Aether Core

Arvell slowly walked out of the river, with his wet clothes sticking tightly to his body. The faint outline of his chiseled physique was visible even through his clothes.

If there were any women around to see this they would have fallen for him on the spot, luckily for Arvell, there weren't.

He slowly took off his clothes leaving just his underwear and left them to hang on a nearby tree.

Arvell was not able to fully grasp the extent of his new makeover before since he was wearing clothes, but after finally seeing his new form he was astounded. Despite full-well knowing that he was completely different from his old self, he was still not prepared for this shift.

He even had a 6-pack now. Arvell ran his fingers down his toned abs with curiosity, admiring his new ripped muscles.

Arvell clenched his fist and assumed a fighting stance. He was taught swordsmanship growing up, but that did not mean he had no training in hand-to-hand combat.

He was taught the basics of unarmed combat, on the off chance that he was to ever end up in a situation where he did not have his sword.

Arvell punched the air and heard a faint 'whoosh', as a gust of air came from his fist and scattered some leaves that had fallen on the ground.

He looked at his fist with an expectant gaze.

'If my new body is this strong at the 0th refining stage, I can't even imagine how strong it will be at the first refining stage or even the later stages,' he thought to himself.

'I agree your new body is far better than your old body. Your average pencil has evolved into a holy sword deserving its own epic and myths~' Lykos mused.

Arvell's eyes opened wide and he took a peak.

'...' Arvell looked with disbelief as he realized Lykos was telling the truth.

Little Arvell grew up, and now he was a monster.

Despite being thirteen he could still make grown men cry with his size.

'Congratulations! You are a real man now! Make sure to take care of that ok?

It's our family's treasure, so take care of it, and don't go putting it in weird places.'

Since Arvell was already thirteen, he knew about the 'birds and the bees' and naturally understood Lykos's not-so-subtle sexual innuendos. However, he was too happy to care and simply just brushed it off with a snort.

After all a man's 'sword' was his pride, so seeing himself with better gear made Arvell feel more self-confident in himself.

'We should probably start working on forming your Aether Core and your Nether Body now' Lykos spoke.

Arvell sat down on the warm grass and looked at the Thales River which glistened under the midday sun. He basked in the sun and allowed the water on his body to evaporate.

'I agree,' Arvell responded, 'I need to be strong enough to protect myself. It would be foolish to not get stronger as soon as possible.'

Arvell took a deep breath of fresh air to calm his nerves. He was already eager to learn how to use his new powers, and he was shaking from the excitement.

A handsome silver-haired man materialized before Arvell, momentarily shocking him.

The man looked at Arvell with a grin and sat across from him in a lotus position.

'Lykos? How did you come out of the amulet?' Arvell asked after overcoming his momentary shock.

'While I am outside the amulet, I am not technically 'outside the amulet'. The part of me that is tethered to the amulet is still intact, however, I am just projecting myself outwards.' Lykos responded.

'While I am able to show myself to you, no one else can see me. But at the same time I can't really touch anything do anything physically,' he continued.

It seemed that their mental connection still held up despite Lykos projecting himself outside of the amulet.

Lykos leaned in to touch the center of Arvell's upper chest, however, the finger just went through as if it was just an illusion.

Arvell didn't even feel a thing. It was as if the finger didn't even exist.

'This is where your Aether Core should be. Right on your middle dantian. This is the centre of your body, and where you can get the greatest value out of your Aether Core.' Lykos explained.

'Many people have tried other locations, but none of them were remotely close to the power when the core is formed in the middle dantian', Lykos continued.

Of course, Arvell knew this, since this was common sense for mages. Many people have tried to disprove this and try other locations, but all they did was create extra work in disassembling the core and then reconstructing it on the middle dantian.

At this point, only the young and naïve bother to dispute this fact. The members of the older generation have long since come to peace with it.

Touching his chest in the location which Lykos pointed out, Arvell closed his eyes and memorized the feeling of his finger on his chest. He stabilized his breathing and focused entirely on that point.

He noticed some sky blue-colored particles floating around near that spot. Just as he thought about asking Lykos what they were, Lykos reading his mind told him what they were.

'Those are Aether particles. Try to gather as many as you can in your body and collect them into your dantian' he explained.

Heeding Lykos's words Arvell tried to gather the particles to his dantian. To Arvell's surprise, these particles acted as an extension of him and moved how he wanted them to.

Arvell felt a faint connection to these particles and moving them felt as natural as moving his limbs.

Arvell began to slowly gather all of the Aether around his body to his core.

***

Several hours later.

The sun began to set beyond the horizon, bathing the forest in the soft twilight glow.

The chilly evening air assaulted Arvell's bare skin, which had dried off hours before.

Beads of sweat were dripping down Arvell's face and his forehead was scrunched up in concentration.

He'd spent the last few hours gathering the Aether in his body to his core fairly easily, but then the real problem started.

He had managed to gather the cluster of Aether in his body which formed what Lykos called an 'Aether Pool', which he said was a similar concept to a mage's Mana Pool.

Essentially that was all the Aether he had in his body that he could use to manipulate time and space.

It really only took Arvell one hour to do this, however after he gathered it, his real problems began.

He had to condense it into an Aether Core.

This was a far more tedious process since he had to compress the mass of Aether he collected in his core, and essentially 'process it' by making it more compact.

Through this, his body would have more space for Aether to enter into, which would increase the amount of Aether he can use, while also making it stronger.

The power that can be used with normal raw Aether could not be compared to the output that properly refined Aether could accomplish.

It was like comparing raw ore and refined iron.

Naturally, compressing and refining his Aether was no easy task, forcing Arvell to spend the last couple of hours slowly compressing it.

It was almost like the Aether didn't want to compress, but Arvell kept going.

Now, after many hours of mindless refinement, Arvell was finally at a breakthrough.

He focused all of his attention on the refinement process, not even paying attention to the butterfly that had landed on his shoulder.

'Almost there! Just a little more!' Arvell thought to himself.

Lykos watched Arvell struggle with an expectant gaze. He refrained from encouraging Arvell himself since he did not want to risk distracting him and making him lose hours of progress.

Arvell put all of his energy into forming his Aether Core, causing small vortexes to form around Arvell, as well as speeding up and slowing down the flow of time in his surroundings sporadically.

The butterfly on his shoulder realized something was wrong and decided that it was time to leave.

The moment it took time slowed down around it, making the butterfly freeze in the air.

Each flutter of its wings took several seconds, and it didn't seem to even realize that it slowed down considerably. To the butterfly, it was fluttering like normal.

If anything it would notice that the amount of sweat on the human's face was increasing much faster.

The butterfly slowly crept forward, but it was then suddenly pulled into one of the numerous vortexes surrounding Arvell.

The butterfly found itself several meters in front of its previous location and while it was confused with this situation, its small brain could only understand so much and decided to go drink the nectar of a nearby flower instead.

All of a sudden the vortexes disappeared and the time flow in the area corrected itself as if the mystifying phenomenon was just an illusion.

Arvell finally opened his eyes and yelled in an exasperated breath.

"I DID IT!"