Prologue 3

After he created the Record, Victor was finally integrated into the world. As a result, He awakened a special elemental essence as he fit the requirements for the world to bestow one on him. Those being a strong soul and a connection to a particular concept or element.

He awakened a special version of gold essence, King's Ransom. The gold essence was an evolved version of gold that focused on the aspects of purity and corruption. The awakening resulted in his hair to turning a metallic golden color and his eyes turned a molten gold color. It also resulted in his mana turning golden as well.

He extracted the metal aspects of his new mana and saved them for his next soul tattoo.

After extraction, he was left with his new gray mana that represented both the concepts of purity and corruption. It also reset his mana purity back to the level he started with when he awakened at the age of four.

While usually this would be devastating news as his work purifying his mana for the past twenty years was washed away. In this case it wasn't as his mana was now imbued with the concepts of purity and corruption, that fact along with his experience in mana purification would make it easy to regain his progress and even to go further. This change made something most deemed impossible possible, complete purity. This was deemed as such since the closer to true purity you got the harder it would become.

This paradoxical nature also mitigated one of the disadvantages of pure mana, while strengthening the advantages. The main advantage of pure mana was that it was increasingly easy to shift its form. This was because to shift one's mana form one must first shift to a relatively pure form then its new form. Pure mana would effectively cut the process of mana shift in half, as its default state was already pure. Purer mana was also easier and quicker to change to a new form.

The downsides to pure mana were that it was virtually useless in its natural form and the process to return to its natural form after battles is a little longer than average. The second was the one eliminated by his new mana form as the corruption aspect sped up all transitions in form. His mana could become any form quicker than his compatriots. This would become even quicker as his mana increased in purity.

His new mana would separate into two forms that would strengthen as he trained it: White Gold and Black Gold. White Gold would be a pure conductor, while Black Gold would be a pure insulator. White Gold would have every aspect removed from it turning it into regular pure mana. Black Gold would be made of all the impurities removed from his mana and body; it would be pure in its own way.

White Gold would be his weapon and tool, he would imbue it with whatever essence was necessary for the task. The mana was a metallic white.

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White Gold

'Pure gold'

A pure mana conductor

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Black Gold would be his shield, due to it being made of every kind of impurity it would swallow every type of energy that tried to pass through it. The mana was a metallic black.

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Black Gold

'Gold so corrupted that it turned pure'

A pure mana insulator

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The creation of Black Gold would further purify both his body and White Gold to make them both the perfect conductor for any energy, but that was a long way away.

The good news for his body is that it will become increasingly good at his branch of magic. The bad news is that his body would make him the most average human to ever exist physically. He would be reliant on magic artifacts and soul tattoos, most notably Midas' Gold, to achieve any superhuman physical feat.

This purification had the effect that his soul would become stronger and eventually outstrip his body. While his body purity would delay the inevitable, his soul was going to outgrow his body and like a baby bird the proverbial egg would crack. The day that happened he would be faced with a choice either abandon his body and live as a ghost or consume it and live as a body soul.

The gap in time created by having pure mana would be even more prevalent when using certain magical artifacts. As certain artifacts used magic lenses to transform magic into a new form. This usually took the form of two lenses, one to purify the user's magic and one to transform into a new form. Due to not needing the first, he could streamline his personal magical artifacts which would leave more room to improve functions and make the operation cheaper, easier, and quicker.

The next tattoo he constructed was also based on the wish lake fable and was made of the metal aspects of the element he awakened. After extracting the metallic aspects from his body and mana, it left only the paradoxical aspects in his mana. This tattoo was designed to cover for the weak body most mages possess. It was created from his understanding of a magic technique, mana sleeve. This technique added a flat increase in physical abilities as opposed to its brother technique of mana imbuement that was a multiplicative increase that suited the physically inclined better. The tattoo would always keep a low level of mana sleeve around his body active using an amount of mana equaling his regeneration rate. He could also spike potency, but also the cost, when needed. When he spiked the usage the sleeve turned more armor-like in appearance, with peak usage being a seemingly physical golden armor.

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Bodi's Armor

'Metallic Muscles'

Creates a permanent mana sleeve around the user

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The soul tattoo was a circular tattoo with an armor silhouette on it below his previous fable tattoo. The extraction of the metallic aspects caused his mana to turn grey and his hair back to brown. The only remnant of his previous physical change was his molten gold eyes.

The constant activation also had the effect that light would gain a golden tint when reflected of his body or possessions.

He used White Gold turned into the form of a thread to create the first of a set of magical artifacts that he named Heartstrings. This set was a collection of weapons involving threads or chains. Most of the time it would appear like a set of bracelets on both wrists. The set could manipulate the size of the items, so they were small when inactive and enlarged when in use. The default Heartstring was just a White Gold thread that was cosmetically altered to appear red. It acted as a conduit for imbued mana. The Heartstrings also currently included Biological Stitch and his glowing fishing line.

The fact that the set had a name linked the artifacts contained within and thus strengthened the weaker items. It also allowed for the duplication of items contained within with varying costs depending on the strength of the particular item.

Currently a white metallic thread, a red thread with a white bone needle, and glowing blue hook and line were resting on his right wrist.

The next thing Victor constructed was also made of White Gold and named The Heart's Web. This tattoo spread a web of his mana around him alerting him to his surroundings and allowing him to manipulate the surrounding energies. This tattoo represented both his heart concept and his weaving concept. The tattoo was a blueprint and seed of one of his future domains.

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Heart's Web

'A tattoo that originates its creator's domain'

Proto-Domain involving the absorption and release of energy

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The tattoos were red and blue spiderwebs on the bottoms of his feet. They had the disadvantage that he would stand out like a spotlight to those who could sense or see mana. However, this was mitigated by his mana purity that made it harder to detect.

Both the Heart's Web and Default Heartstring would increase in potency and subtlety as White Gold became increasingly pure.

He spent the rest of the day training, when he was done with that, he checked his webs for more trapped animals. After slitting their throats, then draining and collecting the blood, he ate dinner and turned in for the night.