The moment Emily’s earth-shattering kick ects, the twisting vortex of wind dominating the space disperses, revealing the elemental within. It appears frozen in its attag stahe motion of its upper torso halted, with all of the sand within its body half-cooked into a solid mass that leaves several gaps.

  Emily capitalises on the opening she’s created, kig off the air with her and releasing all of the charge stored in it. She rockets down past the elemental, sliding one of her Cws into a gap in its body and eg with the core with a satisfying crack. The clear sound rings out, filling the clearing as Emily sms into the hard, cooked sand below.

  She looks up ahe winds making up the elemental’s body slow to a halt before its sandy corpse falls to the ground beside her. Almost immediately, the storm begins to close in around them, seeking to cover the ship pletely.

  I guess the elemental wasn’t actively creating this sandstorm then, only living in it.

  Emily grabs the elemental’s corpse, shattering the hardened sand with a single punch to pull out the cracked, fist-sized, glowing orb within. It’s mostly pale green with a few small streaks of swirling sandy-brown light.

  A wind elemental with a small dual affinity for sand. I wonder if I use this to add another element to my repertoire. It feels like a sub-category of earth.

  She’s forced to pull her focus away from the core as the stusts reach her again, so she stands up and races back towards the ship. She slides uhe drod unches herself up into shelter easily, dropping her electrified state aing out a sigh as she moves to shut the hatch behind herself, her face back to a calm mask with all signs of her bat-high gone.

  “Using elemental e to cast sky step seems to be a sure-fire way to drain myself if I’m not in the middle of a mana-dense region,” she mutters with a g her dwindling mana reserves. “Luckily, I still had plenty of maa left if I really .”

  The hatch rises up to seal off the room and, as Emily raises a hand to jure some wind to up the sand scattered across the floor, the door bursts open. Podrick races in, followed closely by the rest of the crew, bar Anton.

  “That was incredible!” Podrick cheers, rushing over to Emily but halting in his step aating when he sees the blood trailing down the tre of her face. “Are you okay?”

  “This?” Emily asks, ign the dirty room for now and reag up to cast se, wiping away the blood on her forehead to reveal a scabbed-over cut, healing at a visible rate. “It’s nothing. My natural healing is very good. As long as my mana keeps cirg, it’ll be gohout a tra a few minutes.”

  “So, you don’t even need healing magic yourself?” Ange asks, drawing Emily’s focus to the healing cuts still lining the pilot’s arms. “If only you could trahat to me.”

  “I -“ Emily pauses, Ange’s words setting off a spark of an idea in her mind, “Might be able to?”

  She immediately throws the idea to her sedary cores, restarting their work on a new healing spell from scratch.

  “Give me about ten to twenty minutes and I’ll have something to test,” Emily says to Ange before turning her curiosity on the rest of the group. “Anyway, why are you all here?”

  Only Ange and Podrick remain unfazed by her gaze, while the other three all flinch slightly as her cold eyes pass over them.

  “ao e check you were okay and ask what that thing was,” Ash expins after a slight stutter, pressing down their obvious disuch faster thaher two and gng at the pulsing core still in Emily’s grasp.

  “Well, as you see, I’m fine,” Emily says, raising the cracked orb before her. “As for what this was? Aal. They’re a pretty rare creature formed when trated elemental mana gaiience.”

  “How rare are they?” Tony asks, surprising Emily that the quiet man would e forward. “We’ve never run into something like that before. If you weren’t here, it would have ripped the ship to shreds.”

  “Rare enough that it doesn’t surprise me you’ve never seen one,” Emily says as she turns back to face the open room, raising her free arm and weaving a few quick hand signs to jure a light, twisting breeze to gather the scattered sand in the tre. “I also suspect it wouldn’t have e he ship if I wasn’t here. Elementals are normally very intelligent, and I wouldn’t expect a wind elemental to show such ht hostility for no reason. I think that one was unstable, and it robably drawn towards my mana signature.”

  She finishes ing the floor, leaving the sand piled up on top of the closed hatch as she turns back to the crew, finding them looking at her with a mixture of twisted expressions.

  “I- it was drawn to you?” Sam asks, tripping over his words as soon as Emily focuses on him but tinuie looking like he regrets speaking up. “Will we be targeted by more dangerous monsters because of you?”

  “Maybe, maybe not,” Emily says with a shrug, idly tossing the elemental core between her hands. “My presence should scare off most weaker creatures uhey’re in rge groups, but there’s a ce a stronger one like the elemental may approach me. Don’t worry about it too much. I said I’d make sure this ship reaches New Denntimo safely, and I meant it. I don’t break my word.”

  Sam shrinks back slightly at the iy behind her words, but he nods as out a relieved sigh as he turns to scurry away.

  “Thank you,” he says before quickly stepping out into the corridor.

  Tony follows him out with a relieved expression after thanking Emily too. Ash asks after the ship’s external damage before walking out as well, leaving just Ange and Podrick.

  “Go back to the ste room and tinue marking those ptes,” Emily tells Podrick before the enthusiastic boy ask her any more about her fight. “I’ll join you in a bit once I’m done helping Ange.”

  He nods and quickly suppresses his excitement, turning around to follow her instrus and earning a satisfied nod from Emily.

  “Didn’t you e here before because you wao observe the storm?” Ange asks, gng at the closed hatch as she gathers the cushions still lying on the floor before waiting for Emily to take a seat.

  “Yeah, mostly because I felt a magical element to it when it first hit, and I thought it may have been jured by a creature. But, that elemental was third circle like me, so if it really was drawn to me as I suspect, it’s uhere’s anything else stronger iorm,” Emily expins, taking the other offered seat of cushions and sitting down cross-legged with the elemental’s core sitting in her p. “And nothing weaker than us could create a storm that big.”

  As Ange nods in uanding, Emily shuts her eyes and focuses on her spellwork, carefully delving through her slowly growing runic colle to actualise her new idea. After a little more than ten minutes of sitting together in silence, she opens her eyes and cracks a small grin.

  ˉˉˉˉˉ

  [Bandage]

  [Circle:] Sed

  [Cost:] 400 Mana/cast

  [Description:] jure bandages of solidified light that boost natural healing when applied.

  _____

  She lifts both hands and internally casts her new spell. Glowing white light pours from her arms befathering together above her palms and densing together to form a silken white strip of fabric. It starts as a small strip a few timetres long and wide, before slowly growing as Emily pours extra mana into it.

  “Either pull up your sleeves or take off your shirt please,” Emily says, gesturing fe to e a little closer.

  Ange nods, tearing her eyes away from the beautiful, glistening white fabric emanating an air of purity.

  “This shirt’s ruined anyway,” she responds, pulling a knife from her belt and quickly cutting off both sleeves at the shoulder.

  Emily takes the arm Ange offers her, carefully pressing the magical fabric to her wrist, where it sticks on its own, before winding it up to the top of her bicep, c all of the exposed cuts.

  “Woah, that’s weird,” Ange says, moving the bound arm around. “It barely feels like there’s anything there but it’s kind of tingly.”

  Emily nods at the expected feedbad takes the woman’s other arm to it as well. A quice at her remaining mana, as she applies the treatment, causes Emily’s eyes to widen slightly in surprise.

  Damn, that’s expensive. Four thousand mana just to both arms.

  “There you go,” she says after the sed is ihose should stay for about ten mihehey fade your arms should be spotless.”

  “Thanks, Emily,” Ange says while pushing herself up to stand.

  Emily nods and waves her off, remainied and pg both hands on the glowing core in her p as she shuts her eyes again. Ange hesitates in the doorway, gng back at Emily with a flicted expression before she tinues out into the corridor.

  I wonder what that was about.

  Emily stops paying attention to her surroundings as the door clicks shut and focuses oask at hand.

  Time to see if I learn a new element from this core!

  She pours a stream of mana into the orb, trying to ect with the turbulent flow she feel within. The moment her raw maers the core, it’s torn from her trol and scattered. A frown creases her brow as she adjusts her approaow attributing her mana with wind before sending it in. Her mana holds together as it ehe solidified mass of mana, but it also gets drawn into the flow within and soon leaves her trol as well.

  Okay, no iing mana for now I guess.

  She ges tactics again and focuses to draw out the mana from the core. Cyg Teancer’s Breath, Emily directs her body to draw in mana through her palms and waits. It takes a few minutes, but eventually, a light stream of mana is pulled from the core and into her body. However, the moment it happens, the core suddenly shakes, growing warmer as the glow within lights up the cracks on its surfad a stronger flood of mana rushes into Emily. Immediately, she releases the orb, dropping it into her p as she doubles over in pain.

  “ARGH!” she grunts through gritted teeth, her eyes shooting open.

  Looking down, she sees her arms shaking, the veins on the back of her hands bulging from her skin with an unnatural green and brown glow. She instantly tries to turn off her paiors to allow herself respite to observe calmly, but despite her and to her body w, the pain lingers.

  Shit.

  Without wasting a moment, Emily floods her arms with mana and maa. A light mist of mana slowly rises from her skin as the f is forcefully flushed from her system and, the moment the mist stops seeping from her pores, the pain subsides.

  “Haaa,” Emily lets out a sigh of relief, flexing her fingers and running maa through them to make sure they are ued. “Okay. Maybe don’t try pulling mana from a half-broken, dead elemental’s core.”

  She turns her gaze to the item iion and watches as it stops shaking, the glowing light p from its cracks slowly redug until it returns to its inactive state. She picks it up, finding it once again cold to the touch, and pces it in her belt for now as her maa firms she suffered no sting damage, before leaning bad letting herself fall ft on her back as she tries to process what just happened.

  That pain wasn’t normal. It tinued even after I turned off my paiors. I didn’t think that ossible. Was it some form of ination fr to pull in a I ’t use? Or was the mana in the core as unstable as the core itself? The flow within feels abnormal, so that’s a possibility. Maybe it’s just not possible to cultivate using aal core like that. I have only read about them being used to fuel arrays and artefacts. Maybe that water elemental was doing more than I thought to ect with me safely.

  After a few minutes of throwing ideas around in her head, Emily lets out anh. Uo e to a clusion without more testing, she adds the core to a slowly growing list of things to research ter.

  “Whatever,” she mutters, gathering her cushions bato her ste and standing up. “Preparing the ship’s upgrades takes priority.”

  KeroKeron