101 The guardian of the plane...

"Absorb the essence?" Aiden frowned, "just so if you don't remember, let me tell you about it. I can't absorb the essence of the beast I don't kill."

"You're a fool." Mraz sneered, "Can't you just make the essence crystal of its essence?" Aiden nodded and Mraz continued, "why can't you just normally absorb it, without the help of your essence absorbance circle?"

"Huh! What's the use of the mana circle, then?" A knot formed between his eyebrows, "If I absorb the essence normally, how is it going to help me comprehend my mana circle?"

Listening to Mraz's sigh, Aiden felt that it was loud inside his head, "extracting the essence and condensing it into an essence crystal will allow you to comprehend your first circle."

Aiden could feel that his next question would agitate Mraz more, but still asked, "What is the difference between directly absorbing the essence and absorbing from the essence crystal?"

"Extracting the essence of a beast, with your innate mana circle, you can get rid of the Will of the beast, even if you didn't kill it." Aiden felt that Mraz's voice was calmer than he had expected.

"When you kill a beast, you can absorb most of its essence. About 90% or more. But if you don't kill the beast, you can absorb 40% with essence crystal. 50% if you're lucky. "

"Huh!" It made little sense to Aiden, "Even if I absorb it as soon as someone kills it?"

"It's not time," said Mraz. "It's the will of the beast. When you kill the beast, the Will of the Beast will be submissive to you, and when you use your innate mana circle, you can extract most of its essence."

"But when I try to extract the essence of the beast, somebody else has killed, the Will of the beast resists. Hence decreasing the efficiency, right?" Aiden got the gist of it. And Mraz confirmed that he was correct about that. Aiden nodded, trying to sit down.

"Not here." Mraz interrupted again, "Get closer to the skull. The closer you are, the purer the mana will be."

"Would you want me to freeze to death?" There were almost two meters of ice beneath his feet. Ice was forming at the end of the hairs, his nose was burning, and he couldn't smell anything.

"You're weak." Mraz couldn't care less about pitiful excuses, "your body is weaker. This body is holding your strength back. Before refining your obelisk, you need to refine your body. Otherwise, you will die when you attempt to draw a second mana circle. Don't just stop there, move on."

'The last time I checked, I had the strength of 72 and endurance of 121. That is already at the level of special force. What do you want me to be?'

Aiden had forgotten for a moment that Mraz could listen to what was going on in his head. "Your totemic wolf could kill tens of them with a swipe of its tail." That was true, and Aiden couldn't argue about it. Yet Mraz continued, "Don't you feel ashamed to be inferior to your own subordinate?"

Aiden didn't make a single sound, clenched his fist, and walked forward. But the closer he came to the skull, the harder it became for him to walk. Aiden had already lost his sense of touch, he couldn't feel his fingertips or the tip of his nose. It seemed like even his eyes had frozen.

Ten thousand needles were piercing his skin with each step, yet Mraz continued to say, "A few more steps." Gritting his teeth, Aiden moved forward.

He was just about twenty meters away from the skull. Looking at the skull, Aiden felt that rather than a boney skull, it was a blue ice skull. It looked like an elongated skull with a pair of mandibles, similar to insects, rather than round mammal heads.

Above everything, the two-meter-long horn on its forehead was the brightest feature of it. Every time he looked at it, he felt a stabbing pain was spreading from his eyes to his brain, almost causing him to faint.

"One more step." Mraz's words relaxed him a little. He dragged his lead-filled leg to take the last step and *boom*

Aiden's leg lost all the strength. It felt like someone was stepping on his chest, squeezing every ounce of air out of his lungs. All the bones inside him were cracking under the immense pressure.

Blood seeped out of his lips as Mraz spoke, "You are inside its domain. You can activate your mana circle now."

Aiden wanted to swear but didn't have the strength. It wasn't just hard to breathe, he just couldn't breathe. All the organs inside his body had stopped functioning.

The pain was consuming his consciousness and even thinking was painful for him. It was too hard for him to sit down, so he succumbed to the immense pressure.

Aiden stood in the infinite void when he opened his eyes. He gazed at the star that looked like the star of the EXO-04 solar system.

Aiden wasn't sure if he saw it right, but it looked like something was traveling through space towards the star. The giant organism reminded him of the old man's story.

In fear, masked with curiosity, he mumbled, "Dragon." It shook its head as its marble-sized star just tickled its enormous body.

Yet it groaned. Only then did Aiden realize that there was a gashing wound on his back. And the blood was leaking out of the wound. Shining golden blood.

"A beast with golden blood?" Even though he felt that it was an illusion, still he couldn't help but feel a chill down his spine. For the first time, he felt that all those unbelievable words of Mraz might be true.

The owner of the skull or the skeleton he had on Earth is too small in compression. But a question remains, "Is it just an illusion?"

Aiden's question had little impact on the scenario unfolding in front of his eyes. The dragon left as suddenly as it had appeared, leaving behind a black scale. The scale was red on one side and blue on the other.

Whether it was because of gravity or some other reason, Aiden didn't know, but the dragon scale revolved around the star. As Aiden looked closer, he found that the red hue on the one side of the scale gathered one spot.

To his surprise, he found something similar was happening on the other side of the scale too. Soon, a giant red egg was forming on one side and a tiny blue egg on the other.

Time passed, the red egg cracked, out-came a giant with a skull wrapped in flame. With a pair of overgrown canines, a pair of bullhorns, and a swirling magma body, it roamed around on its side of the scale.

However, the more energetic it became, the more of its raging fire invaded the other side of the scale. But the giant remained utterly oblivious to the existence of a tiny blue egg on the other side of the scale.

Then the blue egg cracked. Out came the body of a tiny giant with limbs made of ice. It was the single horn on its head that drew Aiden's attention. It grew up in a tiny area surrounded by fire on all sides.

Over time, the ice giant developed at a startling pace. The ice giant was born on the concave side of the scale, while it created the fire giant on the convex side of the scale. But as the ice giant eradicated the flame, the scale also shifted.

For the first time, the giants met each other, and it resulted in the war of giants. Yet, the more they fought, the more changed occurred on the scale. Land formed every time they clashed, mountains formed when they fell.

It was the chaos of constant creation and destruction. Aiden did not know how long it had been going on, however, it was anything but peaceful.

After the war, the ice giant was roaming on the surface of the sphere, while the fire giant had lost all its strength and retreated within the sphere.

"The EXO-04." Aiden was confident that he had seen this planet from the outer atmosphere. It was just that such an origin story contradicted his belief in science. Aiden wanted to know more, yet a strong rejection forced him out of the dark space.

When he opened his eyes again, he was standing inside the space he was familiar with, but on a closer look, it felt different. The obelisk looked similar, so did the mana circle, which shone brilliantly underneath it.

"There was no snow before," Aiden mumbled as he looked around. It was his mana space for sure, "But those two steles weren't there before."

Aiden moved closer to take another look at the stele. The image of one of the stele was of a wolf, along with a countless amount of mana circles. While there was an outline of a human with a pair of pointed ears drawn on the other stele, with only three circles on it.

"What are you looking for? Come over here and sit on the mana circle." Aiden didn't notice it before, but when he looked, he noticed that Mraz was talking from the top of the obelisk. "Don't waste any more time. Come quick."

Aiden sighed and moved to sit down on the mana circle. When he did, he felt that it connected his mind with his body again, and the pain made him faint again.

"What the heck are you doing? Guide the essence mana of the guardian to your heart."

'To my heart?' Aiden wasn't sure that he had heard it right, 'not to my mana crystal? Not to the obelisk?'

"Idiot." Mraz didn't miss the opportunity to scold Aiden. "Didn't I tell you to strengthen your body first? If you guide it to your obelisk and try to absorb it, you might succeed, but your mana will become rough and will shatter your mana channel. And even if you're able to survive, you won't be able to use mana again."

Mraz used the only threat that was super effective against Aiden and continued, "First you need to strengthen your heart, then bones, and finally the internal organs. And it is only after you have reinforced your body and your mana channels that you can guide the mana to your obelisk."

Aiden nodded and did what he had been told. It almost forced him to faint. It was like someone was squeezing his heart so hard that blood was leaking from his nose and ears. But the cold was so strong that it had frozen the blood in a matter of seconds. However, the pain didn't cease.

"Have you forgotten to direct your essence mana to your heart?" asked Mraz in a calm tone. Aiden could taste the sarcasm in his voice, but he didn't have enough strength to refute. When he did what he had been told, it reduced the pain a little, but it was nowhere near enough.

"Even without its will, the mana on the guardian of the plain is inherently violent against any beings that didn't originate on this plane. So, if you direct the mana to your heart, it will destroy your heart."

'What the hell am I doing here, then?' Aiden's heart was in pain, and his own essence mana was trying its hardest. But it was like a drop of water over a raging campfire.

"Don't worry, your essence mana will heal your heart," said Mraz in an unhurried voice. "The more you break and repair your heart, the more it will absorb its essence. It will strengthen your heart in a process."

Even if he wanted to curse, Aiden couldn't be reckless with the control of mana, especially around his heart. But he knew one thing. There's a painful journey ahead of him.