There was a crack as Phlaeris appeared directly beside me, holding a spear made of chitin that was aimed at my face. Crushing it in her hand, she dropped it on the ground and glanced my way before looking away.

  “How do they keep getting past my dispersed Mana?” I finally asked. After some kind of insect started taking potshots at me, I flooded the area around myself with Winter Mana in an attempt to freeze the projectiles in place before they could land.

  The next two shots, I caught myself, then they started ignoring my Mana entirely, and Phlaeris was compelled to step back in.

  “What? Can’t figure it out yourself?” she asked in return, her tone conspicuously absent of mockery despite her not even bothering to hide it from her expression.

  “I was considering the answer during the last twenty shots you caught. Given that I have received pretty much no formal training in magic, I feel like I’m lacking some key piece of knowledge. Also, are you not going to kill the thing?” I asked, as another spear rocketed towards my head, ripping through the Mana I was holding in the air, only to be caught by Phlaeris yet again.

  “It’s out of range of your sphere of influence in the forest, unless you can close the distance with me, we’d be separated permanently. That outcome is unacceptable…” she said, pausing. Her ears twitched, and her expression hardened. “For more reasons than one.”

  “Oh come on, don’t be salty just because I asked you to protect me—”

  “It was a little more than asking,” she grumbled.

  “When you were going to do it anyway,” I finished, ignoring her remark.

  “Was I?” she said, revealing nothing with her tone. “Okay, tell me, what is aura?”

  “Really?” I exclaimed.

  “If you don’t want an explanation—” she started, stopping only when I signalled an apology.

  “No, no, I was just surprised you weren’t going to be a brat about it,” I said, thinking back on what I actually knew about Authority conceptually. Hazel and I had discussed the topic briefly, and Autumn had taught me how to connect to my Winter Mana and access Winter’s Fury to create an Avalanche. But that didn’t tell me what it was, just how to use it. “It’s a force that allows remote manipulation of Mana—”

  “Wrong.”

  “Okay it definitely can do that even if—” I started.

  “Wrong,” she interrupted again, and I realized that I was apparently wrong, she was going to be a brat about it.

  I grabbed my Winter Mana in the air, formed it into a ball and threw it at her. “What is this then?!” I screeched at her, when she moved out of the way I followed it up with a flurry of flakes of Winter Mana that she ducked and dove around, effortlessly pirouetting through the air in such a way that not a single flake from the storm touched her. Catching another chitinous projectile in the process while her eyes were closed. “Show off.”

  “Aura has nothing to do with Mana. It’s about personal jurisdiction over the world around you. What is considered to be yours and in a spiritual sense,” she finally answered, “Your Mana is already yours. You shouldn’t need Authority over it to control it as it is already a part of you.”

  Huh… could I? When Mana wasn’t within my aura I couldn’t feel it, but did that mean I also couldn’t control it?

  Pulling my Authority within myself, I attempted to hold the cloud in place but found it was starting to disperse on its own. With a flick of her wrist Phlaeris blew the cloud of Winter Mana away with another variety of Nature Mana that I didn’t recognize.

  “Wrong,” she said unhelpfully.

  “What am I—” I asked, only to realize that I had stopped thinking about aura and started thinking about Mana again. She wanted me to focus on aura not Mana. Letting out a breath I reformed the cloud of Winter Mana around myself. “What does this have to do with what the insect is doing?”

  “The phytovore owns its flesh, does it not? You haven’t acknowledged your claim over the space around yourself. Instead you’re trying to smash the problem like a brute by wielding your ownership like a club,” she said, her words dripping with condescension despite the fact she was being useful.

  “Tsun,” I muttered under my breath.

  “Huh!?” she yelled, stomping her foot on the ground causing the leaves on the forest floor to be blown into the air by a gust of wind.

  “Oh, did I say that in Nature? My bad, I didn’t mean to,” I lied, dodging her attempt at shoving me by taking a step to the side before she even appeared. The model I was building of her in [Combat Simulations] was increasingly accurate. The fact I could dodge proved she wasn’t able to perceive while moving that fast.

  Lack of Wit? I added that to the model and let it continue running.

  Her eyes went wide, “How?”

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  “Turns out you’re predictable,” I replied, trying to think over what she had said. I didn’t produce aura automatically like biological beings, I generated it by feeding a Wondersprout ball inside my body Nature Mana. That aura I then couldn’t actually control, I needed the Skill [Artificial Aura Control] to do that.

  I opened the Skill to review how it was worded.

  [Class Skill Option]

  Name: [Artificial Aura Control]

  Tier: [Basal - Growth]

  Description: [As an artificial being, you have no inherent ability to generate aura. However, you've found a way to bypass this limitation by absorbing an entity capable of the feat. Through it you can now exert your will over reality in the same way biological beings do. This skill greatly enhances your control over the manifestation of your aura, allowing you to mould it into various shapes, intensities, and effects at will. Allows for basic will shaping scaled off Wit.]

  It hadn’t updated to the new Skill format with the latest version of the system. I wondered if that had anything to do with why the wording felt… rather rigid. If aura worked the way Phlaeris said it did then ‘various shapes, intensities, and effects’ was a very limited way to describe it.

  Was I limited to that set of variables?

  A biological being obviously owned their body by default, alongside whatever Mana they produced. That wasn’t the case for me. So I had to establish ownership over it then? Given that the more Eidos I collected the more I became object-like in the eyes of the universe. I assume that affected what ‘mine’ meant.

  Holding my hand up I weaved my Authority through the Mana channels that filled my body, I then released the Mana into the air. I still seemingly held no sway over it. Because I was an object, this wasn’t my aura, I didn’t own it.

  Was learning this just impossible for me then? That didn't make sense, I doubted Eryx would have settled for allowing me to exist without being able to perform a function that was as vital as controlling its own Mana.

  While I mulled over the problem I changed our heading yet again, as the forest seemed to be trying to force me to walk in a circle. The minimap was basically the only reason I wasn't hopelessly lost. Which was probably why Kaelzar gave it to me in the first place.

  There was another crack as Phlaeris caught another spear.

  “How do domains work? For example my aura has a Growth domain to it,” from being produced by Wondersprout.

  “Aura domains are like expanded realms of control that you can exert your Authority over. So with your Growth domain you can manipulate growth without using Mana… that's a very strong domain, how did you obtain it?” Phlaeris asked, popping up directly in front of me.

  “A Skill,” I lied. I was supposed to have a domain over Mana because of my [One With Mana] Skill that I obtained during the period of lost memories. “How do you exert control over a domain?”

  “You just do,” she replied.

  “Very helpful,” I snarked back, before deciding to test that. “All Mana produced by or contained within me falls under my domain.”

  My Authority was suddenly ripped from my grasp and pulled into… me? My very being was filled with Mana, was made out of Mana, and my Authority was finally finding a foothold in it.

  Suddenly the sensation that I was wearing a shell vanished, this was my body, and the Mana it contained and that was produced by it was also a part of me. I almost tripped over a root when I froze as my mind was overwhelmed with being dropped into a body it hadn't acknowledged until that very moment.

  I shivered in disgust, looking down at my hands. For the first time in a long time they felt like my hands.

  “That's cheating…” the girl who was trying to teach me whined, pouting in my direction.

  “Oh, shut the fuck up, Phlaeris.”

  “Mana domains don't exist! You're just using that Divine Power to circumvent actually learning how to do it right!” she said, turning around and walking off in the wrong direction.

  I let out a sigh and hurried to keep up with her. Part of me considered explaining the whole situation with how I didn't actually have Authority of my own, but she already didn't trust me. Why would I provide her more information she could use against me?

  There was a reason I made her make a pocket Oath. Neither of us trusted the other.

  Around my body I flexed my bubble of Mana, it felt like I finally had true control over it. Instead of it being a substance that I used for my purpose it was a part of me.

  In fact it felt like I extended a quarter inch past the Mana that was under my control. With a flex of my will I grabbed some atmospheric Nature Mana that the forest was filled with and caused it to manifest into a thorn which I then launched into a nearby tree.

  That was… [Nature Herald’s Kind] right? The Skill said “Nature aligned Mana can be used as an extension of your Authority at a distance that scales with Spirit,” which I initially thought meant I could use it as an extension of my aura blob, but it looked like it was more like—

  A chitinous spear slammed into my Winter Mana cloud, I could immediately tell that the spear wasn’t me, it wasn’t owned by me. There was another layer of Authority blended into it.

  With a flex of will I shredded that Authority and tried to grab the spear out of the air. Unfortunately I didn’t get it in time before the spear went through my skull. I clutched my head and let out a hiss, it wasn’t painful but it felt wrong. Like my very being had been violated.

  Ripping it out of my head with a flex of Nature Mana formed into wood, I launched it back in the direction it came from.

  [Killed Barkpiercer Sniper (Basal) II-23]

  Class Eidos Overlimit: +115

  Amount under break threshold converting into Eids

  Eidetic Coins: 12505

  Fucking finally.

  The break threshold was the required amount over which I needed to trigger Ascension. I knew what that was because… I guess it wasn’t part of the deleted memories?

  What else did I not lose? Obviously, I’d never find it just by thinking hard because the memories weren’t connected to anything.

  “Decide to stop protecting me?” I asked Phlaeris.

  “Hmm?” she turned towards me, a pout still borne on her face. “Oh! Right, that thing… where did it go?”

  “Killed it. Also, you’re going in the wrong direction,” I replied, then grabbed her hand and pulled her the right way.

  She stuttered something out behind me, but I ignored her. We were closing in on my spawn point on the map. Nearly there, nearly going to receive that Quest reward. Hopefully, it repaired my soul. Because if it didn’t… I had less than two days before I detached and died.

  This little forest trip had taken far too long already.

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