Chapter 5: The Desire to Be Special
After talking about how the 'Crystal Conduit Mana Manipulation' school of magic came to be, the book immediately moved onto the next school inspired by a dragon's body.
'Mage Heart Mana Manipulation' was inspired by a dragon's heart. How a human managed to learn how to mimic the function of a dragon's heart? The book didn't say. It only outlined the differences between the two methods.
While Crystal Conduit Mana Manipulation established a connection between the mage's will and the ambient mana. Mage Heart Mana Manipulation drew in mana from the surroundings, converted it into a more manageable form, and stored it in the mages body.
More specifically, the heart and circulatory system.
The book also answered one of Aryn's previous questions he had since he first formed his Conduit.
Back when he was in the womb and still called it a mana core, he had wondered if everyone's formed in the same place. As it would turn out, a Conduit could be formed anywhere in the body.
The best place to form one's Conduit would be in or near a vital organ, due to the often-times lethal consequences of its destruction or removal from the body.
However, forming one in your heart would bar the possibility of practicing the Mage Heart method alongside developing one's Conduit.
'Nice, it's possible to practice both. Good thing I didn't ignore the pulling force in my head and try to form anything in my heart, or somewhere stupid like my hand.'
Each method had advantages and disadvantages that could be somewhat compensated for if they were practiced together.
For the Conduit method, the disadvantages would be the lack of potency in the early stages, the significant drain that manipulating ambient mana had on mental energy — Aryn knew this particular disadvantage well — and the amount of time one needs to invest in its middle and later stages.
Aryn then moved on to the section detailing the advantages of the Conduit method.
'Unpredictability, long-range and wide-area attacks, what you would expect from the average mage in a world of swords and magic.' Aryn moved on to the section about the disadvantages of the Mage Heart.
Due to the rapid increase in the difficulty of controlling the processed mana the farther it gets from the body, the range of the Mage Heart method suffered.
The reliance on a limited pool of mana to work with can also become a problem in drawn-out fights.
Finally, starting to practice the Mage Heart method was potentially dangerous due to the nature of attempting to alter one's own heart.
Aryn quickly scanned the advantages, the excitement in his heart reaching its peak.
'Bolstering of the physical body, close-range power, early combat potential. They really do complement each other perfectly. Dragons must be crazy-powerful in this world if these mana manipulation techniques are just imitations of how their bodies work naturally.' He reminded himself to stay humble...
Thinking back on his previous life, he frowned. 'Actually...' Then a grin spilt his face.
'Fuck that. I promised myself to reach for the stars in this life! You can't do that without being either reckless, crazy, or both.'
The spark of ambition in Aryn's soul grew to become a flame as he threw caution to the wind and started gathering all the mana in his now 30 meter range around his heart in preparation.
Completely disregarding his father's orders not to try anything on his own.
'Plenty of people in this world have formed both a Mage Heart and a crystalized Conduit. If I want to stand out among them, I need to do something different.'
Normally, one would try to keep their rationality intact.
But Aryn thought that what an average man considered sane wouldn't help him reach his goals. So he allowed his greed to consume him, gnawing at his rational mind.
What Gavin considered rationality would be madness in this new world.
Aryn wanted power, he wanted knowledge, and he wanted everyone in this new world to know he had these things.
If he had to risk his second chance for it, he was going to roll the dice.
'Just copying can only get me so far. I need to do something vastly different if-' He paused.
'No, that's a lie, I'm not going to do this because I have to.' The already face-splitting grin on his face widened even further, looking positively ridiculous on his one-year-old face.
'I'm going to do this because I want to.'
The flame of ambition in Aryn's soul thrummed.
He shifted his attention from his heart to his Conduit. If he was going to do something risky, he may as well go all-the-way.
Trying something that until this moment he would have considered idiotic — or maybe he would still consider idiotic — he tried to use telekinesis on his Conduit.
Unfortunately, nothing happened.
But instead of stopping and giving up on his already foolish idea of nestling his Conduit in his Mage Heart as it formed, he tried something that could truly be called mad.
At the outer edge of his Conduit's crystalline shell, Aryn started compressing mana.
With a focus that he didn't know he was capable of, he compressed, and compressed, and compressed, until a second Conduit started forming.
His goal wasn't to simply form a second Conduit — he was sure that had been tried before — he wanted to start forming the second Conduit in the shell of the first, splitting it open and giving him access to the mana inside.
Once he had access to that mana, he was going to attempt to turn his whole heart into both his Mage Heart, and a Conduit.
He hoped that by suffusing his heart with all the mana in his already somewhat saturated Conduit, he could form a Mage Heart with a sufficient density to also form a conduit in its center.
If he succeeded, he would have a Conduit that would feed itself off of the mana his Mage Heart was converting and storing.
This would remove the need to manually draw in mana into his Conduit and ensure the range of his ability to sense and manipulate mana would continue to grow on its own, potentially surpassing its natural limit.
He himself had just read that the destruction or removal of a Conduit was often-times fatal, but he continued.
If he couldn't do anything special with his second chance, what was the point of having it in the first place?
He stopped forming the second core as soon as it reached the point that it started condensing further on its own.
Instead, he pulled at the condensing mana, destabilizing the second Conduit and forming a hole in the first's crystalline structure.
Pain shot through him, but he strangely couldn't pinpoint from where. It was a pain unlike anything he could previously imagine.
It felt deeper than physical, and much more dire.
'Fuck...' Aryn knew instinctively then, that he had damaged his soul.
He gathered himself and pushed himself further. There was already no going back, there was a hole in his Conduit and an ocean of mana pouring out of it, leaking into the surroundings.
Not giving himself any time to regret his momentary lapse of sanity, he tried to guide the leaking mana to his heart.
With far greater success than he imagined he would have, he guided the flood of mana through his veins and into his heart.
Had he had the time to think, Aryn would have questioned the reason behind his sudden increase in skill at manipulating mana, but he didn't.
The mana seeped into the walls of his heart and brought with it a new flavor of pain. He twitched, his grip on the mana loosening slightly before he gathered himself.
As his heart was flooded with mana, it stopped beating. Acutely aware of this, Aryn got desperate.
He knew that without his heart pumping much-needed blood to his brain, he had less than 20 seconds before he loses consciousness.
The Conduit in his head imploded, releasing more mana than his fading mind could control. About 30% of the remaining mana escaped his grasp, but it was enough.
Just before he lost consciousness, he forced the remaining mana under his control into his heart.
When the last of the mana fused into the flesh of his heart, a few things happened all at once.
First, he finally lost the fight with unconsciousness.
Second, his heart began undergoing a change as it started beating again. Every beat drawing in a sizable portion of the surrounding mana.
He had failed in condensing a Conduit in its center, but he had also formed something beyond a Mage Heart.
Finally, a panicked Maros burst through the door.
***
Maros Mayer POV
Sitting in his office on the third floor, Maros was reading over a statement for the monthly earnings of the businesses he owns in Heriin and it's surroundings when he thought he felt something.
He focused on his senses and found nothing, but his instincts were flaring up.
As a seasoned veteran, he would be a fool to ignore them. He set down the statement and stood up, walking toward the door to his office.
As he reached for the doorknob, he felt a veritable flood of mana come from the floor below, in his son's room.
Whipping the door open, he ran through the hall towards the stairs.
'The wards are still up, I would've known if someone entered the house. That means this mana can only come from Aryn!' Maros' heart nearly stopped as he realized this.
He knew his son didn't have a Mage Heart. This much mana could only come from one place.
'NO!' He leaped down the stairs, only catching one step in the middle before he touched down at the second floor already in a sprint.
'His Conduit shattered, he's going to die if I can't get him to a High Mage in time!'
As his his right foot kicked towards his son's bedroom door, he felt the mana stop flooding the surroundings, causing him to twitch in worry.
*BANG*
The door flew inwards, smashing against the doorstop as Maros lunged toward the little boy that lay in the middle of the room, an open book splayed in front of him.
Maros ignored the book for now, checking his son's pulse.
*Thump*
He didn't calm down yet, blanketing his son with his senses.
As he did, he noticed the damning lack of a Conduit, as well as the strange state of his son's heart as it drew in the ambient mana.
Too panicked to think further into the matter, Maros picked up his son in his arms, opened the window, and leaped from the second floor window.
Catching himself with telekinesis before he hit the ground, he bore some of his weight with the ambient mana and started running east, each step covering a dozen meters.
He couldn't fly reliably yet with his telekinesis. But he could outrun any average horse by lowering the weight his legs needed to bear and adding some propelling force to his back.
***
It took eight hours of continuous running to make it to the nearest city that held a High Mage, Dawn-Ilyn.
By the time he got to its gates, his comfy leather boots were caked in dirt, his feet were blistered, and he was on the verge of losing consciousness due to the strain using telekinesis for eight straight hours placed on his mind.
He walked unsteadily through the city gates, the guards letting him through without any trouble as they saw his state and the unconscious boy in his arms.
There was no doubt that if he had been trying to leave instead, they would have stopped him, suspecting him of abducting the boy.
Tossing the stray thoughts from his jumbled mind, Maros continued on his way to meet an acquaintance of his.
Coming to a stop in front of a gate guarded by a pair of Battlemages in matching attire.
"State your business." The guard on the right said plainly.
Both guards wore a well-fitted plate armor with light-blue fastenings and a crest in the likeness of the sun over their hearts. The armor was well-maintained and polished, but otherwise held no other adornments.
"I need to meet with High Mage Priscilla. Urgently." He gestured to his son in his arms, still asleep and sickly pale, sweat now causing his hair to stick to his forehead.
He was lightly shivering.
The guards looked at him a little longer before they both stepped out of the way in unison. "The Headmistress is in her office."
Nodding his thanks, Maros walked past the gates and into the grand building across the courtyard, passing a few apprentice mages slacking in the courtyard.
Quickly making his way through the Academy's stone halls and up a staircase, he came upon the door he was looking for and knocked.
*KNOCK KNOCK*