Corework

Don’t celebrate too early, Tepin! I might have just used up all the luck I had left. Sure, there was a soulcore right before me, but that doesn’t mean all my problems are suddenly solved.

I wish it were that easy, but reality was different. Was it empty? Probably. I would think I am a unique case. Usually, if a soulcore is removed from one’s body, that means death. Souls are bound to the body they are born with, and if the latter is too damaged or removed, that’s that. So I assume it’s empty!

Next problem, is it even possible for me to just slip into the core? I had no clue.

In my studies, this was never seen as a potential scenario. Sure, there were some fringe theories by some crazy people striving for immortality, but I never gave them much attention.

Guess that bites me in my non-existent ass right about now. Who knows, maybe some of those theories could have had some merits…

I was getting off track. Did I even want to try this? Currently, I am kind of safe after all. If I leave this bottle, there is a high chance I just get dragged away into one of the ley lines below, and done, I am gone. But if I stayed in the bottle, I would be sold tomorrow to who knows who. And there was no guarantee of what would happen then.

This was difficult. What do I do? I don’t want to stay this way forever. I probably should have been dead anyway, no? Was there a point in staying in this bottle at all? Sure, I might have another chance at some point to escape it, but I already feel like I am on the brink of losing it.

No, this was it! My chance of freedom, and I will take it! Fuck the consequences! Anything would be better than this!

Time to get to work! Can I move? Somewhat, I did figure out in the past weeks that I could sort of wobble around inside the bottle. So, time to wobble to new heights! I very much hoped the enchantment on the bottle’s head wouldn’t keep me from breaking out. It did seem to have a rudimentary no-spilling enchantment. But who knows how that affects a soul? I hadn’t yet answered the question whether I was a liquid either. Well, time to find out! If I got through, I was probably not a liquid.

Wait wait wait, Tepin. You idiot, check first if those two went to sleep, and if not, wait! I looked around, and it seemed like enough time had passed for them to call it a day. Good, so I could start now! Before I changed my mind!

Carefully, I pushed against the cap, and to my delight, there was barely any resistance. I fit right through the seams.

As I passed through, I metaphorically held my breath. Wondering if doing this could hurt me in any way. I waited for something, soreness, cuts, stings, anything! But no pain came. Although, what if I just couldn’t feel physical pain? My thoughts were interrupted when plop! I was free!

The bottle was towering behind me; from this perspective, it looked quite big.

My short-lived relief was immediately replaced with panic when I felt some sort of force pulling me. I tried to resist it. Did I miscalculate? Should I have stayed in the bottle? The pull grew stronger the more I tried to resist. This couldn’t be happening! I wasn’t ready to be dragged into the ley lines. Nobody knew what happens after. I tried to wobble towards the bottle. Back to safety! But to no avail. Whatever force had captured me, I could not resist it. And then there was another plop.

Silence.

Suddenly, my senses felt less under pressure. As I investigated my surroundings, a sense of stupidity grew within me. The soulcore had pulled me into itself. I guess it made sense that my soul was pulled into the next most natural place to be. Just did not expect it to be that easy!

Behold! I was no longer a liquid. NO! I was now a ball!

For the first time in weeks, I could relax. The core provided me with a barrier that seemed to shield my senses from the outside world. There was no need to forcefully keep all my senses in control. Instead, I was surrounded by a purple glass with a blue hue going through it. I rested for a moment, enjoying the newfound silence.

After half an hour of enjoying the safety of being in a soulcore, I pulled myself together. There was still more to do! I was happy that my senses weren’t completely cut off and that I did not need to find a new way to control them. Either way, it was time to reach out to the world around me. Part of me was anxious if I would be able to manipulate the surrounding mana. Now that I was within a soulcore, it should be possible again.

I reached out to the ambient mana in the room. A sense of familiarity washed over me; it felt just like back when I had a body. And there it was, I felt the energy and grasped it! Delight spread through me. Finally, the one thing that was standing between me and freedom was in reach. It was time to form a mana-sphere!

If I created a mana-sphere around me, it would act as a shield, protecting my core. Made out of mana compressed so strongly that it becomes a solid. And the last, most important benefit, it would give me access to more than just the mana around me. Because it can store large quantities of the purple energy. And that meant I had enough mana to cast spells! Which would be the key to my freedom.

A sudden realization hit me! Usually, the first sphere just develops naturally. It just pops into existence at some point in your early years. Then, with time, you learn methods to strengthen the sphere, in school, from your parents, or books. There are so-called compression stages, which reflect how many times you compressed your mana-sphere to make it denser so it can store more energy. The more often you managed to do so, the more mana you had, which in turn let you cast more complex magic. The higher the stage, the higher your resistance to passing out from a high density of ambient mana. At the same time, you start to also leak mana, creating an aura around you. After reaching very high stages, people need to learn to suppress that. If not, people will just start blacking out around you.

But my situation was different, I knew all those techniques to strengthen your sphere already. After all I had done so 4 times already! No small feat at my young twenty-seven years. Of course, I had lost all that. However, I would have to skip the natural process of getting my mana-sphere, and that was exciting! All the techniques I had learned previously to improve my sphere, I could now use to create it!

I tried holding it back, I really did!

But then it came out.

I started giggling.

The excitement got the better of me. I felt like I was blushing when I finally got myself under control again. I hated it when this happened. More than once, I had embarrassed myself when I got excited about some experiment and started giggling without realizing it. Wait… Nobody could hear me, my voice was still solely within me. Now that was relieving!

Enough with the distractions! It was time to get this process started. Once again, I grasped for the ambient mana, this time pulling it towards me. I blended out everything to solely focus on my task.

At first, I just gathered as much mana as I could till it was dense enough to become visible. I gathered it in the form of a floating ball before me and held it in place. While I continued gathering mana, I slowly started pulling from the ball, creating a string. That I then started stringing around me, until it surrounded my soulcore. It started resembling the outside of a yarn ball. I continued to carefully lay the string around me in a dense pattern. Repeating the same process over and again, until many layers surrounded me.

A single slip of my concentration during this process would mean I would have to start all over. But I was quite good at manipulating mana! Heh. It was time to finish this up.

I had created quite the dense network of mana strings around me, all that was left was to compress them together until it was one. I started pressing my yarn ball-like structure together with all the strength I could muster. It was fortunate that, back in the day, I never missed my mana manipulation training. Still, this was very taxing, and I grew more tired by the minute. Yet I knew I couldn’t stop until the mana-sphere was complete!

Dust

Something had woken me up. I blinked, trying to get the sleep out of my eyes, and looked out of the window before me. It was still dark out. I scratched my head as I took a look around me. Hm, there was my backpack lying beside my bed, and there was Olgore, he wasn’t snoring for once, so that didn’t wake me up. And there was a flying glowing ball hovering above the table.

Everything seemed in order. So I started lying back down, and had just closed my eyes when I immediately sat back up. Turning back to the table, I looked at the crystal ball we picked up from the Necromancer we apprehended earlier. It was floating. Yeah, it hadn’t done that before! Then I sensed it. The ambient mana in the room was higher than it should be. That probably awoke me. I told Olgore to give that stupid ball to the authorities! Anything a Necromancer would carry with them was likely highly illegal, but did he listen? No, of course not! I suspiciously looked at the crystal ball, it was glowing, no pulsating purple with some slight bright blue streaks here and there. I wish I could have gotten through Olgores’ thick head and gotten him to just bring the guy to the authorities after we caught him. Not to also steal from him!

Still in bed, I prepared a spell, a simple lightning bolt. But I held myself back, I didn’t know what would happen if I just hit it with the spell. So I waited spell ready, a warm buzzing around my hand coming from the lightning slithering around it. I was looking for an object to throw at Olgore to wake him up.

Unknown magic was dangerous, especially if it came from a Necromancer. Not finding anything better, I threw my pillow over at Olgore. Bullseye! Hit him right on the head.

I did not have to wait long until he started rising, looking around confused. That’s when I heard buzzing, my eyes immediately sprang back to the ball. There was purple lighting all around it, hitting the wall, the table, everything in reach.

And then, from one moment to the next, the lighting disappeared.

Olgore stared at me, while I blankly stared at the hovering ball.

He was about to open his mouth.

Then, out of nowhere, a shockwave I did not see coming hit me, no us! It threw me from my bed against the wall beside it. Everything in the room was turned over, the window shattered, the bed frames, the table, and the seats also broken. For a while, I sat on the ground dazed, not quite understanding what had just happened, when I heard something small hit the ground and Olgore groaning.

My entire body hurt, and I didn’t think I broke anything. But I could already feel the bruises growing. Slowly, I stood up, a bit unsteady on my feet. Looking for the ball, I found it lying on the ground, between what was left of the table. Now it had a smooth purple surface around it, with a light blue light shining from within. But otherwise, it didn’t look like it was doing much else anymore. Something about this whole thing seemed familiar, but I didn’t understand why exactly yet.

I turned to Olgore and saw him holding his head, but he looked otherwise unscathed. Still, I asked.

“Are you okay?”

Tepin

Once all that pressure that had built around me was released, I immediately felt better! I noticed how I fell to the ground shortly after, but that didn’t matter much to me.

I had done it! I had created a mana-sphere around my soulcore. Looking at it, it was quite the masterpiece. I couldn’t stop myself, and immediately checked the amount of mana that I now had available.

Holy! Now, wasn’t that something? My new sphere had much more mana than it had any right to! I let out the giggle that was bubbling up inside me! At this point, I didn’t care, it was not like anyone could hear me anyway. This was amazing, this would certainly help me in the future! I had almost as much mana as if I had compressed my sphere twice already. I couldn’t stop giggling, I was just so happy. I could not wait to write a paper about this experience, publish it, and show it to my peers.

Oh…

My peers…

I still didn’t know where they were…

No Tepin!

Stop!

You cannot have these thoughts right now.

Think!

You just got yourself the means to find them! Then, I noticed someone was talking. That is when I finally took a look at my surroundings. Oh, ohhhhh. Fuck! With my blinding motivation, I had completely forgotten what happens when a new mana-sphere comes into existence. All the overflowing mana that I didn’t compress was released at once. I cringed when I realized that I had destroyed all the furniture in the room. But at least that window never had glass, right, heh? Not until a few moments ago. Who am I kidding? I sighed. Both Olgore and Dust were looking at me. They both looked quite rattled. Oops.

“So you are saying the stupid **** did this?” Olgore said.

“Yes, that is what I am saying! Not only that, I think it ****** a *********** around it!” Dust answered.

“That sounds ********. But I’ll just ******** it ****.” Olgore responded and started lifting a large two-handed axe over his shoulder.

So that’s probably the word for destroy then. Never mind that, I had to move. I saw the axe coming towards me, and at the same time heard Dust scream: “Don’t, we don’t know what could ******!”

But it was too late, he was already swinging, but I wasn’t powerless anymore! Instantly, I drew multiple rota with mana beside my core, connected and activated them.

The spell was cast instantly! Just when the axe was about to split me, a gust of wind propelled me halfway across the floor. I hit the wall, bounced off it, and then slowly rolled away from it.

Thankfully, I was quite adept at casting simple spells fast. Otherwise, this would have ended very badly. I heard a crack, and when I looked in its direction, I saw that Olgore had pulled out his axe from the wooden floor. This time he fucking threw it towards me.

“Stay still, stupid ****!” He almost growled.

Ah, sweet context clues, so that was the word for ball. Oh, an axe was flying towards me! I cast the same spell again and rolled across the room. Ignoring the circumstances, being able to move again was quite nice. But I had to somehow de-escalate this situation. While I saw Olgore sprinting towards his axe, I quickly started drawing letters with mana above my head, spelling out that I am a friend.

That stopped Olgore in his tracks, and both of them looked at me.

“Dust any **** what that means?” Olgore asked, and without hesitation, Dust answered, “Nope.”

Ah, idiot me! Obviously, they couldn’t read it, I wrote it in my language… that was my bad.

But Olgore had stopped attacking me, so I had to use this chance! Lacking a better idea, I simply created a 2-dimensional rendition of an ‘X’ crossing out an axe, with my mana. Hopefully, this would buy me some time. After all, I could cast again, and projecting my thoughts into theirs wasn’t that difficult. While I would have liked to project my thoughts to Dust, he likely was able to repel me. The spell readied in his left hand told me as much. So Olgore it was! After all, he didn’t seem like a magic user. I started creating a complex rota sequence that would connect my mind with his.

I had no time for stealth. I made the rota as small and fast as possible, but they still saw them.

“Olgore, it’s casting *********, be ready!” said Dust in a hurried tone, but he was too late, I was faster! The spell was complete, and a little string of mana barely visible shot from me to Olgore, connecting me to his core.

The connection made, I directly spoke into his mind, not losing any time.

“Uhm, hey! Nice meet you…. please, not trying to destroy me!”