Chapter 21: [Duchy of Inferna] [12] [mana core]
It had been two weeks since Evelyn began to teach me.
Those two weeks had been the most arduous, exhausting, and enlightening period of my life.
Every day began at dawn and continued until my muscles gave out, until my mind grew too clouded to control another drop of mana.
Evelyn’s house was like a second home to me now; every blade of grass in her garden knew the taste of my sweat and frustration.
However, this arduous process had begun to bear fruit.
Using two different mana sources at once no longer felt like speaking two different languages.
Instead, I was like a craftsman who could use his right and left hands for different tasks simultaneously.
With one hand, I could form a spear of pure, destructive flame fed by my internal mana, while with the other, I could weave an invisible armor for myself from the wind I drew from the air around me.
Evelyn’s philosophy of "feel, don’t manage" had seeped into my very veins. I no longer fought with mana; I danced with it.
On that day, as the sky once again cloaked itself in the unique orange and violet hues of sunset, our training seemed to be at an end.
The thought that I would have to return to the castle and face Aron Inferna’s judgmental gaze landed like a hard punch to my gut, piling on top of my exhaustion.
I was sitting on the ground, trying to regulate my breathing.
Evelyn, as always, watched me with flawless elegance.
"Not bad, novice," she said, and though her voice retained its usual mocking tone, there was a different glint in her eyes.
"You’re no longer scattering your power around like a clown. Your mana efficiency is at least ten times what it was on the first day.
The preparatory lessons are pretty much over."
"Preparatory?" I asked, breathless. "I’ve been living through hell for two weeks, and you call that preparation?"
Evelyn let out a haughty laugh. "Of course it was preparation, little one. I couldn’t very well try to teach an illiterate man to write poetry, could I? Everything we’ve done until now was just laying the stones on the path to the main event. Now, the time has come to take the step that will make you a sorcerer."
I looked at her with curiosity. What else was there?
"I am going to teach you to form a Mana Core," she said, her voice suddenly serious, as if she were speaking of a sacred text. "We are going to gather all that unruly, scattered energy in your body into a single point and transform it into a permanent, stable, and exponentially growing source of power."
Her words exploded in my mind like a bomb. A Mana Core... I remembered the unique power I once possessed, the immense power I used when I fought Dr. Aris, the power that made me feel as if I were the strongest and most supreme being in the world.
"As you are now," Evelyn continued, walking slowly around me, "you’re like a sack full of precious gems, but left wide open. You’re powerful, yes."
" But your power is constantly leaking, it’s inefficient, and it has a limit. The Core, however, is like a furnace that takes those gems, melts them down, and constantly produces new ones. It becomes a part of you. It breathes with you, it grows stronger with you."
Excitement and fear gripped me at the same time. "How... how do we do that?"
"It won’t be easy," she said flatly. "It will even be dangerous. For a normal person, forming a mana core is a meticulous and perilous task that takes years. "
"But in your case, things are completely different; you have not one, but dozens of different types of mana moving within your body."
" Which means it is dozens of times more dangerous. You will focus all the mana in your body—both internal and external—to a single point just below your heart and compress it there. Your body will resist. Your mind will want to wander. The slightest loss of concentration could cause an uncontrolled mana explosion."
" In the best-case scenario, you’ll be crippled. In the worst... well, you’ll have carved a nice crater into the Duchy’s land."
I swallowed. The risk was even greater than I had imagined. But I had no intention of turning back. This was the path to power.
"Tell me," I said with determination. "What do I need to do?"
For the first time, a look of genuine satisfaction appeared on her face.
"Now that’s the spirit I like. Listen to me carefully. Close your eyes and sit cross-legged. Forget everything you have learned until today. Forget commanding, directing, shaping. Just feel, and gather."
I did as she said.
I closed my eyes and cleared my mind. First, I felt the familiar, burning internal mana flowing through my veins.
I didn’t force it anywhere; I simply acknowledged its existence. Then, I focused on the dozens of different types of mana circulating within my body without mixing.
Then I turned my attention outward: to the touch of the wind on my skin, to the whispers deep within the earth, to the ocean of mana stretching to infinity in the air... And I invited them in as well.
Dozens of immense powers converged inside my body.
One was hot and personal like a volcano, the others cool and universal like the ocean. Normally, I would control them separately, but now, following Evelyn’s instructions, I let them all flow freely within me.
"Now... merge them," Evelyn’s voice whispered, as if it were coming from inside my own mind.
"Don’t let them fight each other. Understand that they are dozens of different rivers from the same source. Unite them in a single vortex."
It was nearly impossible. As the dozens of powers collided, a civil war erupted within my body. My veins stretched as if they would tear, and my bones creaked. The pain was about to carry my consciousness away.
"Endure, kid! Embrace the pain! It is the herald of change! If you let go, it will destroy you. Don’t try to control it, just be the center. Let them revolve around you!"
With every passing second, a tremendous energy gathered around me.
As the limits of my body were pushed, the wooden walls of Evelyn’s house began to tremble with the crackling mana storm.
The windowpanes vibrated with a low hum, and the branches of the trees in the garden swayed in a violent, invisible wind.
The chaotic mana within me was echoing in the outside world, with waves of multicolored energy swirling around me.
I gritted my teeth, the taste of blood filling my mouth.
I stopped trying to control it. I held my sense of self steady, like a rock where the raging rivers met.
The mana began to spin around me. Hot and cold, destructive and creative, internal and external... It all became a chaotic vortex being pulled toward a single point.
"Good! Now compress that vortex! Make it smaller! Try to fit all that chaos onto the head of a pin!"
This was the apex of pain.
It felt as if the entire universe was collapsing into a single point inside me.
My consciousness was fading in and out. Just as I was about to give up, Evelyn’s first lesson came to my mind: "Power lies not in size, but in efficiency... Sometimes a single spark can ignite a forest."
I didn’t try to compress the vortex with all my strength. Instead, I showed it a home.
I whispered to the empty space below my heart. I told it that was where it belonged. The chaos paused for a moment. Then, as if it had found its way, it began to flow toward that point.
The pain gave way to an indescribable pressure. And then... BOOM!
A massive explosion echoed around Cassian.
The intense energy of the core’s formation spiraled out of control, blasting the walls of Evelyn’s house outward.
The wooden frame splintered with a deafening crack, the windows shattered into dust, and a portion of the ceiling collapsed inward.
The garden outside, as if it had been pummeled by a giant fist of power, was a wreck of torn-up earth and scattered plants.
Evelyn was thrown back by the shockwave of the blast, but she managed to protect herself with a magic shield at the last second.
As the cloud of dust and smoke slowly settled, Cassian’s motionless body was revealed at the center of the explosion. He was lying on the ground, unconscious and completely drained.
Evelyn’s usual composure cracked for a moment. Her eyes widened in alarm. "Cassian!" she cried, rushing to his side in a panic.
Kneeling in the middle of the wreckage, she placed her trembling hands on Cassian’s neck and chest, checking his breathing, the rhythm of his heart.
It was beating steadily.
There were no fatal wounds on his body. He was simply... spent.
When Evelyn’s attention shifted to the area just below his sternum, she felt the faint but steady glow of pure mana energy. He had done it. He had formed a Mana Core.
She took a deep, relieved breath, the tension in her shoulders vanishing instantly.
A complex expression appeared on her face as she looked at her ruined home and the incredible boy before her. She leaned down gently and brushed the hair away from his face.
"You truly are an incredible kid," she whispered.