Chapter 8 - Grey core

The vines seemed to have finished drinking the large creature's blood with surprising speed. Adam was now close enough to the vines and didn’t hesitate to swing at the spiky appendages wrapped around the lizard's limp neck. The claw was very sharp and combined with his mana-infused muscles, the vines were sliced like butter. They were about as thick as his arm, and pink blood splashed all over Adam as he carved through as many vines as possible. The cut vines slopped around on the ground in contrast to the amputated vines that didn’t even react. A moment later, Adam noticed that the prickly vines he had cut were now repairing and regrowing at a visible and alarming rate. The lizard had forced itself into the mass of plants and only its front end was visible to him. With his mana sight, Adam could see the faint glow of a mana core inside the beast. There was no way to fully remove the lizard's corpse from the grasp of the ever-growing vines, so Adam instead plunged his blade into the lizard's chest and pushed his arm in to try and grab the mana core. The vines were regrowing above him and slowly descending in his direction. He forced his arm in deeper as he rummaged around the creature’s still warm and squishy insides. With a final push, his entire arm up to his elbow was deep inside the dead lizard's chest, he had managed to reach past its heart and down inside its ribcage until his fingertips finally felt the familiar sensation of warmth from the beast’s core. With a hint of panic from seeing the menacing spiky vines approach, he tugged the small stone towards himself. As soon as he retrieved the core and a fist full of warm flesh along with it, Adam got to his feet and sprinted in the opposite direction of the large natural wall of green and blue that seemed to stretch as far and high as he could see into the jungle. He kept his mana sight active to avoid being accosted by predators but was now also wary of any carnivorous plants and spiky vines along the way.

It took him some time to return to the outskirts of the jungle since he lost his way a few times. He went to the small pond he found last time, cleaned his bloody arm, and extracted the core from the flesh he had torn from the dead lizard. Having a better idea of what would happen when he swallowed it, Adam decided not to return but to simply absorb the core right here. Upon closer observation, he noticed it didn’t have the standard black color but instead a gray colored tint to it. This was a first for Adam who had only ever seen black colored cores. It made him pause before he absorbed it, and he began reviewing what he had discovered about mana cores so far. You see, Adam has experienced magic with certain properties before, the coconut heart’s water and cherries all had a slight green and refreshing feel to them. Normal mana however looked more like solid white dots like the sloth monster’s core. Normal mana is what he used and what was abundant in the atmosphere but this core felt like it was a shining light. Was this an element affinity like fire or water? It felt like a bright light when he focused on the gray sphere, so was that part of the reason why it was able to hide so well?

“Did this guy use magic to manipulate light?”

Was it refracting the light that hit its body with its light affinity mana to help elevate its ambushing abilities? That would explain how it got such a high-level core, nothing would be able to see past that trick… Unless they developed a mana sight spell to spot the thing.

“Sorry little lizard but you never stood a chance against my awesome magical prowess”

Mana affinities were something Adam had been very curious about since all fictional magic had different types, he would always go with the fire magic when he could since it had the most awesome and flashy spells. Who wants to be a shitty water mage and summon a pond when you can go around throwing fireballs and summoning wings of flames. That being said, he couldn’t burn things with his mana but was that simply because his core was too low grade to use his affinity for the moment? The only time he had encountered mana with a different feel or affinity was this gray colored core. The coconut heart was a special natural treasure so it doesn't count as it wasn't a living creature. Adam re-read his status screen and was very interested in this line.

Mana core: [black - middle - (???)]

He had wondered what those question marks were and why it said black. He now guessed that once he got his core to a high enough grade then it would evolve and change color, no doubt to grey, and that should also unlock his affinity as well. He then got super excited at the prospect of unlocking some sweet fire magic spells. He swallowed the small grey core but having the memory of the coconut hearts overpowered mana, Adam began to build a mana construct cage around the grey ball before it would get the chance to dissolve and spread around his body. His experience with ingesting highly dense mana sources was not a very pleasant one so he wanted to limit his risks as much as possible. He also knew that the fruit was a special case since the beast cores never spread their mana around his body but was instead happy to stay put as his core slowly extracted the mana for himself.

“Better safe than sorry I guess, don't want that lizard to have the last laugh because I choked on its weirdly shiny magic”

His careful approach did appear to be the correct choice but his actions were wrong. You see, he was correct in assuming the lizard's core wouldn't dissolve so the mana construct he tried to form around it, while good practice for condensing mana, was completely useless and easily dispelled. What wasn't so safe however was the mana itself. Look, as far as Adam could tell, this mana was a slightly brighter white than the mana he could now see, breathe and control. Oh, how wrong he was. Looks can be deceiving and Adam should have focused more on the feeling he got from the mana. He was brand new to sensing mana, meaning he tended to pay close attention to its texture, movement, and look rather than something as arbitrary as a slight vibe from the magic energy. As soon as he allowed his core to reach out and start absorbing the grey core, his entire body felt like it was about to get crushed. It was like swallowing rocks as the mana had an immense weight to it. It was far more complex than normal ambient mana and since Adam was trying to absorb it as quickly as possible to get stronger, he felt as bad as he did when almost overdosing on that coconut heart mana. His only saving grace was that this pain was concentrated only on his core unlike when the fruit’s mana had spread across his entire body. On the other hand, the concentrated pain in his core made Adam scared his core was about to explode. It was now no longer a small ball but had become a wildly swirling liquid that was barely holding together. With each piece of light mana being dragged down, his core became more and more chaotic. It was like a planet getting hit by comets and breaking apart into liquid clumps of magma and barely staying together thanks to the gravitational effect of the large debris.

Adam knew that if the core didn’t recombine then it would well and truly be destroyed. After everything he had endured, he wouldn’t let that happen. He used all his willpower to stop attracting the foreign core’s mana to him, and then he focused on trying to push the now disturbed black liquid of his core back to its original solid ball shape. He wasn’t able to push it back together though since it seemed that some sort of reaction was happening inside the black liquid, and it moved in what looked like floating splashes and rotated around, it was reminiscent of when he stubbed his toe and hopped around the room to alleviate the pain. Adam then decided not to force them together but to instead control the movement of the black liquid. He tried to get them to all start rotating in the same direction instead of the random directionless jolts that had them splashing into other parts of the now shapeless core. It took everything he had to slow them down enough to impose his will onto them and get them moving in orbit around where the core was supposed to be. He got them swirling round and round until it resembled a donut shape. By now, he had regained control of the black liquid and the reactions they had after absorbing the light mana seemed to have greatly faded. He kept rotating it and forcing it closer and closer together until the center was filled with the core’s black stuff once again. It wasn’t perfect and it wasn’t the smooth black pebble it used to be, but Adam felt like it had stabilized enough for the next step. He had a large grey core perched inside of him and was currently doing his best to avoid having his own mana go anywhere near it. However, this was his best source for advancement since the fruit, and he still needed to absorb it.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

The sweating young mage was committed now. He chose to absorb this different mana and now he couldn’t back down. If he left it there then he would need to permanently focus on not absorbing it, since his core usually automatically sent out pulses to replenish its reserves from the ambient mana he would breathe in. Leaving the grey core as a ticking time bomb was not an option. Adam would have to consume it little by little. He didn’t relinquish control over the still swirling and rotating core, he didn’t want it to be blown apart again so he willed it to keep rotating and intertwining the black core into a ball of liquid strings in hopes that the constant movement and interlacing he was doing would hold it together. He sent out the smallest tendril he could manage towards the grey core and brought back a tiny chunk of shiny white mana. He brought it closer and closer to his revolving core until it was abruptly sucked in like his core had its own gravity field. He looked carefully this time and noticed that the center of his rotating black mass now had a small dot of light that appeared to be pulsating and swirling around the center of his core. It was resisting being absorbed and pushed back against the core every time it flashed brighter. Fortunately, the constant intertwined movement of the black core was working to grind it down until the light was snuffed out. His core looked a little less dark afterwards and Adam was afraid it might have been burned by the light somehow. This seemed unlikely since he couldn’t feel any heat from the mana but a sense of constant light. As if the mana was fighting back against being hidden inside the black ball. That must have been why his core was almost reversibly destroyed when he first started ingesting the mana. It was not as easy to break down and absorb since it was a lot more dense and complex and had its own unique properties that opposed its suppression and destruction. He felt something similar when consuming the coconut heart since its mana was constantly rejuvenating and seemed to heal all his ailments. Normal mana was a lot lighter and easier for his core to use since it didn’t have any of those effects. It was like the basic bland building block and all the other mana was something that took it and added their own effects and layers to it.

Adam was now more confident in his guess about how to deal with the core so he continued absorbing piece by piece for the next few minutes. It was not easy since the small lights always tried to blow apart his core, but he doubled down on his efforts and managed to start condensing his core to resemble a ball of threads now rather than a black liquid substance. He imagined his core as an interwoven ball of solid strings and the imagery actually seemed to affect his core. When he saw it as a liquid, it became more like a liquid in its movements but now that he was doing his best to keep it all together, it started looking stronger and more compact. It was no longer a black color but now resembled a dark metallic color. He thought he felt something different with his core so he opened his status window.

Adam Hartwell

Mana core: [black - late - (???)]

??? (???): [???]

Spells: [Mana sight - crude - common]

(???)

“Yes, I finally made it to the late stage and I still got most of the grey core to absorb. I might get another level or two out of absorbing the whole thing.”

He was elated that he had once again advanced but a sudden realization then befell him.

“Shit, the magic body augmentation”

As far as he could tell, every advancement came with a greater magical capacity and with it, a round of magical body tempering that would increase his physique. But now was a terrible time for that, his core was in a precarious state since he was practically manually holding it together. If he relaxed his concentration the core would stop rotating and intertwining with itself, thus allowing the light to push it apart once more. He wasn’t absorbing large clumps of mana so it wouldn’t be as bad as the first time, but the pain alone told him that having your core get blown apart was very bad and dangerous no matter if it was fully destroyed or not.

Adam focused even harder on the ongoing battle within his core as he attempted to suppress the mana pulses he experienced when he first got his core. If he failed then he would most likely lose control over his core due to the mental overload all that activity would cost. He was already getting a headache from forcibly ingesting small pieces of what was essentially small explosives. He noticed that the core wasn’t actually trying to send out the body reinforcement pulse though. Adam was confused for a moment until he realized that he had been looking at this wrong the whole time. The core was his magic heart, it was what allowed him to absorb and store mana and what he used to make his spells. He had always viewed it as a tool given to him by this magical world and was using it as such. However this was his core, he was the one who formed it and he was the one who commands it. It was like any other organ, a piece of him that he had grown to understand over these last few days. The status window that he could summon that he got when forming his core made him unconsciously link the two as some sort of video game feature. But in truth, his core wasn’t some preprogrammed video game tool with predefined available actions and routes to take. It was an extra part of him that acted passively to fulfill its purpose but could be influenced or fully taken control of if he wanted and had the aptitude and practice to do so, just like any of his other organs. His heart has always beat without him needing to think it, but with practice and talent, one can influence how slow or fast, and even have it beat exactly to the person's wish. It all depended on practice and talent but it is still a piece of you and you are ultimately the one in control.

Adam willed his core to reform into a more solid and stable ball and that was what the core did. He willed small pieces of the light affinity mana to be dragged in and absorbed and that was what happened, he wiled his core not to send out strengthening pulses right now and his core followed his commands.

With newfound determination, he pushed on and started sucking in bigger and bigger pieces of the foreign mana as his core expanded and strengthened to adapt to the light mana’s effects. He was determined to become stronger and unlock his potential fire affinity and he wouldn’t stop until his core was grey or the grey core he swallowed was fully digested. And so continued the struggle for dominance within Adam’s body, as he sat cross-legged at the base of a tree, surrounded by the undergrowth, not too far from a small pond at the edge of the jungle, the dim haze from the ocean was accentuated by occasional sparkling light coming from the bright rings only barely visible from under the dense jungle canopy.