Firstly, the drain attack seems to be delivered by a physical part of the flower. Is this physical aspect affected by gravity? I picked a stem and filtered the gravity to increase around me. The result was a partial success. The increased gravity weighed down the floating seeds, but they were light, and the wind and the explosive start countered the gravity increase that I could put out.

  “Well, that's bloody annoying,” Kiri said.

  “What?” I asked.

  ” My bone armour is only partially effective against it. The dead bone is more effective than the living.”

  I just nodded at that.

  Solar Bloom just encouraged the plant to grow.

  I moved further away from everybody and closer to the weird flowers. I extended my Cosmic Aura and then used Solar Flame in a circle around me. Everything burned, including the flowers, and they didn’t have time to spread their seeds. Some on the periphery did, but I extended my aura gain and froze everything with Frigid Void. That was a method I discovered to stop the fire spreading and setting the whole plains on fire.

  The plants burned fine, but they also died when I froze them. The seeds in the air also died as I reached out and caught some. I was now standing in a circle of burned plants, surrounded by a circle of frozen plants.

  “Frigid Void seems like the safest method of killing the plants,” I said.

  “It will leave a noticeable trail of dead plants, though,” Kiri said. I nodded. Kiri was paranoid about leaving evidence of our passing. I already have an unnatural circle of dead plants around me.

  “I am not sure we are going to avoid that,” I said.

  I had one more thing I wanted to try. My Light Filter was sitting at nine, like a lot of my skills. It was becoming more useful as it levelled. Filtering the light through my aura, I could make us all blend in with the surroundings. I could stop infrared light from escaping, hiding our heat signature. Solar Bloom can be visible, creating light, which I can then manipulate with Light Filter.

  I blasted Solar Bloom in the circle of burned and frozen plants, but there was nothing left alive to grow.

  I moved to a new area. Light Filter needs to break through to Journeyman, just as many of my skills do. What I want to do with Light Filter is use it in the same way I used Gravity Filter. With the Gravity Filter, I can focus the gravity in a particular area. I see no reason I can’t do that with Light Filter.

  This was not easy. Light was not gravity. How did I filter gravity to be lighter or heavier? Gravity is a constant pull to the centre of the Earth. I restricted that pull, and I got lighter. To make it heavier than usual, I had to bend or shift gravity from one area to another and concentrate it in another. I wasn’t stopping it; I was moving it to focus it.

  Light was different because it came from everywhere to everywhere. There was sunlight, and then it bounced around. The bounced light was all different colours. It was not constant like gravity.

  I started with my own Solar Bloom light. It was constant and radiated out from me. I usually used the filter to block specific colours or wavelengths, which might be a better description. I was good now so that I could vary it in patterns.

  What I wanted this time was to bounce the light and focus it onto a single point. That point with the one flower.

  When I filter the light, what actually happens to the part I restrict from passing through? I examined what I did, and it used Spiritual energy to absorb it. That will be why there are minimum Spiritual Strength and Agility requirements.

  Would it cost less energy if I bounced it instead? Light bounces all the time. It took a bit of manipulation with Spiritual Agility, then hardening with Spiritual Strength, and light was bouncing around the inside of my aura.

  I had to close my eyes or I might have blinded myself again. I kept track with Light Sensing. The light was bouncing around inside my Aura, and the intensity was building as there was nowhere for it to go. I opened a space near the plant stem and shaped my aura so the light bounced in that direction.

  After Light Sensing went to Journeyman, I suddenly had a much clearer sense of the light and was able to focus it better. Light definitely acted like waves, but also went in a straight line, even though that didn’t seem to make sense.

  Then a new skill slotted into my status. Light Manipulation, and it jumped straight to apprentice Level.

  All of a sudden, I could manipulate light directly. I could bend it, shape it and aim it. I could even focus it, and when I applied the Light Filter at the same time, I could focus it better.

  Light Filter also went to Journeyman level.

  The flower stem burst into flame, but only the flower stem, not the whole area, like with Solar Flame. I put out the fire with Frigid Void.

  “What did you do?” Kiri asked. Both of them were staring at me.

  “I now have two ways to kill individual plants,” I said, “Frigid Void and Light Manipulation.”

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  “You disappeared; it was like there was a big black hole of nothing,” Kiri said.

  “A black hole?” I queried. “That doesn’t make sense unless…” I activated my Cosmic Aura again and reflected the light inside. My newly levelled Light Sensing said nothing was escaping, but that would not account for a black nothing outside. I looked further. I was absorbing the outside light but not letting it back out. That was a force multiplier during the day. It also made it obvious.

  I reduced the Cosmic Aura to be just under my skin, and it still worked fine, and I looked just like me. During the day, the bigger the aura, the more light I could focus. It was a balancing act.

  I focused the light again, and another stem burst into flame. I stomped on it to put the fire out so it didn't burn the prairie. That was still a problem.

  This was just focused light, causing a normal fire. It was not Fire that burns in the void. It was a normal fire started by focused light.

  I still think focusing on Frigid Void was the better way, but I practised the Light Manipulation to kill some stems. I refined it, narrowed the hole to use and used Light Manipulation to concentrate the light. I used a Light Filter to test different parts of the light to see if some worked better than others.

  Then I was surprised when a new Skill appeared on my Status. Spectral Combustion. It took all my manual work away, and I could just focus on what I wanted to burn and how intense I wanted it to be. The further away the object, the weaker the skill.

  I now have a way to start fires without setting the whole area on fire.

  Frigid Void was still the best way to kill the flowers. I moved to a new area with a mix of Spiritually Draining Flowers and regular plants. I spread my aura and tried to focus my Frigid Void on the SD flowers and not the other plants.

  It was too much. My Mental Agility was as high as it had ever been, but it was not fantastic. I reduced the radius. Then I reduced it again.

  Finally, I felt I could do this. I spread Frigid Void out and focused only on the SD Flowers. The near ones always exploded when someone came inside their detection radius. I felt my Spiritually Tough Skill resist.

  Then I let Figid Void activate while focusing only on the SD Flowers. “It worked!” I exclaimed.

  “What did?” Kiri asked.

  “I can kill the SD Flowers without killing all the plants around. It is only in a small radius at the moment, but I will get better at it.” I said, showing off the dead flowers and live grass.

  “SD Flowers?” Kevin asked.

  “Spiritually Draining Flowers,” Kiri explained. “He just gave a cool plant monster a lame name.”

  I shrugged, “It is practical.”

  “Nah,” said Kevin. “When I write this up for the Lore Society, I am not calling them SD flowers.”

  “How about Soulblight Bloom?” Kiri suggested.

  “The existence of the soul has not…” Kevin started

  “Blightburst Ivy,” Kiri interrupted.

  “It is nothing like an Ivy,” Kevin said.

  “Witherbloom,” suggested Kiri.

  “Mmmm, possible,” Kevin said

  “Doomdelion,” Kiri said, “you said they are like Dandelions!”

  “No,” Kevin said.

  “Burstsucker,”

  “No!”

  “Seedsucker!” Kiri shouted and made sucking noises with her mouth. Kevin’s face heated up. Humans. It must be some sort of sexual innuendo for Kevin to react like that. I will always struggle with their attitude toward sex. As I thought about it, it probably referred to oral sex that Kiri introduced me to. Humans are weird.

  I tuned them out and focused on my skill. Frigid Void had broken through to Journeyman level. I had much more control over the skill and would get more as it levelled, while the energy use was dropping. I could target the same things in my aura and apply Frigid Void to them. The skill was not stronger; it was just more helpful, and with the reduced energy, I could keep it going longer.

  I moved to a new area and tried my upgraded skill. The nearby flowers burst, and my Spiritually Tough skill was close to levelling again. This could be good training for it. It was probably good training for Kevin and Kiri, especially for Kevin.

  I interrupted their banter, “So you want to head around the bulk of the flowers, or do you want to see what is in the centre, and whether it is a monster?”

  They looked at me. I could see the idea growing in Kevin for his report to the Lore Society, even though he had only just learned a Spiritual defence skill.

  Kiri was not so keen. “No monster should be taken lightly,” she said. At my raised eyebrow, she conceded, “I know you are not taking it lightly, and we will have a clear path of retreat.” She looked at Kevin, “Can Kahz fly over and see what he can? Preferably high enough not to disturb the seeds. Their sensing range seems to be about a meter, maybe a little more.”

  Kevin nodded, and Kahz flew off. We watched him fly about twice my height over the field. He didn’t trigger any flowers. The field disappeared over the next rise, so I didn’t know how big the main concentration of flowers was, really. Concentration of flowers? Bunch of flowers? Is it a bouquet?

  Kahz was only a short way over the main concentration when he dipped down into detection range and darted back up. Kevin is testing the vertical range, I suppose.

  “That would be too easy,” Kevin said.

  “What?” Kiri asked.

  “I was hoping that Kahz would cause a cascading explosion of seed that would spread over a wider area. It wasn’t a great hope. Keep an eye on that patch, we want to know how long the seeds take to regenerate.”

  “It is a way for us to get out without using spiritual energy, though,” I said.

  They both nodded in agreement.

  Kahz flew out over the field and then up over the rise to see how far it went.

  “You see all this here?” Kevin said, waving his hand at the field, “It is three or more times the size of here to the rise, and it spreads out.”

  “Right, said Kiri, “so we are going the long way around.”

  “Yep, and it is quite the detour,” Kevin said. “We should map the size to report this,” he added.

  “So are we going left or right?” I asked.

  “Hold on, let Kahz have a look,” Kevin said. “Wait, Kahz is in trouble!”

  I couldn’t see him as he was behind the hill.

  “Some of the larger ones have a longer range,” Kevin said, “Shit, he is not going to make it.”

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