- Drake's POV -

It feels like I have been in darkness for a long time when a bright light suddenly appears. As I approach the light, it turns into two lights.

As we approach the lights, their colors start to pop: one is golden, and the other is green. I try to get as close as I can but am unable to. There is a force preventing me from approaching.

There is a sharp tug on my back, and I look. There are two other lights. One is black as night, and the other is a deep purple. I have seen all of these colors before. It confuses me why I can see the other two when I have no affinity with them. Or can you see any mana? I haven't thought to ask anyone. I pay attention to my mana affinities, and it hasn't been long since my eyes have been able to see the different mana types.

Getting bogged down in what mana types is going to get me nowhere. Mentally taking a seat, I think of things that might help in this situation.

It took me a moment to remember one thing Laxreal told me: "When in meditation, it is possible to see into yourself and find your mana spiral. The purer the spiral, the better the spells cast by it will become."

Taking a closer look, I notice that there aren't any spirals right now. Since I am here anyway, trying to get them to spin won't hurt.

Focusing on my healing mote of mana in front of me, I try to move it.

It doesn't want to budge, no matter how much willpower I use to move the singular mote. I move on to the Nature mote, and the same thing happens.

Trying the other two, I receive the same results. None of them want to sping to make a spiral.

I try to circulate my mana through my system, but it seems like my mind is locked into this space, and I can't get it to register anything outside of this area.

"Damn," I say. Knowing no one will hear me, I make a decision. If I am going to experiment, I want to have a baseline of where everything is located. Following this train of thought, I assign 'quadrants' to the different motes of mana.

The first quadrant is the healing mote, the second is the nature mote, the next is the corruption mote, and finally, death.

My mind spins briefly, and I look at each mote's location. If one looks at it specifically, it forms a sort of cycle. I don't know where the cycle starts, but they all interact with the previous quadrant differently.

I can't tell how they interact fully as they are singular motes of mana, but I have a feeling I will know more once their spirals develop.

Again, I try spinning the motes. They are just as solid as before, and I want to experiment with something. I focus on two of the motes of mana and try to spin them.

It is more demanding since I focus on two motes instead of one, but I can feel less resistance. However, the strain on my willpower is incredible.

Thinking about it, I try and get three motes to spin. I can grasp the third mote, and the resistance further decreases, pushing my willpower to its limits. I don't know if I can get all four motes to spin simultaneously, which becomes an issue. What will happen if I can't get all four motes to spin?

I keep trying to figure out how to get all four motes to spin, and then I have a potentially stupid idea.

Why don't I try and get all of the quadrants to spin around me, and then I try to spin those I can see?

Trying this new method, from my seated position, I move the two motes in front of me counterclockwise around my body.

Slowly, they start to move, and as the healing mote leaves my line of sight, the corruption mote enters.

This process continues till the healing mode comes back into vision. Being able to spin all four around me, I push the motes before me to spin. Starting with the healing and nature mote, with the lesser resistance, I can get them to begin to spin before the corruption mote comes around.

Focusing as hard as possible, I can get all the motes to spin slowly. As they are turning, I feel a burst of pain. And everything in this place stops abruptly.

I start the process again and once again get all the motes to start spinning before the burst of pain breaks my concentration.

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When I look down at my chest where I 'felt' the pain, I see black tendrils spreading across my body. There is another set of motes next to the death and corruption motes.

Feeling frustrated by the pain, I try to start over, but I am unable to. Trying to move the healing and nature motes has become all but impossible at all.

I tried another six times to start the process, and my frustration grew with each failure.

During these attempts, another three motes of each death and corruption mana joined the previous two.

The black tendrils have started to spread through my legs and arms.

Feeling helpless that I can't circulate my mana, I think something is getting wrenched out of my body.

Looking over, I see one of the motes has been pulled from the death section.

Another wrenching and a corruption mote has been pulled.

Figuring that someone might be helping me get rid of the extra motes, I wonder if there is anything I can do to help.

I mentally think about circulating my mana again; this time, I feel my body responding to the mana circulation.

As soon as that starts, I can see one more healing and nature motes in the space with me. Pushing to get the rotation started again makes it easier for both sides to be more balanced.

There is another wrenching from this space, and I feel another of the death mana motes being dragged away. The spinning destabilizes, and one of the motes from the nature side is shunted to the corruption side.

Once it is over there, I watch in horror as it slowly corrupts and becomes another mote of corruption mana. Now, with two motes of healing mana, one of nature mana, four corruption mana, and two death mana, the supposed black tendrils turn purple, spreading further onto my metaphysical body.

Panicking, I tried rotating my mana through my body again, and thankfully, it was successful. This pulled in another mote of healing and nature mana. This doesn't balance everything but gives me more time to think.

What do I need to do? I try to think, another wrenching pain and one of the corruption motes is pulled away, but it severely interrupts my thought process; it takes me about 30 minutes, from what I can tell, to get my mind back on track with what I was doing. In that time, nothing terrible happened, nothing good either, but at least I am stable for now.

I rechecked my metaphysical body and saw that the veins hadn't grown with an even amount of healing mana to corruption and nature mana to death. There are now golden veins running through the system alongside the purple veins.

Thinking about it, I try to shunt one of the healing motes to the nature motes. It took a couple of minutes, but I succeeded in doing so.

The mote slowly turns green and then stabilizes. The golden veins slowly recede while green veins become prominent.

I am trying to do the same with the corruption mana, but I can't manipulate them as much as I can with healing and nature mana.

Another bout of pain wracks my system, and the corruption mana drops to two motes. The purple veins recede, leaving only the green veins visible.

Thinking about what I could do to make everything even, I took another risk. I push the extra mote of nature mana to the corruption quadrant and let it become corrupted.

Hoping whoever is helping me can grasp this extra mote, I wait and focus on spinning the four quadrants around myself.

It doesn't take long for the mote to be removed from my system. At this point, I have no primarily visible veins.

Taking a deep breath, I focus on circulating my mana again. Once again, I am successful, and another set of healing and nature mana motes appear in my workplace.

Then, I do something that would be stupid if things weren't as stable as they are now. I try to integrate the death and corruption mana from outside my body and pull it inside.

It takes a couple of attempts, but I can integrate a set of death and corruption mana into my system.

I look at my metaphysical body and find four veins running through it. They are just reaching through my body, but none have fully incorporated themselves into my mana veins like my healing and nature mana should.

I have stopped trying to spin the quadrants; it is too challenging now, and my focus is on just turning the quadrants around me.

Soon, I feel the tug on my death mana mote, and I reach out to stop it from being pulled away. My willpower and the person trying to help me struggle, but I win by holding onto the mote.

I continue trying to incorporate more motes into my system. As I become more conscientious of what is happening, it becomes more challenging to circulate my mana through my body. It takes 14 minutes to get another set of motes in my workplace.

There are now four sets of each inside where I am at. Looking again at my metaphysical body, I find all four veins aren't proceeding like my veins were cleared. All my limbs have been highlighted, leaving only my head untouched by any of the veins.

Finding this development intriguing, I continue trying to get the fifth set of motes in my system. It is almost eight times as complicated to get the fifth set of motes as it was to get the fourth set.

The person helping me constantly tries to pull out either a death or corruption mote.

Fighting for control over everything has made things more complicated than necessary. At one point, they can grab one of the motes and pull it out, causing me to wait for the other of the corresponding motes to be pulled out.

The whole process of getting the fifth set of motes takes 56 minutes. Once the fifth set is completed, my entire metaphysical body is lit with different veins.

As soon as that happens, I feel pain all over my body. It feels like my blood is trying to force its way out of my body through any means it can while my mana is boiling just as furiously as it rushes through my system.

There is a sudden break as I am forced into a conscious state. I quickly inspect my body to find something I couldn't have believed to happen.

My mana veins have started merging with my regular veins, which is excruciating. I see a notification in my field of vision.