Mana Core Awakening

POV Julián Kingscrown

In the past few days, as my second birthday approaches and I could walk around the house with Grandmother Rinia, I've been constantly searching for where I should have my mana core awakening. Since I'm almost done forming it and I don't have much time left to find a suitable place where it won't cause too much damage and be discreet.

As I've been forming the core, I realized that I have an extremely high affinity with mana. This put some psychological pressure on me because, despite not having real experience in forming a mana core, I knew that the explosion it would cause in the surroundings would be very strong.

The reason I think that is because I remember reading in the novel something related to the strength of the explosion, being proportional to the person's talent.

To be completely sure of that, I reread the basic mana theory books for dummies to confirm the information I had:

The first thing was that mana existed in the atmosphere. I didn't remember it, but it was still important information. Also, that practitioners or mages used the surrounding mana and attracted it to their bodies, finally condensing it in their mana core.

It also said that the proportion of mages and non-mages is 1 in 100, depending largely on genetics. But even so, that wasn't everything, there are exceptions where they may not come out as mages despite descending from mage parents.

Seeing the proportion, I remembered the biggest weakness that Dicathen had in the war against Alacrya, and that was numbers. They had many more mages, except for the scythes and retainers, as well as those of high lineage, the rest were not so powerful but numerous. I still haven't found a way to deal with the problem of quantity versus quality to make it at least less effective.

There was also the concept of how mana can be used, and it is only through two methods: improving the body with mana enhancers, and emitting mana to the outside world, the conjurers as I remember.

The enhancers are more common among warriors who use mana, channeling it through their bodies to strengthen themselves and their attacks. I hoped to awaken as an enhancer.

This is because in my opinion, from the highest levels of central mana core level, both can cast long-range spells and enhancers will have an advantage over conjurers who are not so accustomed to close combat.

Next is the practice of conjuring, seen in Mages, who after using their mana, can cast spells to emit a certain effect in the surrounding area or directly to a target, the typical stereotype of a mage you see in fantasy worlds.

Now we move on to their weaknesses and limitations.

Although the enhancers can possess incredible strength, defense, and agility, their weakness lies in their limited range. Initially, yes, but as they progress, they will wipe the floor with the conjurers, was the thought that crossed my mind.

In addition, it said that conjurers possess unfathomable powers, being able to bend their surroundings to their will. What a load of garbage, both were equal at low levels when fighting one on one if enhancers used their abilities correctly.

After calming down, I read about how to measure the aptitude of both types of mana users.

The skill or talent of an enhancer is measured by the strength of the mana channels in their body, which measures the speed and efficiency in relocating their mana from their mana core to various parts of their body.

On the other hand, the power and talent of a conjurer, comparatively, is measured by the power of their mana veins, which indicates the speed and effectiveness of absorbing mana from the outside world to cast a spell.

This part was still the same as I remembered.

It also talked about how most are born with a skewed difference in their mana channels and mana veins, so training both at the same time from the core awakening was very inefficient. It was recommended to train focusing on one only.

Now it was mentioned that there are a few rare deviants. The two most well-known types of deviants are elemental deviants and emitters. Although there are still some to be discovered, the most sought-after are emitters, better known as healers. Healers possess the rare ability to cast their unique restorative mana directly onto others, recovering wounds and damage.

If I remember correctly, I think that the Emitters or diviners deviants were descendants of the Djinn, but I'm not completely sure.

Now they were explaining the phenomenon called "backlash" that occurs in both types of practitioners. For enhancers, it is produced by the exhaustion of the mana core, causing extreme bodily pain, depending on how intense the damage to the mana core is. For conjurers, the backlash is produced by the overfilling of the mana core. This is produced by the excessive use of spells beyond the practitioner's capacity, or by the use of a spell too powerful for their mana core.

Although I knew all these things existed, it was always good to remember them. You never know when you might make a mistake and, worst-case scenario, blow off a limb or break a bone while trying to do something.

After closing the book, I decided to check how much time was left until the awakening and estimated that it would be a day before my second birthday in this world, which would not be celebrated.

This was because babies were very prone to die before three years old. What a terrible fate for them, let's hope we can improve the survival rate after the war ends.

As the day of my awakening approached, I managed to find a clearing that seemed to be about 15 minutes away from Grandmother Rinia's house. It was free of trees, and there was nothing that could fall on me during the mana core awakening process.

Additionally, it had a radius of about 10 meters. One could never be careful enough, and I didn't want to die in some stupid way while going through the awakening process and end up being crushed by a falling tree.

I began to review the types of elements and deviants that derived from humans. Personally, I would like to be at least a double elemental with an affinity for Fire and Water with its deviant.

Hopefully, I can get something else like Wind or Sound to provoke illusions and become a triple elemental.

Although the abilities of plants and metal were very useful, they have their limitations, and I didn't think I would get any of them since I wasn't an Elf or a Dwarf.

So the days passed while I prepared for my awakening and tried to find a space to escape from Grandmother Rinia and awaken without harming her since I would hate to do it by mistake.

And finally, I had my chance. The day before my birthday, before ten in the morning, Grandmother Rinia went out to collect some materials from the forest that she needed for her strange rituals that I still couldn't get used to.

Strangely enough, they had been decreasing lately for no apparent reason. I wondered if it was because she had somehow improved her control over her deviant abilities.

But, at this moment, that didn't matter. I left the house after several unsuccessful attempts where I felt like I did a lifetime of exercise. When I left through the window and landed in the garden, I began to walk, forcing my body to keep moving since I didn't want to damage the house where I lived and hurt Grandmother Rinia.

I knew better than anyone that it was today or there would be no peaceful tomorrow, so I made every effort to try to run with my short legs, trying not to fall, which happened, fortunately, I fell on a soft bed of grass and didn't have any scratches.

I'll keep this in the back of my mind and never tell anyone who goes through this embarrassment.

When I finally arrived at the clearing, it had been about five minutes since I left the house.

I sat on a rock in the middle of the clearing, and I got into a lotus position to begin meditating.

After about two minutes of meditating, I felt the last fragment enter the core to finish forming it.

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POV Rinia Darcassan

This morning, I decided to go to the forest to collect some herbs that I needed for some of my rituals. Although I improved my control over my divination abilities, I still needed some catalysts.

After about twenty minutes since I left the house, I heard a powerful explosion about two minutes away from where I was since I managed to feel the breeze created by the explosion.

I immediately moved in that direction because that was the location of the clearing where we had been several times with Julian.

I was worried that somehow the child had left the house trying to follow me and had had an accident.

Walking as fast as my body allowed me, I approached the location of the clearing, and the more I got closer, the more concentrated the mana was in the area

When I got close to the clearing, I could see Julian, raised half a meter off the ground and surrounded by a translucent barrier of multiple light colors around it, like an erratic combination of colors, forming a kind of rainbow that gave him an ethereal impression.

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POV Julián Kingscrown

Boom!

I heard a loud explosion ringing in my ears, but I ignored it and felt the changes in my body.

If before I could feel the small mana fluctuations around me when they were quite intense, now I could feel it in constant movement, no matter how minimal it was. I also felt that mana was a friend I had been separated from for a long time. If I concentrated, I was almost sure I could do anything I wanted.

After feeling that I had descended, I opened my eyes and looked around.

Holy shit! What happened here? A crater about 10 centimeters deep had been created from where I was, extending about 8 meters in radius, leaving everything around me like a sterile wasteland.

It looks like a bomb had fallen right on top of me. Furthermore, the concentration of mana that I had not correctly perceived before now clearly indicated that it was very high.

My intuition screamed at me that it shouldn't be like this, so I quickly tried to leave to avoid being blamed for this until I saw Grandmother Rinia.

My body stiffened, and I got scared. My eyes started to water because I didn't want her to treat me differently for disobeying her and leaving without permission.

Will she see me differently after awakening so early? I didn't want anything like that to happen. I didn't want to have destroyed this clearing in the forest, even though I tried to be strong and tell myself that this was necessary if I wanted to save everyone. I thought there was no worse salvation than the one that was never asked for, so I was so scared.

Deep down, I was afraid of being a stranger to this story, that everyone would see me and treat me with indifference.

Grandmother Rinia approached me, snuggled up, and gave me a maternal hug where she transmitted the warmth necessary to calm me down.

And she said, "You know it wasn't right to leave without my permission." After a few seconds, she spoke again, "I don't plan to blame or scold you for what happened with this little clearing. After all, I knew from the beginning that you could be special, just not that much."

Then I said tearfully, "I'm sorry. I didn't want to leave without your permission, but I didn't want to hurt you or damage something where we lived since the books said that the process of awakening as a mage generated an explosion."

"I understand, and I won't blame you, but try to talk to me more. I think we've lived together long enough for you to have more confidence in me. So you can tell me these things," Rinia said, increasing the strength of her hug.

"I'm sorry. I won't do it again, and I promise to talk more with you when these things happen," I said, returning the hug.

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POV Rinia Darcassan

Fragile, that was the best way to describe it. The figure I saw of the child when he met my gaze was of absolute terror, as if the world had come crashing down on him.

His teary eyes clicked in my heart, and I quickly approached to hug him because I felt like he could break at any moment.

I understood that despite being so intelligent, he was very fragile, as if he were trying to carry more than he could on his shoulders.

At that moment, I didn't need to use my divination abilities to understand the difficult path that this boy had decided to take.

After about two minutes of hugging, two elven guards approached.

"Ancient Rinia, what happened here? We heard a loud explosion, and this area seems to have a strong concentration of mana," one of the guards said.

"Inform Elder Virion to visit me immediately. Nothing can come out of you. Anyone who asks will be told there was an accident with some materials that were here," I told the two guards.

"Understood," the two guards responded, taking their arm to their chest in a sign of respect.