The first four circles were actually quite simple in both theory and practice.

Reaching them wasn’t easy. A Mage had to stretch the astral walls within their Mana heart, forcing it to expand and make space. That alone required time, control, and a deep understanding of one’s own limits.

But the principle behind them was pretty straightforward.

A Mage pulling in as much mana as possible and compressing it into a defined circle within the Mana heart. That circle acted as a reservoir—a battery—from which mana could be drawn at will. Over time, it would naturally replenish itself through rest and by absorbing mana from the environment.

The fifth circle, however, was different. It was the point where things began to change.

The fifth circle was when a Mage’s body had to begin adapting to mana itself, becoming stronger, more resilient, and capable of withstanding different forms of mana without breaking apart. It was a transformation in one word.

At the highest level, a Mage wasn’t even considered mortal. They became something else entirely, something that had woven their body and existence into mana so deeply that they stood closer to a god than a man.

Kai was nowhere near that stage. But here, on the Earth Plane—he was about to take his first real step toward it.

So he began slowly, taking the initial step: adjusting to the environment.

The mana here was far more dense than anything his body was used to. Even though he had already adapted slightly just by being here, forming a fifth circle under these conditions required far more care.

He couldn’t rush this because the density of mana changed everything, including the calculations and the adjustments that he had to do.

If he underestimated it and forced too much mana through his system, it wouldn’t just fail—his Mana heart could collapse entirely. And that would mean death.

So Kai didn’t act immediately.

For the next hour, then another, he simply sat still with closed eyes, breathing in and out. With each breath, he let the mana flow through him, observing it, measuring it, understanding how it behaved within his body.

At the same time, his mind worked, taking note of the amount of mana, and adjusting it accordingly, preparing for the step he was about to take. He needed to know his limits before he could even begin, like how much mana his body could take in, how much pressure his Mana heart could handle, how far he could push his veins before they started to tear, and even how much his Mana brain could endure before the whole process collapsed.

He took a slow breath, letting the dense mana settle around him as his thoughts moved carefully from one point to another.

A lot of things could go wrong in the next few hours, but Kai was confident.

He wasn’t the type to move forward blindly. As a Mage, he had learned early that things went wrong far more often than they went right. Planning for failure wasn’t optional—it was survival, so he accounted for every risk and possible outcome.

Only when he was completely sure, did he move forward.

He opened his eyes slightly, then closed them again.

“Alright,” he whispered and began.

Up until now, everything he had done revolved around his Mana heart. But the fifth circle was different. More than the Mana heart, it involved the other two organs, his Mana veins and Mana brain as well.

As he drew in mana again, he didn’t guide it solely toward his heart like before. Instead, he split it, forcing it to flow through his veins while directing another portion toward his Mana brain.

The reaction was immediate. There was a sharp, stabbing pain.

It spread through him as he pushed mana against parts of his body that had never been meant to handle such pressure.

Kai’s breath hitched slightly, but he didn’t stop. Instead, he increased the flow and let the mana course through his veins, stretching them, forcing them to adapt, while another stream wrapped around his brain.

He tried not to flood all at once. Instead, let it seep in gradually, allowing his Mana brain to adjust as much as it could.

And then, he started pushing more mana toward his Mana heart.

He already had the space for the fifth circle. That part had been prepared long ago. Now, all he needed to do was hold the mana in place long enough to imprint it, to shape it into a stable circle.

Simple in theory yet anything but simple in practice.

In the next few seconds, the pain intensified.

It felt like his veins were being pierced from the inside, like something sharp was running through every part of them at once. At the same time, it felt like someone was trying to hammer his brain and fill his heart with water.

All of it happened at the same time.

Kai’s hands tightened slightly where they rested on his knees. He tried his best not to move or react but simply endure it.

If this had been his first time, he wouldn’t have been able to do it alone. But it wasn’t. He had gone through this once before, and that made all the difference. He knew how to to endure it silently.

He had no other choice as he had no intention of making a sound that might attract the attention of the others.

So instead, he reached to the side, took out a few prepared herbs, and began to chew through them slowly. The bitter taste spread through his mouth, but he ignored it, focusing entirely on what he was doing.

All the while, his body began to change.

Up until now, he had only been a mage. Now, he was stepping into something beyond that. Something closer to a being shaped by mana—an immortal—than a normal human.

Every second, more mana entered his body. It filled him steadily, building up until there was enough for the next step.

Kai didn’t rush. He chose his starting point carefully.

The veins first… he thought.

They were spread throughout his entire body, acting as pathways that carried mana wherever it needed to go. If those pathways weren’t strong enough, everything else would fail.

Slowly, he began to change them.

He pushed mana into a single section, starting with the veins closest to his Mana heart, and began to expand them. Not forcefully, but steadily, allowing them to stretch and grow thicker so they could carry more mana.

The key was control. Too much pressure, and they would burst. He didn’t want that.

Bursting veins was common when reaching the fifth circle. Most Mages accepted it as part of the process.

But he didn’t. He wanted this to be as clean as possible.

Kai worked carefully, focusing only on one pair of veins at a time. Once the ones around his Mana heart was stable, he moved outward, toward his shoulders, then down his arms, then into his palms.

Each step brought more and more pain. Rather than highs and lows, the pain was more of a constant and sharp feeling.

More than once, he felt certain his veins had reached their limit, stretching to the edge of tearing. Each time, he adjusted instantly, reducing the flow of mana just enough to let them stabilize before continuing.

Bit by bit, he allowed his body to change, and the results were clear.

With wider, and stronger veins, he could pull in more mana than before. For a Mage stepping into higher circles, that alone was a massive advantage. But it didn’t stop there.

The veins of a Magus didn’t just carry mana—they refined the mana they took in further, and made it more potent.

Hence, Kai spent more than two hours just on that.

The only time he ever came close to messing it up was when one of the veins around his legs suddenly jammed.

Kai hadn’t noticed it before, but it was probably due to the bite from the voidlings.

The injury had healed in the hours they have travelled today, but the bite might have left around some lingering foreign mana that jammed his vein. It had been a mistake on his part that he had missed it completely.

Fortunately, the jam was small and not lethal, and he was able to clear it out in minutes, but if Kai hadn’t noticed it, there would have been a backlash from trying to push mana through it, and that would have surely undone a lot of his work.

He made a layer of mana inside of his veins to keep them expanded until his ascension to the fifth circle was over. Once he did that, he moved onto his Mana brain.

That was more tricky than the veins simply because the brain was the most complicated part of any human. And a Mage’s brain not only required them to sense mana, they literally helped regulate and control it. If anything went wrong with it, a Mage could be crippled.

Getting your Mana heart broken could still be fixed, but that wasn’t the case with the brain.

So, Kai moved slowly, probing along the edges of it with his mana at first. Once he was sure it was stable enough, he created small needles of mana and slowly started to stab them.

At once, excruciating pain erupted, and it felt like Kai was about to pass out at any second. But he gritted his teeth, took out more herbs, and chewed through them as he kept going.

Upgrading the Mana brain meant changing its internal structure. Using the needles of mana, he directed small, controlled streams toward its core, making sure the rest of it remained intact. Every time he pushed mana through it, jolts ran across his entire body, and he shivered slightly, but he didn’t stop.

Every second he endured brought him closer to the finish line.

He moved the needles carefully, guiding them through different sections, pulling them out and placing them again in precise points that would improve his mana sense and control. It was a slow and deliberate process.

Truthfully, he didn’t have to go through this much pain. There were other methods.

But this one was the most effective.

It was a method that would only be developed when mana surgeries peaked. Instead of forcefully reshaping the brain, it worked by easing its structure, opening small gaps within it and refining its functions from within.

The needles weren’t just tools for change. They also allowed mana to flow through those newly opened paths during the advancement itself.

That was why Kai chose it even if it hurt and pushed him to his limits.

Slowly, he continued.

Again and again, the pain surged through him. His mind screamed under the pressure, and more than once, it felt like his senses were slipping away entirely.

Still, he persisted. And after a long stretch of time, something changed.

A wave of mana surged from his Mana brain and spread through his entire body. In that instant, Kai felt everything around him more clearly than ever before, his senses expanding outward as if the world itself had sharpened.

Even through the lingering pain, he smiled.

Then, without hesitation, he removed the needles.

He didn’t move straight away to build the mana circle knowing his body needed more time.

The changes in his veins and brain were still settling, still adjusting to the flow of mana running through them. Rushing the final step now would only increase the risk.

Fortunately, the last part of his advancement was the simplest.

While he had been working on his organs, Kai had already gathered more than enough mana inside his Mana heart. It was there, waiting—dense, compressed, ready to be shaped.

All he had to do now was bring it together.

He took a slow breath, then another, letting the cool air around him steady his body. The lingering effect of the herbs helped as well, dulling the sharpest edges of the pain, though not removing it entirely.

Pain never truly left during an advancement, it only grew. So he waited, letting his body settle and his control stabilize.

After around twenty minutes, when he felt ready, he turned his focus inward.

His awareness slipped into his astral space, brushing past the four already formed circles that floated steadily within it. Beyond them, there was space—space he had prepared long ago.

That was where the fifth circle would form.

He began to push.

All the mana he had gathered moved toward that point, drawn together with careful control. Even for him, holding it in place was difficult. The mana resisted, trying to spread, to escape.

But slowly, it gathered.

He inhaled deeply and looked at the rough sphere that was formed. Then it grew denser, and more stable.

Kai began to rotate it in slow motion–so slow that it was almost unnoticeable. But as it continued, the speed increased. The gathered mana started to move on its own, pulling more into itself, forming a spinning mass.

A vortex.

The outline of the fifth circle began to appear. And with it came another wave of sharp pain.

His astral space trembled under the pressure of the new power taking shape. Even though it had been expanded enough to hold even a sixth circle, it still needed time to adjust.

Time he didn’t have.

If he slowed now, if he allowed the space to settle—the mana could slip. The circle could collapse and nasty repercussions will follow.

So he didn’t stop.

Kai continued, even as the pain reached a level worse than anything he had felt in the last few hours. A part of him wanted to scream, to let it out, but he forced it down and focused only on the process in front of him like nothing else mattered.

In reality, he had already gone too far to turn back. If he stopped here, the backlash would destroy everything he had built. So he pushed forward.

More mana flowed into the vortex as he tightened his control, stabilising it as best as he could. He focused on the core first, compressing it until it was firm and steady, then slowly moved outward, shaping the edges with care.

He didn’t allow his grip to loosen for even a moment. Not until it was complete.

Time passed.

He didn’t know how long.

Hours, perhaps.

All of it was spent refining, adjusting, holding the circle together as it formed fully within his astral space.

Until finally, It felt stable.

Kai slowly loosened his control, letting the circle exist on its own. For a brief moment, he simply watched it, wondering if it would hold.

And when it did, he let out a quiet breath.

Relief washed through him, but he didn’t move right away. For a few minutes, he remained still, checking everything, making sure there were no cracks, no instability, nothing that might collapse after all this effort.

Only when he was certain did he move to the final step.

Kai gathered a thin wisp of mana and guided it through his Mana heart, then pushed it outward, letting it flow through his entire body. It travelled through his veins, reaching every part of him, then rose upward toward his brain, which still throbbed from the transformation.

It formed a connection.

A single thread linking all three of his organs together.

Then, for the last time he pushed. Mana surged through that thread, binding everything together.

And the pain—it exploded!

His body shook violently as it overwhelmed him. His eyes snapped open, the world around him spinning as if it couldn’t hold still.

A wave burst out of him.

It spread through the tent, rippling outward into the surroundings, carrying the force of his breakthrough with it.

Kai felt his strength drain all at once, his body threatening to shut down under the strain.

But even then, he knew.

He had done it.

He had become a Magus once again.

***

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