I had no time to ponder the schema that now nestled far too close to my core.

The blast of mana from the bloody thing's death had revitalized my floors, refilling the ambient mana not to where it had been but a more comfortable level, points of awareness once more able to reform and fill in the gaps of my vision. I still wasn't comfortable with the lack of mana present, but it would have to do for the moment. This wasn't exactly something I could risk not being aware of.

My second thought was immediately to my creatures.

Seros and the sarco both sagged in the water, exhausted beyond all my reckoning; Seros from his mana channels scraped until emptier than empty, the sarco with injuries laced over his body. The pitch-shark hadn't even managed to land a single hit to him, pinned as it was in the small room and by Seros' hydrokinesis. Those injuries had all been gained just by touching its void-like skin.

I didn't like that. I didn't like any of this, not about this creature nor why it had attacked me. Underthings were supposed to stay in the Underdark. They'd been banished there, long before the breaking of Aiqith. As a sea-drake, I had been privy to more of the world than little humans could comprehend, and even I didn't know much about the Underdark, nor the beings that dwelt there.

What I did know was that they were supposed to stay there.

I shoved the thought out of my head. No time to concentrate on that.

I flew around to my various creatures, pressing soothing mana into their wounds and refilling their painfully dry channels as best I could—those that had survived the monster's raw presence were mostly evolved, having enough mana to survive being nearly emptied. It was another harrowing thought for me to confront.

My creatures weren't like others. They were born purely of mana, of power; if they were ever fully emptied, they just died. There was no biological matter to fall back on.

Only Seros had a chance of surviving it, being natural born instead of mine, but I didn't know if he could. Mana-exhaustion tended to come into effect when magic users had depleted on fractions of their core, still leaving enough for their body to run, and I had been giving Seros the mana he needed to work. If I hadn't been able to, what would have happened?

I didn't like that thought.

So I ignored it. I was getting uncomfortably good at that.

The sarco hissed, dragging himself off the bottom of the Underlake as my mana wrapped around his injuries, regrowing skin and scales as I poured blood back into his veins. On his tail, where he'd swept it up against the pitch-shark's side, something sharp had torn several spines out; I couldn't regrow those, not with their entire base ripped out. I smoothed over the scales as best I could, regrowing from the divot carved through his flesh; but it looked wrong.

A battle scar, then. The sarco would probably appreciate it.

For now, he just swam slowly back to the end of the Underlake, claws sheathing deep into the stone as he pulled himself out of the water and into the flat entrance to the tunnel that led down a floor, stretching out beneath the quartz-light I'd hung for him. Exhaustion pulled deep at his thoughts as he drifted away.

Seros was much the same, though his injuries were mana-based instead of physical. I pushed more and more mana into him, sending calming thoughts through our connection—not that he was expressively panicked, more because I was a dumbass and concerned about him—as I helped him rise up from the sandy bottom of the Underlake, guiding him to the same exit up a floor. He needed rest, and as much as he was a seabound monitor, it was easier to sleep on land.

So I shoved him with as much gentleness as I could muster, clearing any opportunist roughwater sharks who were too stupid to read the room and just wanted to attack their wounded rival out of the way. Seros bobbed to the surface, blue-green scales flashing in the algae-light as his gills pressed tight to his side. I dragged up a pillar of water and dumped him in a wet, bedraggled heap next to the sarco.

It was a testament to how much they'd put into this fight that they barely glanced at each other and just went to sleep.

My core tightened.

That hadn't been a normal attack. The pitch-shark had been too wrong for me to get a read on it, to understand why it was doing what it was, but it hadn't been here for anything good. Slicing through my bloodline kelp, ignoring all those that didn't attack it, squeezing itself into a space that barely fit its enormous size. Everything was wrong.

Worst of all, the fight hadn't even strengthened me; all the mana I'd gotten from its kill was what it had absorbed from me, even less with what it had managed to… digest before we'd killed it.

But there were some good signs.

Most of the mana it had absorbed had been from my ambient store and Mayalle's contributions. It had drained my creatures, yes, but not for the majority; too flighty, not as convenient as the stuff swimming around it.Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

So when it had died, that mana had been released in a blast, but not all of it had gone back to my ambient clouds. Quite a lot had gone into the creatures who had won the fight.

And messages crawled across my core.

Including one I'd been rather excited about for quite some time.

Your creature, a Silver Krait, is undergoing evolution!

Please select your desired path.

Sun-Banded Krait (Uncommon): Returning to its roots, it releases blast of light to distract and confuse its prey, darting in to inject its incredibly potent venom. In watery deeps where light does not reach, it reigns.

Fanged Sea Snake (Uncommon): Forgoing land entirely, it darts through the water with renewed speed and purpose. Lined in fangs repurposed as spines, it warns all creatures around it of a toxin that gives no mercy.

Fledgling Sea Serpent (Rare): Held aloft by dreams of larger seas, it terrorizes those around it with its superior mass and strength. All but the largest flee before it, and only those with knowledge of the past remember how enormous it will grow.