The spirit's inspection of my body was thorough, but in no way unpleasant. It probably should have felt intrusive, but instead it felt loving and protective. The connection I felt with the spirit was undeniable, and I knew it went both ways. I laid back and enjoyed the sense of closeness, Torill didn't even enter my mind until I heard a groan from next to me.

When I looked over, it took me a moment to recognize her. It was almost like looking at a different person. What threw me most were her looks, though they were unchanged in reality, my perception of her had been drastically altered.

What lay before me was not the peerless beauty that set my heart pounding regularly. She was pretty, but not stunning, and I felt no attraction to her at all. That's not to say I stopped caring for her, but the feelings seemed muted, limited by the lack of connection.

Without even thinking about it, I did something I hadn't bothered to do during our time in the camp, and summoned my clothes.

When she started blinking her eyes, and looking around in mild confusion I felt an ache in my chest, and felt the need to get some distance from her. I understood why, it wasn't like I'd forgotten what we'd been doing together just the night before. I certainly hadn't forgotten that the change in perception wasn't natural. But it was the way it was, and would be for a few days.

So I said, "Good, you're awake, I'm going to go check on things. You should read your letter to yourself."

I saw her notice the pages in her hands as I made to leave the tent.

"Thanks!" I heard her say in the overly cheerful voice that she used when we were around other people.

I launched myself into the air, shifting mid-leap, and flew off to see how things were progressing. The wind of my flight made my eyes water.

When I was flying high above the forest, the spirit spoke up.

"You may enter the aura, it will not sense you so long as you use no external magics." Its words came packaged with a warmth, and a desire to do its duty for me.

"I believe you, but I can see from here, no need to waste your energy protecting me now."

The forest was well and truly flooded. There was nearly a foot of water on the ground. I spared a thought for anyone who relied on the water I was diverting, though I remembered from the maps that there weren't any towns within a hundred miles. The maps didn't show where spirit beasts lived, and I knew they were out there in the wilds.

I wasn't done impacting the local water supply though, my plan called for quite a lot of it. I made a mental note to make absolutely certain that the flow returned to normal when I was done.

After seeing that things were progressing nicely, I didn't return to camp. I found a nice tree, and perched on a branch. Then I reached out to the spirit.

"Can you tell me if anything comes near me? I need to meditate."

"It is not in my contract. But for you, I will. These feelings are interesting, even the pain coming from the fact that you don't feel the same way about me is delicious." Echoes of how it felt accompanied the message.

They made my heart skip a beat. I couldn't help but feel a mirror of the emotions, as my body reacted to the connection between us. I told myself that they weren't real, and even if I didn't feel it right now, I was loyal to Torill. The mental conflict forced a harsh hiss from my lips.

"Are you alright? I did not mean to cause you pain." Concern filled the background of the words.

"I…" I felt strangely bad for fighting the feelings. Though it borrowed the emotional connections from elsewhere, it currently clearly cared about me. "I need to meditate. I need to be mentally prepared for tonight if my plan is going to work. I need to be in the right headspace for it."

"I understand, I will be careful not to cause any more conflict. Do what you need, I will alert you if you are in danger." The message was clean, devoid of any extra feelings.

I sent it a very sincere "Thank you."

The first thing I had to do when I entered meditation was acknowledge and set aside the conflicting emotions and buried pain that I was feeling. I then acknowledged and put aside the feelings of guilt I had about how I was going to be ending the tree's current incarnation. I would be giving it the fastest end I felt I was capable of, that had to be enough. I couldn't let the guilt and sadness enter my mind, I needed to forget about those things entirely.

I needed to call on joy and play, so I ran through memories of my time in Belua's realm as a cub. I grabbed hold of my memories of the pure playful chaos of the place. Then I focused on my memories of the times I channeled air early on, I felt my heart begin to race despite my meditative state.

I began to tell myself how fun my plan was, how much sticking to the steps would be a big part of the fun. My heart beat faster and faster as I forced myself to get excited about the fun I was going to have. I was mentally running through the steps in my mind for the fourth time when the spirit gave me a mental poke.

In the real world the wind was whipping around me. The air was filled with mana that seemed to have sensed what I was planning, or perhaps more realistically it got excited because I was excited. It brushed against me, almost pulling me off the branch I was perched on. I could hear it begging me to start playing. With the excitement that I'd built up in my mind, I couldn't resist.

I shifted my core to air, and brought the free mana into my aura. I'd given quite a lot of thought on what Concepts to use for this, my most dangerous use of air mana outside of the arena.

Gathering , Joyous , Playful , Energetic , and Charging flooded into my mind, I danced through the trees of the forest, my body transformed into a mass of air in the vague semblance of a sky terror. I allowed myself to grow larger and larger as I flew, gathering air mana into myself. New and different Concepts joined me, adding power far beyond what I could channel on my own. I had to reject some, they would ruin my dance with the chaos they would bring.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

I plunged into the river upstream of my diversion. My gaseous body sent water flying high into the sky until I compressed myself down to a somewhat reasonable shape. When I was submerged, I reached into the phased pocket space where my elemental mana crystals were stored and shattered all of the ones that held water mana, calling through the mana for it to join me. Enticing it to come dance with me in the skies. All of the nearby free water mana responded.

Massive quantities of water transformed into vapor, the surroundings became shrouded in dense fog, and I pulled it along with me. I couldn't communicate with the water mana that was maintaining the state of the water, but it seemed to enjoy being my dance partner. We rushed and spiraled, my airy body was practically vibrating with built up energy. I yearned to unleash it, but I was not at the right step in the dance for that yet. As I had repeatedly told myself when I was planning, the buildup was part of the fun.

The water I carried with me didn't get the message, and released the charge that it had built up in a thunderous lightshow. I gathered it up, adding to the energy stored in myself.

By the time I reached the space above the tree's aura, I could barely contain myself. Lightning jumped frequently between myself and the cloud I carried. The sky filled with the incessant crackling roar of thunder.

I made half a circle around the tree's territory before I had to call the water mana in the cloud to myself and eat it to fill my core. Despite the fact that air mana continually added itself to my being and lent me its power, it was not enough. I was using so much mana to keep storing my charge, my core was nearly empty.

With nothing holding it in its gaseous form, the clouds began to turn back into water. I pushed them to the center, so they would rain down upon the giant tree.

I had made a full circle when I felt I could hold it no longer. I moved the core of myself to the center of the circle of swirling winds, and unleashed every bit of built up charge on the highest branch of the tallest tree. The sensation associated with the release was downright euphoric. I giddily watched the results.

I was aware enough to be glad that I didn't have a flesh and blood body, because the world was filled with enough light to blind a man, and the thunder and explosion that followed would have shattered eardrums.

As it was, I could barely make out how the lightning turned the branch it hit molten. That would probably be the extent of the damage if the tree wasn't coated in water, if every porous inch of it wasn't filled with the stuff. If it hadn't had so much to drink up from the flooding. I joyously patted myself on the back.

The lightning spread through the tree in an instant, the heat of it caused the water it contained to flash boil. The tree, strong as it was, couldn't contain the pressure of the steam inside it, and burst in a tremendous explosion.

With the bulk of its limbs gone, the ravaged trunk of the great stone tree listed to the side. Parts of its stone body were red hot and molten. But its enduring nature kept it from instantly succumbing to the massive damage. I felt the aura below me flicker, and weaken for just a moment, before it flared with great force, searching for the source of its pain.

I felt the spirit surrounding me take the hit from the aura for me, felt it tune to the tree's concepts, but nothing seemed to happen to it. I was untouched. The stone tree's aura shrank away after the burst, it no longer covered nearly the same territory as it had before.

I went on to the next part of my destructive dance. In order to properly fuel the level of destruction this step called for, I accepted some of the Concepts that I had rejected up to this point.

I swirled and twirled, spinning around the remaining aura, dragging mundane air along with a slew of debris from the forest with me. I spiraled up and down, setting the pattern for the winds to follow. I howled in a close approximation of laughter as I forced nearby trees to become uprooted and fly through the air. The violent movement of my form caused the air for miles to stir dramatically. The whirling winds inside the aura assaulted the weakened monster tree, the remains of its own fallen branches slammed into it repeatedly. In less than a minute the wounded giant fell to the water covered forest floor.

The aura around it flickered and lost its strength. I judged that it had reached the point where it was slightly weaker than my own. The fall had happened just in time, my air core was down to mere whispers of mana.

I lowered myself to the ground, landing on four snow white paws. The water that touched me began to crystallize before I even switched to my water core. I looked at the destruction I had wrought with a heavy heart. But I didn't have time to feel sorry for my opponent.

My pack dropped in front of me, and I quickly drove my paw into it. My massive claw hooked a bag that I had placed near the top for easy access. After I retrieved my prize I ripped the enchanted material apart with my teeth to get at the water cores Torill had hunted for me. I would have to owe someone the cost of the bag, but I had no time, and I needed the extra mana.

Water mana and foreign Concepts entered my stomach, thankfully the Concepts were easy enough to reject. I took a brief note of them, but they were unimportant to me. I just needed the shot of energy for the last part of my plan.

Monsters that had ignored me before, when I ventured into the forest as a squirrel burst from the ground where they had stayed safe underground during the storm and began to lumber towards me. Levels and the System's names for the creatures filled my vision for a moment. Many of them were much higher level than I was. Some of them were above 250, though only by a level or two. They were too late. I unleashed an aura of cold, deadly, penetrating, freezing, and dampening .

The water surrounding me froze in moments, the monsters found themselves locked in place. I looked at them with emotionless eyes, as I stepped onto the ice sheet I had created and moved to do what had to be done.

I heard the monsters grinding roars, I heard them trying to shatter the ice. They would free themselves eventually, but not in time to save their protector. I walked into the tree's aura, there was a brief power struggle, but after expending more than two of my cores worth of mana, I won.

I slowly walked towards the downed monster, careful to allow the water in front of me to freeze solid as I moved.

Scanning the trunk of the tree, I saw that it was broken and partly encased in ice, there wasn't anything it could do. Its aura fought back, it even pushed all the way through my own to connect with me in its last desperate efforts. The spirit protected me, preventing even a whiff of the aura from touching my body.

I found the place where its core would be, and slammed spikes of mana dense ice into the stone surrounding it. It took more time than I would have liked, but eventually I removed the section that housed the tree's core. Some of the monsters were close to freeing themselves by that time.

I felt the aura disappear, the Legend was dead and it hadn't even been able to really fight back. I looked at the stone with the crystalline core embedded in it. It was a sad sight, unlike most jagged monster cores, it was a perfect sphere, with the exception of the massive crack on one side.

Hungry urged me to consume it right away, but survivor helped me resist. I would eat it after the water cores in my belly were spent. After I had dealt with the army of very angry monsters that were headed my way.

Despite their number and level advantage, I had no fear. I was surrounded by my element. Theirs was largely hidden from them, covered in ice as it was. From the churning of the mana in their bodies, I could tell that they were massively affected by the loss of the tree.

They were used to how the tree had altered them. Their own native Concepts were asserting themselves for what was probably the first time in centuries. Using their mana should have been an instinctive part of their nature, but their nature had been altered so long that their instincts were all wrong.

By the end, only one had managed to create a feeble aura, its control was shaky at best, but it put up the strongest fight. I took a few hits, my shoulder was likely broken from an unexpected flying boulder that the strongest one had condensed out of dirt from one of their holes.

It simply wasn't a contest, I could manifest and hurl tons of ice, and even with three working legs I practically danced on the ice that their stony feet slipped on, or broke through regularly.

When nothing moved any longer, I hobbled to the spot where I'd left the tree's core. Switching my own to pure, I told the spirit to alert me of danger, and got to work digesting the last remnants of the water cores.

The moment I finished digesting the last Concept the spirit spoke.

"Do not be alarmed, Torill has been here for some time. I didn't want to interrupt you. She has placed the core in a containment bag to preserve it."

I opened my eyes, and saw Torill sitting on the fallen tree. The ice around me had melted long ago, the sun was peeking over the horizon. It had obviously taken me far longer to digest the cores than I had planned.

"I think you were supposed to tell me to get to a safer distance before you started. It got pretty wild at camp, you know."

I cringed, though the scolding words were lightened by her cheerful tone and bright smile. I knew from experience that neither were entirely real. It hurt to see her displaying her facade to me.

"Sorry I was…"

She interrupted my projected thoughts with a soft voice. "Not feeling so great? Somewhat confused by conflicting emotions. Frustrated in a way that you couldn't quite put a finger on, and in need of an immediate outlet? I get it. I've been there, more than a few times. I'm not mad. I know what we were, my note told me all about it."

"Yeah, all those things."

The woman nodded. "So what now? I know that we've got a lot to do still. The letter said that you need to do something with this core." A large enchanted bag appeared in her hand. "It was light on details. I guess you should do whatever that is first."