The Primeval Era-Chapter 146: Rain! II

Clouds were composed of moisture and air, particles so small and numerous that Mana could flow between them without resistance. There was no flesh to slow the current. There were no bones to absorb the impact. There was only endless space filled with countless droplets, each one capable of carrying energy from one point to another instantaneously.

In this form, he managed to realize he could generate extremely pure Mana at rates that allowed his body to drench itself and accelerate its progression by more than five or ten times what he had achieved before. The refinement process that usually took hours was occurring in moments. The purification that usually required focused intent was happening automatically.

And due to how rapidly Mana was conducting through his cloud form, he felt droves and droves of energy surging into his beast body and human body below. The rivers became floods. The floods became oceans. So much Mana poured through his connection that his physical forms couldn’t saturate their organs or bones or other bodily systems quickly enough to accommodate it.

He felt like his beast form might simply explode from how much Mana was flowing through it!

He felt his human body straining against energy trying to find space that didn’t exist. The sensation was not pain exactly, but pressure building toward a threshold that couldn’t be safely crossed.

He needed to find a solution.

In that luminous state, his mind filled with glorious activity. He sensed the conductivity and purity of Mana spreading out all around him, felt it pushing against boundaries that threatened to rupture. Since there was such a large density filling everything and threatening to overflow, he thought to himself a simple question.

Why not try to compress it?

He remembered the medallion of that demon, the crimson crystal that had survived flames capable of destroying everything else. It had looked like an extremely concentrated core of what that demon used to be, power compressed into a form so dense that ordinary destruction couldn’t touch it. The demon had stored its essence somewhere specific, had created a point of absolute concentration that preserved it beyond apparent death.

A Core.

He thought about this idea before nodding to himself. If demons could create such things, if they could compress their essence into crystalline structures capable of surviving annihilation, then why couldn’t he do something similar? Why couldn’t he take this overwhelming flood of Mana and squeeze it down into something manageable?

In the next moment, he focused on his beast body and human body simultaneously. He sensed the inscription that had been carved onto his heart, that letter of the Primordial Tongue burning with warmth and power. The inscription pulsed as if responding to his attention, as if waiting for the command it knew was coming.

"Compress for me."

HUUUM!

The process began in both bodies at once.

In his beast form, he felt Mana crossing through major systems that seemed completely saturated. His bones had absorbed all they could hold. His marrow had crystallized to its current limit. His organs pulsed with energy that had nowhere else to go.

He began pulling all those seeds of Mana toward his heart.

The energy resisted at first, comfortable in the spaces it had claimed throughout his body. It didn’t want to move. But Damian’s will was absolute, and the inscription on his heart amplified that will into something the Mana couldn’t ignore.

Currents reversed. Floods changed direction. Everything began flowing inward.

It was hard in the beginning. The compression felt like trying to squeeze an ocean into a cup, like forcing a mountain through the eye of a needle. He felt his heart begin to feel like it was being pinched, pressure building around the inscription as more and more Mana accumulated in a space never designed to hold such density.

It even looked like it would fail.

But he calmly roared out a single word.

"Persevere."

HUUUM!

Incandescent blue flames erupted around both his bodies with intensity that made everything before seem like candle flickers. The surging seas of Mana threatening to spill out from him more than doubled and tripled in concentration instantly. What had been overwhelming became catastrophic. What had been a flood became a deluge capable of drowning Lands.

But also, at the point near his heart where he was attempting compression, something changed.

A point of solid crystalline white formed near the area where his heart held that inscription. It was small, barely larger than a grain of sand, but its density was unlike anything else in his body. The surrounding Mana felt it appear and began responding to its presence like metal shavings responding to a lodestone.

The crystalline white point began to draw in all the Mana raging within his body.

Rivers that had been threatening to burst their banks changed direction and flowed toward that single point. Oceans that had been pressing against every boundary in his form started draining into something that seemed to have no limit to what it could contain. The pressure throughout his beast body began to ease as energy found a new home.

Exactly the same phenomenon occurred inside his human body.

A matching point of crystalline white formed near the inscription on that heart, and the seas threatening to spill out from his human form began being drawn into it. Two bodies. Two cores forming. Both connected to the same consciousness, both responding to the same will.

A Mana Core.

The words formed in his mind as he watched the process unfold!

This wasn’t a technique passed down from Ancestors. This wasn’t a method developed by Shamans across generations of trial and error.

But even calling it a Mana Core felt wrong.

The energy being compressed wasn’t ordinary Mana. It was Mana refined through the Primordial Tongue, purified by flames that predated the current age, generated through Doctrines that had never existed before he created them. Calling it merely a Mana Core would be like calling the sun merely a light.

Damian thought for a moment before he spoke.

"A Primordial Mana Core. That is what I shall name you."

BOOM!

As if his declaration held meaning, as if the act of naming something gave it power it hadn’t possessed before, that small crystalline white point began to buzz. It grew slightly larger, expanding to accommodate the pure Mana still being drawn into its structure from throughout his body. The compression continued, density increasing beyond anything that should have been possible.

And then it released a single white drop of Mana.

Pure white.

Damian felt it emerge from the core and spread through his body, and he understood immediately that this was something fundamentally different. The Mana was dozens of times denser than what had gone into the core. It was dozens of times grander, carrying intensity that made his previous cultivation feel...mild.

The immensity of that single drop caused everything to tremble.

Around his beast body and human body, dense white clouds began to gather. Not the blue flames he had become accustomed to, but something new!

He...had made some progress in his Second Doctrine!