The new day dawned bright and beautiful, not a hint of rainclouds in sight- not. Sheets of rain thick enough to darken the sky poured past my windows. I stood forlornly just inside one of the outside doors and dripped. It turned out that, while practising flying in the rain was a good idea in theory, in practice it was remarkably unpleasant.

A quick flash of mana through my armour and all the water soaking me boiled into vapour, leaving me to pick pieces of tree out of my now dry clothes. With how poor visibility was out there, I should have probably been paying more attention to my Depth Meter readout.

I sighed. “Guess it’s another indoor day then.”

A short breakfast stop later (leaving some out for Tear), and I was on my way down to the mana artery. I needed to put some more practice into rapidly generating and shutting down my lifeforce counterflow. I knew it was a risk using this method of total aura suppression, but I persisted for two reasons. The first was that there was no possibility of me undoing it accidentally and giving Tear the mother of all aura shocks. The second was that my instincts told me that I should be able to nullify it much faster, fast enough to be able to do so in combat. Which is why I was going to practice. A lot.

I Rod of Discord-ed into the shaft down to the mana artery, slowly floating down it with my half-spread wings just brushing the Lihzahrd Brick walls.

Just before teleporting for a second time, into the room with the Gem Tree orchard, I paused. Something felt off. I looked around, but nothing looked wrong. There was just something niggling at me, the sense that something was not quite right... just out of reach of my conscious mind.

I shrugged: no point wasting time trying to force myself to work it out, so I went ahead and teleported into the Gem Tree chamber. Instantly the sense of wrongness intensified, my attention snapping towards its source.

In the far corner of the room, a blue-haired girl cowered. She was naked, her skin visibly damaged by the extreme high mana density, and looked terrified.

I took a concerned step towards her, then stopped as my attention flicked up to the upper right of my vision. I grinned; I knew this lost girl looked familiar.

My spear, Daybreak, dropped into my hand. I thrust it out, a blazing replica flashing between me and her, stabbing into her side and lodging there. Instantly the illusion over her collapsed, pink skin turning green, pale blue eyes becoming crimson. The Nymph screeched at me through a mouth full of bloody fangs, leaping at me even as her body erupted in flame.

“One.”

Her face met the spinning haft of my spear, clawed hands slashing at air.

“Two.”

She reeled back and I swept her legs out from under her, leaving her sprawling on the floor.

“Three.”

I stepped forward as she lunged at my leg. Instead of biting my ankle, she received my foot in her fangs. She slid across the floor, smashing into the dais in the centre of the room. Her clawed hands and feet scratched against the floor as she regained her footing.

“Four.”

She leapt at me again, spear shaft taking her under the chin. I ducked under her lashing legs and put some more power behind the spear, hurling the monster towards the ceiling. She hit it feet first, crouching and pushing off it like a spring, diving towards home.

“Fi-”

The flames guttered and died. I stepped to the side, the Nymph’s body crashing to the floor.

“The initial strike from Daybreak plus four and a half seconds of the Daybroken flames... roughly Expert level I’d guess?” I mused as I pulled the monster’s body into my inventory. “An essence material for creating a Metal Detector so... yeah. Expert.”

I crossed the room to the central dais, noting that the Gem Tree saplings had grown another couple of inches in the past 3 days.

I sat cross legged and focused on taking deep breaths. While the fight had been brief, with minimal threat to me, it had still flooded my system with adrenaline which I needed to clear to calm myself before messing with my lifeforce circuit. It was a shame the Nymph wasn’t a stronger opponent.

That thought caught me slightly off-guard; had I been so eager to fight in my previous life? I thought I hadn’t. I guess I’d taken in more of the influence of the Lyte persona than just excitement for crafting.

As I was regretfully letting the buzz of adrenaline drain away, leaving me feeling empty, cogs were turning in my head.

“Hey, isn’t there a Title associated with killing a Nymph? What was it again?” I cracked my eyes open, abandoning my attempted meditation in favour of pulling out my cell phone to check.