Elara’s feet stepped through the mist, pushing it aside in tiny swirls. Her back was straight, her eyes focused. To any outside eyes, she would have looked confident.

She was confident; alone in the mists, Elara made sure to pull all the strings that would make her so, to adjust each of the little pieces of herself until everything felt just right. Not too confident, but not fearful. There was a balance, one that was easy to find when Elara could make adjustments to herself so readily.

Pull here, and suddenly the mists around her became something frightening, nightmares made manifest. She would see the puppets that were her friends - and wasn’t that something to think about, friends - moving in the mist, creeping about on shambling limbs that became hers again every time she went to sleep. It was enough to make her want to curl up and die.

Pull there, and she couldn’t find it in herself to care about them at all. She lost the fear, dismissed the nightmares, and felt undefeatable. Invincible.

She settled on somewhere in the middle; even if the spore-mist herself couldn’t make her its puppet, the other Seekers would still be a danger. Overconfidence could kill her just as easily as collapsing in fear might.

As unhealthy as brute-forcing her emotional disposition was, it was far less unhealthy than that. From the moment that she began to fall into the mists, Elara had decided that she would keep herself in total control.

When in the mists, she couldn’t be anything but that. Later, she would let herself feel what was natural, whatever that ended up being. Later, but not now. Not for a while.

The spores rooted within her face itched as they tried to twist and writhe. She pulled at her strings in the opposite direction. Her face didn’t even twitch, the two forces balancing out perfectly. The achievement, something that she once might have only dreamed about, came so easily. It was enough to try and put a satisfied smirk on her face. She let it; there wasn’t any harm in that emotion. Not like the others.

Still, it itched; the sensation was distracting, a twinge that pulled at her attention. Elara let her face go numb, dulling the sensations just enough that they became an afterthought, only strong enough for her to notice and counteract the spores’ attempts at control.

The others were nowhere to be found. Knowing what would happen to them, they might have tried to move away from where anyone else would fall. It would make them more difficult to find for rescue, but it also meant that they were less likely to be clumped together. That made them less dangerous.

Elara’s gaze flicked to the tiny snake coiled up on her shoulder, the one that made what she was now possible in the first place. Healed her enough that she had the chance to grasp her own strings.

Little bits of green were starting to show on his tiny face, the black all but invisible on his own black scales.

“Are you doing okay?” she murmured, letting a bit of concern out before clamping down on it again. The sounds were swallowed by the mist far more than she was used to, almost devoured whole. Just another thing that seemed different than before, along with the overly-coincidental manner in which the mists twisted themselves in figure-like shapes, as if trying to catch her attention.

The mist was different, as if it was trying its best to lure Elara in different directions so that she stayed forever lost - or maybe so that she started to ignore motion at the corner of her eyes, setting her up for an ambush.

Elara let a hand press against her companion’s head, scratching lightly while her feet kept moving through the mists. He had started to bite at his tail, doing something that was forcing the spores that infected him to die. Probably something similar to how he could make things that cleansed the spores from everyone else, but Elara couldn’t be sure.

She didn’t have magic snake powers, just a weird Seeker one.

Normally, Elara would’ve just had to trust that he’d be okay, since she couldn’t just take him out of the spore-mists temporarily; with the way that the mist swallowed sound and twisted about, she had long since lost all sense of direction. The necklace around her neck, however, always knew the way home. Elara could feel it tug against her when she thought hard about the Guardian Statue that it was connected to.

An evaluating glance towards the snake at her shoulder, still biting his tail, told her that she still had time before needing to leave. Though the spores and their awful roots were still occasionally appearing on his scales, they seemed to be doing so much more slowly than before, as if he was getting better at fighting against it than he had been at the start.

He might not be able to hold out forever, but she was fairly certain that he’d be able to do so long enough so that she could find and destroy a few sources of the spores, thinning out the mist.

Elara gave him another few scratches, feeling a spike of pride and more than a little bit of spite when she easily quashed the attempt to turn those innocent scratches into something more dangerous for the Little Guardian. Her fingers didn’t even twitch, the battle beneath the surface of her skin easily won.

Focused eyes scanned the ground below her, looking for signs of as-yet unseen dangers - of which the other Seekers were now a part. The ground was covered in a thick coating of dead spores, gray like ash but without the warmth. Moment by moment, more bits and pieces fell, adding their own corpses to the growing mountains.

Elara’s feet tramped through them mercilessly, casting the mountains aside in plumes of dustlike motes - and so, too, would have anyone else’s.

It wasn’t long before she found a trail, a single set of shambling tracks that pushed further through the mist.

She followed it quietly, the mist swallowing what little sound she made.

Lesser Core Skill: [Life - Vitality I] Increased.

[Life - Vitality II] Acquired.

Another few drops of vitality dripped down my fangs, this time without any drops of vigor to go along with it. Immediately, I noticed a difference in effect. It seemed to be more effective than [Life - Invigorating Bite] would have been at the same level, despite both of the abilities being created from the same initial drop of life essence. Vitality alone was much more powerful than I had expected.

Out of curiosity, I followed it with a drop of vigor. The healing of vitality instantly decreased, even as my scale-flesh itself began to feel empowered by vigor. The two aspects that formed life essence didn’t go together quite as perfectly as I might have thought; they didn’t even come close to canceling one another out, but they were still weaker in the other’s presence.

If I wanted the greatest effect, I could only use one at a time. Otherwise, I might as well just use the older [Life - Invigorating Bite XIV] to take advantage of its higher level. Using the two aspects together would be the same as reverting to the strength of my initial [Life - Invigorating Bite]. Pointless.

I caught myself before I let out a hiss of annoyance. More spores in my flesh could only make the situation worse.

And then I had a thought, one that might let me use both of my newest abilities at their highest potency. More drops of life essence split in two. After using them a few times, I was able to quickly separate vigor from vitality from one another, sending them where they needed to be.

Drops of vitality dripped from my fangs, doing exactly what they had done before - wiping away as many spores as possible. In this case, I needed to wipe away all of them. Clean out my flesh entirely, even if it was only temporary.

I wouldn’t be able to heal myself like I had been forever; eventually, I would run dry. The spores would take root, and I would only be able to wait for my mana to slowly accumulate so that I could fight against them again. I needed to try something different.

With that in mind, the drops of vigor went elsewhere, accumulating in a separate portion of my body - and, hopefully, achieving what I hoped it would.

When the thought-light flickered, I nearly hissed in glee.

Gained The Lesser Core Skill: [Life - Vigorous Spores I]

The hidden membrane within my mouth-flesh moved, releasing the set of vigor-infused spores. They took root with a simple thought-hiss, spreading outwards through my own flesh. With the vigor that infused them, they grew thicker and stronger than they ever had before, their large tendrils worming through my flesh in its entirety.

After all, if I couldn’t afford to heal away the Lesser Core’s spores forever, it was better to take away any room they had to grow - and if they tried to take root anyway, my spores would be strong enough to fight them off.

I wouldn’t be able to use any drops of vitality without damaging my own spores, but it was a worthwhile tradeoff.

These spores, at least, would listen to my commands.

They would serve the Great Core as they were meant to.