The area from which Nova was pulling mana grew increasingly larger as time passed. By now, all the wind mana within twenty meters of him was being channelled into his wind core.
Still, even with all this mana pouring in, the wind core didn’t seem to be under any stress whatsoever, instead, it welcomed the vast influx of mana with open arms.
Twenty-one meters… twenty-three meters…
Nova stared inwardly at his core as he felt the area expand. The core, now twice its original size, shone as brightly as a green-grey star on the verge of exploding in one final, unforgettable moment.
If he hadn’t already known that this was part of the process to advance his core rank, he would have stopped absorbing mana long ago for fear of actually exploding.
‘Only less than one percent is left to temper,’ he estimated. ‘It’ll be done in a minute or two at most.’
It was then that he remembered the two young men sitting just thirty meters behind him.
With his current pace, Nova needed only one or two more minutes to finish his advancement, but that was also how long it would take for his area of absorption to cover the remaining distance and reach the two young men, effectively rendering their surroundings devoid of mana.
That thought lingered for a moment before Nova shook his head. ‘Now isn’t the time to think about that. Everything can be settled after my wind core advances.’
Twenty-five meters… twenty-eight meters…
At that moment, the two young men noticed a slight drop in mana. Evidently, although they sat thirty meters away from Nova, the two were able to pull mana from a radius of two meters around themselves.
Their brows furrowed as they exchanged the same questioning look.
“Are you feeling it too?” the shorter of the two asked.
The other one, a tan-skinned young man, nodded slowly. “The mana around us is thinning at a rate visible to the naked eye, but that shouldn’t be possible. This place is designed to allow dozens of people to absorb mana at the same time, and there are only six of us here now.”
“Is something wrong with the cave today? If so, we should report it to our bosses before things get out of control,” the former said.
Giving it some thought, the tanned young man replied, “Mhm, but let’s wait a few minutes and see how things go. If we report it now and it turns out to be nothing serious, we might get penalized. Who knows, maybe it’s a normal occurrence that happens every now and then.”
“Alright.”
Thirty meters…
While the two were busy talking, the pull finally reached their positions.
In that instant, they distinctly felt all the mana around them being dragged toward the end of the cave. Stunned by this development, their heads slowly turned toward Nova, who was calmly sitting with his eyes closed, his clothes swaying gently.
Before the two could formulate another thought—
Right then, Nova felt his wind core reach a tipping point as it spun wildly. At that moment he shouted inwardly, ‘Advance!’
Rumble
A muffled sound rang out in the cave, soon followed by a shockwave that sent dirt flying from one end of the cave to the other, kicking up a thick cloud of dust.
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When the five people, four men and one woman, felt the disturbance, they hastily shielded themselves, each using their own unique methods.
They tried to open their eyes to see what was happening but couldn’t see anything through the haze.
Normally, it wouldn’t have been difficult for them to see through a cloud of dust if it were the same as the old Earth’s dust, but the particles swirling around them were filled with mana, effectively rendering the five not much different from ordinary humans caught in a sandstorm.
They squinted, but it was futile. They could barely see their own arms as they covered their faces.
While they couldn’t see a thing, at the end of the cave Nova’s wind core had just finished breaking through.
The green-grey color on the surface of the core had dimmed, no longer shining as brightly as before it advanced, but still noticeably brighter than it had been previous to coming here.
Nova felt the changes that came with the advancement, and even he, despite knowing how much stronger his core already was compared to others, was shocked.
It took several seconds for him to calm down and take a deep breath, yet his fists refused to unclench.
“Did my wind core just double in strength? No… triple? That’s not it either. It’s somewhere between the two. This much increment in strength… how is that possible?” Nova’s voice was barely above a whisper.
He didn’t dare speak louder for fear that this was all just a dream and he would wake up.
The reason behind the vast increase in his core’s strength wasn’t without basis.
Previously, his rank 3 wind core had been comparable in strength to a rank 9 core from the natives of the Purple portal. Based on that, his current rank 4 should be equivalent to a rank 10 core.
And that was where the reason lay.
How difficult was it to reach the rank of a rank 10 mage? How many such mages had even existed since the beginning of that world?
In the Vireah Empire, the rank 10 was little more than a myth, an ideal only the most devoted mages dared to pursue.
Forget rank 10, even rank 9 mages could be counted on the fingers of one hand, and that was assuming some hidden monsters hadn’t simply chosen not to reveal their ranks.
With such a mythical rank, would the difference between 9 and 10 be just a small one?
Obviously not. The difference was a gulf so vast that a rank 9 would be as helpless as a baby before a rank 10.
Likewise, if the stages from 1 to 9 were divided into early, mid, and late, with 10 as the peak, then Nova had effectively leapt from the early stages of his wind core to the mid stage. Such a breakthrough wasn’t a simple advancement anymore, it was a qualitative step forward.
This meant that if he were to use wind spells now…
Nova lifted his right hand and, still trembling with excitement, muttered, “Wind Blade.”
VROOOOM!
A droning sound rang out as air was torn apart again and again with no sign of stopping. Simply by existing, the wind blade the size of his finger refused to let anything else occupy the same space.
At that moment, it was the only place in the entire cave completely devoid of dust.
If not for the rapidly hardening Earth, now many times more durable than it had been before the apocalypse, there was no telling what might have happened.
Nova stared at the wind blade and carefully lowered it to the ground, letting only a tiny portion make contact.
As soon as they touched, the ground beneath the blade crumbled, reduced to dust.
Seeing the cave’s floor, harder than ordinary Earth due to the dense mana within it, turn to dust with no effort made his hand, which was controlling the wind blade, freeze.
‘Can I fight against Force users with mana now?’ Nova wondered, though even he wasn’t sure.
Despite witnessing just how unbelievably strong his wind core had become, he still didn’t know if it would be enough to go toe-to-toe with Force. The impact the latter had left on him was too significant to ignore.
‘One way to find out is to fight the construct again when I go back.’
He waved his hand to dispel the wind blade and stood up. “That’s for later. What I need to do now is raise my other cores to rank 4.”
Nova turned around and could clearly see through the dust, that meant he also saw the five people struggling to regain their sight.
‘I caused a bit of a commotion here, huh? Better leave before the dust settles and they start asking questions.’
A flicker of wind mana appeared at his feet as he took a step forward.
Before one could even blink, he was standing in front of the tightly shut gate.
“How do I get out now?” Nova muttered, looking around. He had come in by pushing, but there was nothing he could grab to pull this time.
His gaze swept the area once more, and he noticed a diagram of an array on the door.
“Ah, so that’s how,” he said, placing one hand on the door and injecting his mana into it.
While he couldn’t replicate the array, it was low level enough that he could at least understand its purpose.
When the array had absorbed enough mana, it lit up fully.
With the grinding sound of cogs turning, the door slowly began to open.
As he waited for it to swing wide, he thought, ‘Next, I’ll go to the lightning room.’
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