My mind wandered. I was used to gathering power through essence. Creating seals that would help my soul deepen in depth. It was a violent endeavor. Often fraught with life threatening dangers and beings that could erase your existence from reality in a blink.

  I had succeeded in surviving through skill and guile.

  Cultivating mana was nothing like that. It was both simple and annoying. I had to harmonize the mana with my emotions and that would result in a slight change in my body. Considering the fact that I had two seeds, I had to shift in between emotions.

  My conviction at first and then came my drive to preserve.

  The more I cultivated, the more my body changed and the more mana my body wanted. It had become a dry riverbed that hungered to wet its surface. It had started to suck in mana on its own. And now it felt like I was just the passenger on its sand that could only follow its guidance as it changed its nature.

  And if all that wasn’t enough, my seeds. The one in my heart and the one in my spine had grown from the size of sunflower seeds to the size of peanuts. And they kept sucking in more and more mana.

  They had gone from unobservable seeds to foreign objects stuck inside me. At times I wanted to rip my chest open and pull them out.

  I knew it was inadvisable and every instruction I had been offered called them my seeds but the rattling pain in my heart and the cold numbing pain in my spine made me reconsider that guidance.

  My heart rattled. My body stiffened and locked up. I took a gasping breath and shifted my focus to think about preserving the world I had been pulled into.

  Slowly, the pain in my heart settled to a dull throb and the chilling ice in my spine began to grow and travel up.

  I had lost all track of time. I did not know how long I had been here sitting under this whirlwind of mana. I ignored my wandering thoughts and focused on the feeling of Saha in my hands.

  I needed to preserve her life. If the damned, the doomed and their masters ever came to supremacy on Gaia, her life along with others would be lost.

  I could not allow that.

  The ice cold pain traveled up and down my spine. Reaching down my hips and up to my skull. I felt it slowing my thoughts and blanking me out. I felt sharp teeth nip at me.

  I opened my eyes and saw Rustle looking worriedly at me. His ethereal body was covered in snow and the poor creature shivered in the cold.

  Did he not like ice? How could I make this process easier for him?

  I had tried to take off the armor but Rustle did not want to come off.

  Rustle chittered and I nodded at my armor’s soul and began to shift focus. Rustle bit my finger and chittered. This time with frustration. I looked at the little soul. Rustle squeaked at me and spun on my open palm.

  I looked at Rustle trying to understand what he wanted. He chittered, headbutted my chest and spun again. His head following his tail.

  “Do you want me to spin the seed, little one?” I asked.

  His answer was an emphatic squeak.

  “Hmm…” I hummed thoughtfully and sighed. “I don’t know how to do that.”

  Rustle looked at me and scampered to the side. I followed him with my eyes. Rustle stopped next to a pebble. He squeaked at me and then rushed towards it. Not in his full bodied form but in an ethereal mist that rotated around the pebble.

  After a couple of spins, Rustle formed in my lap looking at me with an expectant gaze.

  “Oh,” I said, feeling like a fool.

  Rustle squeaked one last time and dissipated into the armor on my chest.

  I closed my eyes and breathed. Picturing what Rustle had showed me.

  The mana inside me had grown and my veins had started to bulge once again. I could not let that get out of control. My body was demanding my attention and I had to start working on it again.

  But turning the seed had to take priority. And I had an inkling of how to do that now.

  My mana was tied to my emotions. I focused on my conviction to rid this world and the waters it rested on of all the unnatural dangers. The doomed, the damned, and the masters they served. The more that I thought about it, the more the nature of mana changed inside me.

  I pictured it working itself to my seed, not splashing on top of it like earlier, but rushing it from the side. Like a river around a stone. Working it until the soil that trapped it gave way. Dislodging until it was free to spin and turn.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  Mana attuned to my conviction of bringing death to my enemies followed my will. It hit the seed from the side. At first nothing happened. I didn’t lose heart and give up.

  I continued moving it until the pain began to rise and my heart stuttered. I stopped and focused on my ice. Repeating the process in my spine.

  Back and forth. Back and forth. I kept repeating the mana’s movement. The sky darkened. Stars began to rise in the sky. The cold became biting in the night sky.

  I didn’t let it stop me. Ilya was somewhere out there. But her spell that made the wind whirl overhead kept me informed that she was still well and taking our damned prisoner to the dungeons.

  The first hint of movement in my seeds was from my death seed. It tilted on its axis. It was just a brief movement but just that little movement invigorated me. And I focused back into streaming my mana to the side of the seed. Once again I faced failure.

  I shifted focus and went to my ice seed. It didn’t even budge.

  It was morning when my ice seed shook. And that is all it did. It just shook.

  I began to wonder if this would ever work. Maybe I was better off using essence to fight. After all essence was what gave me an edge against the damned.

  I was also getting worried. Why hadn’t Ilya returned? Should I go and look for her?

  I had enough essence to fight a few damned. But was it enough to take on the thorgs? No. They were too tough. I would have to steer clear of them.

  With a sigh, I resolved myself to give my seeds one last try. If nothing worked, I would go look for Ilya and the others. And if I ran across the thorgs? I would just have to find a way to escape.

  I shifted my focus back to my seeds. I would give them one last try. After that I would leave this basin. I concentrated on my conviction. And started streaming the death mana in. I felt the mana scrape against the seed.

  It moved slightly but once again it did not spin.

  I gritted my teeth in frustration. Why wasn’t this working?

  “Blight. Spin you cursed seed.”

  Why was my conviction not enough? I wanted to rid the world of all the damned and doomed. Then why?

  A thought came to me. Did I want to rid the world of all the damned? If so, why had I let Ilya take that damned baroness away? Had I compromised on my conviction already?

  No, there had to be something more to my conviction. What was it? Or was I thinking about it all wrong?

  What had I said when I had started cultivating mana? I thought back to the pain hazed memories of struggle of yesterday. And the words came to me.

  I was the Silent Hunter. I had an unending duty to order.

  A jolt ran through me. The mana streaming towards the seed thickened. The seed in my heart wobbled.

  With a start I realized why this was not working. Worried about Ilya and the others, my gaze had narrowed. I had started to think only about the damned, the thorgs, and even the wraith. Those were my enemies but only for now.

  The mana stream became denser as my mind cleared. And things fell into place once again. My conviction was not tied to them. That was too limited. No.

  The mana stream running into my death seed hit it hard. The debris clogging the seed flew apart.

  I grunted and spoke aloud to remind myself of my duty again. “My unending duty is to bring death to anyone who challenges order.”

  The mana rushed to my seed and turned it. It started slowly. One spin. And then faster. Second spin. Third spin was even faster. By the fifth something began to change around me.

  Mana began to stream into me in a rush. I opened my eyes and looked around.

  The dead frozen corpses had started to create pools of death around them. Those pools broke. The death mana rushed into me. Streaming into my seed.

  The seed began to spin faster and faster until I could not even keep track of its rotation and lost sight of its movements.

  I looked on with an open mouth. The bodies began to break and deflate. Their skin ripped and tore. Their scales and bones shattered into sand and spilled out. They all turned into mana that flowed towards me.

  Rustle appeared on my lap and chittered happily. The little soul opened its mouth and sucked in a mouthful of death. I looked down at my armor’s soul and chuckled. I couldn’t begrudge the little one a treat. I had been a fool and he had helped me.

  I laughed. “Don’t get used to that. That is a good snack but we eat essence, Rustle.”

  Rustle chittered happily and shot back into my chest plate.

  I no longer had to actively push mana into my seed. It was happening on its own. I just watched as the world around me changed. There were more than the damned that had died here.

  There were hundreds of creatures under the snowy ground that had perished because of the density of mana in the basin. Most of them were little bugs. But they all had created little pools of death mana that were now streaming into me.

  So, if that was the case then I knew why my ice seed hadn’t started spinning.

  There was nothing wrong with the way I thought about my preservation. The problem was that I wasn’t targeting the right kind of mana. I was just pulling in neutral mana in the air towards myself. I should have been pulling in mana from the ice and snow falling from the skies.

  I cursed myself internally. Honestly, what was I thinking? Why had Ilya flown up to the sky to pull mana? Because she needed the mana in the wind. And here I was sitting on rocks trying to pull in the cold.

  I looked up at the steady whirlwind. Snow drifted down from it. Ilya had made it to help me and yet I had scooted away from the snow because it was cold and wet.

  Ilya was right. I was a fool.

  I used my legs to slide myself back to the mound of snow. I took in a breath and flopped backwards. Burying myself inside the snow.

  The crystals flew everywhere and then flew back down. Covering me like a blanket. Over my torso, my legs and even my face.

  I didn’t brush the snow away. Instead, I began to think about my drive to preserve. My ice would help me do that.

  “I will preserve those in need of protection.” I closed my eyes and repeated the words from yesterday in a mutter.

  The thick stream of cold rushed to my ice seed and it began to spin.

  This time there was no resistance. Cold rushed to my seed and in seconds my seed began to pull in mana. I felt the ice break down around me into streams of mana.

  I laid there with a satisfied smile on my face. I had finally done it. I was on my way to creating cores. Now all I had to do was wait and...

  My death seed released a pulse that tore through my heart.

  My ice seed responded with a pulse of its own sending a cold fire through my nerves.

  My back arched and my heart stuttered.

  Before I could get a handle on things, my body went limp. I lost the ability to move.

  “Ahh…” A scream erupted out of my mouth and with it came my pitch black essence.

  What was this? What was happening?

  I looked inwards at my soul. My reaper's soul rebuffed me. This was not possible.

  How could my soul revolt against me? I looked on as essence seeped out of my skin and began to hover over me.

  It didn’t fly away. It just lingered there gathering over me.

  I realized what was happening. Emotions. A reaper did not have emotions.