"Instead of letting the energy flow through you, control the threads from the orange core to create a barrier around your body. While the red core boosted your perception and innate abilities, this experience will reinforce your strength, defense, and consolidate itself as an impenetrable barrier."

I picture the orange threads intertwining with the insects' limbs earlier, making them so tough that I had to use my full power to break through them.

The threads of orange light permeated from their cores and consolidated around their exoskeletons to create a barrier around the creatures.

"So, like a Qi barrier?"

Ember nods and throws the fragment he's holding into his mouth, swallows it, then replies.

"Kind of. Watch me, then try to replicate what you see. This is going to be a far slower process, and a lot more painful too."

His eyes light up with orange light, then slow-moving orange threads of divine energy start to move from his chest to permeate throughout his body.

They slowly begin to wrap around his arms and legs, creating a thin layer of dense orange gravity surrounding his body, moving over his skin like a very viscous liquid.

My gaze tracks his vitals while his MP and HP spike up and down as his body heals at a much more rapid rate than it did when consuming the red cores.

It takes almost 5 whole minutes before the orange energy surrounds his entire being, then another 5 for it to dissolve away and fade into the air.

A tiny layer of orange light is left behind inside his crimson aura when he looks up at me with a grin.

"Remember, the first half is the hard part. Make it through that and the rest is easy."

I take a deep breath while staring off into the endless sky and swallow an orange fragment of my own.

At first, it feels just like the reds.

A surge of heat ripples through me, and momentarily, my vision even turns bright orange as well.

I counteract it with my all-seeing eye and multiple buffs to stay fully conscious, but it doesn't matter much once the orange threads of energy begin to spread throughout my body.

They're extremely hot, giving the perception of millions of molten slithering serpents digging through my flesh beneath my skin.

Instead of the evenly spread, fast-moving energy of the red cores, this one gives an entirely different feeling.

Coarse, slow-moving threads of heavy reality-bending energy intertwine themselves with my muscles, blood, and bones while spreading to the tips of my fingers and the bottom of my toes.

Watching this process take place from an outsider's perspective on Ember's body was a totally different experience than having it happen to myself.

What took just 5 minutes or so for him feels like hours are slowly passing by.

My entire body glows with a bright orange light, and dozens of mana crystals are being plundered to provide for the massive amount of regeneration being done on a cellular level to every square centimeter of my body.

I want to yell out and scream through the pain, but that would break my concentration. The only thing I can do is stare off into the clouds, keeping the faint black outline of obsidian trees in my consciousness while the heavy chain below me swings in the wind.

My skin is melted as an impossibly dense, slow-moving layer of orange divine energy sets itself around my skin, eyes, and even hair.

It feels as if I weigh ten times more than I did moments ago. Gravity is pushing me down much harder than it was before I ate this fragment, and an immense pressure is pounding down on not only my body but my mind as well.

It feels as if days have passed before the pressure begins to go away, but in reality it's only been a few minutes.

Once it does, it feels as if I can finally breathe. The 5 minutes as the pressure subsides and the orange shell dissolves into the air, watching the threads fade away, is one of the most relieving feelings I've ever felt.

I let out a long satisfied sigh and fall to my back once the process is done.

Small threads of orange light still shimmer in my skin and make a small shell-like aura around me, burning my flesh and tearing me apart from the inside out; however, the minuscule pain now compared to what it was moments ago is nothing.

It feels relaxing to only have to regenerate at this slow rate.

I lay on my back for almost half a minute, breathing heavily, then let out a laugh and sit back up.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

"You weren't kidding! That was a lot more difficult than I thought it would be..."

Ember grins, then sits back as well.

"We'll do another round in a few hours. It's going to take a while for the excess to leave our bodies, and we both need time to recover."

He's right.

Despite my mythic grade self-regeneration skill working at its maximum capacity, there is still fatigue leftover from that excruciating experience.

After just one stone, it feels like my entire aura has changed. I feel much more rooted in reality. The threads of energy close to my body feel much thicker and heavier. On top of all of that, looking down into my chest I can already see shimmering orange threads slowly floating in and out of my red core.

Despite this, I feel a bit frail. If I ate another stone right now, the experience would be far worse than what I just experienced.

It takes a full 5 hours for me to fully recover and feel like my mind and body are back to 100% again.

While I rest, occasional swarms of insects fly by headed toward the island in the distance, and Ember picks off the stragglers to collect more orange cores.

Then, we repeat the process again.

My skin, muscles, and bones are slowly melted by millions of orange microscopic threads and regrown to harden and reinforce my body from the inside out, leaving me sweating and out of breath with a smile on my face when it's all over once again.

I feel heavier, denser, and stronger once I get a few minutes to recover.

This time, it takes just under 4 hours before I'm ready to go again.

If there was a sun in the sky, it would be rising and setting multiple times while the insect creatures completely ignore us, flying by to flock into the obsidian death trap of a forest.

The time-gap between orange fragment consumption becomes less and less.

The excruciating slow-moving pain that comes with each one becomes far more bearable.

So much so, that I don't have to use my full concentration when the orange threads stay behind more and more, intertwined inside my flesh after every cycle.

My skin, muscles, and bones harden to the point where they feel like they're not even organic tissue anymore.

My rate of self-regeneration increases even when I'm not consuming stones, and the heavy presence that ripples like gravity waves while consuming fragments starts to lag behind to be present even when all of the excess energy has faded away.

My core and aura fade from a deep crimson to slowly shift toward a bright orange.

Over 5 full days pass before I'm capable of consuming fragments without having to wait any extra time in between.

Orange threads still slowly fade off my body each time, but the amount is almost none compared to the amount of energy I would lose on the first couple stones.

It feels exactly like the breakthrough point I hit with my red core.

I just need a few more, and there will be a monumental change.

"Almost there..."

I stare off into the endless sky that looks exactly the same as it always has with black trees stretching up into the unknown while eating another fragment.

The process is soothing now.

Another thick orange layer of shielding is added to my body to make it denser and stronger than before.

I take deep breaths while this fragment dissolves and the last remnants of my red core are overwhelmed by the thick orange threads.

My heart beats in my ears loudly while a bright orange aura envelops my entire body and I stand from my seated position while a gravity wave of orange energy pulses from my chest.

I grin while staring down at my hands, then up at the sky again.

A small group of insects flies by, soaring through the air on their way to the floating island.

I count 7 of them, then jump off the swaying chain I'm on to follow them.

My strides filled with wind magic leave behind orange footprint shaped dents in the air. They begin to fade once I'm far enough away.

I pull out my sword from my item storage and orange threads slowly creep up it once my grasp tightens around it.

I fill the blade with Soul Energy. The dark mana and Qi are reinforced with millions of orange threads on the outside of the sword, and its weight feels as if it's been multiplied many times over.

This feeling of strength is far greater than the intensity I felt while wielding this same soul energy in my greater form days ago with nothing but a red core.

I could activate that buff now to increase my strength even further, but it doesn't seem worth the hassle.

I grin while slashing through 6 of the insects in just two swings of my blade.

Their outer shells are obliterated by the weight of the hot Soul Energy in my blade.

My speed is still similar to theirs, so one of the bugs manages to escape my second swing.

It charges in to avenge its fallen allies, attacking my unguarded back, but its entire arm shatters to pieces as it makes contact with my new skin-tight unbreakable defense.

Its antennae move rapidly and its beady black eyes widen while I turn to slice it in half.

While the insects fall, dissolve, and I collect their cores, I do some tests with my blade.

As long as I keep it connected to my grasp, the orange threads stay intertwined to strengthen it from the inside and create an orange barrier around it.

However, when I let go, the threads retract and fade away to leave it in its natural state.

I place it back into my item storage with the newly collected cores and float back over to Ember to wait for his orange core to awaken as well.

While my sole focus these past few days was absorbing fragments, he farmed many more stones for us, leaving hundreds of excess in my item storage.

It takes about 6 more hours for his core to awaken; in the meantime, I practice on the insects that pass by.

I thought that by now, after awakening my orange core too, I'd understand why they're so eager to send themselves into that death trap of an island, but their infatuation still is a mystery to me.

Ember tests out his new powers too on some of the nearby monsters, punching through the tough outer layers of exoskeletons with nothing but a soul energy-powered fist, not even in his hybrid form.

I join in the fun as well.

His fists and my sword break through the tough outer shells of these insects, and the image of that yellow-cored lizard crunching through dozens of them in a single bite flashes through my mind with every kill.

We slowly make our way back toward the island filled with obsidian trees.

A battle strategy slowly begins to form in my mind of how we'll take on one of those lizard creatures together, but my concentration is broken once I see the purple barrier beneath the floating island appear out of thin air again and ripple with waves of gravity just like it did when it stopped the island from falling down into the depths of the sea before.

It feels and looks different this time.

Instead of stopping the island from falling, it looks as if it's exerting force to push it upward instead.

A loud echoing creek, and the jingling of a long chain below the island hits my ears.

I have to make a split-second decision and change my plans once I see the island of black trees and golden fruit start to move upward again toward the endless sky above where it came from.