After Kyrion rested in a pool of blood, he finally regained enough energy to get back to his feet. He was hungry and irritable. Instead of spending another day bleeding out, Kyrion decided to go hunt his wind spirit.

And so Kyrion went deeper into the forest, his mess getting turned into nutrition for the plants.

As Kyrion walked, the earth went from solid to mushy as he entered a swamp-like environment. However, his training kept him from taking the plunge into the waters below.

The smell of rotting animal carcasses and plants filled the air aiming to deter those who entered.

The smell did not bother Kyrion as he passed through unhindered the mana around him, blowing the junk away.

“Huh. I’m being watched.” Kyrion muttered.

“But of course. Do you think you can walk into a spirit’s territory and not get noticed?” Karl said.

“Shouldn’t I be talking to Jala instead?”

“No. Jala’s mad that you interrupted her conversation..”

“Right. And now I gotta go hunt this spirit of autumn wind.” Kyrion watched as the further he traveled, the redder the plants seemed.

“Yeah, it should give you the ability to control larger amounts of wind and manipulate storm clouds. It will also add the season of autumn to your domain.”

“Great. A non combat power.”

“Well you could extend the maximum size of your wind blades.”

Kyrion rubbed his stomach. “I’d rather not give Psycho access to a distance advantage.”

“You’re going to have to deal with it eventually. You need to learn how to deal with people who fight like him.”

“I hate that your right….” Kyrion stepped on something he shouldn’t.

A slimy, scaly creature opened its mouth, revealing a large set of sharp teeth that it attempted to use to take off Kyrion’s legs.

Kyrion jumped upward when he felt the motion moving up to twenty feet straight up. As Kyrion fell, he charged his heel with wind mana and brought it down on the alligator bisecting it from head to tail.

“That was easy.” Kyrion said.

As he did, 7 more alligators poked their heads out of the water and moved to attack.

“It was a trap.” Kyrion hopped up to a tree and tried to send mana through it to get a lay of the land. But, unfortunately, these plants didn’t want to give him the information and instead struck him back with vicious intent.

“What?”

“Your in the domain of creatures that don’t want you to leave alive. The plants included. They want you to become one with the soil.”

“I hate this.” Kyrion jumped from branch to branch as he gained momentum before moving onto air platforms. The more Kyrion traveled, the more he could feel himself being forced down a path toward a blank field full of mushrooms.

Kyrion realized what was happening and closed his eyes. Opening up his ability to sense mana.

A trio of giant frogs hopped toward his location. Kyrionhadn’t moved far past the alligators before getting ensnared by an illusion. His body slowly gets dragged toward the center of something.

Kyrion moved his feet and noticed that he was on a squishy substance reminiscent of the maw of a flytrap.

Kyrion opened his eyes and released a powerful mana blast through his feet. The force created a crater in the maw of the flytrap. Kyrion rose above the trees far up in the air, getting some distance.

The 3 frogs were consumed as the maw slammed short soon after.

“Karl? How long was I trapped in the illusion?”

“Two minutes. After you got past the gators you did make progress until you started moving over that thing.” Karl stated.

“Ah. Interesting.”

Kyrion summoned giant spears of ice which he propelled downwards into the flytrap. These were made and placed into his domain ahead of time, as Ice creation was draining and inefficient.

The spears sunk into the flytrap in a star formation, and Kyrion began to chant.

“You exist in three forms. From solid, to liquid, to gas you flow. Eternally changing, expanding, and growing. Now I beacon for you to swarm. Shatter into a fleet of snow.” Kyrion’s eyes glowed an eerie green as the spears shattered into a fine powder and infiltrated the inside and outside.

In moments the giant flytrap was covered in snow.

“From snow to water you will shift. Then boil over and escape your prison. Within the creature, you will lift. Bust through and prove that you have risen and…” Kyrion held his head as he had gotten tongue-tied.

“That’s your limit for mana output in action. Good to know,” Karl said.

Kyrion watched as the plant’s core dropped in the form of a pressured green bead.

“That’s the core isn’t it?” Kyrion fell to the ground.

“Yup.”

Kyrion took out Anesthesia and lined it up with the bead surrounding it with a layer of hard earth mana.

“You aren’t going to keep it?”

“Now what was that spell Cecil told me when sending people forcefully. Yeet? No… Begone? Not that either. Erof!” Kyrion watched as the core broke through the clouds and flew past the horizon.

“Hopefully it will land in the ocean.” Karl stated.

“Hopefully it will land in a volcano.” Kyrion answered.

“Realling going for that hole in one aren’t you?”

“Of course. I don’t like the way it tried to eat me. And I don’t want to accidentally absorb it.”

“Fair enough. We’re just a third of the way there.”

“Where exactly my senses aren’t working properly.” Kyrion ran past the crater he’d left behind and continued toward his goal.

After a moment of respite, Kyrion stumbled into an area full of hissing, and a dome of mana covered him. Supposedly leaving him stranded.

The hissing grew as Kyrion was surrounded on all sides by venomous snakes. “Great, Blood Moccasins. And they’re all practitioner ranked.”

“You know your snakes.”

“Gamodren knows his snakes. I learned to deal with them out of necessity. I can cure one or two bites but thirty. That’s lethal. I can’t be gentle.”

“Great cause I can sense that their preparing to coil.”

Kyrion removed his eyepatch and sent out a gust of wind that revealed the location of every snake to his senses.

“Inverse Rend.” Kyrion channeled over 100 Wind blades that began to orbit his body at high speeds. Then, with minor alterations to his mana, he sent them out just as the serpents leaped. Each blade hit a snake at least three times, the first cutting, the second severing horizontally and the third bisecting vertically.

Snake blood and venom littered the area painting everything in red and purple save a dome around Kyrion’s body where waves of wind continued to circle, ready to kill any stragglers.

A snake buried underground popped out, attempting to go for his neck only to become a pile of gore.

The dome faded, and Kyrion looked around with an irritated expression. “Is that all you got?”

There was no response as Kyrion stood there waiting for the cowardly spirit to emerge. It didn’t.

“How lame. Do I really need this spirit?”

“It would be very convenient if we could have a season other than Spring.”

“What’s wrong with Spring?”

“Everything has a cycle. Things need to grow, die and regrow to improve.” Psycho stated.

“I don’t want to hear that from you, Captain Crazy.” Krion didn’t like the forceful tummy tuck he received.

“I was just testing your pain tolerance for next time.”

“Next time it will be just me and Kyrie.”

“Bah. Please? Just a little? I don’t get to stretch my legs often and you need to raise that survival instinct of yours.”

“Maybe.” Kyrion said with no intention of doing so until he got a better handle on his soon-to-be new boost to his wind affinity.

Kyrion stopped as he entered a pocket of warm air that smelled of cinnamon, pumpkins, and something else.

“Smells good. But I can tell you’re trying to poison me spirit.” Kyrion looked towards a statue of a spirit that seemed to be stuck in a pose.

“I am the great autumn spirit of this forest Pthinoporon. What do you wish of me.” The spirit took on a female form wearing a dress of autumn leaves.

“Nothing from you sho!” Kyrion shooed the spirit away.

“What do you mean shoo! I am a lesser deity you can’t just!”

“Do I look like I care?” Kyrion did not look like he cared.

“How dare!”

“Shush” Kyrion clamped his hand down and looked about.

“You can’t just!” Pthinoporon looked like she was about to fight the boy when she let loose a predatory wave of mana. The lesser deity began to feel as though they were suffocating.

“Found you.” Kyrion said in a sing-song tone as he looked at what seemed to be an empty space that began to shrink into a ball of wind.

“What did you do, human!” Yelled the angry wind spirit.

“Him. You want him? He’s nowhere near as high quality as I am.”

“Listen. I already have too much personality. I don’t need any more. Also, having met a deity you are quite weak in comparison. In fact you’re much weaker than the spirits I have now.” Kyrion looked at the spirit and shrugged.

“And I’m just…”

“Undine, pay your rent and come on out. Maybe you can shut them up.” Kyrion sighed.

Undine appeared in complete form, looking down on the spirit. “I am Undine, lady of lakes, Goddess of Imala’s fresh waters. What else do you want me to do?”

Kyrion looked to the wind spirit, who had stopped struggling, and then at the lesser deity. “I see you have no need for me? Well, go enjoy the rest of your day. Bye!”

“I would also like to leave.” The wind spirit said.

“I know you were the one testing me. You knew why I came here and made things inconvenient. You have 2 options, be destroyed and I move on or willingly become my spirit. So you can help me vent my unwarranted anger or you can come with me freely and not be broken.”

“Didn’t think I made you that angry. Sheesh! Can you take a joke?”

“You didn’t but my blood sugar is low, and I’m frustrated by things far out of my control. Please let me destroy you so that I can go back and say you didn’t cooperate.” Kyrion sighed.

“I am confused.”

“Hi, Confused. Welcome to the family.” Kyrion pulled the spirit towards him, and it materialized as a young man in a toga and sandals.

“No Eurus, is my name. Wait!”

“I bind thee Eurus to my core. Do you consent?”

Eurus sighed as he turned into a spherical bead and flew into Kyrion’s core.

“You tricky. No good. Oh, it’s pretty nice in here.” So Eurus went to explore Kyrion’s domain. It would take a while for it to fully integrate. But he had convinced the spirit that it was in danger to stress it out and then knocked it off balance before tricking it into saying its true name. This is why most spirits lie about their real names. Gaining a spirit’s true name will force it to give more power.

Undine looked at Kyrion. “Were you really going to kill that spirit?”

“Who knows. My blood sugar is very low and I’m willing myself to function. This place is making me hungry and I know that the food here isn’t real.”

“Are you really that pure boy I met in that forest?”

“Depends on what purity truly means. My desire to help people is pure and simple. I kill when necessary but never more. When I must fight another sentient creature I do what I can to spare their life unless they have harmed innocents. That is my code of honor.”

“And yet you were so aggressive against the Midas boy.”

“He smelled of blood, had an arrogant attitude on top of a god complex. Sinbad also smelled of blood but even he seemed disgusted by his companion. Max also wanted to punch him but knew he’d only get hurt if he tried.”

“I mean the memory wipe. Did you really need to attack his brain like that?”

“We both know that the brain is a delicate organ. If I wanted to I could have left him as mindless as a newborn babe. What is 24 hours?”