Training Begins

Krios stood alone in one of the palace court yards, training rigorously as preparation for his entry to a magic academy on the other side of the continent in the coming month.

Him and his parents had a discussion four days prior about his decision to venture out and explore. His mom hated the idea and rejected it initially, but after hours of Krios trying to convince her, she finally relented and agreed but on certain terms.

They have chosen Zelestria Academy which Reah herself attended during her youth. Her family has a long history with the academy which is why she chose it for his son so as to continue her family's legacy.

'I need to reach the Late Core Reformation realm in a month' Krios reminded himself. This was because the minimum level required to enter the academy was the Late Core Reformation realm. And he only had a month to reach that level before he departs for the academy.

Krios has now started to practice basic flame magic as instructed by his father. He had already learned how to conjur flames on his hand, and it became second nature to him, just like breathing.

Now he is trying to condense that flame into a fireball that can be used as a projectile.

"Increase mana output towards the meridian on the hands." Krios was reading the instructions in book his father has given him. It had instructions about the flow of mana and where it shoud pass and head to.

Mana started pouring out of his core and it manifested as a blazing light blue inferno on his left hand.

'Woah, that's a lot of flame right there' amazed by the amount of mana his core was able to release at once.

The flame started to shrink as he tried to condense it into a ball.

BOOM!

The fireball exploded right on his face as he lost his concentration. He flew a few feet backwards before falling on to his back.

"*cough* *cough* This is so fucking hard!" He shouted in frustration. He had been trying to replicate what his dad showed him but he has failed time and again.

Days passed by and Krios was having little to no progress which infuriated him greatly. The fireball has has exploded on his face so much that he was starting to think that he was just not cut out for it.

"Realx, calm down." Krios talked to himself as he was in the middle of condensing the fire he created. It was already the nineth day of his training and he was already feeling the pressure mounting on his back.

He felt the familiar tug on his gut as the flame tried to go wild but he pushed on. He calmed his core and maintained the mana flow as much as he can. He didn't late the raging feeling in his core disrupt his concentration. He knew he needed to conquer the flame and tame it.

Then all of a sudden, the flame stopped fighting back.

"Oh shit, I did it!" Krios cried out loud.

He looked at the fire ball floating on top of his palm. It had what looked like a solid circular core of about five inches, while the fire itself rose to about three inches up from the center.

"Now all I need is to control it to hit a target."

He raised his arm up and his palm faced the dummy he placed a few meters away. Krios willed the fireball to hit the target and it flew for a couple meters before it dissipated, not reaching the target at all.

This didn't faze him in the slightest. He knew it was going to happen so he just trued and tried again.

After the twelfth day, Krios was now firing fireballs upon fireballs like it was nothing. Now he can release a fire ball in as fast as a couple of seconds.

"This would do for now." He sat down pretty exhausted. He has trained for thirteen days straight, stopping only to get some sleep or take advice from his father.

Kane could not physically help his son as he was tasked to temporarily manage the clan while the clan head was at the union sacred grounds along with other union heads. Which is why Krios decided to learn the arts by himself.

"Would it be possible to imbue my fireballs with Chaos energy?"

He sat down and tested his theory. He conjured a fireball and slowly imbued it with his chaos energy. The fireball then started blaze wildly while its core remained quite intact. The fire flickered chaotically, like a raging fire storm.

"Its Beautiful" Krios said in admiration.

The light blue fireball now is tinged with purple, with its flame flickering in the shades of blue and lavender.

He shot it towards the dummy and the dummy exploded violently sending bits and pieces meters away.

"Woah, that was way stronger than my normal fireball."

"I need to be careful when using that. Just a small amount of chaos energy and my normal attacks get boosted by a lot. I might hurt someone unexpectedly."

On the fifteenth day, Krios knew that it was finally the time to ascend to the next minor realm. He was well rested as he had decided to take the day's off the previous day, which made him confident of breaking through.

The next minor realm required him to imbue mana into the surface of his core, reinforcing it to make it stronger and tougher.

He sat down in a medidative stance and started on with the process. He slowly but surely imbued mana into the inner surface of his core trying ti reinforce it as much as he can. Then he reinforced the outside surface with chaos energy leaving him in a peculiar situation where both surfaces of his mana core, the inside and the outside, were being strengthened.

This process was the least painful of all the three stages of Core Reformation which was welcome fact for Krios. He went through the process as fast and as efficiently as he possibly can which to an outside observer, would be a ridiculous thing to do.

But Krios had an advantage in his affinity to chaos energy. His usage of chaos energy shortened the amount of time he needed to satisfactorily strengthen his core while also having it stronger than a normal core would be.

After a couple of hours,

BOOM

A familiar booming sound reverberated from his core. He has finally made it to the next minor realm of the Core Reformation Realm.

"Hah!" Krios exhaled as wiped his sweat away.

"One more minor realm and I'm ready to go."

He inspected his mana core and was amazed by the way it has improved. A normal person with a normal core would be able to strengthen his core and have its surface thicken by a milimeter. This is due to the fact that they can only thicken it from the inside and not the outside.

Krios on the other hand, was able to thicken the surface of his mana core by three milimeters because he added on to it both from the inside and the outside surface. This would mean that his core would now be able to withstand more mana pressure thus being able to expel mana at an even grater rate and efficiency.

"This Chaos core is definitely a cheat code." Krios chuckled.

He raised his hand and conjured a fireball. The fireball grew and grew until it was about twice as big as his previous ones. He aimed the fireball at a boulder that he replaced the dummy with. The fireball flew straight to it in the blink of an eye and it exploded into a hundred pieces.

"Perfect." Krios smiled as he saw the power he can now unleash. The fireball was now bigger, stronger, and took a shorter time to conjur. And it was without imbuing it with his chaos energy.

Days went by and Krios continued with his training. This time, incorporating his weapon of choice, a spear. Weapons are not strictly for warriors as a lot of mages utilize bladed weapons to increase the lethality of their attacks. They can use weapons to channel blade attacks at targets from a distance.

He practiced shooting fireballs from the tip of his spear, to coating its blade with a blazing inferno and sending flaming sword slashes at targets.

On the twenty seventh day, four days before Krios starts his journey to the academy, he attempted to do the final push to ascend to the Late Core Reformation Realm.

This process, although not the most painful, would be the hardest to accomplish as he would need to now shrink his thickened and expanded mana to half its current size.

Krios, sat down in a meditative stance and started with the process. Although challenging, this process would be a piece of cake for Krios as he had his chaos energy to help condense his mana core to the required size.

Instead of forcing his mana core to shrink using his mana, he used his chaos energy to press on to his mana core as hard as he could.

His mana core trembled from the extreme pressure exerted by the chaos energy. Krios was quite surprised by the lack of pushback from his mana core knowing how seemingly repulsed it acted toward chaos energy just a month prior.

He deduced that this change was due to the amount of time both chaos energy and mana remained in proximity of each other that resulted in them getting used to each other.

"Whoo." He breathed out heavily as the pressure on his core continued to increase.

"More. I need more" Krios increased the flow of chaos energy into his chaos core and added more pressure into his mana core.

The process took longer than expected as his extremely strengthened mana core remained unwavering.

After six hours of constant pushing and pressure on all sides,

BOOM!

The familiar boom of triumph sounded out once again with his mana core finally shrunk to half its previous size.

Krios fell on his back with a smile on his face.

"I'm ready for you, Zelestria Academy."