normal beast of burden. My ram form was as mixed as ever, with stripes, thick fur, and a long tail. My fangs were hidden behind my lips, but I'm sure my mouth didn't look quite right.

Ivo sent out a cheerful greeting, and I felt him sending out good emotional vibes, which made the man less fearful than he might have been.

As we traveled, I realized that our target's territory was only a few miles away from where I had appeared in this world. Which meant it was close to whatever it was I had to take care of in a few weeks. I started to feel a strangeness to the flow of the mana around me. It was all slowly being drawn in one direction. My own pull at the mana overrode it in my immediate vicinity, but it seemed to fight me.

I instinctively knew I needed to avoid getting too close to the center of the pull. I wasn't sure what would happen, but I knew it would be bad. There was a reason I couldn't interfere with it yet.

Thankfully I didn't have to worry about it, the hunt was going to happen well out of its range.

Once we started to feel the direction of the pull shifting, I stopped. I was breathing pretty hard, but I was far from spent. The men dismounted, and I tore into the local vegetation. My mouth seemed to suddenly be capable of opening very wide indeed. I'd much rather have meat, but we hadn't thought to bring any, so I made do.

The men looked at me as I chewed my way through a whole sapling tree. Long ago Dux had told me that all I really needed for food was organic matter, and it was definitely true. I just had strong preferences depending on my form.

I shifted my core back to pure, and shifted directly to my sky terror form. The men already knew the plan, they would keep their distance, but head towards the target. I would make the first strike. Venom soaked saliva was already threatening to seep from my mouth. Sky terrors were kind of messy when they got excited.

I took off, not using my air core made it very difficult, but I managed. When I got to the border of their territory, I could smell the primates, and feel the bite of their cold. I shifted my core to death.

I wasn't sure what it would do, but I knew it would have something to do with my venom. I wanted to poison them all, I wanted to bring death to the weakest among them. I felt the life drain from my body, at first it made me so weak I almost fell out of the tree I was perched in. But I quickly regained function, my form was dead, but the death mana kept me animated. I felt the life ahead of me, and I already had my plan to bring down what I could.

I let out a dry hiss, a thick mist flowed out of my mouth. My sky terror form's venom, empowered by the death mana manifested itself very differently. It was more like an aerosol poison, if poison was attracted to life.

Every bit of the poison I released was wasted on the plants around me. I watched them wilt and rot in real time, their death brought me satisfaction. But they were not as enticing as the mammals ahead of me.

I jumped from the dead tree, and flew forward, my dead, withered and dessicated form was completely unaffected by the cold. My flight was slow, my feathers were somewhat tattered, and not nearly as good for flying as they once were. But I was also lighter than I'd ever been, my form contained no moisture.

As I flew through the frozen territory, I expended the mana in my core to produce more and more poisonous mist. My mind filled with the identification data for the monsters. The primates were very angry at my intrusion, but I was some distance above them, and the mist obscured my location. The alphas fired some ice spears at the sound of my hiss, but nothing managed to hit me. I could feel my mist infiltrating the weaker members of the species. It had no effect on the alphas, and only the very weakest died.

After a few minutes I shifted my core to air on my own, I was surprised that I didn't require Dux's help. For my next trick, the alphas needed to see me.

I had to work swiftly, I called the winds to blow the mist away, and send me rocketing in the direction of Ivo and Pierce. I heard the alphas bellow, and had to spend a fortune in mana to deflect the ice hurled at me.

The alphas chased me into the forest, their troops were too slowed by the effects of my mist to keep up. My plan had worked, my only problem was finding the men. Flying at high speed through the forest was extremely unsafe for something with as big a wingspan as me. So I shifted in mid flight to my Snowy Mountain Prowler form. I hit the ground running, the alphas were still in pursuit.

I roared loudly as I ran, the men knew to listen for it, and the air mana would help the sound reach them. It had a direct line to my thoughts when I was channeling it after all.

My core was emptying faster than I could consume mana, because I couldn't stop shielding my back. I was also spending mana to keep up my stamina, and enhance my speed.

I was thankfully not channeling the prowler's air Aspect. What I was channeling was all about leading my enemies on a merry chase, It was perfect. I would have to analyze the Concepts later.

I heard Ivo and Pierce shouting, and altered my course towards them. There was a wide grin on my feline face, everything was working perfectly.