I sat in the dark of my room,a week has passed since my my injuries . I didn't go to the infimary i tired to patch my self using excuses to convince Athar that i don't need medical aid but i need more theoretical knowledge to adjust to Avulum and its heritage. In the end he let me go to the library thinking that even kids had had connection to magic since their birth and it wasn't logical to get me understand and use magic from the get go even if i was smart, Sadly it wasn't just the library as i hoped but an "Integration Training".
Sadly or thankfully, the tower higher ups has kept my identity a secret to not cause a problem, and just enjoy their victory over the demon king.
"Huh.. Argh." I sighed in frustration. The sensation of the Stone scraping at my Vitality a constant, sickening reminder that my time was up. I didn't need a healer; I needed a fuel source.
I closed my eyes and sank into the Library. I didn't look for spells. I looked for recalled observations. During Last week, during my "integration training," Akhtar had sent me to the sub-basements. To the Tower mages, a "Blank Slate" is a just like a dud that can't use magic due to genetic defects; a perfect janitor for sensitive areas. Mages have "noisy" mana signatures that can trigger unstable materials; I, however, am energetically silent. I had spent six hours hauling crates of lead-lined glass while the archivists ignored me, treating me like a piece of furniture.
They thought I was just a laborer. They didn't realize I was an engineer with a photographic mental vault, a new function of the stone that i discovered during my "training". I hadn't been just moving crates; I had been reading the manifests.
Manifest Entry 804-C: Tainted Chimera Core. Entropy state: High. Stability: Critical. Location: Sub-Level 4, Vault 9.
A chimera was i failed experiment on a magical beast, I thought it was cruel but they thought it was necessary for advancement and failure was a common thing while breaking new grounds. I didn't agree but this experiment was about overloading a monster core with mana and since it didn't get destroyed it means that this core has more mana than what a normal core have. I needed to have it.
Getting to Sub-Level 4 was a matter of wits and Fluid Dynamics. I didn't take the stairs—those were guarded by mages with Mana-Sight. Instead, I headed for the Laundry Chutes.
I used a small piece of scrap metal to wedge the internal dampener open. I didn't have the mana to levitate, so I used Frictional Braking. By bracing my back and feet against the narrow walls of the chute, I controlled my descent.
I landed in the soot-districts, three floors down. Here, the air was thick with the smell of coal and grease. This was the "Under-Tower," the industrial heart that kept the mages' paradise running. I blended in immediately. To the guards, I was just another soot-covered worker in a grease-stained apron.
I followed the Thermal Gradient. A vault full of unstable Fire Cores is a massive heat-sink; it radiates a specific infrared frequency that my "Mana Suction" could feel like a distant campfire. I followed the pipes carrying Liquid Frost-Salt—the coolant the Tower used to prevent the discards from reaching critical mass.
The vault door was a three-ton slab of lead-infused steel. I looked at the brass pipes overhead.
"If I can't pick the lock, I'll use Thermal Shock."
I used a heavy wrench to crack the valve on the coolant line, spraying the hinges until the steel turned brittle—undergoing a ductile-to-brittle transition. Then, I pried open a steam line from the furnace exhaust, blasting the frozen metal with high-pressure heat.
The molecular stress was too much. The steel didn't just bend; it shattered.
Inside, suspended in a containment field, was the Tainted Fire Core. It was a jagged, violet-orange mess, pulsing with the dying rage of a Chimera. It was "tainted," chaotic, and exactly what the Stone wanted.
I grabbed the core. The heat was instantaneous.
"Refine," I hissed.
The Stone performed a High-Pressure Extraction. It stripped the soul-filth to power the Vault's internal "refinery" and flushed the pure, violent residue into my empty pool.
[Mana Pool: 20/100... 80/100...]
I didn't stop. I used my "poisoned" nerves to act as a Magnetic Bottle, crushing the mana until it began to Phase Transition.
[150/100... 190/100...]
At 200 units, the 100-unit "Apprentice" limit shattered. The mana collapsed inward, densifying into the high-potency core of a Tier 2 Initiate.
[Tier 2 Initiate : Achieved] [Mana Pool: 60/1000 (Stable)]
The pressure vanished. My shoulder was "forged" whole by the surge. I stood in the center of the shattered vault, breathing in the smoke. I had broken the laws of the Tower, As normal tier 1 mages would need to prepare and adapt to their 100 mana before trying to condense it to form a core but i just ignored all that. I overloaded my system and created what was never thought about in the written Laws of Avulum .But for the first time, I had the power to write my own .