Chương 21

"Hello," I managed to say with a raspy, painful voice.

"I'm friendly…" Appearances would have deemed this man to be a threat. He lifted a hand, revealing that the rest of his skin was also tree bark. He was like a small treant, very close to humans in shape. His bald scalp was the smoothest part, though still wooden, and his eyes were the most human, with vivid orange irises studying me suspiciously. Tree man… My thoughts were a complete mess, but Tonir's angered words about a tree stealing territory from the gang underground vaguely resurfaced.

From all of Tonir's hatred, I didn't expect the tree to speak near perfect Asterran. He called, "Colin! Get over here! We've got human-shaped dinner!" I tried to cast mana again to no avail. What little mana my core had splashed around uncontrollably.

"I… bring a spellbook… if you save me…" I said. The treant kept frowning at me from behind the bars. A few seconds later, a new person walked in. This time, it was a human with a blocky face and an impressively thick neck. He seemed paler than most Asterrans; Vora wasn't exactly sure of his ethnicity, but he was definitely human. He met my eyes and with a deep voice, said, "Oh. He looks hurt."

"He fell down the trap; of course he's hurt." The treant's tone was rough like an old man's, but surprisingly human, with a green tongue that allowed him to speak normally.

"I'm asking if he's dangerous. This goddamn sewer sniffer; he's in the middle of a core upgrade!" Colin faced me.

"I would help him."

"Not so fast," the treant said.

"He's a gang member. Why are you here, human?"

"I'll… tell you," I said, each word coming with painful rasps. I forced them out anyway.

"Bad people… are after me. I'm… trying to escape. You should… Hide the trap. They'll sense me." The treant kept frowning.

"He can still be healed," Colin said in his deep, monotone voice.

"It's not too late." A long, grunting sigh.

"Hide the trap, Colin, and bring that boy in. Watch that his neck isn't broken." The latches of the barred window creaked open. Colin peeked in. In his hands was a smooth wooden stick with carvings of spell patterns lining its surface. He pointed it up at the mouth of the trap and pushed mana in the patterns. The mana coming from his core was yellow, but the color turned blue as mana traveled up the staff, where it formed into a spell, and the hole above was covered in a thick ward of stone. A mana color converter?

I wondered. With patterns already drawn into it. So if mana is pushed in, the spell is automatically cast? Colin placed the staff aside. Then he cast Levitation on my body. Gently and proficiently, he lifted me into their hideout without speaking a word. Smooth as his control was, dizziness remained from being lifted. The trap led directly to a cramped underground house, lit with a bright overhead lamp hanging from a mana wire.

The floor had been flattened with wooden planks, and most of the cavern walls were blocked by shelves and boxes of items. A cozy armchair with a reading lamp watched the trap. On the wall next to it was a wooden painting with art carved into it, depicting a landscape that I was too dizzy to identify. The rest of the items blended into a mess of bookshelves, laundry, boxes of equipment, all crammed into a room far too small to contain it all. Colin levitated me carefully onto a hard table.

"Master Lemph has a green core. He's healed me from much worse." The treant returned upstairs with another two staves in hand.

"So. Interrupted during a core upgrade, were you, boy?" he asked.

"I was," I uttered.

"I could leave you there, and you'd survive," Lemph said.

"You might walk wrong for a while, and your new core will be weak, but you'd survive." I turned my head.

"Weak core?" He snorted.

"A complete amateur, then? Has it ever crossed your head that core upgrades might need to be correctly habilitated?"

"I read upgrades could kill." No mentions of habilitation, though. Lemph spoke before I could say the last part.

"So you went ahead and grabbed one without preparations?"

"Talking hurts," I coughed out.

"Could we… talk after I'm recovered? And habilitated…" His frown wasn't getting any better.

"I hope you understand that you're a part of a gang that has been trying to kill me for the better part of a month."

"They're… trying to kill me, too," I said, which wasn't too far from the truth.

"I left them."

"Sure, you can say that," Lemph said, "but what I need to know is whether you'll send your magic straight back to me the moment you recover. It's easy to make promises now that talking is all you're capable of. What if I heal you and you recover your full core?" Of course. His suspicion made sense. I wouldn't trust myself either in Lemph's position. They didn't seem to be the strongest fighters either. Colin had a solid, firm presence in the mana realm, but his core was level one.

Lemph was seemingly stronger, but his presence was hidden under a mental barrier. A sturdy, elegant barrier that doubled as a mirror, sending any prying eyes away. His core wasn't necessarily hidden—I clearly knew he had a core under there—but the details of its strength were concealed. It could have been level two, or it could have been as strong as Fellia's. I said, "I would never harm a man who saved my life."

"You steal?" Lemph asked.

"No." He frowned at my satchel.

"And those spell patterns? You claim those are yours?"

"I won't steal from you," I said. If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. He snorted.

"Funny boy. I do want to look at those spells as well. What do you think, Colin."

"Been a while since we had new spells," Colin said.

"If you save me, I'll tell you which ones are traps," I said.

"I think we share goals. The gang… is my enemy, too." Lemph's orange eyes regarded me with clear dissatisfaction.

"And where did you get your core upgrade?"

"Fellia Ell—" I tried to say, only to immediately cough. A sharp wave of pain came with it. Lemph's green mana found my chest, and the pain lowered enough that I could speak.

"She chased me here. I somehow won."

"The Ellaris daughter, huh," Lemph said.

"Well, can't say they've done much good to the country."

"I'm really not a murderer," I said.

"I'm just looking for my sister." Lemph kept staring at me.

"Am I too nice if I heal you? Is this going to lead to my death?"

"No," I said.

"I'll never harm you." He tapped his fingers, considering. Finally, he grunted.

"Hold this spell stick, boy, and push mana into it. Habilitation for a level two core is simple enough inside that spell." Lemph noted my broken left wrist and handed the stick to my right instead. I held the stick.

"My mana core is blocked," I said.

"No, it's not," Lemph said.

"You're just bad at controlling it. Force some mana into the stick. It's not so hard. By the time you wake up, it's up to you how well you've habilitated your core. In the meantime, I'll see what I can do."

"Thank you…" I said, though I remained uncertain about the spell's effects. I was just glad someone was helping me.

"Your main goal is control," Lemph said.

"The second goal is expansion. If you overstep the second, hoping to have a big core, you'll die. Better to have a smaller and safer one." Oh, I thought, finally catching onto what habilitation likely meant. Core upgrades weren't just stationary objects, it seemed. Their shape was dynamic, adjusting to the owner. I had to do that properly for my core. If so, what was the spell for? To calm it down? I'd need to find out. Here goes nothing.

By force, I drew mana, not into a pattern, but into the spell stick in my arms. The process was still a battle, like trying to grab a fish from water. Through sheer force, I managed to pull a handful into Lemph's spell. A mind spell was cast forth with me as the target. The mana wrapped around my head, and a spell of unconsciousness was inflicted on myself. Control over Vora's limbs disappeared, and with it, the pain disappeared. I couldn't see anymore, or smell, or hear.

I felt ambient mana around me, and I sensed a connection from my core, onto the stick in my arms. I only existed as a mana core. I'm back here, I thought with sudden surprise. The same, odd state of existence, where I remained conscious, yet without access to my five senses. Only through the sixth sense, I felt the core upgrade violently thrashing in my core, and I also sensed both Lemph's and Colin's mana cores moving about, casting healing magic on my body.

Every sensation was exactly like when I was first latched onto Vora's body. The spell on Lemph's stick sent me to this state. I was connected to the stick right now, and I had a hunch that if I severed the connection, I'd wake back up on Vora's body. This whole thing was induced with magic. A sense of clarity hit me with the implications. This state of consciousness wasn't some supernatural event. I'd gotten here with a literal stick that I got from a mage in Asterra.

If Lemph's knowledge of magic was already capable of doing this, what about the masters with level ten mana cores? Could my whole transmigration be the work of some advanced magic? Maybe an advanced ritual circle could transfer mana cores from person to person, and that was used on a large scale to transfer me to Vora? Maybe the presence that had ripped my mana core from my body wasn't a god at all, but just an expert mage? Could that be possible? If it was, I could replicate that power.

I could find Trina, no matter what world she'd been transmigrated to. I'm still a long way off, I thought. Right now, my focus was needed on the immediate problem. Habilitating my mana core. If only I understood what that meant. I need to control it, I thought. The core upgrade continued to cause absolute chaos in my core. As much as I didn't want to admit it, Lemph was right; I couldn't control it. The thought of entering the spiral of violent mana wasn't appealing, even now. I observed the effect first.

At a glance, my core looked like a pure battle, mana thrashing around as if trying to destroy my core. With Lemph's advice in mind, however, I looked for order in the storm in my core. The upgrade orb sat right in the middle of my core. It seemed to have two functions. First, it spun rapidly, too fast for me to see. Second, it repelled mana, almost like a negative magnet. Combining those together, and my core almost resembled a washing machine spin drying clothes.

Drying was definitely not what the core upgrade was doing. The spinning seemed to have another purpose. My mana was repelled with force, hitting the edges of my mana core. The heavy pressure caused expansion. My mana core stretched outward, its size expanding. The process was automatic. I didn't necessarily need to intervene. If Lemph hadn't talked to me, I would have assumed that the effect would soon be over, and my mana core would recover in its newly expanded size. But something could be improved.

That's what Lemph told me. The spinning effect wasn't fast anymore, and the pain in my core had gradually stopped. Maybe it wasn't that I had to calm the effect down. Maybe I needed to make it more violent to further expand my core. That could probably get complex. I had one idea on how to do it. Forming a spell in its simplest steps, contained two steps. The second part was the more complex one, which I'd always focused the most effort on—the part of drawing the pattern.

The first part before it was merely to draw mana. In comparison, the first step was a trivial part that I did automatically. However, drawing mana came with one important detail. Mana could be controlled by imagination. If I imagined mana rising from my core, my core obeyed, and the mana moved exactly as I wished. That control through imagination existed up until the moment when mana flowed into a spell pattern, turning to magic. Magic was a physical matter, and thus could no longer be moved with imagination.

My core was not currently affected by magic. Everything inside was imaginary mana, which meant that the effect could be manipulated with imagination alone. My first idea was to simply imagine the speed of the spin increasing, but I found that I couldn't move the orb itself. It had an autonomous mind. My control was solely on my own mana. If I tried to grab mana like I normally drew it, the mana's spinning momentum broke through my grasp, merely causing damage. That happened earlier.

It was like trying to stop a speeding car by jumping on the road and pushing it. Using that analogy, what if I instead ran with the car to match its speed? I imagined my grasp following the spinning mana. Keeping up took some focus. I would not have followed a spin at this speed with my eye, but I found it easier in my imagination. I matched the speed of the spin with my imagination as closely as I could get. Only then did I latch on. I felt myself clearly latched on, spinning along with the mana.

Any inaccuracy on my part pushed the mana into the direction, like steering a car at high speed. I increased the spin speed, pulling mana with me, and pushed it hard against the edges of my mana core. Maybe a little too hard; the pain came right back—my mana core warning me about damage. I decreased the pressure just a little, enough that my core felt heavy pressure, but no unbearable pain. It seemed to work. My mana core kept expanding, now large enough to contain at least 75% more mana than before and growing.

I had no official numbers on how large second level cores were supposed to get, but I trusted it wouldn't break as long as there was no pain. The process continued. Every time the spin began feeling too slow, I upped the speed and pressure, keeping it at the very edge of where my core threatened to snap in half. If I was violent enough, I did feel like I could have shattered something into pieces. I had already seen a broken core when I killed a rat. My core withstood pressure much better though.

The end eventually came when the upgrade orb ran out of steam. I extended the spin on my own, and at first it looked like I succeeded, until the core upgrade fully dimmed. Momentum slowed, and my efforts weren't enough to create pressure anymore. It felt like I was pushing a car whose engine had broken down. My mana stopped thrashing about, and I now had what I hoped was a fully upgraded and habilitated core. Lemph continued healing me in the real world. I studied the effects for a little while.

A few minutes into that, he must have sensed that the core upgrade was over, as he grabbed the spell stick from my hand. With that, I fell fully unconscious, and I felt like I'd be recovering for a long time.