The surrounding environment was completely barren with no signs of any creatures to curious for their own good. After confirming there were no unwanted guests I turned to the small clearing in front of the building to check on the girl. She appeared to still be in a deep sleep but i could sense an increase in brain activity, she was not awake yet but she will be soon. I gave one last look at the building behind me before approaching the girl, and I took this chance to inspect her closely this time instead of a general look over and found several pieces of flesh have been removed. She was missing her calf muscles and most of her arm muscles, there were also large pieces of her back and sides missing as well. All in all, most of her muscles were removed and probably used for sacrifices, and due to that she will probably be bedridden for the rest of her life, barley able to move or walk.

I didn’t notice all of the damage before due to the gown covering her, but to me these were just superficial injuries that could be healed. Though I had many ways to heal her that doesn’t mean they were instant fixes, she was in such a fragile state due to prolonged exposure to occult and demon magic I couldn’t use my usual methods that would of had quick results. I sighed and gave a long look at the girl before turning to the building.

I was once again annoyed and I needed to take out my frustrations on something. I began to alter my unused traps, I kinda went overboard so they were everywhere, and made them a bit more destructive. I had mana to waist because of the sentry’s demon core so might as well have a little bit of fun. I unraveled and altered the traps in such a way that they all connected before overloading the cores that operated them. Soon a eerie whistling sound emerged from the building for a minute before a sudden snap caused it to stop. A low hum followed the snap signaling that the cores were ready, but before I initiated the final step I turned to the girl and created a reinforced protection wall around her.

With that done its time to watch the fireworks, i sent a massive wave of mana into the interconnected strands and soon the low humming became deafening. The magic strands held for a second but before the eruption could commence something strange happened. A figure suddenly bursted through the main doors and ducked for cover before a sudden explosion brought the building down... or up in this case. The eruption was well passed my expectations and leveled the surrounding environment before abruptly pulling it back into the center of the eruption. Dirt and debris soon formed a large sphere in the center of the building before a second explosion erupted from its center causing it to disperse and send out a massive shockwave that was almost three times bigger than the first.

I quickly maneuvered the supersonic wave to split causing it to part around me. After the shockwave safely passed by I quickly began to search for the cause of the anomaly. It’s been so long since I couldn’t accurately control my magic without outside influence that i was rendered stunned and dumbfounded at the site. I quickly found the figure that escaped the building before it exploded, or at least a quarter of it. Turns out it couldn’t escape its fate and had almost all of its body obliterated besides its upper part of the left arm, a little bit of its torso, and half of its head.

Despite its meager remains and scorched skin there was still several identifying features, it was the elemental. It didn’t make sense how it was able to move on its own much less have enough intelligence to try to escape a perilous situation. It was nigh inconceivable that it suddenly gained a conscience between me removing the previous one and the destruction of the building but that is what seemingly happened. It couldn’t have been the demon possessing its body because I thoroughly weakened and removed its soul, even if it was still alive it would be to weak to do anything of the sort. It also couldn’t have been the elementals previous conscience as i had thoroughly removed it as well, i have preformed such removals more times than i could count and this would be the first time i messed up that badly.

I scanned the body with magic and despite the destroyed and ruptured magic system I could find no evidence of the previous conscience or any sign of outside interference. I highly doubt someone was able to infiltrate and control a magic system of my creation without alerting me or leaving a trace. Even though the explosion ripped through the elemental’s magic system there should still be at least a few signs of tampering.

Maybe it developed a conscience? It was hard to believe but not as hard as someone tampering my creation without alerting me. The main problem is that I didn’t purposely create an environment to develop the conscience, which means that something is wrong. I sighed and rubbed my jaw in contemplation before grabbing the remains and placing it in my cloak. With the addition of another pretty big object i was running out of room so I decided to start transferring large cumbersome objects to my pouch, I sighed and made a mental note to enchant the cloak further. I returned to the girl and gently picked her up before performing a jump to return to the ritual site for the claiming ceremony. With light turbulence we arrived at our destination, the ceremony site was exactly how I left it. I looked up and found that the sun was quickly setting.