Chapter 23 - Soul feeding

Adam spent a long time on that spiral mushroom. He absorbed the red demon's core but felt as though his own core had indigestion after he absorbed a certain amount.

It seemed as though he couldn’t properly digest the foreign mana.

It reminded him of the dense magic of the light affinity lizard. It wasn't as hard to absorb then, but it was definitely more challenging.

He had assumed that it was due to its different affinity but now realized that consuming the core of a higher-grade beast with a different mana affinity is like trying to eat someone's hat. It's tough, takes a lot of chewing, and you probably aren't meant to be doing it in the first place.

His fascination with his core and its multiple functions had given him many ideas about its possible purpose and features. He thought about it as a second stomach, used for magical energies. It allowed him to store mana but also convert it into his own. It would digest foreign mana by stripping it down to its most basic.

Ambient mana was the only mana it could naturally consume as its magical energy was at its most basic. Adding an affinity to that pure white mana is building on that basic magic by having the core regurgitate the mana it had absorbed and adding its own unique flavor to the mix.

The trouble about that for Adam was that he had no idea how it was doing that. What steps were happening between the mana going in and it coming back out again?

These were questions he really wanted to be able to ask someone like that Nafritese fella but he didn't sound like he would be coming back any time soon.

The reason he really wanted answers about the core was because he didn't know if what his core was doing right now was normal.

You see, ever since he found that he could see his soul when looking inwards, he noticed that his core had two different states. One solid where it looked like a small stone was lodged in the middle of his torso, and one that looked as though it was a small ghostly ball of silver flame at the center of his soul.

His core hadn't changed when using his normal mana, but as soon as he pressured his core to give him soul-attuned mana, it simply ignored his commands and continued to provide him with standard white mana.

He had to switch to his inner soul sight in order to access and use that mana. And there was very little of it.

For the past few hours, he had alternated between absorbing the red mana core and testing his own core and his new soul affinity but he never had more than a drop of that silver magic.

Despite not interacting with any other energy, his soul mana also didn't dissipate. He had spawned a few silver clouds outside of his body and used his soul mana on his eyes in order to observe them. He found that, despite his poor control over the small flames, they didn't dissipate at all but rather simply stopped existing after being outside of his body for a few minutes.

All mana constructs dissipated bit by bit back into the environment but his soul mana didn't do that. He had no explanation for it other than it simply stopped existing. Like a fire without any oxygen left to burn, the flame didn't even leave a smoke trail to mark its presence after it faded out.

The pitiful amount of soul mana he could produce meant that he still couldn't use it in place of his standard unattuned mana. That wasn't necessarily a bad thing as he didn't know what happened the first time he pulled on that silver spark. It was able to somehow kill the red demon but it did cause him to pass out and wake up in extreme pain.

Adam noticed that his soul looked a little more stable and flowed a little less chaotically after he circulated his soul mana along his pathways and allowed his soul to absorb it, so he decided that it would be his best course of action for now, at least until he could learn more.

The old man in the white space had told him that stronger souls provided some species with an advantage in magic and even healing so it was the logical thing to try and strengthen his soul.

Every time he fed his silver flames, the amount of new soul mana he could regenerate seemed to increase incrementally.

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He didn’t have any of the red demon’s core left to absorb but could tell that most of its mana was simply wasted anyway since it took too much effort for his core to purify it and only a fraction would be usable after the process was complete.

He therefore decided to finally leave the giant spiral mushroom he had been on for several hours or maybe even days. He couldn’t tell when he was above the surface but now that he was hundreds of meters underground, time was even harder to keep track of.

He saved a small apportion of his soul mana and sent the rest to be slowly absorbed by his soul. His soul mana was his final trump card against stronger foes but he would still like to avoid any further encounters with red-cored monsters again.

He stuck to his standard mana as he attempted to make his way back the way he came when running for his life. He wasn’t moving very fast as he retraced his steps and used his mana-enhanced sight in order to carefully watch for any unwanted creatures lurking in the fungal jungle.

Every few hours, he would stop at a safe place and switch his core to his soul mana version in order to circulate it within his soul which required complete focus inwards and made him vulnerable to attack. He would only regenerate a teaspoonful of the silver magic every hour so he spent most of his time still using his standard mana, mainly for his greater sight spell. After many hours of walking, he finally found the entrance to the underground jungle that he had used to enter.

He was sick of the endless jungle of fungi and decided to head back to the surface. He would much rather go back and look for those lizards than aimlessly wander around the underground tunnel system, waiting until he inevitably stumbled upon something far out of his league once again.

He did notice the occasional rodent scurrying about and large insects digging into the giant mushrooms but nothing like what he had hoped to find down here.

He had believed that an entire ecosystem of mana beasts was living down here when he first arrived, but nothing he saw was even worth the effort of catching.

But it wasn’t all bad news. His new affinity had given him a few well-needed advantages. He once again checked the spell section of his status.

Spells:

- [greater sight - crude - uncommon]

- [mana blades - crude - uncommon]

- [enhancement - crude - common]

- [soul circulation] - crude - epic]

He was ecstatic when he first discovered he had a spell that helped him better circulate soul mana through his pathways. This meant that the time needed to have his soul absorb his silver magic by having it travel across his pathways had significantly reduced.

He was also able to regenerate nearly twice as much soul mana as when he first started and the time needed had also significantly reduced.

The fact that it was ranked ‘epic’ echoed his own thoughts about the new spell. He wasn’t even mad that it wasn’t an offensive spell like what he had been aiming for since he first discovered how to create spells. The faster he could have his soul grow by feeding it his soul mana, the more useful it would become.

It reminded Adam of the old clicker games he used to play on the family computer, where you needed to click to gain points and then spend those points to buy upgrades and optimize how many points you could gain per click or buy different boosts and the like.

You always had to reinvest the points you gained into gaining more points faster, which was remarkably similar to what he was doing now.

Each time his reserve of silver mana was refilled, he could spend it on strengthening his soul, which would provide him with slightly faster soul mana regeneration and the cycle continued.

He hadn’t marked the passages he took when running from the ants but recognized a few of the tunnel walls he had passed on his descent. He was a little more confident in hunting those ants individually now that he knew they were his best option for a constant stream of mana cores like the lizards used to be.

Adam walked the various tunnels for hours but didn’t encounter a single thing. It wasn’t too surprising since the tunnels were barren and stretched for kilometers without change. The only creatures that lived in the underground seemed to prefer to stick to their own territories. There were of course exceptions, like the giant red-cored tarantula he had seen fighting a giant lizard and of course that demonic red monster straight from the fires of hell.

He never saw anything like it before so he was hoping it was the last of its species. Unfortunately, he doubted that very much and only wished never to cross paths with another ever again.

After a few wrong turns, he came upon a different section of tunnels that had small white crystals lining the walls. They appeared to be formed from pure crystalized mana to his greater sight spell. And that may actually be precisely what they were.

Adam inspected the wall but something else stood out to him when he placed his hand on the cave wall. It was vibrating as if a drill was being used close by.

This made him tense up as he took a step back and examined the tunnel for threats. Anything that can dig through this incredibly tough mana-infused rock is bound to be extremely dangerous.

He didn't notice any immediate danger but the now audible sound of grinding warned him that something big was coming. He didn't want to go back the way he came so he instead pushed further into the tunnel lined with white crystals in order to find out what lay beyond. He had a trump card now and was sick of running away. Not to mention he was a bit lost so he steeled his nerves and pushed forward.

The best defense had always been a strong surprise offense for Adam.

This would be a little more complicated since he couldn't dig around in the walls but he would make it work.

He hadn't used up his soul mana yet and decided not to use soul circulation bit to hold onto it for now as it was his only effective tool right now… And he wanted to test it out so bad.

It was eating at him that he had no idea how he was able to kill that terrifying red monster and he needed to learn how to weaponize this new magic. He had always believed that magic was his only chance of surviving in this place and this new ethereal silver energy reinforced that idea a hundredfold.

The vibrations were getting louder and more numerous as he went and even the floor was starting to shake.

He slowed his steps and began to evaluate if he was doing the right thing. Ultimately, his stubbornness won out as he soldiered on until he finally found the source of the now deafening noise.