The village chief became increasingly angry, leading other village elders from his loyal faction to join in suppressing Satoru’s mother’s faction. Despite this, the situation did not escalate into a physical brawl.
“I will remember this!” Satoru’s mother turned her back after realizing she couldn’t get what she wanted, and the elders of her faction obediently followed suit.
“Did she think she could control the whole village with that alone? Delusional.” Sakuya whispered in a very low voice that only Mordred and the members of Twin Helix could hear.
“It’s the classic case of mortals having a fraction of a cultivator’s strength. She thinks that with her power and influence, she’s able to have her way with anything in the village. Due to the lack of brutal competition, her scheming ability can only be measured by the metrics of this village.” Katyusha whispered back. “Naturally, she couldn’t snatch you under the watchful eyes of our vice-captain with that level of scheming.”
“Oh?” Mordred acted surprised, his gaze quickly searching for Sumire.
“Un!” Sakuya nodded as she began to elaborate. “Our personalities, actions, and possible reactions are variables in her calculations. Before we fall into unwanted situations, she’ll be our first line of defense… while the captain will be our last. Twin Helix can perform well because of those two!”
“I see. The vice-captain seems like a frightening woman…” Mordred uttered false praise. In the eyes of rank 1s, she is truly a great woman who schemed deeply, but he was not surprised at this level of arrangement.
After driving Satoru’s mother’s faction away, the village chief made an apologetic gesture and signaled to Sakuya and the rest to proceed with the ceremony. Both sides wanted the rite of passage to end quicker since the faster it’s done, the faster they could accomplish other, more important things. They won’t allow a small pebble in the road to block their path.
“Let’s get this over with.” Sakuya led them towards the square once more where the rest of Twin Helix were waiting.
The open field is jam-packed with people, most being unfamiliar faces to Mordred who had Satoru’s memory. Since people on the frontier villages lacked entertainment, this crowd is a natural phenomena. Perhaps, they were purposely roused for some reason beyond Mordred knowledge, but they were behaving under Twin Helix’s arrangement. In the center of the field, there were youths who had been waiting for the hunter team to start the awakening ceremony.
“Alright, let’s start!” Sumire shouted once Sakuya put Mordred where he belonged. With her voice, the villagers started to tone down their voice. “The last step of the Rite of Passage is the Awakening, both for spirit and body cultivators, but we’ll get to that later.” She gave a signal to Alanis who’s supporting her. With the cue, Alanis walked towards the two as she began telepathically scribing the ground, drawing a ritual formation with some blueish crystal powder.
“Cultivators are special, privileged beings. Even with talent, not everyone can become one. Back then, traditional cultivators relied on luck to kickstart one’s cultivation journey because not much information about it is known. As time goes by, more and more cultivation methods are created, refined, and improved, but things fundamentally change when the Great Archmage erected the Hunter Association whose goal is to bring prosperity, not just a way to survive.” Sumire explained. “Modern cultivators rely on potions or other external factors to support their cultivation journey. We are no longer letting our fate in the hands of the heavens! Everyone with a little bit of talent can become a cultivator!”
The awakening of spiritual force was done on the previous day. If both Mordred and Hiroshi chose to be a non-mage spirit cultivator, the last event wouldn’t be as flashy as this.
At this moment, Kurogane brought two potion bottles, each having different colored liquids. He headed towards Mordred and Hiroshi, handing down the red one to Mordred and the brown one to Hiroshi after telling them to wait for further instruction. Even from a glance, everyone could tell the one Mordred received is fundamentally different compared to Hiroshi’s as his is faintly glowing and has a texture orange-red like magma.
“Unlike body cultivators, spirit cultivators have a slight chance of awakening a special organ whose existence is both real and illusory around their belly, known as a Mana Pool. This organ will be a place where mana is stored within their body.” Sumire was like a teacher who’s giving lectures to the villagers. This was actually one of her various missions in coming into this frontier village and why there are so many people attending the awakening: to educate them. “The potions that we’ve prepared are specifically tailored for an earth-path and fire-path potential mages. So even if you somehow got it, without talent in spirit and affinity in that element, it would harm you instead.”
“Now then, the mana pool awakening process is affected by a myriad of factors. The principle behind it is not completely understood, but the Hunter Association has concluded extensive research about it. One’s emotion, physical state, and countless other variables will have an influence in the awakening of mana pool.” Sumire continued. “If we were in big cities, we could use modern cultivation rooms to further boost the success rate, but we must use what we have on hand.”
She stepped forward, approaching the two main characters of this event. “These potions are psychedelic drugs. After consuming it, your consciousness will be hazy as your mind will be attuned to the heavenly dao for mana pool refinement. During the process, it is advised that you hold on to your ideals- specifically, why you wanted to become a cultivator in the first place, as a strong motivation has some influence in successfully awakening your mana pool.” She told Mordred and Hiroshi before signaling to Kurogane and Sakuya.
The two hunters nodded and placed several crystals the size of a distal phalange. On Mordred’s side of the ritual formation, the crystals are rubies whereas on Hiroshi’s side, they are topazes.
“To support the awakening process, it is proven that external resources can be used like this.” Sumire picked each stone one each hand. “These are rank 0 earth and fire elemental crystals, composed of elemental particles condensed into a solid form.” She placed the ruby back carefully while carelessly throwing the topaz without a care. “If you find them in nature, please be careful with fire-path, lightning-path, light-path and metal-path ones, as they are more harmful than others if they explode. Well, every single one is radioactive, so it doesn’t actually matter what element they are, just be careful with them.”
She added, “Adding elemental crystals is actually an optional step. Some mages can change what element they want to delve deeper into as long as they have yet to become a Lord, but that rarely happens.”
She then produces several dark-colored coins faintly glowing with blue hue from her dimensional storage. “Unlike elemental crystals, this step is mandatory. This is the ultimate resource amongst cultivators… Mana Crystal Coins, or crystal coins for short. Each one of these coins has the lowest concentration of mana inside them, they are typically worth ten gold coins, or a thousand silver coins, or a hundred thousand bronze coins.” She touched her chin in regard to a good analogy since gold coins are rarely used in transactions in this village. “Let’s just say one gold coin can buy you the cheapest mortal-rank labor slave in most cities, so each of these crystal coins can buy you ten labor slaves.”
Alanis accepted and began carefully arranging the handful of coins, their glinting surfaces standing out amidst the rubies and topazes.
“The concentration of mana in the air is too thin here to support a mana pool awakening.” Sumire explained her actions. “Without a mana-gathering formation, we must rely on these crystal coins. However, this method comes with limitations, as it involves forcibly infusing foreign energy into our mage apprentice-candidates. To prevent them from exploding, it is advised that this method is used under the supervision and assistance of experienced mages.”
With Sumire’s explanation, Alanis, who had finished telepathically drawing the ritual circle, moved towards Hiroshi’s back, while Sakuya went behind Mordred. The two official mages began briefing about what would happen next.
“Satoru, I will be guiding your mana pool awakening process. You can trust me on this, just follow my instructions!” Whispered Sakuya, sounding more intimate than usual. Mordred did not think too much before nodding; he was familiar with the process, even if she didn’t help him. He then glanced towards Hiroshi, seeing that he is also receiving Alanis’ whispers.
Naturally, Mordred required no assistance as he, as the Great Archmage, was the one who designed the procedure. He even had methods to push the success rate to 100% even when alone, but having the ability to perfectly awaken a mana pool without assistance would be suspicious, especially since grade-S spirit talent means a fundamentally different mana pool awakening procedure compared to those who had grade-C to A spirit talent.
Sumire continued to explain. “Just as spirit talent is being graded to 5 tiers from E to A, mana pool is also split into the same tiered system. Naturally, having grade-A mana pool during awakening is significantly better than grade-B or lower, but ideally, the spirit and mana pool should be in equal tiers. If the spirit is better than the mana pool, then it’ll be like a swordsman given a knife instead of a sword. Or if the mana pool is better than the spirit, it would be similar to giving a holy blade crafted by the greatest craftsman of the land… to a toddler. Each of these scenarios would mean the mage apprentice could not fully utilize their resources.
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However, that was before, a primitive way of thinking. At the current age, it is better to strive for a better tier of mana pool because the issues caused by having a better mana pool could eventually be solved by potions or cultivating with better meditation techniques. Unlike spirit talent, mana pool awakening can be affected with effort, it's best if we hold nothing back with resource spending to produce better results.”
Sumire wanted to add that the Hunter Association even has the method to allow people with little to no spirit talent to become pseudo-mages with the support of magic machinery artifacts, but it is too expensive to the point of being unrealistic for people from a frontier village like this. It is already doubtful that the whole village’s resources could nurture a proper mage in the first place. Thus, she held herself back.
While Sumire continued elaborating on the process of awakening the mana pool to the general populace, Sakuya whispered to Mordred. “Having grade-S spirit talent would be a waste if you could not awaken a grade-S mana pool. I’ve replaced all the necessary resources for your awakening into the suitable variants.” While having her hand on his shoulder, she subtly pointed towards the crystal coins.
If Mordred focused close enough, he could see there was light refraction around the coins on his portion of ceremonial formation. With a bit of effort, he could sense that it was a stealth method designed so that the coins would be similar to their 1-unit denomination if looked from afar, but its effect is reduced as one looked closer. They are not low-grade crystal coins, but mid-grade instead: each one is worth 100-unit of low-grade crystal coins. With the coins numbered nine, his mana pool awakening process would spend around 900 crystal coins instead of the typical nine.
If the whole Mira village were to be sold, it wouldn’t amount to a few thousand crystal coins. From that alone, it could be seen that nurturing a mage is a resource-hungry endeavor. If the mage has higher talent, then it would be exponentially more expensive.
“Wouldn’t I explode if so much energy were injected into my system?” Mordred had the desire to awaken a grade-S mana pool, but the difficulty of doing so is far more difficult than the grade-A.
As stated before, the ‘normal’ grading system only has five tiers of assessment, ranging from E to A. Being beyond the normal assessment level meant grade-S must possess special properties that allowed one to stand above others.
A league of its own, so to speak.
“Don’t worry, the potion you’ll be drinking is also a special brew.” Sakuya assured him. “The Captain of Twin Helix had personally refined it a while back, expecting special cases like you. She had been looking for talent far and wide, preparing two sets of grade-S mana pool awakening potions of all nine elemental paths. Back then, we were against it since refining one is extremely expensive even by our standard, but here we are... I swear, her scheming is honestly ridiculous.”
Mordred raised his eyebrows. It wasn’t his first time hearing Twin Helix’s acknowledgement of their captain. His curiosity of the identity of their captain has now increased significantly. “Are there some things that I need to take note of during the awakening?” He inquired.
“The one thing you need to understand is that having a mana pool will be a major change in your life.” She elaborated. “Fire-path is all about heat, and the fire elemental crystal we’ve prepared for you is far purer and concentrated compared to that Hiroshi kid’s earth elemental crystal. I’ve never witnessed a grade-S mana pool awakening process, but with the resources we’ve prepared, you should be able to successfully condense a grade-S mana pool… and having a mana pool in your body would mean you can start collecting external energy, your biology will slowly adapt to the change and thus produce fire-path radiation en masse. It’ll be hard to quickly get used to it, but I will teach you everything you need to know.”
Mordred nodded in understanding. While martial artists do produce radiation, the level at which their body produces is generally much lower than that of mages. To put it in perspective, it’s like comparing the warmth of a cozy fire to the intense heat of a nuclear reactor. Though in reality, there are some martial cultivation methods that specialized in producing radiation, therefore it’s not an absolute fact either.
Eventually, Sumire finished explaining the technical know-hows before giving a signal to both Alanis and Sakuya.
“I believe a quiet environment is preferable since you need to focus and all. Rank 0 wisdom-path magic spell, [Sensory Deprivation]!” When she activated the spell, it turned the world within Mordred and Hiroshi’s perception into a dark and soundless environment, not allowing intervention from the external world.
< You should proceed to drink the potion now. > They received a telepathic message from Sumire.
After drinking it, the two received further instruction from their guide. In Mordred’s case, he could hear the telepathic whisper of Sakuya who told him to breathe in a specific sequence and focus on his belly. She teaches him a meditation technique while her spiritual force inspected Mordred’s body.
Mordred was prepared for this. He had already restarted higher bodily function, allowing his heart to beat normally like a human. Of course, his killing intent has been retracted, so it wouldn’t kill Sakuya’s spiritual force which had infiltrated his body. If this was a normal case, the rank 1 warmage would be able to discern the abnormalities of Mordred’s body because Astaroth had used [Hemotherapy]. However, the advantage of having mid-stage soul foundation can be shown here.
His truesoul is extremely corrosive and destructive. If one were to make contact with it, it would corrode one's own soul. If Mordred possessed malicious intent, he could alter the warmage’s soul into his slave over the course of a long period of time.
In this situation, he used his soul’s corrosiveness instead of destructiveness to affect the perception of the warmage. Sakuya might have an overwhelming advantage of spiritual force, but her soul is a completely different matter. Yes, her soul foundation is deeper due to her sheer cultivation rank, but she did not cultivate them. If Mordred’s soul is like a bar of refined steel, then Sakuya is a large pile of iron ore. The ‘weight’ of the minerals might be in Sakuya’s advantage, but the quality is in Mordred’s overwhelming dominance.
Thus, the warmage’s truesoul is susceptible to Mordred’s influence since she did not prepare an anti-soul tempering method before proceeding. Even so, he didn’t want to influence her too much because if he got exposed later, it'd be troublesome. For now, he just altered her perception, not allowing her to find out the abnormality of Mordred’s quasi-dead body.
After the first hurdle has been taken care of, he could focus on mana pool awakening. According to Mordred’s memory, the method to do so is split into three steps.
The first step is to attune one’s consciousness with the heavenly dao. This is because mana pool refinement is inherently a heavenly miracle. Human or other intelligent races couldn’t awaken a mana pool on demand.
As stated before, back then, old-era cultivators rely on luck to kickstart their cultivation journey. This was because even if one managed to awaken a mana pool directly, the memories of how one did so would be wiped clean by the heavens. It is an unexplainable phenomena that even when Archmages tried to research about this topic, they could not gain a complete understanding.
It was as if the heavens did not let them so.
And so, instead of understanding how to ‘assemble’ a mana pool, why not just make the heavens do the heavy lifting? The technical know-how is no longer important; they could turn the heavens into an automated mana pool refinement machine. Just drugged the potential mage apprentices so that their mind is attuned with the heavenly dao, and let the heavens do its work. A drug-induced miracle-making method, so to speak.
So far, this method has worked perfectly fine. Or rather, it simply just works, there’s no other explanation.
However, to Mordred who had a special understanding of heavenly secrets, this was not as simple as it seemed.
‘It’s unfortunate that I do not fully remember the Mana Pool Refinement True Inheritance, but I should be able to refine a grade-S mana pool if I play my cards right…’
After drinking the potion, his mind should be hazy as his consciousness merged with the heavenly dao. However, Mordred’s truesoul is rather immune to consciousness-altering effects. He did not want to attune his mind with the heavenly dao because it is also known by another name: the World’s Will. As an otherworldly invader with a goal relating to world-wide genocide, if he was detected by the World’s Will, his luck would plummet and karmic retaliation would comes in droves. Problems would start to occur at higher frequency until the Sacred Alliance found him through sheer bad luck.
It is in his best interest to hide from the World’s Will.
By deliberately opposing the fusion with the heavenly dao, he inadvertently triggered the unsealing of his forgotten memories, becoming more acquainted with the sensation of condensing a mana pool. It was akin to experiencing an intense bout of deja vu, as if he had undergone the process before.
‘First of all… I need to expel the World’s Will which has infiltrated my sea of consciousness!’ Mordred scoffed, a portion of his soul essence turned into killing intent which was specifically effective against the World’s Will. Most cultivators aren’t aware of the existence of the World’s Will, nevertheless developing a method to cleanse one’s sea of consciousness out of it. But as an otherworldly invader, it was the first checklist that allowed him to infiltrate this world.
The World’s Will’s infiltration to his sea of consciousness actually brought mana pool ‘blueprints’. With its destruction, he shouldn’t be able to awaken one himself because he simply doesn’t know how to. However, the World’s Will cleansing further triggered a flood of memories as if a certain condition had been met.
“I see… That’s how it is…” As fragments of memories regarding his Mana Pool Refinement True Inheritance flowed back to him, he began to deepen his understanding of the prior self’s schemes. Various mana pool designs he had deduced during his time as the Great Archmage began to slowly resurface. Pressed for time, he skimmed through them all, focusing on the grade-S fire-path mana pools designs. “To achieve this, the fire elemental particle density needs to be at least ten times higher than grade-A, and the crystalline mana pool walls will require more crystal coins to condense. This should suffice.”
With that in mind, he proceeded to the second step of the awakening: condensing the mana pool.