Chapter 21 - A ripple across space

Yacova missed her lavish life in the Muhyuang family's service but knew that she could never go back. She was forced to spend the rest of her life in hiding. Seers like her were rare in her sector and were extremely sought after, sometimes for her abilities but also simply to remove her to protect their secrets and shady actions.

She had fled with her husband after she evolved into an orange-core mage. This was when she would begin to truly glimpse the future and therefore would become sought after by all the major factions of her sector.

The Muhyuang family promised her parents to protect and guide her when her talent was discovered but the house had grown weak after the combined attacks from their opposing forces.

She had glimpsed a fragment of the future that awaited her and refused to let it come to pass. She wouldn’t be used as some bargaining chip to save a falling house, so she fled to a small backwater mining world with her red-cored husband.

The two had met when she was but an infant on homeworld and grew up together as best friends. Their species is the dominant one in their world, as the Involpose are a highly intelligent species that resemble small humanoid foxes. Their brown and white fur acts as a protective armor against both physical and magical attacks which allowed them to become very resistant creatures.

Their high intelligence allowed them to build a great civilization in their relatively small world. They are multitalented and pursue many different types of magic as their affinities tend to be extremely varied.

Yocova had been transported off world when her core had become red and her affinity discovered. She was married at that time but didn’t want to have pups until she had lived a longer life. She wanted to live a hundred years before starting a family, after all, Involpos have a relatively short life and even her red core would only extend her life for another two hundred years.

This ended up becoming the correct choice as she now found herself on the run from giant families with blue and even purple cultivators at the helm. Being born a black core, she had no chance of reaching yellow in her lifetime unless she came upon an incredible encounter.

She was reflecting on her past and possible future while curled up in her round bed. Orange cores don’t usually need much sleep but her mind was very important to her ability, and mental exhaustion would be a death sentence for her. Glimpsing beyond the veil of time could easily fry her mind if she isn’t able to resist it.

Her husband had taken a job at his friend's crystal carving shop, not far from her new home, which made her feel guilty. He had been following her around the sector without complaint, but she still hated what her ‘gift’ had done to them.

As kids, they would run around the village and talk about what they would do when they grew up. But because of her, both their lives were ruined.

Before she could sink any deeper into regret over the past, she sensed her connection with the universe grow stronger. This had never happened before.

She immediately sat up and focused her mind on the sensation, as she moved her magic in the usual pattern she had discovered after countless attempts to activate her clairvoyance ability.

She had always fought against the heavens to glimpse into the future but now the heavens were opening up to her as if inviting her to see something.

Her eyes rolled to the back of her head and her body spasmed as she sat upright on her bed.

Her mind however, was transported through time and space as reality bent and twisted around her, forming a long twisted tunnel of space and magic. A moment later, she saw a light. A single light in a sea of darkness.

The light was growing stronger and brighter before small pieces of that light broke off from the whole and drifted away from the large white ball.

Space distorted and bent around the smaller lights and rips in the fabric of space began to swallow them up. The lights weren’t eaten but rather seemed to control the opened rifts for their own purposes.

Each time a light broke off from the whole, the main light grew stronger and brighter. This sped up incredibly fast until Yacova couldn’t even see the darkness of space anymore, the light was all-consuming and ever-present.

Suddenly, she was pulled back the way she came and was thrown back into her shaking body. Her mind was screaming and her muscles were twitching uncontrollably.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

Whatever she had just witnessed, it was unlike anything she had ever seen before. It was like watching the birth of an Absolute. Her mind went blank after that since the vision had pushed her to her limits.

Elsewhere, seers and diviners from across the nearby sectors also received some sort of message or another. Many weren’t visions as vivid as Yacova’s but all knew that their universe was headed for a major event, one that would threaten the order of things even for the most powerful of beings.

_ _ _

Adam spent many hours siphoning off the red mana from the dead demon's core but was very disappointed that he didn’t have anywhere near enough to advance his core again. Despite the unusually red mana he had absorbed, the red dots in his own core didn’t change much at all.

He had never absorbed a core of such high grade before and it seems like he wouldn’t be able to get much from it.

Unlike the grey cores he had absorbed, this red core wasn’t as easy to deal with, as the amount of time and effort needed for him to process the foreign mana meant that most of it was lost to the inefficient process.

Combined with the ever-growing need for greater quantities of mana it became obvious that consuming higher-grade cores wasn’t a viable way to rapidly increase his magical power.

The pain in his body had disappeared and he was relatively safe on the giant mushroom spire so he delved back into this new affinity.

It wasn’t fire, unfortunately, but apparently, it was an incredibly rare affinity so maybe that was for the best. As long as rarer meant stronger, he would be happy.

Adam focused on his core until he noticed the silver ember. Just like he did before, he focused on the silver spark until his entire body lit up with silver flames. Seeing what was apparently his soul was a weird feeling.

People had debated whether humans had souls for millennium but here he was, starting right at the slowly pulsing and flowing silver flame.

It was significantly distinct from his white mana which looked a lot like clouds of white dust simply floating around. Soul mana, on the other hand, had a deep and primordial feeling to it. As if he was observing an ancient energy that should only exist in myth.

It also had a very different texture to it. Standard white mana could be equated to a liquid in its movements and feel, soul mana was then closer to a gas that would float around and was hard to touch and move.

It was ethereal by nature and he couldn’t condense it into a solid like he could unattuned mana.

His enhancement spell therefore couldn’t use this mana since it wouldn’t travel to, and strengthen his muscles.

But since it won’t work to enhance his body, could it instead enhance his soul?

He had no idea what this meant but he had a hunch that he was onto something. The God told him that all living beings have souls and that the stronger their souls, the better they can control the arcane and the longer they can live.

Adam didn’t know what he was supposed to do to enhance his soul but knew that it was the key to everything. He pushed out some soul mana from his core and was surprised by how hard it was to control. It was slow and weak like it would dissipate at any moment. But it never did, it seemed to be completely invisible to all other forces and energies around him.

When he controlled his standard white mana, he would have to condense it down and keep a strong mental control over it or it would be destroyed by the surrounding energies and returned to being ambient mana. The air, physical obstacles, and even his own body would all impede its integrity as he fought against the world for his mana to stay under his control.

His silver mana didn’t have any of those negative encounters as it traveled from his core and into the darker lines across his soul. His pathways would simply act as a navigational aide for his standard mana but when his soul mana traveled along his pathways, it caused his silver flame to light up as if fuel was poured onto it.

He felt more awake and focused than ever before as his silver fire lit up in his vision. This must be what the God meant when he said that the better the quality of the soul, the greater their control over the arcane.

His fatigue was also lessened as his body felt more invigorated.

He wasn’t sure why that was, as he hadn’t put any mana into his body. In hindsight, his soul was an essential part of his existence so of course it would affect his body.

Adam wanted to make use of the durable nature of the mana as he tried to recycle the silver energy traveling across his pathways. He made it loop around until that small piece of soul energy was completely absorbed by his silver flame.

His soul had eaten the silver energy to fuel itself and had become a little brighter. It wasn’t as bright as when he was actively circulating mana but its default state had slightly improved.

He tested using the silver mana in his vision spell but didn’t notice anything different.

The amount of silver mana he could extract from his core was very small. A single drop in the ocean of standard mana that made up his core. As a result, he had to wait a long time for his core to form more.

Soul mana was so completely different from his standard white mana that he had a feeling that they were entirely different energies.

He had encountered different mana affinities before, the light affinity lizard and this blood affinity demon for example. Those mana types were very different and had wildly different effects, but they were all built with standard white mana as their base. He could still see the foundation of white mana that those creatures used.

If they were using entirely different energies then he would never have spotted the light mana lizard or the blood-red demon monster.

He focused back on his white mana and let the sight of this silver soul slip out of focus. He then pumped more mana out of his core and sent it back up to his eyes to activate the greater sight spell.

Using soul mana meant that he had to essentially adjust his inner vision from the layer where his magic operated to the deeper and usually invisible layer where his soul functioned.

It was similar to putting a finger in front of your face and focusing either on the finger or the background. His soul mana was the key to showing him that the was more in his metaphysical body than just mana but to access it, he would need to focus beyond the finger, metaphorically speaking.

But since his soul magic wasn’t built on the foundational energy of standard white mana, he couldn’t simply have his core absorb and convert it at will.

He had much to learn about his new power but considering even a God thought he had an incredible opportunity, he was more determined than ever. Not simply because he was now considered special by a being that is no doubt worshiped by countless people, but also because he now knew that the truly are entire civilizations of magic users out there and that it extends to multiple universes.

His goal had crystallized even further, from uncovering everything that there’s to know about magic, to discovering everything there is to know about magic and get off this uncivilized world and explore the vast multiverse and somehow become as powerful as a god.

Seems like a pretty achievable goal for someone reaching for the moon.