Unlike the previous times where the Ray of Light encapsulated just Adamu, who held Sun Bearer, this time, the Ray of Light was not only large enough to cover the whole Ritual Pattern he had made on the ground, but it was also much thicker and denser, thus causing the Hard Light Construct in the form of a head-sized orb of multi-colored light to exhibit the same thickness and density, hence displaying the distinction of its importance.
Yet it was not just that. The aftereffects of the last Chant/Prayer also lasted much longer.
Still, the aftereffects were just that, aftereffects to awe those who prayed.
To Adamu, it was irrelevant as a common stalk of grass.
No.
All of his attention was settled on the head-sized orb floating right above Sun Bearer because he had to make sure he had not made any mistakes. After all, Ina, The Light of the World, only provided him the energy and nothing more.
If it failed, then it was all on Adamu’s shoulders.
Done examining, Adamu nodded and guided the Sanctuary Core down to the ground and right into the center of the Ritual Pattern he made. In fact, half of the Sanctuary Core went into the earth, while the other half was above the ground.
Once in place, Adamu focused on Sun Bearer and sought the Orb of Light played high above the tree tops. Then, he activated it, causing a soft and thin red Ray of Light to descend straight from the sky.
Though, as Adamu stared and blinked his eyes, no red dot or line was seen on the ground or around him.
“Hmph, of course, I'd miss on the first try.” Realizing the problem, Adamu influenced the convex lens attached to the first Orb in the Sky to adjust its aim.
It still took a few moments for Adamu to find the damn red line since it was a bright day, but once he located it, it was easy to recognize where it needed to go. Nonetheless, what was harder was actually getting the red Ray of Light to land where it needed to be because of the distances between the origin and the target.
Hence, the descending red Ray of Light precariously skipped around the Ritual as any minuscule correction of the convex lens in the sky meant meters on the ground.
In the end, after a bit of fine-tuning, it was done.
The red Ray of Light landed directly on the second Orb of Light, displaying its transparent existence, only to instantly diverge the red Ray of Light into seven parts.
Since he used a red Ray of Light, Adamu instantly noticed where those seven Rays of Light pointed.
The first to be adjusted went to Ina’s Idol.
The second red Ray, directly landed on the half-buried Sanctuary Core, thus turning it somewhat red as well.
The other five were slowly adjusted to create a Pentagram/Pentastar made of light, but since the Ritual had yet to be invoked, nothing but a fancy red symbol appeared on the ground.
Examining the red symbol and the ratios of all its sides, Adamu frowned.
“Should have done this first before drawing the lines on the ground.” Once again admonishing himself, Adamu went around manually correcting everything. Luckily, it was not that hard or time intensive, as he'd been careful when first doing it on bare ground.
Overall, a bit of time was spent on that, and when everything was up to Adamu’s standards, he focused on the Sanctuary Core right in the center of everything.
Waiting for a moment to power up first, Adamu then had the Sanctuary Core extend its presence around the Ritual site.
The way it did that was to bubble with red liquid light because if there was hard light, there also had to be liquid light. As such, the red liquid light began to bubble up from the Sanctuary Orb, only to flow and spread over the ground.
Where it found indentations over the ground, it took on the shape of those indentations. Within moments, the liquid red light had taken on the complete profile of the Ritual Pattern.
Once it did, Adamu took over the controls and slowly contracted the red liquid light such that none got left above the ground. Where the indentations were, the liquid light hardened into squares, circles, triangles, and all the other symbols, thus becoming the foundation on which the Ritual would play out.
That done, he examined everything once more and corrected what he needed to correct. Mostly around the five small orbs inside the five circles representing the Five Basic Principles of Magic.
After that, Adamu focused on the Orb of Light high in the sky and instructed the orb to no longer use just the red wavelength, but all of them, even those human eyes were not attuned to see naturally. At the same time, Adamu thickened the amount of Light emitted out of the Orb, thus transforming the Ray of Light into an actual Beam of Light.
Consequently, the same occurred throughout the Ritual in question, even if to a lesser degree because it was split seven ways. Another consequence of the increased brightness was Adamu losing direct sight of a large part of the Ritual.
Regardless, the Sanctuary Core was where it was supposed to be, and Adamu was where he wanted to be. As such, he crouched and touched the Hard Light Construct that was the Sanctuary Core, resonated his Spirit with it, and gave it a command to fulfill.
“I, Call on Thee, in Ina’s Name, Awaken, Sanctuary.”
Light.
Glorious Golden Light spilled from the Sanctuary Core and soon after from the whole Ritual Pattern, blinding Adamu completely, at least for a short time, but by the time he regained his sight, the Golden Light had dimmed down to bare existence.
However, that was still enough to highlight the Ritual itself.
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Moreover, there was a certain static spiritual feel around Adamu.
A sensation he had not yet felt since he'd been born in this Realm. Yet, despite being very eager to make use of the Ritual, he was still cautious.
First, by examining every inch of the Ritual, all while being extra careful around the outer perimeter of the Ritual site. For there, a barrier existed, stopping anybody unauthorized from entering inside. At least, if they were not too powerful or too skillful because there were limits to how much stuff could be implemented in one small Ritual, especially a Ritual established over one afternoon.
Touching the barrier in question, Adamu instantly noted the slight resistance as his hand passed through.
Nodding, Adamu pushed his whole body through, only to turn around and take a look at the spherical barrier in question. Spherical because a sphere provided the most coverage to the absorption rate of incoming damage, whether it be physical or magical, or some other kind.
Nodding in glee, Adamu found a small stone and threw it at the barrier, just for it to bounce on it and fall to the ground.
“Works…” Adamu confirmed. “The next question would be how much it can stand, but that can wait.”
Passing through the barrier only attuned to him, Adamu went directly for the half-buried slightly golden-glowing Sanctuary Core.
Kneeling and placing his right hand on it, Adamu once again resonated his Spirit with it and all the little features it possessed, which were not as many as he liked, but something is better than nothing in this case.
However, one feature Adamu was adamant about implementing into the Sanctuary Core.
Largely because the whole Sanctuary Ritual was made out of Light itself, thus allowing the Sanctuary one feature usually relegated to a complementary Sub-Core instead of the actual Core, and that feature was stealth.
As such, similar to what Adamu had done to the Ethereal Light Construct on Ina’s Idol, he commanded the Sanctuary Core, hence the Ritual itself, to turn intangible, ethereal.
However, unlike the Ethereal Light Construct on Ina’s Idol, the Sanctuary Ritual was entirely made out of Light itself and thus had no physical anchor. As such, the whole Sanctuary Ritual could not turn intangible. Hence, Adamu made it half-ethereal and half-physical to prevent the Sanctuary from being seen and sensed unless someone of a very high rank knew what to look for or got very close to it. That and being a Light Magic User, a Shadow Magic User, or a Darkness Magic User, since they were very sensitive to all Light-based Magical effects.
There were other ways as well, but Adamu put the three above as the main probable cause if anybody or anything found him inside the Sanctuary.
Feeling safer than ever before, Adamu quickly removed all physical signs of the Sanctuary being present, meaning the indentations over the ground, and directed his attention to the main reason the Sanctuary was built in the first place.
Focusing on his Spirit, Adamu had it resonate with the Realm Grid again. However, just in case, he kept the resonance as low as he could.
Either way, the wet and sticky feeling was gone and replaced by brightness, warmth, purity, protection, and a sense of authority, which wasn't ideal as that still meant that the Mana was colored, thus being harder to shape.
But that was a minor inconvenience compared to no Magic at all.
“Phu… Praise be to Ina and her Sanctification.” Adamu declared with full gratitude behind his words, even if they were not a prayer directly. That done, Adamu relaxed and sat down to enjoy his body saturating his awareness of happiness and pleasure with a chemical cocktail.
Nonetheless, as was usual, all happy things were not to last, otherwise, none would cherish the good things.
“Huh, there is still some time before Noon arrives?” Adamu, with a somewhat lazy expression, realized. “Alright. No more slouching or something bad will come to disprove my acts of comfort.”
“Well… Food, Water, and Shelter are taken care of. For the most part.” Adamu voiced out. “Time to work on tools.” That said, Adamu stood up and focused on himself for a moment mostly to loosen the last inhibitors against Magic usage.
Then, he focused on his Spirit and made it resonate with the Realm Grid.
Slowly, of course. However, the more time Adamu spent without being snatched by some unseen horror, the greater the resonance between Adamu and the Realm Grid became. Thus, it was a no-brainer that the greater the resonance, the greater the amount of Mana pulled from the Realm Grid. Still, regardless of how much Mana Adamu drew, he did not drag the Mana into his Spirit to temper it and color it with his own dye because his future self was evident about becoming an Essence Master instead of a Magic User.
Perhaps it was to preserve the Time Loop that would allow the rise of the First of Men again. But the most likely answer was that even if Adamu managed to take the old path, more pitfalls remained ahead of him. Hence, while a new path was well… new, with its own pitfalls, it did mean that the old ones would be sidestepped.
As such, what Adamu did with the Mana was to channel it into the Pentagram/Pentastar Ritual Pattern below his feet, made out of Light, and it greatly drank said Mana because there was a reason the Pentagram/Pentastar was standard practice to include in a Sanctuary Ritual.
In truth, all a Sanctuary Ritual needed was the outer protection circles to be considered a Sanctuary. Nonetheless, the Pentagram/Pentastar Adamu included became a staple of all Sanctuary Rituals because it could strip all colors, meaning all the foreign influence within the fueled Mana, thus transforming tempered Mana back into Raw Mana.
As such, no matter who or how many used the Sanctuary, there would be no disharmony between the users.
Of course, there were downsides to all this, but the perks outweighed the detriments. Hence, the Pentagram/Pentastar greedily sucked up all the Mana passing… no, gliding through Adamu’s body because of the Pure Essence filling it to the brim, thus manifesting new, yet old sensation, inside Adamu’s Mind and Spirit.
At the same time, the Pentagram/Pentastar activated and drank the incoming Mana, the five small circles found at the tip of every side of the Pentagram/Pentastar, representing the Five Basic Principles of Magic, spread their influence over the incoming Mana, and guided the Mana through every circle at least once, before repeating the process as long needed till all color was gone.
The first circle, the circle representing Conjuring, stripped away the brightness from the Mana.
The second circle representing Alteration, stripped away the warmth.
The circle representing Enchantment stripped away the purity.
The circle representing Evocation stripped away the protection.
The last circle, the circle representing Dominion, stripped away the authority from the Raw Mana.
Of course, since the incoming Mana was likely tempered, and if not tempered, then at least influenced by Ina, The Light of the World, it meant several rotations needed to be concluded.
But no matter how long it took, Adamu would wait gladly for it.
Once every color got stripped away, the Raw Mana was guided into the Sanctuary Core autonomously, and there it would wait till the moment it was needed.
Still, despite the wondrousness of the Sanctuary Adamu had created, it did have one major downside since a Hard Light Construct acted as the Core of the Sanctuary. Unlike using a specially made Core meant for said purpose, after being carefully selected, prepared, and treated from the best materials available, the amount of Raw Mana this Sanctuary Core made out of Hard Light could store was a pittance compared to a true Core.
It is what it is. Adamu thought when he noticed how quickly the Sanctuary Core was filling up.
The Mana quantity aside.
What in Heaven’s Grace was that gliding I sensed after channeling Mana through my body? It felt like my body became the best possible conductor of Mana in existence.
Was there such a thing?
Despite being the one channeling the Mana, Adamu easily put it to the back of his head in favor of searching his memories of anything like Mana gliding through a physical body.