I had planned to deal with whatever was chasing Ember and then watch her progress through my jungle, making subtle adjustments as she progressed. The mana crystals had already attracted a bunch of wildlife that could tolerate being inside my Domain in exchange for power. Animals were more pragmatic than I’d hoped. Their increased intelligence was probably the result of the large amounts of mana nearby. My own mana always purged a little bit of the corrupted red mana from the Hellmouth and replaced it with my own from any living thing that came in.

Unfortunately, my plans were cut short. The tiny spiders that had chased Ember here were powerful. I had to quash the red mana in every flame they made to extinguish it and stop them from looping, and then I needed to directly oppose the mana inside their bodies. Even though the demon spiders were babies, they were still too powerful for me to just bring the full force of my own mana against theirs without abandoning my Domain. Still, a battle of attrition still favored me, and I chased them around inside my entrance chamber until there were only a few left.

They were smart enough to sense that they were fighting a losing battle. Four baby spiders hopped into formation and burned their way out of the wall I’d closed behind them, then scurried away. Ugh. That had taken forever.

Right on cue, Ember pressed exit crystal and appeared in my entrance chamber in a wash of blue flame.

I really should have disabled that teleport function. At least she hadn’t gone through any quicker. Keeping her alive while fighting a small swarm of demon spiders would not have been easy.

She wrinkled her nose. “You couldn’t get rid of the corpses?”

Of course I could. I pressed down on the corpses with my own mana, causing the remaining red mana to bubble up and dissolve along with the bodies.

“That was incredibly gross. And it still smells awful. Are there air fresheners on this planet?”

It had been a long time since I’d smelled anything with a living nose. I could see the tiny charred bits of spider floating through the air though, and I guess they were kind of annoying. I consumed them with my mana, the same as if I were about to teleport them. But instead of then letting them go somewhere else, I just kept the spider bits inside my mana until they eroded into nothing.

“Huh. Am I Awakened?” Ember said.

That was a good question. I probed her form with mana, looking for anything different from when I’d first seen her. There was something there, a bit of mana buildup that kind of settled down in her bones and blood like silt. It moved sluggishly. It didn’t seem to be affecting her though. For the first time, I contacted her directly. I slid the thought into a bit of mana and pushed it at her.

Almost.

She stumbled back and waved her spear a bit. “Warn me next time,” she said.

No.

“Damnit, why.”

Amusing as this conversation was, it was time for her to go. I needed to make the next trial, and then make myself some real defenses for the next time a hoard of demons invaded. Thick spikes I could release from the ceiling to impale anything I wanted, maybe a giant mana crystal I could shatter in the entrance chamber so that I could bring more of my mana to bear at once, and a way to make both the ceiling and floor collapse. Those were things I could do. Anything else was either too complicated to complete in a feasible amount of time before I got bored or had to do something else, or required knowledge of spells I didn’t have. I could give myself more options, but that required more time spent experimenting.

But before she left, I got a sample of what the mana she’d gathered felt like. It was different from mine. My own mana reminded me of a clear stream that I could easily shape into whatever I felt like. Ember’s was more of a sticky syrup, clinging to its position within her until something could force it out. I gathered that it was a lot stronger than my own, but would take more effort to actually use.

On a whim, I tried to copy some of it. It … worked. Flawlessly, just like that. I had her mana. I put a little bit into the mana crystal in the middle of the room. It was big enough for thousands of samples of similar size, and the shape would keep it from decaying. I mixed a little bit of my own mana within, just a single spark. One spark would remind me to bring whoever touched the crystal to the trial just after my jungle. Two would bring them to the one after that, three the one after that, and so on. It was still a bit too manual for my taste, but it was a system that would hold up if other people unexpectedly found me. Ones that I was okay with Awakening, anyway.

I was about to get right to designing my second trial, but Ember was still there.

Go.

She glared at the stone in the middle of the room. She wouldn’t have much luck in breaking that, not with how sturdy I’d made it. I’d bet it was even stronger than the stone it was placed on.

“There’s a huge spider wrecking everything back at the camp. It’s like those little ones, but a lot faster and stronger. It also spit fire everywhere.”

And what did she expect me to do about it?

“Let me stay here,” she said.

I was pretty sure there were good reasons for people to not stay here, otherwise Senz would have stayed. Though maybe those reasons were gone now that the camp was destroyed. I’d make her a room, and if that got her killed then that’d be on her.

I formed a small mana crystal and put it in front of Ember. If the mana inside moved while it was inside my Domain and not inside a trial, I’d sense it, and I’d teleport her to her room. I could create and burn some animals for food and create water, so she’d survive in here. I took a few minutes to hollow out a chamber while Ember puzzled over the crystal. When she figured out how to move the mana inside, I placed her inside the room.

She held perfectly still for a bit, then started feeling around at the walls.

Ah, yes. Light. I stirred up some mana to illuminate the place, then created a basin on one side of the room and filled it with water.

“Thanks, I guess. But there’s no way out.”

Technically there was, or I couldn’t have put any mana inside the room. The narrow slits that led inside were just too narrow for her to even see. Her way out would be through the mana crystal. I waited for her to figure it out as I started working on the second trial. It didn’t take long, although she only tried to use the mana crystal after kicking the wall. I put her back in the entrance room.

“You couldn’t have just told me what to do?”

No.