"Wait," Sherron called out after seeing him form lances and orbs.

Lev almost growled at her, only now realizing just how much his mental state was affected. "Why?"

"Fight it from up close. I'll keep an eye on you."

He took a few deep breaths and let the lances disperse. The Exalted definitely had a reason for that request, and Lev trusted her with his life.

Shaking his head to fully clear the piercing aura trying to dominate him, he summoned Stargazer from his ring and descended. The dreadwolf didn't immediately rush him, content with observing him from afar while intensifying its mental assault.

Lev made the first move instead, while a torrent of fire mana rushed out of his converter. Before pulling it into his armor, he streamed a large amount of pure mana into the enhancement formation, and then into the flameforged constitution rune.

His worries turned out to be unfounded when both of them worked perfectly fine in tandem, empowering his armor to a new state primed to be imbued with fire mana.

It was then that he dragged all the converted fire mana under his control and let it enter his armor in a stream. Lev's world turned a fiery orange through the haze of heat surrounding him, and in a single leap empowered by a crap ton of fire mana, he was in front of the dreadwolf.

The wolf pounced at the same time, its jagged fangs oddly symmetrical. It was a good thing he noticed that, for when the tongue slithered out from between them, it extended for nearly a dozen meters.

Lev grabbed it in haste to avoid getting skewered, which was also a mistake. A burst of fire from his hand seared it and dried most of the corrosive saliva digging into his armor, requiring him to constantly repair it.

His brows rose even further as he darted back to avoid the dreadwolf's rumbling roar. It destroyed a large area of the ground he was standing on a moment before, though his attention was grabbed by the unholy fluid coating his hand. Instead of disintegrating, the saliva absorbed his fire mana and empowered itself.

Hackles raised, he did the only reasonable thing and upped the fire mana attacking the fluid. Raising his right hand towards the monster, a large, wild cone of fire shot out of it, almost catching the wolf due to its speed and area.

The solution also worked in completely removing the corrosive contents, and the monster chose that moment to redouble its mental attacks.

One moment, the Dreadwoods were silent, and the next, everything except the battle stopped existing. Darkness shrouded the region he was present in, one visibly empowering the dreadwolf and holding the human down, pressing on his shoulders with the might of impossible goals and shattered dreams.

Hopelessness tried to creep in, but Lev resisted enough to release a wave of fire to blast away the dreadwolf. It rose up faster than before, and its movements accelerated as well.

He didn't panic and used even more fire mana in his armor and matched it in melee. Dodging its initial lunge, he matched its arms with his own fists. The first punch was deflected with great difficulty, and the second overpowered his block and hit him squarely in the chest.

The plates on his chest worked as expected, absorbing a small yet significant portion of the impact to raise their own durability. As a result, he flew back like a cannonball, air pushed out of his lungs.

Much worse was the drastically increased mental assault. The physical contact had allowed the monster to drill even deeper into his mind, now completely shrouding the sky in darkness. Somehow, the area they were fighting in was still bright, except everything beyond two dozen meters was covered in inky blackness, providing cover for the dreadwolf.

So this…

Lev still didn't use Stargazer or his ranged attacks. Even the ropes on his bubbles remained stationary, though they occasionally twitched as he barely held himself back and fought against the invasive aura.

… is why Willpower is so important. No wonder Sherron brought me here today.

He could have pushed the whole mental effect away and blasted the wolf out of existence. It wasn't that strong, as the repeated clashes had revealed, but it was quite flexible.

Two of its right arms moved as a response to a failed lunge, and this time, Lev slapped away one and ducked under the other. His feet had barely touched the ground when a fiery shockwave tore it apart, launching him at the monster at a speed higher than what he could control.

Control wasn't necessary, anyway. His kick was perfectly executed, landing on the side of its turning head. Another wave of fire burst out of the impact, this one deliberately released to further damage the dreadwolf.

But physical contact allowed it to escalate the assault. The mental attack was crumbling at the edges now, pushed to the limits of the monster's skill, yet it still failed to make him stay still.

Whispers danced at the edges of his consciousness. The worst stole Orianna's voice, telling him that his goals amounted to nothing, and that he was worthless no matter how hard he tried.

How stupid.

Lev's lips were perpetually parted in a grin. If anything, the monster only confirmed just how deeply he cared about his found family and how much they loved him in turn. Those words would never leave Orianna's mouth, and no matter what he tried to imagine, he couldn't ever visualize the fire mage looking at him with disdain.

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It just wasn't possible.

Well, thank you for that. He took a deep breath and jumped back, avoiding its fangs by a hair's breadth. The final piece of the puzzle just clicked for me.

What was fire?

Lev didn't quite know all the theories and facts about it. If anything, he was quite ignorant about the element. What he did know was that fire was heat, and heat needed something to be produced by. It could be very fast motion, such as his arrows that caught fire after a certain point, or an imbalance of energies, for which he had no examples. Or it could simply be a large amount of energy and its reaction. The possibilities were endless.

Point was, fire needed something to burn, and something more to burn even brighter. Flames created of mana used both air and mana as a fuel, predominantly the latter, but blue fire demanded something else.

Simply increasing the fuel didn't quite cut it. The fires became darker and hotter. That was all. The question was finally answered when he fought the beetle. Willpower was the primary component of higher-tier elements, though the fight itself hadn't revealed anything else. Only that.

Now, he had the answer. Blue fire was, after all, a relatively linear evolution of normal fire. The first step was indeed increasing the fuel being channeled into it, so he did just that with Stargazer's blade. Trying to create blue fire in his armor was going to end horribly for obvious reasons.

A giant amount immediately rushed through the glaive, further increased by its enchantments. All of it gathered in the long blade, as tall as Lev, to cut the monster to pieces. Its color changed in instants, going from pale blue to yellow to dark orange, radiating waves of heat that seared the ground around him.

The dreadwolf chased him in vain, recognizing its mental attacks continuously weakening. Lev's speed was too fast, each of his steps seeing him soaring through the trees while leaving a trail of burning air in his wake.

After he had an adequate amount swirling in the glaive, he focused inward. The aura of the dreadwolf intensified, pouncing at the opportunity, but he paid it no mind. Instead, he double-checked, then triple-checked the final requirement.

It was desire.

Desire was a broad term. What he felt was the need for a goal, the destination at the end of the path. That varied from person to person. Amelia could evolve her fire simply to push herself harder, to prevail where her parents and many others had failed. Orianna's fire, in the form of her fire soldiers, probably reflected her desire to save lives, just as Isabella's fire could evolve in accordance to the necessity of being stronger than everyone else because she was royalty. Just like them, Lev also had a goal.

He really wanted the monster to die.

There wasn't any deeper meaning either. The moment he had set eyes on the dreadwolf, he had declared himself its kind's nemesis. Dread monsters looked ugly, they were extremely dangerous, they were a pain in the ass for humanity, and, above all, they dared to touch his mind. No one dared to mess with his mind.

In a blink, Stargazer's long blade went from dark orange to a brilliant, swirling blue that immediately pushed back the darkness. Lev's mind reeled from the sheer difficulty of maintaining that much blue fire, except his eyes never left the monster that warily retreated.

More fire mana streamed into the glaive. It was becoming exceedingly difficult to control it all when he moved Stargazer into position, prepared for a horizontal swing. Before the dreadwolf could run away, feeling its death swiftly approaching, all of the muscles in Lev's arms and chest tensed. The glaive moved in a wide arc, forming a crescent moon of dense flames in its wake.

In a split second, the attack was ready, and Lev ordered the greatest fire slash he had ever formed to move.

The giant wave of flames that followed reached the monster in the same instant. Lev brought all of his walls and shields in front of him while quickly flying away, but he didn't need to.

Despite being composed of violent blue fire, the slash continued to tear apart the trees and carve a deep gouge as it flew in a straight line, just a few meters above ground.

Then it kept going. And going. And going…

Lev's face was becoming increasingly strange under his armor when Sherron suddenly grabbed him from behind and dragged him up at high speed. They ascended for kilometers in a few seconds, almost knocking him out from the speed, and also revealing that there was something wrong with his body.

Before he could look inward, the sky brightened. Far in the distance, everything turned bright white, yet he still stared with his mouth ajar. It felt like he would go blind if he looked for too long, but the show was only starting.

The white slowly dimmed to reveal a colossal pillar of flames, rising for hundreds of meters. That wasn't the bulk of the attack, however. A rolling wave of normal flames was slowly rushing out from the point of the blast, but before that, several towering shockwaves slammed into them.

"Bubbles," Sherron calmly reminded him. Lev nodded and brought his three bubbles close to him, then formed a larger one around all of them, wincing all the while. A weird lethargy permeated his being, though he ignored it in favor of enchanting the large bubble with a single, giant durability rune, and then dumped a ton of mana in it to overload it to the limit.

A good thing, too, as the wave of fire rolled out in earnest, it also produced searing waves of heat that set dozens of kilometers around it ablaze. Lev quickly held his breath as Sherron did the same, and watched with wide eyes as the real blast passed underneath them, decimating a massive portion of the forest in every direction.

Several smaller waves also flew out afterwards, deafening in their passing. Lev didn't blink to miss a single moment of it, and staggered in surprise when a strong implosion dragged their bubble to the center of the blast.

He got it under control after a few seconds and just… stared. There was little else he could do, especially because another detail had revealed itself.

Stargazer's core was empty. He had unknowingly used nearly half of his own pool, as well as the glaive's entire pool, to power a single fire slash.

It was glorious. It was also something he couldn't replicate again.

Sherron gently lowered him to the bubble's floor as he blinked repeatedly. Moving his limbs was supremely difficult, and every twitch sent a jolt of pain up his brain. Moreover, now that the moment had passed, he could barely keep the bubble afloat, let alone move it around.

"Well, well, well," the Exalted grinned, greatly enjoying his paralyzed state. "Someone learnt the hard way. Again. Like he always does."

"Don't you dare say you disapprove," Lev sent, unable to speak. "Also, what the fuck is happening?"

"Oh, and it's also your first time overtaxing your soul. Aren't you special?" She poked his cheek, probably because of his unfair advantages. Lev didn't mind, anyway. "You are aware of what that is, right?"

"Of course," he replied dryly. "I also have to face it when I use too much of my mana in a short time."

"Ah, of course. Only when you use multiple times more mana than an average mage does it start to set in," she nodded gently, the epitome of understanding. The impression was shattered when she snorted, very much unlike her beautiful appearance. "Either way, your willpower is severely overused, and so is your mind. Creating that much of an evolved element is extremely difficult. What possessed you to try that?"

"I have no idea," Lev sent a mental shrug. "It was quite majestic, though. You can't tell me otherwise."

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