Chapter Sixty Four
Joe woke this morning having slept in much longer than he expected with Kilniara slipping into bed with him. He jerked awake in surprise, but not defensively, then quickly sighed with a grin as he sidled into her side just as she did to him.
“Mmm,” Kilniara moaned as she cuddled into his side, “Mms nice.”
Joe grunted and chuckled, “Yeah.”
The remained silent, basking in each other’s presence and Joe almost fell asleep again while holding her but when she wiggled and slid into him again, he woke and stretched a bit before he smiled and looked at Kilniara.
“Time to practice a bit?”
Kilniara sighed, “Do we have to?”
“You don’t have to. I’ll do it alone.”
“Good!”
Joe chuckled then began emitting mana and playing with the mana points. He did this until he ran out of mana then began using his points as well, both spiraling them around in various ways as well as emitting from them. He was still concerned about emptying them, so didn’t emit until they were empty, but did emit. He began adding other aspects to his mana point manipulation as well. He did take some time trying to stuff mana back into the point as well, and found himself surprised when he was able to sort of overload it. The mana escaped from the mana point after he stopped shoving it in, but it did over fill. He also began attempting to manipulate the point itself, compressing, stretching, and interacting with the entire point itself as well as doing something with it's interior and wall, not simply its position. He almost gave up but after a good ten minutes of trying, he began to notice the shifting in other ways he could quite grasp. He could see it physically changing and soon found himself playing with all his points, manipulating them in as many various ways as he could. After a few seconds, he stopped with a silent curse and separated out the points to never receive any manipulation, hoping he’d still have a decent control. That… was dumb. He sighed but turned back to his exercise.
He continued in this way for a bit of time, finding it even relaxing, not really bothered by the effort, But after several moments, he suddenly felt exhausted, weakened in a way that was so unusual that he was easily able to tell that he’d never experienced it before. The exhaustion was a pain that shuddered through him in a way he couldn’t understand, but it felt very much like something from exhaustion due to exercise. It was painful, but a good form of pain. The pain of sore muscles.
He stopped playing with his mana points but took a lesson from his physical exercise and slowly released his points, letting his manipulation of the points release slowly. He no longer attempted to squeeze or shift them, but did clamp down on them and slowly, ever so slowly over several minutes, relaxed his grip upon them until they were fully released. The release shivered through him like over stressed muscles, cramping uncomfortably but in a way that wasn’t body. Something weird was … feeling something.
Joe sighed and groaned simultaneously and released his manipulation of the mana points although he still emitted mana from deep in himself. As he did so, the strain that he felt eased considerably but he still felt a bit of … cramping. He then remembered what he’d learned about cores yesterday. He tried to shift towards his bag, but Kilniara moaned a bit and Joe stopped. He smiled a bit then hunched his shoulder, interrupting Kilnara’s rest.
“If you don’t want to move, then could you get me a core from my bag?”
Kilniara grumpled but rolled around in his arms and reached over the edge of the bed. As she did so, she suddenly slipped over the edge and he quickly slipped a hand around her waist, catching her and pulling her back into himself. She froze as she felt her rear slide against his belly. She stifled a moan as she turned to look back over her shoulders at him. He shivered himself, staring into her smoldering eyes and felt the small spike in his belly as he realized she’d shrunk her tail down when he’d grabbed her.
They both stared at each other for several moments, both eyes locked on each other until Joe drew in a shuddering breath. When he took that breath, her eyes fluttered and she growled as she pressed back into him. He closed his eyes, freezing and pushed her away firmly, but without rancor. She mewled softly but pulled away as well before they both finally wrestled themselves under control. She twisted herself around back to him, and holding the core he wanted before pulling herself back into his arms. Joe found himself distracted for a few moments, both cuddling and coming back down from their passion. They unwisely kissed when she returned to his blankets and arms, which did nothing to cool their passion, but they did end their kissing and were able to return to training, Kilniara joining him now that she was quite wide awake.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Joe rolled away a bit but Kilniara kept herself plastered against his side and emitted her mana upward and away from him. Joe played with the core, emitting mana through it and found that doing so through the core actually proved a bit easier. He alternated between emitting with and without the core and found that it actually was a bit easier with the core. Without the core, he had to do the typical full body squeeze to get any mana out. It might have been a bit easier than the day before, so he did feel hopeful that he was improving.
However, when he emitted mana through the core, he found that somehow it connected to his mana in a way that seemed to pull it from him a bit easier than when he tried to do it alone. It just seemed to stream from him easily, quickly. He played with the core until he ran out of mana, then realized that it seemed like he’d been able to emit mana a bit longer than normal.
He was excited to compare the two, but as he was empty, he returned to his point manipulation and groaned when he began it again. He relaxed, pulling back a bit and felt relief. He took a few deep breaths and waiting for a moments before trying again, this time very slowly engaging with his mana point manipulation. He started slowly, and felt the tension rapidly grow on whatever muscle he was using to manipulate his points. He practiced between simply moving them and actually changing them and found moving to be very easy still, although his mana muscle still twinged with minor cramps. The pain and tension grew much quicker when he returned to actually messing with the points themselves, and did so as long as possible before the pain drove him back from it and he gasped a few times when he’d finally slowly released them, returning to the comfort of completely rested muscles.
He allowed his manipulator to rest and simply returned to playing with the points’ position in space, allowing himself to rest but even just positional movement was enough to strain him a bit and he had to play with his points a bit more slowly than normal, working on orbiting them. He found that doing any form of complex orbital mechanics strained him, and he had to do simple work with them. He ended up quitting half way through, too exhausted and strained. He lay quietly in bed for a bit, breathing deeply before flipping open his status and looking at his MP and just watching it slowly fill. He was only a few moments away from it filling and watched it fill. He didn’t really feel anything when it filled. He paused a bit, trying to feel any feedback from it, but didn’t notice anything and began simply emitting mana again.
This time, however, he simultaneously emitted mana through the core and through himself, his central organ, without the core. Or, at least, he tried to. He felt like he was shifting against a massive weight that could not move, his mana desperately charged for the core held in his hand and he had to fight to force it back to emit from his core. He had almost given up on trying to do both at once when he felt the obstruction shift, somehow. He grinned knowing something happened and drove himself to keep trying, grunting even harder in a full body crunch that even tied down his breathing as he pressed wildly against whatever it was that was keeping him away from emitting. He pressed the stream down his arm towards the core while also sending one towards his heart. Separating the streams equally proved difficult and he had to end up sending a bit more towards his personal core to compensate as the core in his hand seemed to draw his mana in naturally.
He finally carefully measured the mana going to both places by feel as he couldn’t judge anything visually until he saw what was coming out of both locations. He was surprised to see a much denser and greater stream of mana coming from the mana core than from his own, and he shifted the amount of mana he was sending to both until they emitted equally. When he had done so, it was easy to tell that he was sending quite a greater quantity of mana to his own heart’s core than to the slime core he held in his hand. He compared the two and was surprised to find such a difference. Another question for Garnedell. Maybe it’s taking mana from the core as well? Adding the core’s mana to my own? Then… can I empty a core? What happens if it empties?
Joe’s mind ran with questions but he pushed them aside and returned to playing with mana emissions, seeing how they would interact with each other. He even added a third mana stream from his other hand, which proved incredibly difficult and he felt another strain come upon himself that was a bit different than the one that came from mana manipulation but was obviously related as the mana manipulation muscle twinged in sympathetic pain. He wanted to do so much more, intertwining the three streams and even just the two, as even the two had shown interesting properties, but the triple emissions emptied his mana so rapidly he wasn’t expecting it and felt a very odd clenching throughout his being and more mana erupted from his core even more powerfully and denser, coming out all three streaming locations. The shock of it interrupted his emissions and he stopped, shocked. I was empty! I know I was. How did I …
Joe’s thoughts bounced rapidly, attempting to understand what had happened before he shoved his curiosity aside and tried again. He once again engaged his full body clench but found that nothing was happening at all. He rested again, grimacing at the failure and frowning in confusion. He took a few deep breaths then tried again, clenching as hard as he possible could, and immediately stopped in surprise again when a wave of mana wafted from his body before squeezing down to three streams: one from his torso, one from his empty left hand, and the last through the core in his right. His surprise almost interrupted him again but he clamped down on it and continued emitting.