Why did the Core understand colour? That was a question that the Core couldn't answer easily, mainly because of the Core in question not knowing why it did so itself. It could look at the Mana within itself and think of it as blue, yet it could likewise pick a random current from the outside and call it out as being yellow. Why was it not the reverse? Why did it not call the colour inside itself yellow with the one outside being blue? For that, there was no answer. It knew what it knew. The reason behind what it knew? That was a level too deep, no matter how one thought about it.

The Core wasn't even sure if there had been a yellow colour outside itself. With everything being as chaotic as it was, there was a larger hardship in separating it all mentally. The inside of the Core had been so peaceful in its operations. There had been a clear flow in where the Mana went, a clear sign of everything working in tandem. It had been a conscious entity in its own making. Or at least that's how the Core looked at it, the complexity being one step above what it could do itself.

Was it the same on the outside? Was there a level of complexity that the Core couldn't comprehend out there? Well… there was something. The Core wasn't able to call it a pattern, however. Or maybe there was a pattern that was simply too complex to comprehend. There was no way to know instantly.

Inside, there had only been one entity to hold on to, one circle of Mana. The Core wasn't sure what to call the pattern inside itself, truly, a circle not really holding true. There were loops, curves, and everything in-between the two designations, making the pattern anything but a clear circle. But, when all was put together, there was a clear sign it was all together, the colouring being clear and the pattering not wavering in the slightest.

The outside was anything but that, constantly changing, never going in the same pattern again and again. In the bursts that the Core had sent out, never had the colours been in the same places, never showing itself in the same ways. They were spread at some times, with the next times showing it all condensed as much as possible. It was the most chaotic display of Mana it had ever seen. And while it might not have meant a lot, the display being the first it had seen, the Core still thought it very serious. There was… just too much.

What did the colour mean? What meaning was there for it? There had to be some to it. The Mana inside the core was unique in its colouring. Green, red, yellow, purple… all were seen on the outside in clear contrast, yet not a single time could the Core see anything that hinted at anything Blue. There were hints of it at times, and there were a few moments where the Core could have sworn to have seen clusters of the colouring, yet the next time it looked there it was all gone, replaced with green or brown. It was worrisome.

But it wouldn't stop the Core from thinking. Yes, the patterns were chaotic, yes they made little sense, and yes, it was too confusing to the Core at the current moment. But what did that matter in the long run? It had time. It had time for everything. And it would learn everything. With enough patience, it would all be okay.

That was the mantra that was repeated many times throughout the mental adventure by the name of figuring out the colours. It was a hard adventure, the Core nearly going away from the subject entirely multiple times. But, it always came back quickly enough, more frustrated with itself for giving up than being frustrated with the harder difficulty of the colouring.

It was hard, yes, but that didn't mean it was impossible. Leaps would be taken at points, conclusions being guessed and then tested for. The Core did everything it could to make itself have the right answer, yet so often it felt like a wall was stopping it from gaining the experience that was required to gain a-

…

A wall. That was it. A wall. A border. Something that stopped another object from moving through space. How obvious it was, how clear it was to the Core, how dumb it had been for not realising it before. If it had been able to do anything close to cheering itself on, a celebration would have been had. Instead, logistics rained down.

It had been a fact noticed longer back in the memories. When manipulating with its own Mana, pushing it around itself, a barrier of some sorts had been found quickly. It was a point where the Mana refused to move past, no matter how hard the Core pushed. Now, the Core did later learn how to circumvent the barrier through the power of creative thinking, but there was truly no way for the Mana to have achieved the same result by itself. No matter how much it had been pushed around, it would never do what the Core had done.

Yet it wasn't like the Mana inside would do such a thing, the pattern upheld never coming close to the edges. However, what did it mean for other objects, be they sentient or not, when they had Mana that moved inside without a pattern? It would hit the edges, again and again, never stopping. It would simply bounce away, always moving. While it might seem random, because it certainly was at some level, the Core was realising that there might just have been more clear constraints for the Mana-Currents seen outside itself.

Not that it truly knew where those borders were drawn, the Core only getting bursts here and there. The response from those bursts of Mana sent out only showed what the world was like in a single moment. The Core couldn't make do with that. It needed to see what the world had to show at every moment.

However, there came a problem. The act of sending out a burst. It took several moments of concentration to do. While it might have been effortless, it still took time for the Mana to diverge from its path and be sent out usefully. The current technique only allowed for a picture of the world to be seen every few moments, and that was when the Core was spending more time sending it out than actually doing anything with the feedback it was getting, essentially making the results useless.

No… it had to figure out something else. But what? What it could do to fix it? When there was a need for constant observation and the burst technique simply couldn't hold up to the pressure, what was there to do?

When phrased in such a way, the Core couldn't help but feel a little sluggish, not happy about itself not realizing earlier. Or maybe it wasn't something it needed to be that unhappy about, the answer not yet having been found.

The burst technique itself needed to be thrown away. Instead, another method of gathering Mana and throwing it out into the world needed to be made. The Core immediately got to work with such a problem, thinking it over again and again. For there to be a constant overview of the world, there needed to be a constant output of Mana. For there to be a constant output of Mana, there needed to be a constant divergence in the Mana-Current inside the Core. For the Core to constantly have a Mana-Current that was changed, it needed to constantly put pressure on the structure already present.

That was a dead-set requirement. The Core haphazardly tried it out as a test, taking a small strand of the Mana-Current and pressing it against the border that separated it from the outside. It didn't go all the way, of course, only trying out the starting process of it, hoping to figure out just what parts didn't work.

The actual results were perfectly fine. With the pressure applied, an albeit small part of the Mana-Current changed over to the other part of the Core, no resistance met in the new direction. When the Mana-Current met the end of what was being controlled, it simply split into smaller parts, bouncing around for a bit before finally meeting up with the regular rhythm and going back to the pattern that had been with no larger issues.

The Core was ecstatic at the easy progress, happy to finally have some leeway in its efforts. However, such emotion was more than enough to make the Core lose control of where it was pushing, making the small strand of the Current that it had taken away dissolve into small pieces, too chaotic to salvage.

… That was a problem. An enormous problem. Attention was required for the constant flow to work. How much attention, however, did there really need to be? Could the Core focus outwards as well, still checking the colours and flows while still holding up the formations created? It was hard to know for certain without checking.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Holding up a strand yet again, albeit with a thicker strand this time, the Core slowly moved it towards the edges. Precision and slow movement were made to make sure the length to the border was as small as possible, the Core not wanting to put more pressure on itself. The longer the abnormality was, the more space there was to focus on. While it made such a negligible difference while it was the only thing to focus on, there was doubt it would be a positive factor when attention needed to be diverted into multiples.

It was the time for reckoning, with the Core tense as ever. With a steady push, it moved the Mana outside of itself, keeping the strand steady and without pause, while also looking out into the world to see what it had to show.

And the view was as perfect as it could have ever dreamed. Sure, the colours were still everywhere. They were still moving around with no breaks, bouncing around in a chaotic world of dance. But.... as time passed, as each thought was allowed to be had while also looking out into the world as a whole, the Core began to truly realise how right its theory about borders had been.

They never moved out! The [Mana-Currents] always stayed within a certain area, never moving close enough to other Currents to actually interact. It was not because of some repulsion effect but due to borders stopping it from doing something like that, to begin with. The Mana was actually restrained into a physical space. It all made-

And then the focus became too heavy on the outside, and all the lights, movement, and theories faded away into the darkness, the Core unable to see it no matter how hard it tried to use the [Mana-Sense]. It needed more time!

Doing it all again, setting up the strand of Mana and moving it around to the needed position. The lights came back on nearly instantly after that, and the Core was able to see it all again. Yet in the moment of jubilation, the attention was again diverted too much and it all fell away.

…

It was not working like the Core wanted it to, and it was becoming obvious that a more permanent solution was needed. The solution needed to include the Mana to work by itself instead of it doing it all manually. It needed an automated handling of the strand, automatic handling of the positioning, with it all being done without the Core needing to actively think about it. But how was that going to work?

The pattern was without change, with no sign that it wanted to change, always going back to what it originally was no matter how much the Core pushed it around. The swirls, corners, and loops all came back together with no matter how much it was all stretched.

That wasn't the desired result. The Core wanted it to be different. It wanted the pattern to change. It didn't hope for it to change, it didn't wish it would. It wanted it and so it would change to happen no matter what.

It would cause a reform in the pattern. But first, it would have to figure out how to change it permanently. To make a change that wouldn't be put back. The Core needed to make sure the pattern was without knowledge of what it originally was.

The idea that came forth was not an easy one, but it was one that came with a few caveats. Through all the manipulation, never had there been a moment where some part of the pattern had not been in the original position. There had always been some remnant of what it originally was, no matter how minor in scale it was.

What if that changed? What if the Core made sure that there was no chance that any part of the pattern remained? If there was no knowledge of what it was, then the Core could mould the pattern into whatever it wished.

Looking back at it a few moments after initially thinking about it, the Core was still not sure exactly what it had done. With a mighty push, every fiber in the pattern, every single node that could have been quantified in any possible way, was pushed away from each other. The wave was turned into a mountain of liquid dust, everything scattered into all corners of the Core.

An unfamiliar sensation came from that. One that the Core was not sure felt… great. It was actually a very annoying sensation. However, it was ignored in favour of not stopping the observations of Mana inside itself. It needed to get one question answered.

Would the Mana return to its previous pattern? That was the question above all others, and it was the one that the Core found increasingly difficult to keep on the forefront of its mind, the other sensation making sure that its presence was known. But no matter how much it wanted to be focused on, the Core did what it needed to do to ignore it.

Thoughts passed slower than ever before. Or maybe it was the Core that was so focussed on the surroundings that the pace of thoughts had picked up. There was no way to truly know, no attention spent on the conundrum. Instead, observations were had about every movement, trying to see any indications of Mana condensing into bigger masses.

No signs of it were found after ten thoughts. After a hundred, similar results were had. The Core would have preferred to wait until a thousand had passed, but the other sensation would not stop increasing in strength. So, after realising that it wouldn't be able to ignore the novel sensation for long, a forced acceptance of no apparent restructuring was had. The Core could only look at the results as proof that it could remake itself into what it needed to be.

And that was just what it did, spinning the wheels as quickly as it could, the sensation creeping up on it quicker than it could concentrate. Yet there was a likewise knowing about how little it could fail at such a critical moment in creating a new pattern, so it endured for as long as it could.

New loops. New corners. New separators. Everything was made anew, parts being scavenged from the previous design but many parts likewise being improvised. The primary function was simply to allow for the Core to tether a part of the pattern to the boundary and control the flow of Mana that went outside, with all the Mana rejected being sent back into the pattern. That was easy enough, though the time felt so much longer with every passing thought. Was time slowing down or was the Mana reacting faster to the Core’s prodding?

There was no time to think. It couldn't think, even. It was hard to even move the Mana around at that point, the sensation from before being overwhelming to the level where it was flooding through the other senses as well. It was an overload of information, all of it screaming at the Core.

But… then the pattern was created and the sensation that had seemed so large and mighty died down into dull memories in the background. The Core had to wonder what it was about for a few moments before finally ignoring it as it had done at the start. There were more interesting things to look at anyway.

The Mana had finally begun moving around in the pattern with ease. The Core had initially been scared that it would take more effort, yet it seemed that the Will pushed the energy to move around more fluidly. For that, the Core was thrilled.

Was that what [Willpower] was for? It would make sense for control over Mana to have something with the [Willpower] stat. Now that the Core thought about that fact, it had not actually looked at what the information about the stat was, having already assumed that it knew what it would say. The new thoughts had told another story.

With a force of [Will], the Core made its [Status] appear, ready to gain more information about itself.

Character Screen

Name:

-

Gender:

-

Level:

1

Class:

Core

Race:

Core

Title:

The Ancient One

Health:

9/110

H-Regen:

0.1/sec

Mana:

115/130

M-Regen:

0.12/sec

Stamina:

-/-

S-Regen:

0/sec

Basic Stats

Strength:

-

Wisdom:

12

Vitality:

10

Intelligence:

12

Dex:

-

Willpower:

12

Available points:

5

Before it had the chance to even focus on the [Willpower] stat, another fact caught its eye.

… Why was the Core’s health so low?