This life was proving to be an amusing break. Akira could not help the smile as he watched his latest master Cara seething with righteous fury. He was feeling prideful at her not being meek or cowering, but showing promise. A resolution to defend that which you hold dear can allow you to reach beyond yourself. He couldn’t help but cheer for her quietly in his own internal voice.

‘Don’t let them clip your wings, don’t let them tie you down. As soon as you start giving ground, they’ll become greedy and take more and more. Only you can stand up for yourself in the future.’ He cheered on while watching the guild master’s face stiffen as Cara slammed the silly piece of paper down. Zoe was intelligent and worked well with Cara to allow them to corner the guild master.

He could see where this was going and with a small chuckle to himself. He gave a brief glance at the guild master and could not feel any killing intent resonate with anyone of his group. Briefly looking inwards, he reached down into the pitch black of his own soul, groping in the darkness for what he knew he wanted. His first encounter with the retch named Flow had him solidify some killing intent, pulled back only at the last second by a command from his master.

Now was different, an earlier request, freeing him from such immature niceties of letting enemies go free. When at the tournament, he’d felt the killing intent resonate. An instance where killing intent that you could see in pure souls as red, starts to shift to black as you lay the groundwork for your task to complete. This was how most schemers operated and he’d encountered more people than he’d care to count who thought themselves smart with their schemes. At the tournament, there was a resonance and Akira knew that an attempt was made on his charge.

Hearing the conclusion to their little trap and seeing that the guild master was faltering and was most likely going to fold, Akira decided to do what he should have done the first time.

With a small exhale he spent what little mana he could in this mana-deprived world to reinforce his agility and unlock a portion of it from its mana-starved state. Without access to the system, he had to guess as he was not used to working with such small amounts of mana. Spending some mana with the intent to awaken the dried-up ocean bed that was his agility and only his agility, he was able to unlock a small fraction of it.

With a small smile, he leaned backward and kicked off, stepping out of the room in a single step and grabbing the stone railing to redirect himself down as he let his speed take him down the four floors to the ground floor. He grabbed the 2nd floor just below the railing to redirect himself down and out towards the luckily already open doors.

He sailed through the air, slowing down from the wind resistance, and came to a rough stop with a few heavy steps halfway down the guild’s long front walkway. He frowned as he flexed his wrist. Damn it hurts from such a minor application of agility. He should have at least tried to balance it out a bit with some fortitude and strength to not feel so fragile. He had to remind himself that in order to not be poisoning Cara into a puddle he had had to starve himself of any natural regenerating mana that would normally reinforce the body’s stat increases.

That had been a lesson that the girls did not appreciate. As their strength increased, their bodies were becoming more saturated with mana, and healing a mana-enriched body was prohibitively expensive. Otherwise, it was like trying to attach necrotic or foreign flesh to yourself if it was not of the same quality or mana density.

He’d been a bit too impatient to get out of there and start the hunt that he’d accidentally already saturated Cara’s mana channels. Closing his eyes and taking a deep breath, he could feel Cara having spent some of her now-tainted mana, most likely making some more embers. Her newly regenerating mana is free of any corruption from his own spent mana.

He calmed himself and thought about how best to approach this hunt. Pure efficiency was required, something he’d not needed to do in what felt like eons. He smiled as he closed his eyes and reached down inside himself, searching for that single strand of killing intent, that promise he made. Once he found it, he focused on it and pulled it taught. Then with a small effort of will, he plucked it and let it thrum out like a single deep chord of a string instrument. Announcing his intent to the world like the most amateur of assassins.

Then he waited with his eyes closed, listening for the response, listening for the resonance, listening for the fear.

===========

Jeremiah was just exiting his secondary smaller mansion after coming to get a change of clothes. The unfortunate common issue with training young fire starters is that they'd commonly fail to do a clean burn, resulting in more smoke. Being a fire mage and smelling of acrid smoke was a disservice to the profession and a sign of incompetence. Both of which he could not stand and he’d taken the opportunity to head home for a fresh pair of clothing.

He was in an excellent mood, he couldn’t wait to get his injured arm healed. Part of the reason for him ensuring that he’d be presentable was to leave no flaws in front of that whore-son and his little bitches.

It was at this point as he was just about to exit his abode that he heard the high pitch snap and crumbling sound. He had initially thought that he’d step on something, but as he moved he continued to hear the tinkling sound of something like broken glass. He went stiff with shock and slowly reached into his robes to pull out a chain with his silver guild plate.

He stood there in shock rocking it back and forth, hearing the sound of tinkling shards of glass tumbling within the silver plate. His first thought was that this must be a mistake, there was no way the guild master would abandon him over something as trivial as forcing some young whipper-snappers to do some menial chores. Sure he’d gone through a requisition and not simply assigned chores as punishment for misbehavior, which was something he could often do within the fire wing of the guild. But with this troublesome foursome, he decided to extend some pressure.

It should have been treated as more of a hazing than anything as severe as this. He was slowly working himself into a temper the more he thought about how everything involving those four had always gone from bad to worse.

Pulling the front door open with too much strength it clanged open and he was out the door. He was going to go give the guild master a piece of his mind, to complain that he was too deferential towards these pseudos and forgetting the decades of service he’d done for the guild.

He froze on the first step out the door towards the guild, his scalp going numb, followed by the hairs on the back of his neck rising. This was then followed up by his breath getting stuck, his heart started to thunder in his ears and goosebumps went up his spine and down his arms. He could feel the skin on his arms getting tighter as it contracted from the goosebumps.

He was looking towards the guild and a great sense of foreboding came over him. His thoughts caught up with his body’s reaction. Despite the most probable misunderstanding, his guild plate was shattered. There were procedures to that and it was not done lightly. By the devourer, the guild master by all rights should be delivering a speech to all those present at the guild.

While he shouldn’t need to worry about anyone in the guild, this foreboding pressure that he was feeling was too much for him to ignore. Thinking about the courses of action, things could get hectic if anyone did anything stupid and then he’d really be stuck. The safest course would be to head back to his family’s territories and have them put forth the petition for reinstatement.

Looking away from the guild, the pressure alleviated as he looked southward towards the general direction of his family’s estates. When looking back to the guild, he felt like his stomach dropped and acid reflux started to bubble at the base of his throat. He quickly yelled back at his house to summon a bronze wind mage butler to prepare the carriage with their old Devra. The thing had seen better days and this wasn’t helped with a low-tiered wind mage support for the carriage, but it was all his family could afford to send him off with for so long.

He managed to get the butler moving and hook the beast up to the carriage and set out in record time. With the guild behind them that pressure and uneasy feeling lessened. This brief repose lasted only a few breaths of time before it returned and felt like it was encroaching and nipping at the back of his neck. It felt like a knife had been swiped at the back of his neck and barely missed.

He clenched his fists to try and bring the tremors under control before he leaned forward to yell out the window to tell the butler to put everything he had into getting him to the family estates as fast as possible. With his master urging him on, the butler did his best but the ride was no longer smooth as the carriage was starting to bounce around every time it touched down. This got worse as Jeremiah kept urging and threatening the mage to put more effort into it.

Sitting back down and swallowing hard, Jeremiah gripped his hands into white-knuckled fists as his right knee started to bounce up and down as he’d get periodic pangs of dread that washed over him.

===========

After a few moments, Akira felt the terror of his quarry radiate from the south. With confirmation, he took his first step only to mutter a small curse that the agility reinforcement had worn off. Feeling for what mana was free and available, he muttered a second curse as Cara had only managed to cycle a quarter of what he had used to reinforce previously to leave the guild.

With a small sigh, he saturated that mana and reinforced his agility by a quarter of the previous amount, and set out at a quick pace in a southward direction. At least this hunt will be interesting. If he were to continue to saturate Cara’s mana, she should learn quickly from this exercise and their coordination should improve over time.

===========

Cara was ripping off two silver requisitions from the board when she cursed and reached out to the wall to steady herself. The unbearable weight and sluggishness had returned in full force. Her mana felt more weighty and slower to move with this weight. It was stifling and she disliked the feeling of weakness that accompanied it. She reached into her side pocket, fished around for her engraved stone, and used it to make another 50 mana embers.

The weight was still there, but she felt as though she had some breathing room. She reached for her grimoire and briefly opened it to double-check how fast her mana was regenerating.

‘Hmm, 13 mana a second or 791 per minute. With every passing moment, I can feel the new mana is more responsive than whatever Akira has done to my unspent mana. I just made 50 embers using a little under 700 mana. Wait, no I’m still generating new clean mana, so it should be.’

After a little bit of math, Cara figured she had spent 714 mana to generate the 50 embers that she could use for 500 mana. She’d be able to regenerate that in a minute, which was a quarter of her mana. Initially, it felt like a lot but then thinking that her mana was only the size of 280 mana embers just felt wrong. Her [Mana Depth] felt stunted as compared to her [Mana Pulse]. She just did not see a way to fix it. It took time to make it deeper and each increase did not feel significant, or rather as it increased each addition was smaller in comparison and more and more insignificant.

Another issue was that it took mana to ignite a mana ember. So she could at most use 2,800 mana to ignite 2,800 mana embers. Sure it was 28,000 mana and she had not tried to do anything that big yet. But the Ursa mount was in and of itself ridiculously expensive.

With a small sigh lamenting the issues I pulled the two requisitions off the board and looked over at Jessica who had a worried expression due to her unsteady footing.

“I’m okay, just a bit woozy from Akira.” I reassured Jess, only to hear a snicker from Zoe.

“Woozy...” Zoe repeated, before snickering again as Jess blushed a bit and it clicked as to why she was making fun of me.

I gave her a small playful smack on her shoulder. “Not that way, get your head out of the clouds, or else the devourer might take a snack.” I replied back.

“So why the quiet one and Devras?” Jess asked.

“They are both in the south and Akira is currently moving in that direction. Also, I think we only take a peek at the quiet one from afar and decide as to whether we should go or not. Also, Zoe’s eyes go weird every time she looks at the word auction house.”

“They do not!” Zoe yelled while accentuating each word with a playful smack to my arm.

We took the two requisitions and went downstairs to register them with a guild clerk. I gave a small curse as I stumbled the last three steps as I felt Akira pull on my mana again.

===========

Akira was gliding down the road, occasionally strumming that chord that represented that loathsome retch mage Flow. This time he got a response that was slightly more to the east. Waiting a moment and refreshing his agility stat he plucked that chord again and got another response more eastward.

With a grin that he was now finally enjoying this hunt, he broke away from the boring road and cut through the forest. Pulling more on Cara’s mana and being able to barely awaken his strength and fortitude. With a push of a foot, the bark on an old tree exploded away leaving the vulnerable cambium exposed.

Akira was leaving a trail that even a child could follow if they could manage to see anywhere from 15 - 40 feet above the ground. Trees that were dozens of trees apart all bore a bald spot in a zigzag pattern heading south-south-east.

Akira could feel Cara working more in tandem with him as she spent all of her mana which would mean in a few minutes he’d be able to really lay into this hunt. With another strum at the single-chord instrument of fear all he got back after waiting was a feeling of astonishment and terror.

===========

Cara cursed as their Ursa mount that she had been instructing to take each step sloughed off into a puddled mess of blades of grass as she was all of a sudden hit with another huge wave of sluggishness. She had been expecting it, but the sudden shift in how her mana listened to her was too much and her entire Ursa mount lost cohesion and fell apart at the seams.

“WEEEEeeeeee!” Zoe excitedly screamed as she rode the grass wave out to the ground.

Cara muttered and grumbled under her breath as she rangled her misbehaving mana, reforming the Ursa and picking the three of them back up into their hanging seats in the back.

“Do it again!” Zoe begged from the side and the Ursa that had just reformed came to a stop as Cara jumped at Zoe and did her best to mercilessly tickle her sides. Jessica simply ignored the two of them and was doodling a goofy face in blood that was slowly being absorbed into the vine egg. If there were any casual observers, they’d find this behavior as she’d sometimes giggle to herself extremely creepy, while her friends just thought it to be quirky of the quiet girl who missed her companion. They knew Violet and thought of her shenanigans as more of a trick where you’d paint or doodle on a sleeping person’s face.

Once Cara finished teaching a lesson to Zoe, she got them back on the road. She had previously spent the sluggish mana on mana embers and then on feeding her grimoire, getting the little glutton up to 10 pages. Most were still blank and Cara was thinking about the lessons that Akira had given them.

He’d often come off as a knowledgeable older brother or mentor instead of a familiar. He’d often guide them or answer some questions they’d get about their own souls. Cara was burning through mana at a constant rate to keep this behemoth moving. She did practice once passing off the control to Jessica. It took a while for her intent to be adapted to allow another specific person to feed it and have it plod on. They had remained motionless for a while before Jessica had managed to get the Ursa moving.

They were now passing it back and forth, but it was still cumbersome and had them come to a standstill while they worked on the hand-off. It was during one of Jessica’s turns that Cara, after experiencing another small pull at her mana that she was thinking that there must be a better way to do this. Reviewing her lessons with Akira, she thought that if it all was a matter of intent, she slowly returned to the space of soul and started to pull mana inwards. She could now see which mana was sluggish and which was still untainted. There was no visual difference until she summoned the mana to her, where some would lazily drift towards her, while others would come like an eager pets.

She put aside the thought of trying to split her mana into the two kinds so that she could try only burning through these unruly motes of mana as a priority before spending all these good children that were obedient.

Pulling that mana and stretching them into gossamers, she focused on her intent that these creations of hers need to be able to do things on their own. That she did not want to have to micromanage every damn footstep of her creations. With that focus, she started to draw the mana around her into a sphere and was able to feel what felt horribly wrong and what felt terribly wrong. Moving through multiple iterations she began to draw out something more and more complex.

She continued to work at the sphere and would occasionally scream in frustration as huge swaths of her sphere would suddenly become lazy dullards. She looked off into the distance at a shining beacon of mana that was her [Soul Pouch] with mana embers and with a force of will would push mana in that direction. She had thankfully entered her soul space with her hand in the pouch while holding her engraved stone, more for an exercise to see if she could try and create embers from within her soul space. With some effort, the beacon in the distance would flash and she swore that like a spreading prairie fire, the mana embers in front of her would blaze slightly before calming down. It was as though they were being purged of something and had woken up from a groggy sleep and were finally behaving like good children. This continued for a while, with Cara waging a war on two fronts. One trying to create this blasted thing, and the other was Akira’s mischief that had almost threatened to unwind the entire thing several times.

She did not know how long this protracted war lasted, but Cara finally stepped away and looked at a complicated spinning sphere where anything else she did just felt more wrong. It was complicated and used a thousand gossamers of mana, but with all that work she got it to the point where it just felt wrong and any changes she did just felt worse.

Looking over the entire spinning sphere she looked at the one area that confused her, it was a single arc or bowl near the outer shell facing out. It was detached and if she dared to attach it in any way, she would almost feel nauseous. She could not help but feel that the entire thing felt half-finished despite how complicated the thing was already.

She then tried to thicken the outer shell and for the briefest moments, it felt like it had gone in the right direction of her spending more gossamers but wrong when trying to thicken the outer edge. She spun the sphere and while holding a single gossamer, had it slowly drift along the outer circumference from the bottom as she slowly worked her way up to the top.

Everything felt equally wrong until she got to that awkward bowl. The gossamer finally felt more correct and with another dozen gossamers, placed around that one finally had Cara scowling in anger. Things were finally coming together, but the problem was that there was a second sphere that was starting to take shape, interwoven or locked with the current one.

While keeping her intent locked in on what she was trying to achieve, she spent another thousand gossamers of mana on fleshing out this secondary parasitic sphere that was attached to the other one. Well, not parasitic as they were both equal in size, and who’s ever seen a parasite the same size as the creature it is feeding off of?

With a few final touches, things finally felt right and Cara was given a fright as she could see the beacon in the darkness that was her [Soul Pouch] that contained all of her mana embers that she had been making today, visibly dim as a huge chunk of it disappeared. With a final curse, Cara willed herself out of the darkness to go see what in the devourer’s name had happened.

Blinking awake, the first thing she noticed was the setting sun. The second was that their Ursa was lower to the ground, dragging its belly across the ground with giant wet noodles for arms rotating comically to slap down in front of it and pull them forward. Jessica was laughing her ass off, hugging a vine egg, while Zoe’s face was dripping sweat as she held onto dozens of blades of grass in each hand and was punching them out in an exhausting manner.

“Hahahaha!” I laughed while pointing at my tired friend’s face. She just let go of ‘reins’ and gave me the middle finger as she flopped backward, the entire wet noodle of an Ursa began to fall apart and we were sinking fast.

I reached out and without an effort, I connected to the Ursa and it reformed and stood up at a standstill.

‘Wow, that was different, now just to get you to walk.’ I thought, and just as I uttered the word walk, the creation started to plod along more gracefully than either Jess or myself had managed to date while I could feel my soul tug at my [Soul Pouch]. A mirrored look of shock could be seen on both my and Jessica’s face and I pulled out my grimoire to see what happened.

Summon Eidolon (Lv ) (1 / 100,000) Eidolon rises. From the realm beyond the veil. A guardian born. Create a servant of the most primitive soul material at a cost of 1,000 mana per ton. Soul Command (Lv ) (1 / 99) unique My soul do command. My Eidolons shall obey. A bond unbroken. First step in the necromantic arts, layer commands at a cost of 1,000 * (1 - Level / 100) mana.

===========

A large swath of mana opened up to Akira and he could feel a resonance with a skill being unlocked. Something that was sealed for Cara’s protection and is now made available. A smile crossed his face as he could only feel pride that she had managed to achieve something incredible on her own without the need for his guidance. It was dangerous for him to use some spell forms that Cara’s soul had not adapted to yet, not that he often had the mana to do such things.

The forest had gotten much darker, but he felt more liberated than ever with him finally being able to stretch his long atrophied muscles. It was still a far cry from what he would want, but he could now hear a rampaging carriage in the distance. His quarry would soon be within his reach.

===========

Night had fallen and the poor bronzer of a wind mage was struggling to even form a wind cushion below the carriage. Jeremiah’s nerves were frayed at all the edges and he had lost a fair bit of weight just from the amount of sweating he was doing. His face was more gaunt and his robes that used to have a darkened ‘V’ from sweat were now all a little darker, almost no part of his clothing was not drenched.

After another failure by his wind mage to keep the carriage aloft, that it bounced off the ground hard and had Jeremiah open his mouth to curse the bastard for his incompetence did he hear the slight whistle and sound of a cracking whip.

Like an unseen viper, a blur cut through the night, and where there used to be four wheels was now just four rapidly spinning semi-circles and the Devra had been cut loose. Without the wheels present as the carriage was coming down out of the air from a dissipating air cushion, the carriage sank lower and lower until the front left corner dug into the earth.

Then heaven and earth were flipped incessantly. A tired and ragged bronze mage was thrown forward into the clutches of a shadow, disappearing into the night, as the carriage started to summersault and rattle around unstably as it bounced dozens of times before crashing and skidding to a halt on its side.

The entire thing was surprisingly well made as it did not explode into pieces and had more or less remained intact through the entire ordeal.

Everything had gone quiet, the insects that were starting to chirp their choruses as night fell all became silent. Just as they resumed their songs, a deafening explosion shot the side door on top of the carriage off its hinges. The nightlife began to scatter from the display of fire magic and with a groan, a bloody mop of hair and a single working arm started to hoist the rattled mage Flow out of the carriage.

With practiced efficiency from possible decades on the road protecting caravans, as soon as Jeremiah cleared the doorframe, he tried to get to his feet but it was like a drunkard after attempting to hit all the taverns on one of the main streets of the capital. He did manage to get to his knees on top of the carriage.

With a quick spin, which did not help him with his dizziness, Jeremiah created a circular ring of fire 40 feet out and 20 feet high as it lazily spun around him like a slow-motion bottom section of a tornado. Grasses were catching on fire and were slowly spreading in all directions as they started to lick some trees, catching their lower branches on fire.

Embers fell like rain from burning tree branches as Jeremiah pushed the flames outwards allowing a column of fresh air to come down the center eye and feed the flames from within.

“WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU!? I’M A SCION FROM THE FLOW HOUSEHOLD. A DESCENDANT OF ‘THE FLOWING LAVA’! HOW DARE YOU ATTACK SOMEONE FROM A NOBLE HOUSEHOLD!” He yelled into the quiet night, the only sound responding to him was the crackling of wood breaking everything around him. He craned his neck, looking around from his vantage point at the bright woods that were extending long shadows far into the distance. Jeremiah’s earlier fear was replaced with adrenaline, his fight or flight response triggered to the max as his means of flight lay below him in shambles.

‘I’m just hunting a small pathetic dark guilder.’ Whispered a voice from right behind his right ear which was followed by the whistling sound of a blade cutting through the air. A realization of shock entered Jeremiah’s eyes as he recognized the voice. He dove forward, turning in mid-air clawing at the voice with a roar, a wave of white flames stretched through the space as Jeremiah fell backward. However, there was nobody there despite him hearing the voice so clearly. He could almost feel the whistling of a sword chasing the back of his neck. As he rolled back to his knees in a defensive position, he was simply greeted by an eerie chuckle that seemed to come from all directions at once.

“WHORE SON!” Escaped Jeremiah’s throat, before he tried to rein himself back in. If that bastard familiar was here, they must have a carriage with stronger or more Devra for them to catch up to him. He decided to switch tack, a nobleman could wait 10 to 20 years for revenge.

“I don’t know where you heard such ridiculous claims, but it is an extreme crime…”

‘I was there you know when we forced the guild master to label you a dark guilder.’ A chorus of 20 to 30 voices said from all directions. Jeremiah kept scanning his surroundings. A snap of a charred branch came from below, hiding close to the carriage.

Jeremiah brought down his two fists together in an overhead blow, dropping to the top of the carriage as an explosion rocked that entire side of the carriage, picking it up with Jeremiah and throwing them 20 feet. The carriage rolled under Jeremiah as he used a pair of jets of flame to try and slow his descent. He still landed hard, but it was better than being crushed by his own carriage.

‘Hahaha, close, you almost got me!’ A mocking laughter came from all around Jeremiah.

“My household will pay ten, no, twenty times the promised rate for my safe passage.” Jeremiah yelled out to the burning flames, unsure where that cretin was.

‘Twenty times nothing is still nothing.’ A contemptuous bark came back as a reply. Jeremiah’s blood turned cold as he realized he was dealing with a madman. A realization that this person hiding in the dark was here to kill him and did not care for anything else.

“You’re insane!” Was all he could retort with. Who would throw perfectly good Dens away? Especially enough to live easily for a couple of winters. The response he got was a peal of resounding laughter, the embers within the air freezing and jumping with each laugh.

‘You try being a slave for hundreds of thousands, no, innumerable winters, and retain your sanity in full.’ His mocking voice came from all directions still and Jeremiah could not pinpoint where it was.

“HA! Hundreds of thousands? You take me for a child!? You think of yourself as being immortal? You’re just a defective product!” Jeremiah roared.

‘Immortal? I’ve killed immortals, they do not stand up to their namesake. Even gods and demons die with enough effort.’ A contemplative response came back from the distance as it circled the clearing made by the rampaging fire.

“Listen to you! I can get you help. My family is of noble peerage, they can get you help for these demons and gods that you see or hear.” Jeremiah started to grasp at straws as he swore he heard the cracking of a whip but it was just a branch giving way from the burning flames.

‘You don’t want me visiting your family unless you want them all to die.’ Was the cold response he got back.

“Come out and fight me!”

‘Soon, it is almost time.’

“What are you waiting for, fight me!” Jeremiah roared as he pushed the flames higher into the sky. He suddenly realized that he was being taunted and being pushed to waste his mana. Fire was often self-propelling, as soon as you got it going it would continue on its own, just needing small nudges. But he was being goaded into wasting his resources.

“The nice thing about gods and demons is that you can borrow their names to help convey a message. They dislike it and tend to interfere, rescuing some souls and bringing them to their whatever afterlives. It can help get the innocent out of the way and reduce casualties.” A cold voice said from the far side of the fire ring as a shadow started to walk forward.

The fires instantly faded out and died, like a solar eclipse, just ending in darkness as he walked forward. Jeremiah threw a billowy flame thrower into the shadow, but everything just stopped, devoured into nothing. With every step he took forward, the eclipse was setting. Jeremiah tried to send a lance of concentrated flame. However, as he raised his hand to mock grip the spear the crescent of the eclipse covered him and he felt a suffocating weight. His mana did not respond to his whims.

It was not only mana that was not responding to his call, but the weight was real. It felt like 100-150 pounds of sandbags were placed over his shoulders trying to push him to his knees.

As Akira approached, the eclipse on the fire ring that was 80 feet in diameter was coming to a close. Once Akira was only 5 feet away from Jeremiah, all fire within the woods, the trees, and overhead branches went out. Leaving everything in darkness except for some smoldering veins of embers glowing gently throughout the area.

Jeremiah was frozen in place from fear and the invisible weight that was restricting him. Akira was casually unsheathing a sword to run him through. It was all transpiring in slow motion for Jeremiah and he was unwilling. If he could go back to the start of it all he told himself that he’d have steered clear of this cursed group. As Akira moved for the finishing blow in what appeared to be apathy and boredom now that the chase had ended and that he was simply going through with the motions of what must be done.

Jeremiah tried everything he could to have his mana respond to him. What truly irked Jeremiah was the apathy on Akira’s face. The detachment to his plight was driving him insane. With nothing working, he did the only thing he could do and spat in Akira’s face. Akira didn’t dodge and just allowed the spit to hit him in the face, where he slowly wiped it away.

“You can kill me, but you cannot humiliate me! My noble house will not rest until..."

“You’re right. My apologies. Allow me to treat you as I would an enemy that I respected. As to how I’d treat gods, devils, or immortals.” He said after finishing wiping away the spittle. With a small raise of the hand that he used to wipe it away, the dark night slowly brightened.

A green-blue ethereal tentacle started to arise between them. It glowed and cast the forest in a surreal and creepy glow as it gently swayed, as though it were underwater following the currents. The tentacle slowly reached forward and started to expand out and form a bulb that bloomed into a seven-colored flower.

When Jeremiah saw that flower, something inside him started to scream like a madman. A primal fear resonated deep within him as two thin leaves unfurled and started to reach for him. He wanted to run but his body was not able to react.

“Your people worship or revere the devourer, this is a devourer that countless civilizations revere. It devours a soul. No afterlife, no reincarnation, just the sweet embrace of true death.” Akira said while looking at the flower with what appeared to be longing.

The two leaves reached out and passed through Jeremiah’s chest. His body crumpled to the ground but what was odd was that the two leaves were drawing in a small red mote that appeared to be struggling furiously. It was no bigger than a thumbnail as the flower reeled in its meal. That red mote struggled as it was pressed into the seven-colored bloom, where the red petals appeared to be writhing in pain.

Akira let out a complicated sigh while he continued to look at the waist-high flower. He stood there transfixed looking at the flower for a long time. It was while he was transfixed looking at this flower that what mana he could use safely ran out.

The flower, upon having the connection cut, suddenly whipped around and anyone who was in the vicinity would have heard a soul-wrenching hiss. The two leaves whipped out like lightning reaching into Akira’s chest. A secondary mournful howl was soon followed by that hiss. Those leaves that were previously graceful and swaying through the air pulled back from Akira. What pulled back was whatever parts that had not touched Akira. The edges that had touched Akira were turning black and sloughing off like diseased flesh.

The mournful howl had actually originated from this flower. If one was to look, they could swear that they could see a sinister face within it. The flower actually cut off its own two appendages as it felt something was not right with them. The red petals started to blaze brighter as the flower started to burn its meal for energy. With a twist, the flower dug into the ground and fled underground, fleeing deep and far as fast as it could.

This entire interaction happened in only a few blinks of an eye. Akira’s hand had quickly gone for his sword, but with his crippled agility, the soul-flower had already attacked and fled in terror before he thought to react.

...

“... Fuck...” Was the only word that could be heard in the silent forest as Akira slowly passed a hand through his hair in frustration.

With a sigh, he walked off into the forest to find where he had deposited the still-unconscious body of the bronze wind mage. He contemplated what to do for a bit and while the older man had made him chase his quarry all day, he decided to help him out. The noble house would possibly pin the blame on him unless he became more valuable to their family. Without any mana available and Cara most likely having gone to sleep, he decided to cut a rune into the foot of the man.

If the girls would see this rune, they’d recognize it as the one they used to expunge their mana out of their bodies all at once. With this, the wind mage should accidentally lose all his mana a few times while he hobbled around. With the soul flower’s earlier presence, anything larger than an insect would most likely be fleeing.

He continued to sigh as he tracked down the Devra to use to ride back. He kept telling himself that a single specimen does not make an invasive species. Also, Seven-Colored Soul Devourers were slow to digest their meals, taking centuries and being very picky eaters, normally only preferring souls of the flavor of their first meal. Akira figured it shouldn’t be a real problem for a few millennia. He briefly contemplated the use of a predator for the Seven-Colored Soul Devourer, but then shook his head as he did not remember a single time that worked out in the long run.

With that, Akira continued off in search of a tired and run-ragged Devra, lost in these dark woods. Then he remembered that the poor creature was probably fleeing in terror from the Seven-Colored Soul Devourer and cursed as he picked up his speed to try and locate the creature before it got too far.