During the infusion process, James felt a tingly feeling throughout his entire body. Once Merabel's mana reached James's soul, the virtue core gave James a notification. “New mana detected in user's soul. Does the user want to rid his soul of the new potentially dangerous mana?” James asked the core what it meant by potentially dangerous. James thought his teacher Merabel was on his side. He could only hope that the core wasn’t saying his teacher could betray him and harm him with the mana she had infused into his soul. “The mana as it is right now is safe, but due to being under absolute control of the originator of the mana, it can at any time be used to harm the host soul. The only options are to trust your teacher won't do anything, become stronger than her to gain control over that mana, or let me absorb it to get rid of it.” James didn’t know what to think, but for the time being he decided to trust his teacher and leave the mana alone. The core responded, “Affirmative. Core energy levels at 50%. Recharging with origin energy is recommended soon.” This was new to James. Humility never told him that the virtue core needed recharging. Luckily enough, James still hadn't abolished his magic circle yet, so he still had pure origin energy. Deciding that once he was back in his room, James would channel his origin energy into the core to try and recharge it a little before changing meditation techniques.
After five minutes, Merabel let go of James and told him, “You must keep your secret safe, as even I can’t penetrate deep enough to truly see what it is. I have a feeling you might just be the one who turns our war around.” After speaking of some sort of war, the surrounding astral sea started to turn pitch-dark with purple streaks running through it. James felt like he had seen this before and was repulsed from the depths of his soul, like when one sees their arch-enemy. Merabel quickly told James, “I will send you back; I can’t protect you during this fight.” After which the bright light flashed in his eyes and he was back in his room. James decided to get right to work on abolishing his magic circles and reestablishing them afterward. Sitting down in the center of his room, James got into a meditation position and focused on his magic circles. With the basic control of his mana, James made it start to run berserk to break his magic circles. While his mana was running berserk, James got an internal wound causing him to start to bleed from his mouth. Unable to stop the process now, James decided to tough it out and go to the infirmary after his circles were gone. After ten more minutes of his mana going berserk, James's magic circle was finally broken and his mage level abolished. Spitting out the blood in his mouth, James tried to slowly get up but fell down with his vision turning black instead.
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James awoke to find himself in a familiar room, the infirmary. There was a different mage on healer duty than the last time James noticed. The mage noticed James woke up and spoke harshly to him, “I know you're Merabel's student, but even that has a limit. You almost killed yourself with your method of abolishing your magic circle. If you wanted to do so, you should have asked one of the instructors to help. Luckily for you, it happened in your room and was noticed by the mechanical life-form under service to the hidden truth.” The mage kept going on, but instead of listening, James focused on his magic circle, or rather the lack of a magic circle now. James thought, “Yes, it worked. I can get right to work on meditation with the forbidden light. I must be fast in order to stand up to the abyss.” While meditating with the forbidden light unknown to James, deep down in his soul, a change was slowly taking place. James's soul slowly changed to not his soul, but the process was so slow James wouldn’t notice it unless he had help. Already experienced with his first magic circle and the better meditation technique, it only took James three days of nonstop meditation to reach his first magic circle again. Now that he was done meditating, James decided to sense his new magic circle instead of getting up yet. The energy was still origin energy, but James sensed another form of energy in the center of the circle, however faint it may be. The energy gave James a sort of familiar disgusted feeling. James remembered that when he was first introduced to the technique, it mentioned using abyssal energy too. After thinking about it for a second, James decided that he would use the abyssal energy along with origin energy but would never be anything like the abyssal creature. Along with the new form of energy open to James, his mana and mental capacity were a staggering double what it were before. Even if James wasn’t stronger than his opponent with double the mana, he was able to outlast same-level opponents.
Remembering that the virtue core was at half power, James wanted to recharge it but didn’t know how to. At the same time, James didn’t know what the core could do besides increase his mediation speed, and that didn’t seem to consume energy. James wanted to go on a mission now so he could gain some contribution points. Before he went out on a mission, James wanted to learn more spells with at least one first-level spell now that he had become a first-circle mage again. The walk to the library was uneventful with very few other members around. James reached the library and went through the usual process of gaining access to the library.