–– Clara POV ––
This years summer break, my final school break, was nice, Gabrielle having found back to her previous self, her personality even more refined than ever before. Flying, brewing and talking, our routine better than ever before. This year we visited Greece, their magical community a little bit smaller than nearly anywhere else, still mostly trading goods, favors and services instead of monetary compensation. This meant, that there was no huge magical establishments like in diagon alley as they were not needed.
Anyone knew everyone, booklets, intermediaries and information brokers available for anyone you did not have an existing connection with. Their magical community was all about connections and having something to offer, which meant that everyone was striving towards progress and individuality, which resulted in a lot of lesser known experts and refugees living there and with the right incentives no one was tattling about their existence.
This also meant that touring the magical community was hard, only a rare few establishments open to strangers, even fewer pleased with our visit, a lot of patrons vanishing as we entered them. But I saw the charm in it, a magical community which worked without any form of governing. A few tried in the past, most disappearing shortly after.
The one grandmaster we could meet there was a ward grandmaster and parselmouth, sadly not ready to easily part with his secrets about parselwards, though they felt exquisite, his shop warded more securely than even Hogwarts, the inside filled with tier one as well as a bit of tier two mana. The man probably did not know about any of that though, as I could not sense any aspect or power from him. His most coveted products were a mix of enchantment and wards though, the difference between them bigger than one would expect.
Wards are generally stationary, bound to an object, a type of wardstone, fueled by a mage or mana ley lines, whereas enchantments feed off lose environmental mana while having less area of effect, mostly concentrated on a single object or person. His prime product was a spatially expanded ring, his best products having a space of multiple cubic kilometers, while I could say with certainty that none of Ollivander's crafters could do that before reaching a terrifying degree of power. This puzzled me a bit, but in favor of my break with Gabrielle I soon forgot about it.
The rest of Gabrielle's break was spent in one of her families properties in Hawaii, sometimes exploring the island a bit, without a guide this time.
Mosaic and Bob also enjoyed their time, slowly learning to tolerate each other, suppressing their instincts, Mosaic originally afraid of Bob due to his nature, Bob weirded out by Mosaic's anatomy which even I did not understand fully, sometimes having studied it. Meanwhile he had sprouted another head after he absorbed the emerald fully, a ruby now socketed in the once again empty middle indentation, securely hefted there. His occlumency also made huge strides, coming close to finding and opening his mindscape.
Gabrielle had tried another time this year, getting her potions mastery without any trouble this time, though she told me that Slughorn basically forced her to try again, the man thinking her more than ready for it, though most other masters would scoff at his assessment.
We had a small party, before the break ended all to soon, Gabrielle traveling back to Hogwarts for another year.
This also marked my first year as true adult, which meant that I needed to do a few things. I had already saved a bit of money, selling some of my potions to interested parties, though nothing to exquisite. It was certainly more than enough to buy a small house in the countryside. I decided on a residence in Greece, as I wanted to try to coax the ward grandmaster into taking me in as an apprentice, though I did not have high hopes. While their magical community was not as pronounced as in other countries, Gringotts still offered services over there, including a small housing market, barely warded off the grid houses.
I took the one of the smallest building possible, though it was still expensive for my current budget. The biggest surprise was that the wardstone was linked to a small mana ley line, so I copied that part of the wards, afterwards revamping and upgrading everything to my current best knowledge, the wards now a lot stronger than when I first bought it.
The house itself was very small, five rooms, a kitchen, bedroom, bathroom and a living room in the first floor, the cellar one big room which I designated as my temporary potions laboratory. The next few weeks were filled with non stop potion brewing, stocking up on most potions which could be put into stasis and a few other must haves, before I started to mingle more in the local greek community, slowly establishing me as a trustworthy potion mistress, bartering for different local materials.
My prime project currently was the liquid luck potion, planning to exchange it with anyone interested for quality materials, which I would need a lot for my next project. My current occupant in my ring was still missing earth, so I decided to do a bit more, building small platforms and a pretty huge garden for the tree to take root in and manage. For this I wanted to use manasteel platforms and walnut wood for the garden, encapsulated by a sphere made out of titanium, inscribed with my current version of a mana filter.
The materials were selected carefully, treated titanium the best bearer for my current ward, manasteel not interfering with the function of the filter. There will be seven layered spheres, all controlled by a central wardstone also made out of manasteel, treated with a very specific potion, which guaranteed that the ward does not output any impurities.
The experiments also showed, that a gravitational enchantment or ward had more downsides than upsides, so I would leave that out for now.
Gathering the materials itself was not that hard, as I could exchange the needed quantity for a liquid luck potion and still not break even. After a month the liquid luck was ready, my trading partners already waiting for it, a list of the mentioned materials and their quantity, together with a reasonable amount of other materials ready. I originally wanted to trade with an Ollivander, but the goblin's were the better partners as their knowledge and experience with metals was unfathomable to most, even these basic materials held to the highest standards of quality.
The trade went well, Britain's goblin king himself acting as my contact, the potion too important to risk it in any way. I deposited the raw materials into my ring, using it as a storage space for now, before returning to Greece to finally start my project.
I needed a few weeks to treat the titanium fully, afterwards needing only a few days to form the hollow spheres out of the material, using a huge amount of different spells to slowly form the material into the right form, in the end having multiple huge perfect spheres, the smallest having a diameter of multiple kilometers. The spheres were fixed in their location due to the sheer pressure of mana inside my pocket dimension's core.
Next I placed the treated manasteel wardstone perfectly in the center, over the next seventy two hours carefully carving my wardscheme, connecting it with the spheres, having a flash of insight, I changed the structure of the spheres again. This took multiple days, the end result having mana channels similar to the material of my pathways, the function of them to create a slow rotation through the mana's passing through the spheres, resulting in a slow spin.
Afterwards I finally activated it.
–– Observer POV ––
A masterpiece was activated, most wardmasters not even dreaming of making such a perfect and efficient ward. The effects were instantaneous, the mana rapidly compressed, getting even denser by the second, the resulting vacuum filled by mana from outside, the eye of Clara Ali Ollivander's storm rapidly shrinking until it was only as big as the spheres who were slowly picking up rotational speed. The fastest one the outermost, the speed slowly decreasing throughout the layered spheres, the last barely moving.
As the spheres and wardstone reached 100% saturation, two things happened. Impurities of previously inside mana were eradicated, everything cycled again due to a manual function of the wardstone and shortly afterwards the first tier 1 mana was formed, specs of purple slowly floating inside the space. They were minute, only 1 tier 1 mana particle in billions of others, but they were there, the sheer speed of their creation unthinkable for many. In a complex state of oversaturation and flux, one single tier 2 mana particle was created, which was not even noticed by Clara Ali Ollivander.
Clara Ali Ollivander fell unconscious, again. The weird girl's consciousness extinguished by the spike of mana density, only barely able to activate the manual function to cleanse the mana inside of the sphere, before her eyes involuntarily closed, her being not able to handle the mana density.
The half dead tree was different. Its wounds had closed a little, but it was still close to death, before this happened. Due to this mana density spike, its sentience fully stabilizing, pressed into form by the abnormally quick spike of mana density affecting the being. Its injuries fully healed over the next few seconds, roots, branches and the tree itself grew, rapidly absorbing the mana in the air, slowly forming into a huge carpet of both roots and canopy with a wide trunk acting as a vital link between them, taking up a good eight of the inner space of the spheres. A growth spurt if you have ever seen one.
For once, Clara Ali Ollivander did not know the real implications of her creation, her ward having reached a realm of self adaptation and evolution, even more intricate than even Hogwarts started out as. Now only hope she does not replace it anytime soon, as time is all the ward needed to reach highs few of these types of wards ever achieve.
–– Clara Ali Ollivander POV ––
I was waking up, again. This trend was slowly getting annoying, at least there was no weird feeling this time. But other weird things happened. Barely half a day had passed, but the tree fully healed and even evolved, his sentience fully formed, the communication no longer as slow as before, both of us exchanging information at break neck speed, the tree's roots intentionally woven into a sort of patch to hold earth and nurture the plants I will plant there. As unexpected and weird as this development was, I was delighted for the newly evolved treant.
Apart from that, a lot of tier one mana had formed, too much in fact. I had approximately calculated the result of the activation of the wards and even after rechecking and calculating everything multiple times, not even one percent of the current tier one mana particles should have formed over the time I was unconscious. I was thoroughly baffled. I was one hundred percent sure I had not miscalculated, but everything was working perfectly and I could not find any reason, that so many tier one mana particles would form. I obsessed over this problem for the next few days, until I threw in the towel, giving up as I had no idea what could have caused this ongoing issue. Well, it felt more like a miracle but still, it was annoying! But apart from this it still meant, that I had finally finished one of my long term projects, one less thing on my growing list of todos.
The next few months were filled with a bit of potion and wardstone making and cultivation. After gruesome months of cultivation I had finally succeeded in epic newcomer, destroying my old mana core, my mana body now acting as the new mana core. This was followed by an immense increase of speed and amount of mana circulation together with a substantial boost to my absorption and regeneration of mana.
I had also worked a bit on the legendary stage and found out the progression for the next view substages. Legendary elite was to dissolve the previous mana cores of my cultivation technique into the mana core body and use the whole mana core body as mana storage. This was something I should have done before I rebuilt my mana core and body, but if I had done that, I would have too little mana to do exactly that, but due to the fundamental change in my mana core body, now it would have the exact opposite effect. The mana would be stored in the whole mana core body, the pathways now „breathing" mana, changing their shapes and working to fit this new distribution system.
A few other previous changes would also be invalidated, now redundant and thus purged but without those previous changes, it would have taken years to gather the needed mana instead of the months I needed. It was sad, knowing that my work would vanish like that, but I found no different way, as I was working with such a huge amount of mana and mana per second, that most would not think possible in the adept stage.
Legendary peak was the implementation of imperceptible thin strings of mana acting as a sort of mana equivalent to nerves, which will take up as much of the space in my mana core body as possible without hindering any other functions, which actually was a lot as my pathways were extremely optimized, the cultivation techniques mana cores no longer existed and most other previous functions who would hinder their working were also purged in the stage before. These mana nerves would also snake through the pathways in some way or another. The design of these strings was naturally extremely intricate, but after my last project of such a thing it was quite easy to do.
For legendary changing I originally wanted to imbue an intent into my mana nerves, but I found out that that was impossible if I wanted to use them as nerves. This was due to many reasons, the most important one being, that it hinder their ability to act as nerves, as a certain part of their capacity would have already been taken up by the intent, which would also bombard me any time they sent information to my brain, which would be too huge a drawback.
Instead, legendary changing was all about connecting, fusing and syncing the physical and mana nerves, which was hard. It would be way easier, if the mana nerves were mimicking physical ones like the pathways, but that would certainly limit their functionality in the long run. This was annoying on so many different levels, that it probably trumped anything I had done to this point, even if I summed or even multiplied it together. These mana strings were thinner than some atoms, their foreseeable count in the millions, only increasing the bigger my mana core body became. I had already connected them to my brain in the previous substage, but that was not enough in the long term.
Apart from that, legendary breathing was impossible for now, none of my ideas able to reach it, but to understand that I would need to explain a bit about designing cultivation techniques. While the terms of the cultivation system were coined by sentient beings, the stages themselves were not just some imagination from someone without any actual basis. It was something similar to achievements, which means that the world itself would let you know the moment you had achieved the stage, had taken that one step forward, improved yourself in a significant enough way to be acknowledged by the very fabric of reality itself. Well, actually no one knew what or who decided it, but you could calculate it with arithmetic formulas, which were widely available as to make it easier to experiment with your cultivation technique.
The only problem with these calculations were, that they were not one hundred percent accurate, which means that you need a life experimenting target, which tested it out. I volunteered myself for mine naturally, but I calculated every single substage to such an intricate and idiotic standard and detail, that I would call it impossible to fail in any way, the complexity of intent infusion inside the mana body warranting any substage more than enough to qualify, together with rebuilding previously built structures, which most would call a fools dream, as it was impossibly hard and any slight mistake could see me crippled or dead.
But cultivation itself was about overcoming all odds, to rise over your previously thought perfect self, to improve constantly, to be a better you any other day.
My schedule was full with all of that and together with my anticipation to see Gabrielle again, my first year as a real adult, flew by in a whirl of productivity and progress. Originally, we wanted to travel to Germany this year, but after I had shown Gabrielle the changes in my sphere, she no longer left my pocket dimension for the whole of the break. To do this, she even helped me with the building of two potion laboratories inside, so that she could brew while being in this: „Super mega awesome environment", though she denies to have ever said that.
Apart from that, her studies had made tremendous advancements over this year, as she no longer spent all her time together with me in a laboratory. Well she did get her own at Hogwarts, but without a conversation partner like me she could use the bit of free time while brewing to learn other subjects, which resulted in OWLs for most main subjects, the teachers refusing to entertain the thought of NEWT tests for now, as her overall knowledge over higher magic was still shallow. And their perspective was quite correct as contrary to me, she was not nearly as much a freak and did not have quite huge libraries to her leisure since her fourth birthday. Well her family did have a sizable one, but her parents refused to let her read anything vaguely dangerous and anyone intelligent knew, that magic was just another weapon in the wrong hands. Ergo, magic was dangerous, quite a leap in their thinking, but it holds true I guess, it just inhibited Gabrielle's potential to shine through.
Contrary to what most think, magical children had more discipline and learning drive than mortal ones due to the simple fact that magic was awesome. It changed the body, mind and soul by minute degrees, which enhanced your genuine interests, which meant that if a magical child wanted to learn piano, the parents would need to pry the magical child away from the instrument instead of overseeing that she practices anything at all. Others just constantly pranked people or played quidditch as a result, but their dedication was still majorly more than any mortal child.
Another result of those changes was, that menstruation slowed down dramatically. It no longer happened each month, one cycle needing a year, decade or even longer to happen. This depended on many factors, but the main ones are age, mana purity, mana saturation, control, current stage and even cultivation technique specific oddities. Consequently, the aftereffects of it were a lot worse too. This is important, as I did not have a single one yet, though my body was as healthy as an ox, one problem less that would bother me anytime soon. Due to this change it was also harder to birth children, the stronger you became, as your energy interfered with the process. It was coined as the hardest instinct to overcome by anyone who tried, as you basically sacrificed potential, time and energy to birth a baby, which the energies inside of our bodies were anything but happy about.
Well back to Gabrielle. Her interest was mana itself, so I needed to literally force her out of my pocket dimension at the end of her break, which annoyed her tremendously, the nagging only stopped after she left with an international portkey.
Due to my previous thought process, I finally had a breakthrough for legendary breathing though. A simple word stood out. Bodies, plural. It was in fact normal to get more energy bodies throughout your cultivation journey, but what if I formed them myself? A quick search through my books and I found a few mentions of how it is at least confirmed to be possible, though it was not specified how.
But I had two ideas. Either I reformed one of my other cores itself and changed it into a core body or I used the transformation process of my mana body to a mana core body as blueprint and did the same with other cores.
It all starts with the basics of energy bodies. They are in another layer of dimension relative to your body, each energy body having their own, all of them overlapping in different phases, not hindering each other in the slightest. I experimented a bit, but it was easy to change the different phases, as I had already done so out of boredom a couple of times.
What I did was to block out my mana core body, which resulted in my senses entering a different phase inside of this different layer of dimensions, where I could place another energy body, after which I could block out both of my bodies, entering a third phase and so on.
Another a month of constant calculations later I found that the calculations also checked out. This meant, that it was theoretically possible to consciously build an energy body. It would neither be easy, fast or sane, but possible.
The first two energies that came to my mind that were remotely possible. Either lifeforce or mental energy and both had their problems. Lifeforce had no core, mental energy was unstable and both were highly dangerous, lifeforce risking my very life and mental energy risking my sentience. An energy body attuned to the energy of my soul would also be possible, but even I was not weird or crazy enough to try that anytime soon.
Welp, the other two would be enough reason to call me weird and crazy, but I will just ignore that. Most would think that the decision between which body to make would be hard, but it certainly was not for me. Both of them would be enough of an achievement for legendary breathing, but I thought: Why not just both?
This resulted in a cultivation spree of the remaining time until the winter break, though the progress was minimal, as each step needed more and more man.