Chapter 42: Patch Up!

It was time.

My core was now on the verge of evolving.

Small cracks had begun to appear on its surface. These were so microscopic in nature that they couldn’t be seen with the naked eye.

Not that I was capable of seeing my own core.

It was just that I felt those cracks in my core, like it was ready to change into… something stronger.

As for the time it took, it had been another month since my first spar with Arthur. We sparred in the morning, and as for the rest of the day… well, that was used for hunting.

After my hundredth kill, I forgot to count the numbers, but all I could say was that I had killed plenty of monsters.

All of them were Iron Cores.

My core had already been ready to evolve from the mana essence that I absorbed after each kill, but Arthur refrained me from evolving the core.

He wanted me to get used to fights.

Arthur had advised me to make my body so attuned to combat that I should be able to fight someone even if I was asleep.

Like how the hell would that happen?

I didn’t know.

Nor would Arthur tell. So I just continued my hunts.

And I must say, with every new kill, I could feel my instincts getting sharper.

Yes.

Though I liked being calculative, having some instincts wasn’t a bad thing in itself.

But the surprising part was that when I agreed to hone my instincts, somewhere deep in my soul I felt a strong repulsion.

The repulsion was so strong that I was going to abandon the thought of doing anything with my instincts, but then again, the repulsion subsided on its own.

It was a strange thing.

I wanted to ask Arthur about it, but felt it wasn’t a wise thing to do.

And when I tried to analyse this feeling, it was like my brain refused to understand what was happening with me.

Like my brain wasn’t my own.

So without the help of my genius mind, I couldn’t understand anything.

Was this the effect of the merger? Did the fusion cause any undesirable effects on my soul?

I didn’t know, and neither could I investigate the matter.

Asking others meant revealing my secret.

I wasn’t a fool to do that.

Arthur had told me to compress the core when the cracks began to form on it.

As my core was Iron—the most basic core—I didn’t have any rings on it. This made the process much easier.

Currently, I was sitting in a cultivation room. This thing was specially built for cultivating in case one’s core was ready to evolve.

The mana in the room was tremendous. Even without my mana control, I could feel it. Each and every particle in the air was surrounded by mana.

The cracks in my core intensified as I tried to compress it.

As I used the mana in my body to enter my mana core through those cracks, the surrounding mana began rushing into my body to compensate for the deficiency.

It was a continuous cycle.

Just near…

I could feel it.

The core had been compressed to the maximum extent possible. Now I just had to give one last push while repairing the core at the same time.

Both things had to be done simultaneously. This was what made evolving one’s core so difficult.

If someone managed to compress the core but failed to repair the cracks, then the results were obvious.

The person could end up with a crippled core… if he was lucky.

In the worst case, the cracks might get bigger and bigger, resulting in the core getting destroyed.

And the result—

Death.

A slow, painful, and agonizing death. A core was like the heart of a living being.

No. It was something more important than the heart. And imagine if such a thing began to break apart, piece by piece…

Knowing what pain awaited them in case one failed the evolution of the mana core, many people were satisfied with what they had.

The risk wasn’t worth the reward for average people.

That was why a large number stayed at the Iron Core without ranking up.

With a higher core, a person could elevate his status in society. More power meant more money and being considered superior to the people below them.

But people still curbed their greed and avoided ranking up if they felt their potential lacking.

And how could one judge their potential?

When you eat food, you know how much more you could eat before your stomach gets filled to the brim.

It was the same in the case of a mana core.

While reaching the peak state of any core, the person realizes whether his core is capable of handling more mana.

Even if the chances of ranking up are low, some people who are ambitious enough take that risk.

As for the result—

Some survive, while others…

It was a tragic thing. But that was what kept the balance of power in nature. Everything had to have a limit for the world to keep functioning for years to come.

As I compressed my core for the last time, massive cracks began to appear on its surface.

It was time.

I immediately willed the mana in my body to fill up those cracks.

Before, I was using mana to fill the core, thereby producing more cracks in the core from the pressure within.

Similar to inflating a balloon.

Now I was doing the opposite. The mana entered the crevices between the cracks and began to patch up the surface of the core.

Like muscle cells healing from microtears after an intense workout.

I was compressing the core at the same time so as to even out the surface.

It was like filling cement in a cracked ball while also compressing the ball for it to retain its former shape—

Mostly a sphere.

That was what the mana core looked like.

At least in most living creatures.

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