The Core of Energy Manipulation.

Two giant hands hovering over an enormous life-like globe where thin strings of milk-white color connected each of the fingers with some part of the globe. Some strings went to land, others to water, some seemingly connected to some part of the atmosphere of the globe, as the clouds drifted by.

For the first time, Tercius asked himself why he settled on a replica of a planet when there existed much larger celestial bodies. Hells, why settle for a replica?

It had felt right in the moment when he made it, that was all. Can I remake a core? Should I remake it at all?

Flu, the chained wisp, was flying slowly between the fingers of the giant hands. If the wisp showed any kind of behavior reminiscent of a sentient being, Tercius would have probably thought that the wisp was amusing itself. Sadly, the only time the wisp seemed to gain a modicum of some kind of spark was while Tercius broke and ripped the chains— and by that time, Tercius was under so much pain that he was not sure if he should trust his senses.

The spherical Core area, splashed with color, was enclosed by the ever-present gray fog on all sides.

Tercius knew that when a skill gained a level, the Core grew by a small amount in every direction. He was able to observe this exact skill Core when the skill broke the barrier and enlarged itself, for the lack of a better description, by a large amount in what felt like an instant.

As far as Tercius knew, a skill level barrier that occurred at every twenty levels was divided into two parts— two different barriers even. The first was the Energy barrier— a barrier that needed a certain amount of Energy to overcome, only to arrive at the second barrier. Tercius was not sure how to properly name the second barrier, but here one needed to use the skill in some other way.

Just like mages used different ways of casting spells— from verbal to non-verbal, from painting to playing with an instrument— with their two skills, this second barrier was overcome by… adding diversity to a skill.

And desire the user has for a skill has a place somewhere in there, Tercius thought. So it's safe to assume that all emotions have an influence. If someone doesn’t want a skill… they probably won’t get it in the first place.

At skill gain, an option would appear: Obtain the skill, Yes/No?

Were-skill was a special skill for being one of the few that gave no option of refusal. But who was to say that this was true? Maybe were-babies were given an option and they took it instinctively— simply because the skill was so powerful. Even without its transformative effects, the skills passives were terrifying. Muscles of steel with no effort? Is there a being that would instinctively refuse that?

Tercius certainly had an option to refuse Language Acquisition when he got it and he was an infant at the time.

He realized that he was procrastinating.

Tercius moved towards Flu, his ‘physical form’ floating to reach the drifting wisp.

Flu, Tercius thought and greeted the peculiar being with a small incline of his head. The being just moved on.

I need some Energy, he thought to the wisp. I'm just going to take a few chains if you don't mind.

Tercius started slowly, just ripping off one chain and immediately taking the Energy it released under his command with Energy Manipulation.

Thinking about the mana exercises that Master Lazarus and Mistress Helfira showed him, he decided to start from the start.

An Energy pulse. There was one immediate difference between Energy and Mana that he noticed. He noted it long before, but it was not important at the time. Now it could be relevant.

Mana behaved more like a gas, while Energy seemed like a stream of water--- even though it looked more like banded rays of sunlight.

The football-sized shape was seemingly solid, like a crystal ball.

Keeping a large part of Energy in his right hand, Tercius used the other hand to destroy and remake the Energy pulse a few times, playing with speed and control as he manipulated the Energy.

Time passed as he played with the Energy, and suddenly he got a strange feeling. He stopped with his manipulation and focused on that sensation, but it was gone when Tercius tried to focus on it. Something was not right.

He resumed his effort with manipulation and the sensation returned. He stopped and it went away.

A few times he repeated the process and the same thing happened every time.

So he tried to do both at the same time. Focus on manipulation and try to see if he could figure out what was going on.

Once more he split his focus into two things and he pressed on. The strange sensation was coming all from around him, he realized after a while. From the entire Core of the skill.

Tercius shaped the Energy into lines, as thin as a hair, then weaved the hair into shapes. A square, a circle, a rectangle.

From two-dimensional exercises, he moved to three-dimensional ones. Tercius gave the Energy shape and destroyed it, over and over again.

He elongated the Energy in two dimensions while making the construct as thin as possible, creating what seemed like a large glowing paper. He moved the Energy paper all around the Core of the skill, folding the paper in every way he thought of--- making the entire exercise much more visually pleasing to him and dare he say it, magical.

Tercius abruptly stopped.

Somewhere around an hour had passed while he did the exercises, Tercius was sure, and he had no more time to do this. He planned to return to this at a later date as he was sure that he was onto something.

That strange sensation from the Core… he would remember it.

All of the Energy he had under his manipulation, he shaped into a ball and let it hover behind him as he headed towards the gray fog.

The previous time when he had too much Energy in him, the Energy had searched for a way out. That way of least resistance proved to be towards the unpacified Core of the skill Energy Manipulation. Tercius figured that what can be done with a giant amount of Energy, can also be done with a tiny amount--- if used properly.

Out of his Energy ball, he took a thin piece and shaped a small arrow out of it. Gently, Tercius pushed it into the gray fog and released it from his active control.

What he was doing now was a technique he developed only in theory--- one based on what accidentally happened that time in the underground Arena of Lissea and his own musings for the past two months.

If his technique ended up not working, he would just have to use brute force and go all crazy on the chains that bound Flu.

A wide grin spread on his face as the Energy arrow seemed to be picked up and carried by a current invisible to Tercius. With glee Tercius thought, Compass to unstable Cores is a go.

He stepped forward into the grey fog and moved after his guide. He wrestled the arrow back to his control and ran in the direction in which the arrow had started to drift. Every once in a while he repeated the technique as he trudged the world of gray fog.

He lost very small amounts of Energy he started with when he found the Core of Energy Sight. A giant magnifying glass. The frame was made of white crystal, while the lens was made of swirling white mists. On a few occasions, Tercius could glimpse behind the swirling mists, but never for long enough to see what the white mists hid.

Tercius left the gray fog and stepped on the ever-shifting lens. Despite what the lens looked like, it was as solid as solid surface as any stone-paved path. Suddenly he felt a pressure on the Energy he managed to carry with him through the gray fog. The Core in front of him was fighting Tercius for the Energy, he saw. He tried to fight for it, to reassert his control--- but as soon as the Energy neared the chaos, the Core of Energy Sight just gobbled up every drop.

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The thing that Tercius encountered previously in Energy Manipulation was present here and now.

Chaos.

The whole center part of the skill was boiling.

It was stupid, he knew, but he to check if everything was the same as before. He pushed his right hand into the chaos and he recoiled from the mind-numbing pain, his whole being screaming to him to get away.

Tercius' testing hand was writhing in agony that pierced into every part of him like a swarm of atom-sized needles.

The pain was the price Tercius had to pay. So much pain.

Time after time, he was exposed to pain that was in some category of its own, something that had made Tercius somewhat dull to its effects--- even in his daily life.

While J'ro was choking him that day, Tercius was honestly surprised by how little impact the pain had on him. He had easily brushed it off, as if it was happening to someone else. It was only when his vision had started going dark that he even thought about reacting.

He was afraid that Mistress Lovela was not wrong about the Well she mentioned.

He was afraid that the problem was with him.

The whole mana system would hurt when the time came and the Well should hurt the most, and in doing so reveal itself. This was what Mistress Lovela explained to him. What if the pain is there and I'm somehow blocking it?

Tercius placed his back to the lens and looked at the gray fog above. As his whole body shivered from the pain he thought about what he was turning himself into, willingly. That led to him thinking about where he came from.

The individual of the world before this one was a guy that shied away from pain, physical and especially emotional— from his early childhood. Not in the sense of running away immediately when it happened, no. When the pain came his way, he endured, and then took a few steps back in anticipation for the next time. Then a few more steps, and then a few more. Eventually, he was beyond the reach of all normal pain.

A preplanned distance.

A raised guard at all times.

As Tercius stared at the gray fog of the Core with eyes wide open and the pain slowly receding in the background, he remembered one of his old childhood wishes.

To be in full control of his body and mind. To feel only when and if he wanted to, what he wanted to, and for whom he wanted to. A silly wish that came out of a conclusion that all adults were supposed to be that way— and those that were not, should be striving to be.

As a child, Tercius had only wanted to be an adult, the best one.

The path that came about from a pure childish desire had a lot of impact on the developing Tercius; even after he realized its impossibility and stopped with the active pursuit of it, it kept having a lot of impacts.

The pursuit of that simple goal had left a permanent mark on him— like all things are wont to do.

That permanent mark was simple. Restraint.

A willingly groomed trait, one that had a natural foothold in his introverted nature.

Tercius chuckled. How things seemed simple when viewed with retroactive eyes.

The strangest thing was that now that his old childhood wish was coming to be realized— at least considering physical pain— he felt afraid of it becoming reality. Go figure.

Enough with the self-psychoanalysis, Tercius thought as he got up to a sitting position. Enduring the pain with a grimace of his face and a loud groan, he stood up. He imagined that this was how it must feel to be ground into minced meat while still alive.

He saw that Flu had made his way to this skill’s Core, which brought a pained smile to him.

Now I just need a colossal amount of Energy to pacify this, he thought as he cradled his painful hand and looked over the roiling center. And this baby should be good to go. Mana Metamorphosis, here I come.

He approached Flu and using just one hand ripped off a chain. Pain shot through his arm, but it was nothing to what his other arm was still experiencing. With Energy Manipulation he grabbed the Energy and held it just enough for the Core to realize that it was there. A second was all it took for the Core to take that Energy and use it.

Then another chain and another after that one.

One chain of Energy did nothing.

Ten chains of Energy was where he saw some progress.

By the time he ripped the chain number one hundred, the chaotic part of the Core had shrunk by ten percent, and he even got a nice surprise that gave him a second wind.

Energy Manipulation (21) is now Energy Manipulation (22).

His other hand joined in on the chain ripping as he used his skill to keep the Energy contained. As more of the chaos was pacified, the demand for Energy spiked.

When he crossed over the halfway line of pacified chaos, just by his visual account, Tercius was not sure if he would have enough time to finish the whole thing if he played it safe.

What held him down was that he kept manipulating the Energy just enough for the Core to have the time to eat it. Tercius was not sure if any Energy managed to escape into his body, but even if it had— he was sure that it was a minuscule amount.

What worried Tercius was that Seliana or Penelope would come searching for him, come morning.

For all intents and purposes, if they entered his room they would find a seizing, or--- gods forbid— an unresponsive body that looked like him on the floor.

He had no desire to scare anyone in that way.

Maybe I should have told them that it was just something that happens to me on occasion? Tercius mused. It's true, so it's not like I'm lying.

As he ripped the chains and fed them to the Core, he debated the pros and cons of pulling back the self-imposed breaks and just ripping the chains with abandon.

He wanted to go for it.

It felt like ages ago that he got his last skill.

He had a dozen reasons that urged him to continue, to abandon all control and finish this thing immediately. On and on, he spun the pros and cons all the while he kept ripping the chains.

I don't know how much time has passed, so… no. I will stop here, he decided, as he made a stop and looked at the job he did so far. The chaos was less than half of what it had been when he arrived hours ago.

Over two-thirds of the Core was now completely calm, compared to the less than a third when he just arrived.

He looked at the hands that did most of the work. Both seemed completely healthy, not a thing visually wrong with them. Both tingled with pain.

He willed himself to exit the Core world and found himself in a black void of his skill Meditation. The pain he felt started fading, and he just enjoyed the soothing sensation for a while.

When he turned off his skill Tercius found himself on the floor, the darkness thick in his room. For a moment he thought he saw something standing over him but when he blinked to clear his eyes there was nothing there.

The blankets seemed undisturbed. Tercius nodded, I did not seize.

He stood up and took a look at the bright night sky. His green eyes twinkled from the starlight of the heavenly field as he searched for the moons. They were still there. Tercius never learned to tell the time using the stars. He had read of a technique of using the horizon, fingers, and the position of the sun, but how was he to use that at night?

For the vast majority of the citizens of the Empire, it was enough to know dawn, dusk, and midday, all of which were dictated by the sun which was visible on most days of the year.

Those who needed a timekeeping device mostly used sundials, but as the name implied sun was a requirement. He had seen water clocks a few times and then when he came to the Pyramid that he saw another device.

An hourglass.

Two clear glass pyramids joined at their tips, that was built in such a way that only a regulated flow of sand could pass through the small joined space in a certain amount of time.

Seliana had bought several for the alchemical lab she was building in her basement--- a terrible idea on her part, one for which Tercius would have words with her--- and one of those hourglasses was a piece meant for measuring twelve hours.

Seliana was still not using them for her brewings, so Tercius had flipped that hourglass just before he left the basement to clean himself up before dinner, somewhere around six past midday.

Tercius quietly left his room and sneaked to the basement. He twisted the top of the light-orb lamp, flooding the dark underground space with light. With wide eyes, he checked and rechecked the time. The small glass notch said that he still had five hours of sand.

"It's just one after midnight. That... felt so much longer," Tercius murmured and went to turn off the light-orb. Five hours, huh? A lot can be done in five hours…

When he came to his room he looked at the bed, then at the blankets.

Bed.

Floor.

Sleep.

Solve the problem.

He took the blankets off the floor and placed them on the bed. He returned the pillow to its proper place and picked up the healing potions off the floor and placed them onto the table.

He made himself comfortable on the bed, used two blankets to cover himself, and finally closed his eyes.

It took Tercius around half an hour, by his count, to find the Core of Energy Sight once more.

The break was a waste of time, but he was glad for it. If he stayed, his hands wouldn't have gotten their deserved respite. The pain was gone, washed away by Meditation, but he felt that they deserved a nice break.

Tercius looked at the chained wisp, a small anticipatory smile on his face. For a while, he thought that he wouldn't make it.

***

A single point of chaos was all that was left of the initial problem. A resistant dot. Smaller than the point of a needle, yet still causing problems.

Persistent little bugger, Tercius thought as he glared at the offender.

He felt tired. It was a long night, but he had almost done it. Just a little more. Why aren't you giving up, little dot? Give up. You alone are all that remains. Sooner or later you will go the way of the Dodo. I want to sleep, little dot. You are keeping me awake for much longer than---

A ripple ran through the skill surprising Tercius for a fraction of an instant. He clamped his hold over the Energy, restoring control the next moment. After that ripple, Tercius felt the skill become more solid in a way it was not before. There it is. The feeling.

He looked at the Energy he had under his control and thought, What do I do with you? It was around what he normally had used while he grew up, a chain of Energy. A level for any skill around level forty-five or more for those below from his experience.

Like a roar of an awakened giant, a loud groan swept over the area--- shaking the Core and churning the gray fog. Tercius stood very still as the vibrations shook him, an instant paralysis taking over his body.

You have learned the skill: Quick Learner! Obtain Yes/No

What?! Tercius's wide eyes observed the name. He had been chasing this skill ever since Perdinar mentioned it, ages ago! It gave---

A wave of vibrations shook the whole world.

You have learned the skill: Small Blade Mastery! Obtain Yes/No

A quake hit the Core, rattling it and Tercius to their very seams.

You have learned the skill: Dexterity! Obtain Yes/No

These are the skills Lux tried to teach me during our training in Nurium! Tercius thought with alarm. What's going on? Why are they---

Once more, the world protested loudly about its very existence while the fog churned.

You have learned the skill: Sneaking! Obtain Yes/No

A second later, another groan swept over the area with a force of a major earthquake, as if intent to show Tercius his place in the world. He saw a momentary light in the distance, the fog obscuring it an instant later.

You have learned the skill: Acting! Obtain Yes/No

Tercius braced himself for the next one. Time passed as he just waited for the next Corequake, actively avoiding looking at the text in front of him.