Another few days later, Kane once again found himself inside the Mystic Nexus. His eyes were closed, and his arms were spread wide. Just as before, icy-dark tendrils with maroon cores stretched into the distance and wrapped themselves around softly pulsing lights.

This time around, though, the tendrils looked sturdier and trembled less. After countless hours of practice, he was finally on the brink of breaking through. In the last two weeks, he'd done nothing but practice his breakthrough and boost Luna's cores.

At this point, his last attempt had already been a near success, so he knew he was reaching the precipice.

"Let's go, Kane," he mumbled to himself. "For the gold this time. You have plenty of stages to go in the future, so don't let this one bog you down too much, yeah?"

Slowly but steadily, the tendrils pulled the lights closer, until finally they were no more than a few arm lengths from his body. His tendrils were trembling with effort as the lights baulked against their kidnapping. Kane's brows were furrowed, and his fists balled as his entire body was tensed.

But this wasn't the first time he reached this point. Now he still needed to move these cores into their proper positions.

Slowly, the tendrils began to strain slightly again. Kane's closed eyelids trembled, and the cores began to move. Most of his attention at this point was focused on the blood core right in front of him. The Dreadwolf essence was his most powerful element, and it was this core in which it resided.

Plus, his tendrils contained more Eternal Winter aether than the Dreadwolf equivalent, which made the blood core a little more restless than the other two.

But he'd expected that. Not to mention that he was still expecting another surprise to come out of his Dreadwolf essence, but that would come later.

Currently, his mind pictured the formations that were represented in the Eternal Winter technique, and the Crescent Moon manual.

Breakthroughs to the second stage required the cores to be in very specific formations, which were outlined in second stage techniques and better. That was why those with a first stage technique could only hope to stumble into a working formation.

But the formation was also important for the future, as it had an impact on the future domain one could form. And that was the true virtue of using a fourth stage technique over a second, or even third stage one.

The main reason for this was the unchangeable nature of the formation once it had been formed. Domain's need to be formed inside these formations, after all, and that means a domain needs to be compatible with the previously created formation.

There are some second stage techniques that offer somewhat universal formations, which would work with most domains, but generally, if you create a formation without a specific plan for the future, you'll be limited in your choice of fourth stage techniques when the time comes.

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As for Kane, he had two techniques that provided possible formations. But he chose to follow mainly the Eternal Winter formation, because it was better suited for future integration with techniques of the fifth stage and beyond.

That said, he wasn't following this formation perfectly. Instead, he attempted to find a middle ground this, and the formation described in the Crescent Moon Manual, so that hopefully he could continue to forcefully bring these two techniques as close as possible.

Fortunately, he had Ella's help with this. Together they'd already created a 'middle-ground' formation before he started this whole thing, and that was the plan he was now trying to follow.

And this time, it appeared he was succeeding.

Slowly but surely, the three lights moved to their assigned spots. Kane's trembling increased as his focus began to fray at the edges. This exercise forced him into a state where he couldn't make a single mistake, no matter how small, for at least an hour with every attempt.

Finally, the lights locked into place. For a moment, he opened his eyes as an excited smile threatened to break through his focused expression. He almost allowed himself to relax.

But then he remembered he wasn't done. Instantly, he scowled and tightened his focus again.

Most others would having broken through now, but paragons faced an additional challenge. Any time they attempted to break through, their essence would challenge them.

Suddenly, his blood core flared up, and a howling wolf's head flew out of it, straight at Kane.

At this point, he still had to keep the cores in their current formation and couldn't let himself be distracted. Fortunately, he knew there was no way to avoid the attack, so he didn't even try.

Instead, he closed his eyes again, and once more tightened his current hold on the tendrils and lights. Meanwhile, he mentally prepared himself for what was to come.

Then, the wolf's head crashed into him.

Instantly, Kane was drowned in fear. He gasped, as all his greatest fears over the years played in front of his eyes, as real as if they were happening right at that moment.

Luna's death, his own death, finding his mother was alive, only to discover she wasn't who he believed her to be, and the unreasonable fear that everything he experienced since jumping from that bridge near Riftshade was a virtual reality environment created by Father as one of his sick games.

But the most prevalent was the moment where the Alfheim elf stabbed Luna through the heart with his staff weapon. Her true death.

He knew, that if it wasn't for Archibald's armband, Luna truly would be dead now, and there'd be nothing he could do about it. And that scared him more than anything.

His focus frayed. His mental capacity reached the limit. He tried desperately to ignore these visions, as he knew they were fake. Yet, at the same time, he had to continue keeping the cores in their formation, lest he had to start all over again.

For a few minutes, Kane teetered on the edge. The tendrils began to fray, and everything was about to collapse.

But then it was over.

Kane gasped again when the visions suddenly disappeared, and fear left him again. This time, a relieved grin truly spread on his face and his eyes opened again.

Suddenly, the tendrils connected to his body separated from him, yet they didn't break. Instead, they wrapped themselves around each of the cores even more tightly, becoming like stable prisons to keep them in place.

Then, a flash, and Kane opened his eyes back in the meditation chamber.

His body was filled with power.

* * *

Another few days later, three weeks after Kane began his seclusion, a small group of people entered the decoy camp that Aelia had ordered to be set up at some distance from the base.

They were confident, yet they appeared surprised by the low number of people they found there.

Yet, they never came out again…