Pulsing a wave of mana outward, Astaroth focused on every particle of mana in a five-hundred-meter radius, extending his focus as far out as he could, without losing his attention to detail.
From that point, he could sense everything. Whether it be the mana in the air, flowing to the wind, or the earth mana particles, rising with the dust of combat, he felt it all.
Falling into a hyper-focused trance, all the sound stopped reaching his brain, as his mind cut out any stimuli that didn't come from mana. With this, his brain started analyzing every particle it could sense, finding their differences.
In a matter of seconds, he was able to lock onto the essence of the corruption. He already knew it stemmed from demonic mana, leaking into their plane, but there was something else to it.
The demonic mana was acting as an inhibitor on the monsters' brains, keeping them in a state of permanent confusion. It was also making the monster stronger, acting like a steroid on their bodies.
This explained how they gained the extra levels and grades, and why they were all acting so brazenly. The fog on their minds was keeping them from feeling danger, even when they were dying.
But Astaroth frowned.
Those particles of demonic mana were so deeply ingrained into the brains and bodies of these monsters, he couldn't possibly affect it from the outside. He needed something that would affect deep inside their bodies.
But he thought of something that might go around this.
'Aether is naturally purer than mana. What if I used Aether to excite the demonic mana into combusting itself?'
He knew this would inherently be harder to accomplish than it sounded. Controlling Aether was still hard for him.
Up to now, the most he could manage was to make Aether, or gather it, and immediately consume it into spells. That didn't require as much control as what he needed here.
Astaroth compressed some of his mana into Aether particles, only making two for his test. Once they were compressed, he tried controlling the Aether, to send it into agitation, so he could recreate the earlier phenomenon of ignition.
But try as he may, the Aether particles refused to follow his instructions, simply floating around in front of him, waiting to be consumed or dissipated.
After a minute of fruitless coaxing, Astaroth was on the verge of screaming in anger at the two little particles of pure white floating in his sight.
"Come on, stupid Aether! Do what I'm asking!"
But nothing changed.
His meld with White was about to end, so he undid the fusion, summoning White through Soul Manifestation, consuming the two Aether points and some. When he saw the Aether reacting to the spell consuming them, he clicked his tongue.
Opening his eyes momentarily, he noticed the circle around him had shrunk quite some distance, and the grey alpha had some wounds on him that looked like they would need treating.
'I need to make this work now, or start slaughtering monsters again.'
Astaroth believed melding with Luna would raise his chances of success, so he did so.
Feeling his body chance once more, he directed his thoughts to the doe now fused with him.
'Luna. Do you know how to control Aether directly?'
Luna was still young, and hadn't learned how to communicate with words, yet. But she was able to communicate through images, like sharing her thoughts.
Astaroth had an image of her being confused, flash in his mind, so rephrased his question.
'Can you manipulate Aether, other than just accumulating it? I need to control Aether to perform something that could save us a lot of trouble. Can you help me?'
A series of images and emotions scrambled inside his head in response, and Astaroth almost passed out as a result. Whatever Luna had tried passing on, it was too much for Astaroth in that short of a message.
Once he caught hold of his footing again, He tried processing what images he remembered.
It wasn't easy. It was like he was trying to solve a riddle that needed words, with only images meaning those words.
And Astaroth sucked at riddles.
After piecing together a few images for about thirty seconds, he felt a nudge on his shoulder. Opening his eyes, he noticed the tired and worried look of the grey alpha.
The circle around them was now nearly gone, and the corrupted monsters were about to reach them.
'I have to make an attempt, right now.'
Focusing his mana into itself, forming some Aether, Astaroth practically emptied his mana reserves. Once the Aether was formed, floating around his head, he did the only thing he could think of.
He pleaded.
'Please, Aether. I need to do this, or I'll have wasted the lives of these wolves for nothing.'
Keeping in his head the image of his mana exciting the ambient mana into combusting, he kept his eyes closed, hands clasped together like a prayer.
Because of this, he didn't notice when the Aether particles started spreading out over the basin, landing on each corrupted monster.
It wasn't only once he started hearing shrieks of pain that he opened his eyes.
On the ground, covering the basin's lower part, all the corrupted monsters were writhing in pain, screeching out unnaturally. Coming out of their bodies was black steam, which was accumulating around thirty meters above the ground, forming a ball.
Once this black steam stopped coming out of the monsters, silence covered the area, with the normal monsters sniffing at the motionless creatures.
Astaroth scanned some of them, wondering if he had killed them. But the result was even better.
After scanning a few of them, he was able to confirm that they had been cleansed. The black demonic mana that had been everywhere in them was gone, and their bodies seemed in shock.
But Genie started growling at the ball of black steam over their heads.
The black orb was slowly spinning, its surface in constant motion, like someone had blown black smoke into a transparent balloon.
Astaroth tried scanning it, but nothing appeared. But when he looked at it with his mana sense, his face palled.
This was all the demonic mana that had corrupted the monsters, and it was still active!
Astaroth did not want the mana to suddenly reintegrate the vulnerable monsters on the ground, so he tried shooting an Aether-boosted Moonbeam at the orb, to destroy it.
But when the beam passed through the orb, it scattered, before reforming into a ball, and suddenly lunging at him.
'Shit!'
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