"What's the next step for the paper?" Alwin asked.

"The next step is porosity and particle retention—fancy terms for how many holes there are and how well they trap particles. Picture porosity as the number of holes: more holes mean mana flows through easily. Particle retention is about how well the filter paper traps particles, which depends on the pore size. Bigger pores let bigger things through, while smaller pores let smaller things through. It's self-explanatory. Once you've got the hang of that, the fun part starts. Don't worry, I won't overload you, so have fun!"

Alwin closed his eyes and re-entered his core. The piles of paper that had littered the inside earlier had vanished, much to his relief. There was no way he was going to be able to fish out that much waste. Okay, there probably was a way, but he was just too lazy to do it. Within his Core, Alwin conjured up a single sheet of paper, a pair of mental hands, and one handy-dandy remote controller. The hands grabbed the items as they appeared mid-air, lest he wanted a broken remote and soggy paper.

Once again, Alwin fiddled with the remote, fingers dancing over those smooth grey buttons, until he found the one that opened up the 'Settings' menu on the piece of paper. It was obvious now that he looked back at it—there was an aptly named 'Settings' button, but in his defense, he pretty sure it had spontaneous appeared the moment he was on the verge of chucking the remote into his mana pool.

This time along with 'Wet Strength', there were additional items in the menu: Porosity and Pore Size. So since larger porosity allows more mana to flow through, Alwin decided to crank that slider all the way to the right. Alwin paused for a brief moment to think before scrolling down to the next setting. Smaller pore size meant that only smaller things can pass through, so he shifted the slider all the way to the left, but not too left, more like left with a smidge of right. All the way to left meant zero pore size which meant, zero way for the mana to flow through—which was bad if that wasn't obvious enough. Right now, only the smallest of smalls could pass through this sheet of paper. Time to report back to Lapis.

"I'm done again!" Alwin shouted.

This time Lapis was paying attention to him. "Already? It hasn't even been five minutes. Your last attempt took an hour, why was this one so much faster?"

"I just found a fast way to do it."

"Just spit it out loud. Don't make me prompt you, it wastes your time, my time, the people who may be listening in to our conversation's time."

"I created a remote control that lets me change the settings of the paper. Then when you mentioned Porosity and Pore Size, those things got added into the settings and I just changed it from there."

"Interesting.” Lapis paused to think as well for a moment. “Unique and universal. I'm going to steal that idea. It's like a universal remote that lets you control anything, I never thought of that. I went into the science of it like obtaining pulp, refining it, adding additives, forming the paper, so on and so forth. Maybe a simple approach is the best. Oh, the ideas that you gave me, Alwin. I'm going to leave a good review for you—five stars! Hey, do me a favor. Go back into your core and aim that remote at your mana pool. Let’s see what options come up in your settings.”

Within his Core, Alwin pointed the remote that he had spawned at the pool of mana below his consciousness. The 'Settings' menu appeared, but it was blank.

"There's nothing on it."

"Hmm, okay just listen to me. When I refine my mana I normally change the states of the mana in my Core: solid for impure, liquid for impure."

As Lapis said that, two new options popped up: Pure Mana State and Impure Mana State.

"Something happened. I can change the states of the pure and impure mana."

"Well don't be a dawdle duck, try it out."

Both of the options were set to liquid. Alwin pressed down on the directional pads of the remote, toggling between all of the different states available: solid, liquid, gaseous, and plasma. Plasma mana sounded like it'd be fun to shoot out at enemies, it'd probably do heaps of damage to them, but now wasn't the time. The Impure Mana State was set to solid, just as Lapis had suggested. A prompt flashed: ‘Apply Changes?’ Of course, he selected yes.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

Unable to change states due to insufficient temperature.

"It says there's insufficient temperature. Does that mean its not hot enough?"

"Quite the opposite really, it most likely means that it's not cold enough. That's very interesting. Looks like that remote isn't all powerful. My theory is that it can bypass all of the complicated stuff that you don't understand but for simple things like changing a liquid to a solid, you're still bounded by the logic that you're familiar with."

Only the first part of Lapis' ramblings were of use to Alwin. So he needed to make his mana colder. There was only one way to do that, well he actually thought of two but the second option didn't sound as fun. A bucket of ice appeared above his Core before falling deep into the aquatic abyss. More and more buckets of ice appeared, dousing the area, transforming it into a glacial wonderland. Small islets of ice—really tiny icebergs floated throughout his mana pool. They were caught within the currents of the swirling whirlpool, going round and round on an eternal merry-go-round of ice.

Back the menu he went. This time when he toggled over to 'solid' and selected 'yes', there were no error messages. A large portion of his mana pool had turned into solid chunks. The once clear pool of mana had been transformed into a murky grey. He'd done it. The impure mana was successfully converted into a solid.

"I've done it, Lapis!" Alwin shouted, making sure to keep a wisp of concentration on his Core, lest he wanted to restart the process all over again.

"Good job, now start filtering it. I haven't found a good way for others to determine purity, but if the mana is clear that's good enough."

Alwin poured 98% of his brainpower back into his core—the lingering 2% were for listening and speaking to the outside world. Within his Core, Alwin conjured up the filter paper and filter funnel. The remote was used to mess with the settings of the piece of paper: high wet strength, high porosity, and small pore size. Once the filter paper was nestled in place inside of the funnel, Alwin spawned in two more buckets—both empty. One bucket was placed right below the nozzle of the funnel while the other was handed to the pair of mental hands, who began to scoop a bucketload of mana—literally—and poured it into the filter.

Liquid mana seeped through the filter paper, soaking it to the brim but it still held strong and showed no signs of breaking apart. Drip drops of refined mana escaped the funnel into the bucket, leaving behind the dirty dark blue impurities on the filter paper. It was a slow process. Alwin stared the refined liquid mana pooled into the bucket, watching drip after drip, drop into the bucket adding to his collection. It was still miles better than watching his paper mache dry—this time he got to watch the ripples form and dissipate with every drop. Finally, after five minutes, he had achieved half a bucket's worth of somewhat refined liquid mana—apparently half of the mana was just dirty raw mana. The liquid in the bucket was transparent, a clear crystal blue, with nary a particle floating about, which was good enough for Lapis so it was good enough for him.

"I have half a bucket's worth of mana now and it looks clear. What do I do now?"

"Grab that bucket and expunge the refined mana out of the core, but remember to imbue it with the intent of enhancing your core. The refined mana will act as the foundation for a bigger core once you've completed your tribulation."

Expunge the mana? How was he going to do that? He had kicked, thrown, and batted his molded spells before, but those techniques couldn't be applied here. Alwin wasn't skilled enough to kick, throw, or bat the bucket of refined mana without a single drop of his hard earned work splashing back into the mucky pool that was his mana. Then, there was another problem. Mana droplets rained down from the top of his core, it was his body's natural way of replenishing the mana that he had used up. There was no way he could remove the bucker from the filter funnel without the somewhat refined mana becoming tainted with the yucky rain-mana—there actually was a way, but Alwin was just upping the ante so that the imaginary audience that lived in his mind could experience some sort of tension.

With a snap of his mental fingers—for dramatization purposes—a lid appeared and sealed the bucket from any risk of contamination. How would he go about bringing the mana out of his core without kicking, throwing, or batting it? Well, he couldn't. What he could do was ensure that none of his hard-earned work would go to waste.

Alwin floated his consciousness up, flying higher and higher, the imaginary hands floating upwards alongside him. As he gained altitude, he could see the mana leaking through the roof of his core, searching for a spot with the least amount of flow. Finally he had reached the highest point of his core, Alwin ordered the mental hands to force their way out of the core—an experiment of sorts. The moment they came in contact with the surface, the hands disappeared. They didn't breach the core, they were simply snuffed out of existence. With that fun little side quest out of the way, came the real kicker. Focusing all of his might into imbuing that bucket with the intent of strengthening his core—it was a simple mantra that went 'Strengthen core. Strengthen core.' With the mantra stuck on repeat, Alwin removed the lid from his bucket, careful to not let any tainted mana drip into his crystal-clear elixir, and then he chucked the contents into the sky.

Essence absorbed.

The notification jolted him back to reality. It worked! Lapis hadn't been lying or wasting his time. There was another way to gain essence without the need to go out and slaughter humans—which he really wanted to do—but the allure of being able to guide his evolution was too tempting.

"I did it. I got a notification from the system saying some essence was absorbed."

"Great! Now do that a couple hundred more times until your Evolution Counter hits a hundred."