Manipulating Mana

After finishing Solus' lessons, Roy stood up and went to his spot to train. He wanted to start the process of hollowing the Mana Core today.

'Question is, how do I begin the process?' Roy queried his tutorial.

{Info}

In order to hollow a Mana Core, you need to manipulate the mana within to evenly de-crystallize from the center out. This allows the still crystallized mana around it to absorb the freed mana and grow.

Process must be done highly accurately. As the Mana Core reabsorbs the de-crystallized mana, It will grow larger. The shape of the sphere also needs to be kept during this process.

After hollowing is complete, the newly formed Mana Heart will be a thin husk that will draw in one or more universal laws. The law(s) will reinforce the Mana Heart, allowing it to become a true container and condenser of mana.

*Whew*

Letting out a heavy breath, Roy decided to immediately begin his process. Using his [Mana Manipulation] skill, he began to de-crystallize the very center of the core. He took extra care to ensure that the process was done as evenly as possible.

...

Time passed and Roy was still working hard on hollowing. The Mana Core had grown roughly twenty percent bigger than it originally was as he was continuing the process. As the area that he needed to evenly hollow got bigger, it got increasingly more difficult as well.

'No way I can finish this with a level 1 [Mana Manipulation], I'll need to level up the skill in order to continue.' Roy wiped off the flood of sweat that had formed on his face as he stood up and went to eat some food.

Looking around the camp, he could see most of the kobolds training, while a few took a break to go gather some water.

Roy had made some water containers to reduce the trips to the river, but they still occasionally needed to restock.

'Guess I'll practice manipulating mana while I eat?' Roy thought to both practice and entertain himself as he swirled some formless mana around in his hand.

"It really is beautiful to look at..." Roy was mesmerized by the dancing mana. Its light blue color majestically radiated as he made it dance in his hand.

'Almost like a completely unpolluted river, flowing freely.' Roy let it flow between his fingers and around his forearm as he continued playing, completely forgetting about his food on the fire.

*Sniff*

"Oh shit!" Roy turned his head and looked to see a charring slice of meat. The mana flowing in his hand quickly dispersed as he had lost focus as well.

"Damnit! I got too immersed!" Roy commenced a short self deprecation session as he took what used to be meat off the stove.

'Darn it, oh well, nothing I can do about it now...' Roy threw the charred meat away and stuck another piece on top of the stove.

It wasn't anything crazy, just a simple flat rock with keratin poles holding it up on its ends. Roy made it a few days ago as he was tired of chewing on charcoal.

...

Enjoying his heated up meat that was successfully not charred, Roy had a big smile on his face. As he was about to take another bite though, a sudden and extremely bright light, followed by a deafening sound rang out.

*BOOM*

"Oh shit! EVERYONE GO TO THE CAVE NOW!" Roy screamed out a warning, knowing that a shock wave followed explosions.

Roy picked up some of their meat containers and charged to the cave with the kobolds in tow.

All of them were carrying essentials, not wanting to lose any of them.

Entering the cave, there was still a pungent odor, but it was much better than before. Roy and the others had cleared out and buried the kobold bodies a few days ago, allowing some of the smell to escape for good. Unfortunately, the air in the deeper part of the cave where the bodies were originally held was stagnant, not allowing it to air out the same.

"Roy, what was that? Why did you have us hide in the cave? Couldn't we just fight what is coming?" Asandra asked Roy multiple questions extremely confused.

"That was an explosion I believe, which are usually followed by shock waves, which isn't something you can fight. I don't know how to measure the strength of an explosion, or how big the shock wave would be, so we are hiding here just in case." Roy slowly explained what he knew as the eyes of the kobolds looked at him in confusion. Not knowing the words, Roy had to mix in some English as he spoke to them.

Soon after he carved some pictures on the ground to help their understandings.

"Oh god, how powerful would someone need to be to do that?!" Terren asked, freaking out at the power level that was displayed.

"I don't know, but what I am sure about is that something really bad is happening where that explosion just went off." Roy slowly spoke as he looked out of the cave mouth, now seeing the shock wave pass by them.

"It must have been pretty far away, the shock wave is relatively weak here. Let's stay in the cave for a bit longer though, since we aren't sure if that was the last one."

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________

"Rainok! Did your wall hold?!" Queen Elena yelled out, looking forward at the devastation her light magic had just caused.

"It did, barely." King Rainok responded, looking at his enormous earth magic wall. It was littered with explosion damage and was on the verge of collapsing. Truly demonstrating how much power the light magic of the queen held.

"At least the citizens are safe then..." Queen Elena looked to see if there were any survivors, yet her eyes showed none. Her attack, that consumed almost two thirds of her magic power had managed to wipe out almost all of the tier zero and one goblins.

Unfortunately it had also wiped out many of their own soldiers. They had managed to get temporary reprieve as the enemy regrouped, but that wouldn't last long, they needed the draftees to get here ASAP.

"What is the ETA on the draftee arrivals?" Rainok asked an advisor next to him.

"Umm... fifteen minutes sir!" The advisor forced out as he was still looking in horror at the results of their queen's magic.

"Tell them to hurry up! I need to go distract that little runaway, while the queen rests. It is far stronger than we assumed." Rainok flew off in the direction of the now furious goblin king, who was looking at his dead army. It was leaking a palpable and horrifying bloodlust that neither Elena nor Rainok had ever felt before.

"YOU DARE KILL MY PEOPLE, YOU DAMN FLYING RATS?!" The goblin king screamed, before launching himself at Rainok with a speed almost impossible to follow.