-Chapter Forty-Eight-

Ruler of Mana

For the longest time now, Aelius was wondering what exactly is the best power to wield.

Nothing seemed perfect.

At first, it looked like the incredible powers of the Devils seemed supreme.

But that’s quickly been proven not to be the case.

Maybe Saki’s power of Awakening Arts?

It was hard to say. It did not feel like Awakening Arts were better or worse than Mana or Dimensional energy. They were just different powers dedicated to different purposes.

Holy power and Divine power belonging to the Goddess did not seem omnipotent either.

Aelius felt this in his clash against the Devils in his past life. If he possessed the Authority of the Goddess to aid him, it felt like the Devils possessed the Authority of a different god to aid them.

The Goddess Stecia is not the only being interfering with the matters of Vertex. That was all he could infer.

Why not Mana? The power Aelius was the most familiar with. Why does Mana not work?

Ah, right. Because no one had high enough Mana Rings to fight the Devils. The idea of refining fifty Mana Rings was ludicrous.

And mankind had not yet invented spells for beyond the Tenth Ring. What could be possible at that point?

Mass teleportation? Space travel? Time travel?

Resurrection ? Creation?

Instigating an apocalypse single-handedly?

The nature of the power itself doesn’t even make sense. Aelius is unable to even picture what Mana capable of killing a Devil could look like.

But even so, as expected, Mana is probably the best.

After all, it is the power that belongs to Vertex.

And it may also be the power belonging to the Grand Horizon.

He will not know until the day the cataclysm comes. But regardless, his path has been laid out before him.

With a light heart that night, Aelius went to bed within the tent.

It was not as though everything was okay again. The pain he felt did not go unnoticed from awakening his past life’s memories.

But at least for now, he’s okay again.

Asura seemed to sense his woe, joining him in the tent.

They only had one set up, and the desert grew unbearably cold at night.

As she laid down beside him, he found her eyes sizing him up like prey.

Reaching up, she gently fondled his earlobes, wearing an ecstatic smile.

“Are you feeling better now, you pitiful thing?”

Before he could answer, he felt a pair of arms wrap around his chest from behind him, and turned to notice Lia embarrassedly embracing him, attracted to his warmth in the freezing air.

Though he was taken aback for a moment, he quickly gave a sigh and rested his head down peacefully.

“Yeah, thanks to you two.”

“Good.”

Asura shuffled closer, paying Lia no mind.

“My warrior’s mind must not falter.”

“Yes, yes,” Aelius chuckled, suddenly interrupted as Asura placed her lips up to his.

They exchanged a deep kiss, just like their relationship in his first life, and Asura pulled away again, giving him a mischievous beaming smile.

“We shall continue another time.”

Leaving it at that, she turned away, leaving her back to him.

“I’m sorry… am I in the way?” Lia asked unsurely as Aelius turned to his other side, looking at her.

Hesitantly, she withdrew her arms.

“I-I can set up a second tent and stay there in the future.”

Aelius quickly realised what was making her so uncomfortable.

Of course, since he somehow copied the Eyes of Truth from Aria, he’s been able to notice the true nature of Lia’s feelings toward him.

But before he could reassure her everything was fine, Asura spoke up instead, without moving from her spot.

“Worry not, girl. Your place is beside Aelius, nowhere else. Never doubt your right to possess him. He has acknowledged you, and so you are acknowledged.” Turning around, she gave Lia a mischievous look.

“Be as greedy as you want in possessing him. He wants you just as much as you want him. If you tried to run away, I can guarantee you he will chase you down, whether you like it or not.”

At her words, Lia’s face suddenly flushed up and she ducked under the blankets, hiding away.

“Ahaha…” Aelius nervously laughed, finding Lia in the bed and giving her a cuddle.

“Is what she’s saying true?” Lia asked as she poked her head back up to their pillow.

“Yes, Lia.” Aelius reached down to give her a small kiss on the top of the head. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t giving you enough reassurance all along. Don’t try to think you shouldn’t stay with me. I would like you to stay beside me.”

Lia found her way into Aelius’ arms and she snuggled up against him.

“O-okay. Since you’ve said so. No take backs,” she softly mumbled, her cheeks flushed.

As her mind gradually drifted off, only a few thoughts remained.

How safe and secure it was in his embrace. And how warm it was.

In the cold of the night, the three grew closer as they shared their tent. And a new day came as the sun began to rise once more.

—-----------------------

-Two months later-

The Death Desert which separated Farrien and the rest of the continent spanned for as long as half of the continent’s land size itself.

But interestingly, at the centre of the desert, there was a strange phenomenon.

As if it were the eye of a storm, a cold winter forest rested in the middle, with the ocean of sand wrapping around it.

The winter forest was called the Death Fields and its size, though incomparable to the desert, was still enormous.

It was larger than Farrien City and the entire Southern region of Farrien combined.

And though it was referred to as a forest, it was actually much more.

Only the outer ring of it was a forest. If one travelled further in, they’d find all sorts of strange scenes.

Mountain peaks occupied a large portion of the Death Fields, as well as endless pits leading into darkness, in addition to the solemn flatland.

After two months of travelling, taking rest only at nightfall, Aelius, Asura and Lia arrived at last to their destination.

—-----------------------

There was a loud ‘shinggg’ as Aelius sliced through a curtain of heavy vines blocking their path.

“We’re almost there,” he assured Lia over his shoulder.

The expedition had proven to be challenging for her. Though she was used to travelling, she was not used to extreme environments like the desert or the forest.

But she did well to keep up.

“Is this the place you’ve been looking for?” Lia asked as she followed Aelius, ducking under a large tree trunk and coming out into a miraculously clear area.

They were surrounded by ascending mountains, having found the only spot in the vicinity that looked artificially flat.

“That’s right. Stay back,” Aelius gestured to the edge of the clearing before he began to step into the centre.

Finally, the main bunker.

“Request access to bunker.”

Immediately, the ground began to tremble and the familiar sound of pressurised hydraulics filled their ears.

“W-what’s going on!?” Lia exclaimed, flailing her arms out at her sides.

“Oh… interesting,” Asura remarked as she observed with her arms crossed, calmly waiting.

Out of the ground, a metallic console emerged before Aelius and its screen lit up in his face.

“I can barely contain my excitement,” he mumbled as he stepped forward.

Aelius deeply exhaled and summoned his dimensional storage portal, reaching into the purple gate and retrieving a small object.

The thing he had prepared in the previous bunker revealed itself in his open palm, before he plugged it into the console’s port.

“My trusty USB, deliver the trojan horse.”

The console’s terminal began to process a dozen commands before his eyes when his hijacking virus suddenly took effect, causing the screen to flash and shake before it suddenly sparked out black.

The sounds died away and the lights faded, leaving Lia curiously glancing between Aelius and the machinery.

Until suddenly it rebooted and the same, familiar, female robotic voice echoed around them.

“Registering authority. Please speak,” it asked Aelius and he cleared his throat.

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“Register to this voice print.”

“Registration complete,” the voice answered and the console lit up green.

“Cancel the bunker concealment,” Aelius ordered and the rest of the entryway revealed itself.

“Wow…!” Lia exclaimed as she appeared at his shoulder, looking down the metal stairs in wonder.

“Let’s go.”

Aelius smiled softly as he led the two down into the depths.

—-----------------------

-6 months later-

As Aelius worked, observing the machine-like sparks through his protector visor, he heard the entry to the bunker open on its own and a series of clattering footsteps descend from above.

“Aelius~” a voice echoed through the bunker, and Aelius smiled to himself, stepping out of the isolated room after removing his visor.

“There you are!”

The black-haired beauty his age ran into his arms, giving him a gleeful smile as she hugged him.

“Hehehe…”

Aelius gave her a soft headpat as behind her, Asura revealed herself from the shadow, also giving him a smile.

“You’ve taken your sweet time, my dear. Lia’s Mana Core has become increasingly more uncontrollable these past few weeks. She’s been undergoing incredible bouts of pain, the longer we delay,” she gestured to Lia who shyly tucked her hair behind her ear.

“Oh, Sura. You didn’t have to mention that to him. I didn’t want him to worry.”

“To achieve this in six months is already outstanding,” Aelius softly smiled, rubbing Lia’s back. “You’ve held on well.”

“At least in your absence, I was able to get her to eat well and exercise to get her malnourished body back into shape,” Asura shrugged as she took a nearby seat and seductively crossed her slender legs.

Her words were true. Within six months, in their comfortable living conditions Aelius had provided them in one of the Imperial cities, and under Asura’s guidance, Lia’s body had caught up what it was lacking, recovering to that of a healthy sixteen year olds’.

She had some proper meat on her thighs and cheeks now, but the exercise also kept her proportions well-maintained in an appealing, hour-glass figure.

Behind him, Aelius heard a ‘ding’ and turned around to see one of the dozen monitors had lit up green.

He couldn’t help but suppress the grin spreading on his face as he turned back to Lia.

“You’ve arrived just in time.”

With that final ‘ding’, Aelius' last hard six months worth of work has finally been completed.

“Come along now,” he gestured to Lia and began to lead her down a narrow corridor.

“You haven’t properly explained to me what it is we’re doing here. I just know that for the last six months, you’ve been working on something.”

“I’ll explain it all properly to you once you’re set up and focused,” Aelius assured her as she looked around them while they passed by a dozen rooms.

“There was nothing here at all when we arrived. This part of the ‘bunker’ didn’t even exist. How were you able to do so much in just six months?” Lia wondered and Aelius smugly smiled to himself.

There was a reason why he had to come to the main bunker for his goal. A reason why the sub-bunker in Farrien was insufficient for him.

If he had the choice, he would’ve done it on the spot in Farrien. But unfortunately, only main bunkers are fitted with ‘development kits’.

Development kits were an incredible creation of the Saints. It starts out as merely a table the size of a pool table.

However, with its functions, it can create virtually anything. It was like a 3D printer that could print 3D printers.

The materials were sourced from the bio-matter around them. It could break down the rocks, grass and soil around them to the molecular level and combine the atoms it needed to form certain types of matter, which Aelius then used to develop mining tools.

The surrounding earthen undergrounds had never been excavated before in all of history. It was practically an ocean of precious ores waiting to be discovered. Using the automated mining robots, he had practically all the metals he needed.

Anything he did not have on hand, he used transmutational alchemy to acquire.

And finally, with machinery he designed from scratch, he was able to, piece-by-piece, complete a monstrosity.

He spent the last six months working on a single masterpiece. Countless sleepless nights and restless days were dedicated to designing the functions of the machine, creating a software on the development kit that could actually accommodate automated construction of his creation, and lastly, automating the connection of the parts.

Such was the magic of a development kit.

It was able to create anything from scratch, so long as the user had the idea in their mind.

It developed ideas into reality.

Through the development kit, Aelius was able to enlarge the bunker as well as create the final room they were arriving at now.

“This is it,” Aelius softly said with a smile as he pushed open the door and let Lia through.

“This is…”

Her perplexed expression spread across her face as she found an elevated bed with a large drill hanging down from the ceiling over it.

“Lie down,” Aelius gestured.

“This looks… strange.”

“Yeah… it’s like going to the dentists-” Suddenly, his head shook in pain again.

“Ow…” It quickly faded, together with the thought he just had.

This had been happening more often. He would at times recall something but forget it straight away due to intense pain. It must have been a side effect of regressing, that was all he could conjecture.

“What are you going to do with that thing?” Lia asked, taking back his attention as she looked up at the drill.

Though the tip was like that of a pencil, the machine itself was triple the size of her body as she laid beneath it.

“I’m going to be carrying out something like a surgical procedure on you,” Aelius began to explain as he fetched a rolling computer chair from nearby and sat down at it by Lia’s side.

“In order for this to succeed, I need you to focus during the procedure, and before we begin, I need you to properly understand what it is we’re doing.”

“Okay,” Lia nodded with a nervous lick of her lips. “I’m listening.”

Behind them, Asura peeked in from the door, silently and curiously watching.

“We’re going to be working on your Mana Core,” Aelius began to say. “Let me ask you, what do you think our Mana Core actually is?”

Lia raised an eyebrow.

“Is it like an organ?” he suggested and she shook her head.

“Maybe? I really don’t know.”

“It’s not. If I cut open a mage’s body where their Mana Core is, there’s actually nothing there. A Mana Core is not a physical thing that grows within our bodies.”

“Then… what could it be?” Lia asked, intrigued.

“It is sort of like hardened Mana. But it’s not like our reservoir of Mana. It’s not like we’re storing Mana in our bodies as Mana Cores, which makes us stronger. It is more accurate to say that this hardened Mana forms the outer walls of a gate. This gate will suck Mana from the outside into our bodies, which we can then use.”

“Oh…” Lia looked as though she had come to understand something new.

“Our Mana Core is more like a vessel, and this vessel happens to be in the shape of a ball with rings around it. The more rings around the core, the tighter the rings wrap around the core. The more pressure there is in the core, the more energy the core can expel. In this world, there is a scientific principle that the more force you push down on something with, the more pressure you apply, the more energy you can create. That is called the principle of condensation. The more condensed something is, the more energy it can produce, and that is how our rings work.”

Lia continued to nod.

“You’re a special case, as the Heir of the Heavenly Order, or the Heir of Mana, as you’re sometimes called. You can use Mana around you directly without needing to make it your own through your Mana Core. But how much you can do that depends on your Mana Core. Your Mana Core limits your Mana transmission capabilities, and it’s dangerous for you to steal someone else’s spell if it's beyond what your body can transmit. Because of that, you need to refine more Rings.”

“Right, so I also need to refine Rings like everyone else.”

“But what if everyone has been doing it wrong?”

“What?” Lia’s eyes met Aelius’ in surprise. “What do you mean?”

“What if condensing your Mana Core in Rings was a stupid thing that was limiting our maximum potential? What if you could change the shape of your vessel to something else that greatly enhanced the rate of your growth and capabilities? A shape can produce unimaginable amounts of energy?”

“Well… that would be insane,” Lia answered.

“You’re right. It is.”

When the Saints invaded the Sacred Continent in Aelius’ first life, mankind was wrought with strife between the two conflicting sides.

One side had forgone Mana to wield technology. The other had mastered Mana to substitute science.

In the face of the Devils, both were lacking what each other had.

The Sacreds did not have their own technology without the Saints, and the Saints could not wield Mana without the Sacreds.

Six years after their initial invasion, a genius scientist developed the most revolutionary machine mankind had seen to date.

What if technology and Mana could be combined?

Warships that operated on and fired out Mana?

Swords that were half tech, half Mana?

Armour?

Or even further beyond armour - Mana sustained nanotechnology.

In theory, with technology and Mana, it was possible to create an entire pocket dimension for people to live in.

It was an alluring fantasy. Until the day it became reality.

A machine was created with the ability to tap into a mage’s core and alter it.

As such, a new way of refining Mana Cores was born, where the machine would forcibly alter the shape of the Core.

The newly created mages showed far more power, and it wasn’t just in terms of Mana. Their entire body underwent changes.

People who could channel Divine Power showed improvement. People who took up the sword after the change were far more talented than any of their predecessors. The same went for martial artists, monks cultivating strange powers, or any other supernatural powers.

“Youre Mana Core has rings around it, which grant it power. What if you could refine hundreds of smaller rings within your Mana Rings?” Aelius asked and Lia gave him a perplexed look, as he quickly pulled down a touchscreen from the ceiling and began to draw on it with his finger.

“This here,” he said as he drew on the left side. “Is your normal ring.”

Before them was a small illustration of an orb - the Core itself, and a single orbiting ring around it.

“Now, what if you could do this instead?”

As Aelius drew on the other side, he retained the orb, but instead of a singular ring, he drew a circle of chains.

Each link in the chain was a ring in of itself, connected to the next ring until they met in a full circle.

Lia observed in both shock and silence as Aelius stepped aside for her to see.

“Instead of forming your Mana this way, you ought to form it that way. The possible benefits are endless. This is no longer called refining Mana Rings. This is what is called refining a Mana Chain.”

The only problem with Mana Chains was that only mages at the Second Ring and below could survive the procedure. It was not possible to operate on anyone past the Third Ring.

That was why Aelius had not refined any of his rings since he regressed, despite Alea curing him. And that was also why he forcefully suppressed Lia’s evolution to the Second Ring.

“Okay… so what do I have to do?” Lia asked with a nervous gulp.

“It’s simple,” Aelius said as he gave her a reassuring smile. “When you focus on refining, your will is actively imaging the shape of a Ring. Instead, when I begin operating on you, I want you to one by one create these links in the chain. Individually, until you form a tight, complete chain around your core.”

“Okay…” Lia weakly answered.

“It won’t hurt. It’ll just feel weird. The only thing is…” Aelius looked over his shoulder to Asura. “It might take us a long time. You’ll be unconscious within your own mind. By the time you wake up, I don’t know how long will have passed. Asura will have to look after us. I’ll be in the other room. Hopefully, we wake up at the same time.”

“I see…” Lia looked to Asura. “What if something goes wrong with the procedure?” she asked.

“It will stop before it can cause permanent damage to you, and then you can try again.”

“Okay.”

Lia gave a sigh of relief.

“Good. Then, now you understand everything. So, let’s begin, shall we?” he suggested.

With a determined gaze, she gave Aelius a nod.

“I’ll succeed no matter what.”

He returned a warm smile.

“Good girl.”

—-----------------------

-Three months later-

In the blink of an eye, but also what felt like an eternity, Lia’s eyes finally opened again.

It was… a success.

There she lay on the same bed, but as she sat up, she felt power overwhelming course within her.

As soon as she finished transforming her first and second Mana Rings until Mana Chains, as well as finished refining her third Mana Chain, it felt like she immediately skyrocketed to the Sixth Mana Ring, in terms of how strong her Mana Core now was.

Her psychic power in seizing and manipulating Mana outside her body was stronger than it had ever been before.

It was the true awakening of none other than her: the Ruler of Mana.