Second Awakening
The next day
Ben and his father are standing in front of the church, both of them with dark circles under their eyes because they couldn't get a wink of sleep due to the events of the previous day.
Inside, the old priest is already waiting for them, just as tired as the other two. "Come with me, I've prepared everything," the priest said in a low voice. It's been a week since Ben was in the chamber and went through his awakening and now he's standing in the same chamber again.
"Why should we take the awakening card with us? Mum said it should be six months to a year before I should awaken my second heart card." Ben asks the priest.
The priest turns to Ben, "Your mother is right, but the hero system gets around that. The system affects not only your body, but also your soul. Your soul is weakened after the awakening, because that is where your heart cards sit. Actually, the term soul card would be better but for the simple population, the concept of a soul is too complex, but I'm getting off topic.
Your weakened soul would repair itself over time but through the system this happens automatically. The system serves as a bridge between your physical self and your spiritual self. These manifestations of yourself are not synchronized with each other but the system helps you with this synchronization. After synchronization, there are no more differences.
So your body and soul are one and allow you to receive experience points and grow. Experience points are nothing but life energy. When someone dies, this energy is channeled through your body, but since your soul and body are not one, this energy disappears. However, when they are one, your body can channel the energy into your soul, where the energy serves as nourishment for your soul. The growth of your soul stimulates the growth of your body with the results I told you about yesterday evening."
Ben looks at Maxwell and doesn't understand anything at all. What does all this have to do with keeping secrets and what happens to him when his soul and body are in harmony.
"I see you are confused but the difference of your two self's is minimal but enough so you can't absorb life energy, but we should start with the system and then awaken your second card. After this, some things should become clearer to you and you should see the world with different eyes." Says Maxwell calmly, serenely and somewhat mysteriously.
Ben sighs and looks at his dad. He nods and leaves the room. Maxwell looks at Ben and chuckles " same procedure as last week. Take off clothes and stand in the circle." Ben shudders `Why do I have to take my clothes off every time I see the old priest.`
Ben stands in the circle, which this time has many more runes than before. The circle consists of several interwoven smaller circles that when put together form a large circle . In each of the 5 smaller circles is a medium mana crystal. It dawns on Ben why he should get 5 medium mana crystals for the challenge, which are needed for the hero system.
"Maxwell are there any side effects to activating the system" Ben nervously asks the old man. "How am I supposed to know? It's not like I do this every day. It's a first for me, too. Be glad I even know what the runic circle must look like, and even for that I had to flip through some books last night."
In truth, Maxwell has a very good idea of how the circle should work. But due to Ben's circumstances, Maxwell had to analyze several different circles and came up with this monstrosity in the end, but he is 50% sure it should work or maybe a little less.
Maxwell summons his deck of cards and begins to feed the circle with mana. The five mana crystals begin to glow and slowly dissolve into smoke.
This smoke is held back by the circles and then directed towards Ben. Ben stands nervously in a circle as the smoke from the mana crystals begins to travel toward him. As if the smoke had a life of its own, it begins to penetrate Ben, right in the heart. Slowly at first, then faster. Ben starts screaming and grabbing his chest.
The pain is too much. Ben's chest feels like it is melting and the longer the ritual goes on, the worse it gets. At first just his chest then his whole torso and then his limbs. He feels like when he worked with his father in the forge yesterday.
Only this time he was the ore being melted in the furnace, and Ben wasn't wrong in believing that. The mana from the crystals molds his body and eradicates all the impurities that have accumulated over time. This destruction leads to severe pain because Ben's body has far too many impurities. More than a 15-year-old should actually have.