'Isn't this exactly the same how my initial attempts to learn my control looked like?'

Watching how the spirit's body continued to move away from his fires, Fen could feel his desperation growing. From how he was tasked with bringing only a single core that was supposed to appear once he would assimilate the monster in front of him, and with how there was absolutely no time frame for this task, it wouldn't be surprising if Mark expected him to take a long while to achieve this objective.

"If that's the case, just how I'm supposed to absorb it?"

Unknowingly letting his thoughts escape from his mouth, the young man reined his flames back inside his body, plummeting down and sitting directly on the wet soil of the forest. With how nearly the entirety of the sunlight was absorbed by the treetops, it was pretty obvious that this place would dry up only during an intense firestorm, either caused by natural reasons or just some arcanist slash monster going rampage.

Rather than bothering himself with the unpleasant reality of this place, Fen simply pushed the tiniest bit of his flames to the surface of his buttocks and legs, starting an endless and uneven battle against the everpresent moisture. But rather than burning it all down as some draconian arcanist would do, the young man started with just an incredibly thin layer of flame flowing on top of his skin.

Right now, if he were to follow the stuff that he was taught on the lessons, he would be supposed to condense his flames to the point where they would have the perfect temperature of evaporating the wetness from his clothes, without actually harming the place around him. But just like with controlling his core, Fen was simply unable to do it this way!

Without the proper absolute control over the fire that was within his sphere of the influence on the great sea of fire, changing how dense it was or influencing its other aspects were out of Fen's authority!

'Wait, why am I even trying to do it in the Draconis way?'

Suddenly realising how deeply he was infatuated with the directions that others gave him that he managed to forget about the prime lesson that this ancient dragon taught him, Fen nearly lost his balance while sitting, nearly falling on his back and proving all his attempts to turn himself dry, futile!

Stabilising his position back, Fen recalled all the details of what he saw back at the fire sea. Rather than putting the barriers and changing the flame to fit his purposes, something akin to trying to create a puddle by paddling the excess water away… What if he just changed the way his fire flowed through him?

Struck by the new idea, rather than trying his best to do something that he was never supposed to do, Fen allowed his natural fire to once again surface on the skin of his palm first. Once the fire stabilised and reached the perfect state of control, rather than trying hard to make it hotter… Fen simply accelerated it!

'Woah…'

At the very moment that this thought appeared in the young man's mind, his hand started to get hotter. Obviously, as it was his own fire, he couldn't feel its effects almost at all, but from the steam that instantly started to raise up from his palm, Fen could tell that it was working!

'Slow down a bit…'

Directing the rate of acceleration of his fire by the feeling of it alone, the young arcanist took a short moment to stabilise the fire once again. Only when the flame stopped wavering on his palm, meaning that he regained the full control of it, did Fen reverse his actions, slowing down the fire to make it colder instead!

"So that's how it works…"

Muttering to himself and done with his testing, Fen quickly expanded the area of effect from his palm alone to his entire body, quickly pushing the fire to the point where all the moisture on his robes started to steam away, without actually harming his outfit.

"Wait… if that works, then…"

Focusing his sight on the small spirit beside him, Fen's eyes turned into slits as a new idea appeared in his mind. Putting all of his attention on his palm, the young man once again reached towards the spirit, pulling to a complete stop once its body started to move away as if the young man's fire was pushing it away.

"Since it doesn't burn anything around itself, I would say its fire is… cold?"

With this wild hunch quickly leading to the new idea, Fen absorbed his fire back into his body, allowing only his palm to keep it up. Only then, bit by bit, the arcanist apprentice continued to cool down his fires, watching for the changes in the spirit's body.

And surely enough, as Fen's flame turned colder, the spirit's body started to return to its normal shape! In just a few more moments, the young man was finally able to touch the spirit itself, merging his own fire with the flame of the natural monster in front of him!

'Now… I guess I should absorb it?'

Recalling Mark's orders, Fen started to pull all his flames back under his skin. But rather than recovering and returning to its usual shape, the spirit's body continued to move along with the flow, absorbed under the young man skin as well!

Crack.

Before Fen could even realise, the entire spirit's body vanished, leaving only an incredibly small flame that looked like a pillar supporting a small, red pebble that otherwise would appear to be floating about two hand's length above the ground. Yet, before the arcanist apprentice could grab it, the pebble cracked, and broke up into pieces so small that they appeared as nothing more but a bunch of red mist!

Despite this clear failure of obtaining what he was supposed to obtain, Fen had no time to think about this, as he realised yet another thing!

From the very moment he absorbed this minuscule amount of fire from the spirit, his own fire turned… a bit hotter?