"...Are you awake?"
Ethea's head turned slightly toward him, her ice-blue eyes reflecting the faint moonlight from the window. Her expression was almost deadpan.
Soren coughed awkwardly.
"Right. Sorry." He shifted on his futon, choosing his words carefully. "I'm on the verge of breaking through to the Second Circle. My cultivation technique has its own method for it, and it's completely different from the conventional methods." He paused. "There are a few things I don't fully understand. Would it be alright if I asked you about them?"
Ethea's eyes narrowed slightly, studying him.
Then, after a pause, she spoke.
"...Yes."
Soren smiled. "Thank you."
He gathered his thoughts carefully, making sure not to burden her with too many words.
"The conventional method says to push outward when the pressure peaks. But my technique requires me to suppress the Mana completely instead, driving it toward absolute stillness until the Core implodes and destroys the boundary from within. The thing is, I'm not sure how to judge when the stillness is enough. If I push too early, it might fail. If I wait too long, the pressure could destabilize the Core entirely. So my question is: when you broke through to the Second Circle, how did you know the exact moment to act?"
Ethea was quiet for a moment, her gaze distant as if recalling something from long ago.
Then she answered.
"...You'll feel it. A moment of perfect clarity. The pressure stops building. Everything stills. That's the moment you act."
Soren nodded slowly. "Perfect clarity. Understood."
He paused, organizing his next thought.
"The technique says the implosion will generate a shockwave strong enough to destroy the boundary entirely. But it also mentions that the destroyed boundary gets absorbed back into the Core as raw material. My concern is whether that absorption happens automatically, or if I need to actively guide it. If I don't control it properly, could the fragments scatter and damage my pathways instead?"
Ethea's lips pressed together slightly, considering.
"...Automatic. The Core pulls it in naturally. Don't interfere. Let it happen."
"Automatic. Don't interfere." Soren repeated quietly, committing it to memory. "Got it."
He asked a few more questions after that, keeping them short and direct. Each time, Ethea answered with the same brevity, her voice steady despite the effort it clearly took.
When he finally ran out of questions, Soren bowed his head slightly.
"Thank you. Really. This helps more than you know."
Ethea's gaze lingered on him for a moment before closing her eyes.
Soren took that as his cue.
He settled back onto the futon, crossed his legs, closed his eyes, and straightened his spine.
He took a deep breath.
One by one, he let everything go. The gate. The father and son duo. Ethea...
All of it, set aside.
Until there was nothing left but the quiet and the steady, patient pressure at his Core.
He turned his awareness inward and began the process.
The first step was suppression.
Soren focused on his Core, feeling the Mana circulating inside it like a living current. It wanted to move, to flow, to expand. But, as told in the technique, he forced it to stop.
Obviously, the resistance was immediate. The Mana pushed back hard, the pressure building sharply as he clamped down on its natural rhythm. His chest tightened, and his breathing grew shallow, sweat beading on his forehead.
'H-hold it. Don't let it move.'
He compressed the Mana further, driving it inward and forcing every particle into tighter and tighter spirals. The pressure intensified into a crushing weight that made his ribs ache, his muscles tense, and his jaw clench, but he didn't stop.
The Mana resisted harder, thrashing against his will like a caged beast. Pain lanced through his chest, sharp and sudden, as if something inside him was on the verge of cracking.
'Not... Not yet.'
He pushed deeper into the suppression, crushing the Mana down until the movement slowed to a crawl, then slowed further, and further still, until finally it stopped completely.
...Stillness.
For a single breathless moment, everything inside him went silent.
No movement, no flow, no pressure.
Just... clarity.
'This is it.'
Ethea's voice surfaced in his memory. '...A moment of perfect clarity. That's the moment you act.'
'Now!'
Without hesitation, Soren released the suppression all at once.
The Mana collapsed inward on itself, condensing into a single point so dense it felt like it would tear him apart from the inside, and then exploded outward in a shockwave that ripped through the boundary of his First Circle. Pain erupted through his entire body, white-hot and blinding, his back arching and his hands clenching into fists. He wanted to scream, but no sound came out.
The fragments of the destroyed boundary scattered for an instant, jagged and chaotic. Then, just as Ethea had said, the Core pulled them back automatically. They spiraled inward, drawn by an invisible force, and dissolved into raw Mana that merged seamlessly with the expanding Core.
But the pain didn't stop.
It burned through his pathways, searing and relentless, as the second layer began to form around the original Core.
'URGH!'
Soren gritted his teeth and held on as it slowly stabilized, piece by piece, until the pressure evened out and the burning subsided.
Then everything went still.
Soren opened his eyes, drenched in sweat and trembling from head to toe. But it was done. He focused inward, sensing the new structure of his Core: two layers rotating slowly in perfect harmony, the inner one dense and compressed, the outer one vast and expansive.
He exhaled slowly, a tired smile forming on his lips.
"I... huf... did... huf... it."
He took deep breaths, letting himself calm down and his body slowly stop trembling. The sweat on his skin had gone cold, his clothes were damp and clinging, and every muscle he had felt thoroughly wrung out.
But beneath all of that, something entirely different was settling into place. A depth he hadn't felt before. A density and weight to the Mana moving through him that made everything prior feel shallow by comparison.
He looked across the room.
Ethea was watching him quietly in the dark, her ice-blue eyes catching the faint moonlight from the window.
"...I made it," he said between breaths. "...Thanks for the help."
She held his gaze for a moment. Then she turned back to the ceiling, but not before he caught it clearly this time — a small, quiet smile, there for just a second before it disappeared.
'...'
Soren looked down at his hands and said nothing, but the corners of his mouth curved upward on their own.
He sat there for a while longer, letting his breathing fully settle and the last of the trembling work its way out of his muscles. Then he straightened up and rolled his shoulders slowly.
His body needed rest. Even more than before. But there was one thing he wanted to check first.
He closed his eyes and thought clearly.
'Status, open.'
Almost immediately, a translucent window materialized in his vision.
════════════════
[PERSONAL INFORMATION]
Name: Soren Valmere
Age: 22
Circle Rank: Second Circle (Early Stage)
Hunter Rank: F
[CORE STATUS]
Mana Capacity: 12,847 / 50,000
Core Stability: Optimal
Pathway Integrity: Excellent
Affinity: Ice (Grade 7 — S Rank) | Wind (Grade 5 — B Rank)
[INNATE ABILITIES]
• Accelerated Regeneration (C-Rank)
• Ironclad Body Constitution (C-Rank)
• Iron Will (D-Rank)
• Adrenaline Burst (C-Rank)
....
....
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