Chapter 16 - Grinding

The sun was scorching the ground as the young lizard made its way to the fresh waterhole. It had been navigating the subterranean passageways for weeks and only now emerged after finally evolving.

All of the lizards were forced to fend for themselves after the first year. Therefore the rodents and insects that inhabited the expansive underground networks were equal parts an opportunity and a danger. A little under half of his generation had already fallen in their fight for evolution but not him, he had successfully evolved from his hunts and would vastly increase his speed and strength.

All the lizards knew of the freshwater pond since they were born there as hatchlings. Unlike the muddy underground water sources, the fresh pond appeared and disappeared depending on the heat and the light’s intensity. The lizard had only been there once but instinctively knew he now needed to return.

Due to the individualistic nature of the lizards, they always tried to keep their distance from one another, except for mating season when the heat lessened and the pond glowed.

As a result, the pond rarely had more than one lizard visiting at a time and the lizards only risked journeying out to the pond when they evolved, as the magically charged waters were ideal for solidifying their evolution.

It was his first journey back to the place he was born and the burning heat and bright light were proving hard to deal with. He had spent most of his life in the dark, so the promise of shade provided by the trees in the distance was the only reason he didn’t turn back.

This newly evolved grey-core lizard was the length of a small person but its clawed feet designed for gripping cave walls weren’t helping it move any faster in the open. It wasn’t concerned about being attacked as it was no longer underground and nothing big enough to threaten the lizard would be out here.

It reached the tree cover and looked around to make sure it was alone, but before it had time to continue any further toward the special waters, something grabbed it by the tail.

In a split second, the lizard was soaring through the air and crashed into a tree. It didn’t even have time to process the situation before something sharp pressed against its neck, a deep wound formed and a purple liquid started to gush out. The lizard tried to thrash about to retaliate against its attacker but it was already too late as it flailed around on the ground, its body not colliding with its attacker until it stopped moving forever.

“Number seven was the easiest so far”

Adam had encountered several of the lizards wandering towards the pond and all appeared to have only just reached grey-core.

He had discovered the best way to kill them as his fight with the second lizard warned him that they were a real threat.

Using the element of surprise and his new enhancement spell, he was able to kill them all without sustaining any serious injury. He did get the odd scratch and bruise but his constitution was incomparable to his previous version since he watched them close up in realtime.

After several fights, he found that attacking them from behind and making them off-balanced or flipping them over was the best way to deal with them. He only needed a few more cores before he could evolve to middle grade and his current source of mana beasts was the best situation he had come across since the coconut fruit.

He had spent several days camping out at the pond and waiting for more lizards to show up. Under the shade of the trees and with the cool air coming from the water, he diligently practiced with his new spell.

Since the system had awarded him with the enhancement spell, he had discovered a new change to his pathways. It was as if the lines that traveled through his body branched out into thin veins across his muscles. He had long since wondered why he wasn’t given the enhancement spell before but it made sense now.

He had always tried to pump more mana into his muscles to make them stronger when in reality, he needed to infuse his muscles on a more cellular level to make them stronger and not leak mana as much.

With the new spell, not only was he nearly twice as strong but he also only needed about half the mana expenditure. Optimizing his pathways really did make a huge difference when it came to controlling mana. It also helped him with his other spell. Each new spell had an active function where the mana was used to form a certain function, but also a passive effect like elevating his control and power.

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He assumed that most people with magic would have learned a bunch of spells at the black core which would hugely compensate for their lack of mana. Meaning that his goal of growing his mana core wasn’t the only path to power as using the mana in a smart way would allow people to wipe the floor with others even if they have a better core.

That realization made him spend even more time focusing on his magic and spells in order to improve them. Mana sight was his only refined spell and it was the easiest to use but he needed to advance his others too.

He spent several days hanging around the pond and hunting the occasional lizard when it crawled too close. He tried killing them with his mana blade but their tough armor protected them quite well. He needed to really over-crank the spell for it to be an instant kill.

He practiced trying to make his blade fly faster and stab further but nothing obvious to refine the spell stood out to him. He would simply need to completely master it until he could control it without even thinking about it, like an extension of his body.

Admittedly, that wasn't something he would be able to do any time soon since the blade only lasted a few minutes before dissipating. He needed to stay still and completely focused for a few seconds to conjure another. He could make them more dense to last longer but he was trying to optimize them for battle.

He wanted the blades to use as little mana as possible and last as long as possible. Since he was safe out here at the oasis, he decided to simply work on his spells until he advanced his core. He only needed a few more cores to do so and the oblivious lizards were never on guard when coming to the pond making them the perfect hunting targets.

He had now consumed over twelve cores and felt as though he was close to advancing. It took longer than expected but today was going to be the day since he had just spotted another lizard in the distance. They were arriving less often now and he was worried that he was killing off an entire generation of lizards.

He felt a little guilty but still killed the lizard in less than a second since he had gotten his method down to a science by now. He had piled up the bodies in a corner near a large tree after he had extracted and absorbed their cores.

As he suspected, this core was the final push needed to advance himself to middle grade. He sat down cross-legged on the sand next to the pond and focused on his core.

It was pulsating rather quickly and looked to be fighting under its own weight, like a ball of liquid splashing within itself. He felt the pressure intensify as the core began to grow and shrink in size at random intervals. It went on like this for a few long minutes until the grey core in his hand was completely absorbed. His core was now like a small raging sea of energy that threatened to tear itself apart with every passing moment.

Adam lost the concept of time and space as his entire mind was focused on containing the rampant energies. The process of advancing his magic was akin to forcing more energy than his core could contain into his core until it either exploded or condensed into a stronger shell to the point that the excess energies would then be contained.

It's a process that he had done before but back then he only had a small amount of magic in his black core. His grey core had about five times as much magic capacity so the entire process was not only terrifying but also more likely to be deadly if he got distracted for even a second.

Luckily, he was able to contain the chaotic energies long enough for them to be condensed and used to reinforce his core. After that, the magic calmed down as the pressure diminished. Finally, his core regained its solid shape and looked a lot stronger than before. It had also gained a slight tint to it as if the core had been stained in blood. Adam panicked for a second thinking that he might have injured himself from the advancement but soon calmed down again.

The dark red tint wasn’t smeared around the core but was actually emanating from inside it. It looked like small dark red dots were starting to become visible in the center of the ball and Adam remembered that red was the color of the next core evolution.

This thought really excited him since he hadn’t noticed this phenomenon when evolving from black to grey. Then again, those colors were hard to tell apart from his inner vision and his mind's eye had become a lot clearer since he first gained his core. He once again refocused on his surroundings to make sure he was still alone but his eyes lingered on a specific spot.

The pond had vastly reduced in the days he had spent here but its water was still very clear. What caught his eyes though was the magic that glistened within it. He still had no idea why or how the water had condensed magic but could tell that it did indeed have a certain property to it. It was denser and more complex than his own mana but other than keeping the water cool, he hadn’t discovered anything else about it.

Now that his core had advanced, his core should have started sending mana pulses to strengthen his muscles but it hadn’t started yet. His core seemed to be waiting for something but he didn’t understand what it wanted. He was about to poke it to get to work when he suddenly had an idea. He didn’t know why the lizards all came here one by one but he had discovered that they weren’t as strong as the one that first attacked him.

That lizard's core was also only a newly evolved grey core but its strength was stronger than the others. The only explanation he could come up with was that the pond was needed for them to fully evolve. If the property of the magically changed water is something that could help a newly evolved core then the reason his core was waiting must mean that the water would help him too.

He slipped into the water and drank as much as he could before the mana pulses started. It wasn’t an evolution but merely an advancement so the amount of strength he would gain wouldn’t be enormous. The core began sending out the white mana throughout his body and the water really did seem to have an extraordinary effect.

Whenever he used mana-strengthening, his body wasn’t able to hold all the mana and would lose some of it during the trip. This was unavoidable even when using spells. He had such a huge trouble getting the enhancement spell for that exact reason. This water however acted like an insulation layer that trapped the mana.

The mana pulses become almost twice as effective since they no longer lose parts of their payload when traveling through their body. This entire pond had been a gold mine and he almost hadn’t noticed. It wasn’t perfect and did notice that some of the mana was actually absorbed by the water but it was definitely a huge improvement from having his body tampered without it.

He waited until the pulses stopped coming before emerging from the water to see what had changed. He hadn’t expected much but with the assistance of the pon, his gains may have been almost as great as his grey core evolution.