As the Beating Iceheart shattered, the boundless magic stored for who known how many years was released.

I had just a moment to think that Beating Iceheart was most likely some advanced energy to magic converter, before I felt overwhelmed by sheer volume of the power aggressively boiling around me.

With a flash of insight, I attempted to absorb it like I did when I lost the control of my power before.

Surprisingly, the idea worked - the impulsive-instinctive act actually paid off!

As the energy circulated, I noticed how my body started to slowly increase in size,

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An opportunity to become a giant skeleton instead of a simply large one did not feel attractive at all.

Cursing, I tried to proactively guide the process of absorption in addition to simply moving the power through the meridians.

Splitting the tasks slowed down the process tremendously, not to mention that it felt extremely dangerous to do trial-and-error modifications on the fly. I was working with potential energy that contained all the heat from unknown area, accumulated over an unknown period of time. It could be well on the level of atomic bombs.

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First, I tried to coil the energy wisps tighter together when they formed physical substance, but it turned out to simply help to process along by speeding it up.

Next, I tried to compress it, and it actually showed some promise!

By deeply focusing on my task, I initially failed to notice that I reached the level of precision close to the molecular level.

With random memories and ideas fusing, I started to slightly unravel the matter that made up my bones.

Then I began remaking it piece by piece, using the new energy to help me to create extremely dense filaments that followed the nanostructure of densely packed three-dimensional honeycombs similar to graphene.

It seemed that originally my skeleton followed the structure of the ordinary bones, with cavities, vessels and cells. But in my new state I was not limited to biological constraints, so I simply reformed it into strongest and densest skeleton I could.

The new arrangement consumed the power in extraordinary amounts, and soon, I was not just no  longer growing larger, but I actually started to shrink!

Two and half meters… two meters forty centimeters...two meters twenty-five centimeters...two meters five centimeters.

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Finally, I reached the equilibrium between my size and the new energy influx at the height of approximately two meters, if my estimations were correct.

Soon, my bones were remade, and I refused to allow myself to grow larger.

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I actually wanted a proper body, that would not send civilized sentient beings screaming at first sight.

Well, there could be an advanced society of highly intelligent undead out there, but that probability did not sound too appealing.

So, to make use of the excess available power, I forced it to form the body structures coming after the skeletal frame.

By experimenting I found out that I could change the properties of the matter that I condensed from my energy, and my proficiency and understanding improved by leaps and bounds.

I could use my theoretical knowledge to give a framework to my idea, and as I implemented it, the process could guide itself in reasonable boundaries and even correct the areas I was unsure about.

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Soon, the cartilage that I made as strong and flexible as I could make, formed the joints and intervertebral discs, covered the rib cage and slowly grew the nose and ears as those were given a proper form.

Ligaments and tendons, with strength far surpassing steel cables were attached to joints and held the muscles and organs in place.

Vessels were formed, and soon came the turn of skin, hair and nails.

Hypothetically I could simply form a solid doll-like structure for my body, but I got engrossed in real bioengineering, and decided to go all-out. Especially since I really wanted to have an opportunity to eat, sleep and experience the rest of the pleasures of life again.

While I did not need the cellular structure, I did my best to recreate processes enabling me to digest food and even gain some energy for the body support and maintenance. The body structure resembled a finely made biorobot, with macrostructure containing organs, vessels, muscles and so on, but lacking cells on microscopic level.  

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I left the nervous system for the last.

As I started to create the body, I thought that the fact that I made it from my power would allow me to directly link it to my mind, but it turned out to feel like a suit - comfortable, but not part of myself.

Therefore, as I recreated a brain, I had to break it down and create anew uncountable number of times - to feel the signals provided by the body’s nerves, I needed an interface capable of connecting my mind and body directly.

Soon, an odd organ unlike an ordinary brain was formed.

It was a sphere, with the surface made of incoming and outgoing nerves’ centers. On the outside the axon-like fibres continued into the body, while the inner part of the sphere had the nerves slowly thinning until they became nothing.

There, in the middle of coiled wisp-thin nerve threads, was suspended a tiny piece of compressed energy.

It took most effort to compress energy in my head into the state of being almost solid, but not quite yet, and then achieve its stability.

Unexpectedly, such creation took up most energy, as the more complicated structures I formed, the more energy it took.

The relationship between the matter and magic energy was clearly not purely according to Einstein’s concept of mass–energy equivalence, but took into the account the complexity and possibly even the potential of the individual objects.

Finally, as I secured the brain-sphere that I started to call “mind core” into my skull, I was at the final step.

I connected the mind core to previously prepared nerves that came from and to my body.

And then, I entered hell.