Arthur Leywin POV
A huge fireball flew toward me. I cursed. As fast as I could, I created a wall of water to extinguish it. The fireball sizzled and disappeared. Good. I realized too late that my vision was blocked by my own wall of water, as Cadell jumped through the wall. Instead of evading his strike, I had to lean into it, to minimize the damage I would receive. His fist hit me right in the ribs. I was catapulted backwards, but managed to land back on my feet.
Now it was my turn to go on the offensive. I augmented my hand and let the electricity flow throughout my body. This way, my reaction time would be shortened, while my movement was faster. In addition to the internal lighting technique, I used wind to boost my speed, as I burst towards Cadell. I cast an ice sword in my right hand, while I used my left hand to conjure some earth mana to create a dust cloud to worsen his sight.
He reacted by jumping backwards out of the cloud and created his own sword and moved it in order to block my strike. As I continued dashing, I hid my left hand behind my back.
As I jumped to come to his height, I also spun my body for extra momentum. Just as my sword was about to hit his sword, I let my icesword shatter. Because our swords did not collide Cadell's balance was off. I was waiting for this opportunity. Using the rotation I had gotten from the jump, I did a 270 in the air and attacked him with the ice sword I had cast in reverse grip in my left hand. He tried to react in time, to bring his sword up, but it wasnt there in time and my sword connected with his torso.
Of course it didn't do any damage, as it was dulled and Cadell had augmented his body in time, so the sword had shattered. As I started to land, I created an earthen ramp to help me gain balance back faster. I then cast another sword. Cadell had also refound his balance and had a grin on his face.
"Well, since it seems I was going to easy on you, let's make it a bit more difficult." On that I huffed. This meaningless hit was the only hit I managed to land on him for the last hour and that only worked since I surprised him with a risky move. Cadell of course knew that, but he wanted to push me to my limit. This is why we were doing this.
He released his killing intent. It was enough so I couldn't move as fast as before, but I noticed that I was still able to move. Compared to the intents I had faced, this was manageable.
"That should be enough," he said. Dammit, that means he isn't using all of it. "Since you're pretty exhausted after all that training, why don't you go all out for the end?" he asked.
"I have been going all out from the start" I responded. Did he think that I wasn't using my full force against him? This training would be useless if I did, and he was so much stronger than me, that I didn't have to worry about accidentally hurting him. In fact this whole spar was against a Cadell who limited himself a lot in terms of speed, strength and mana usage.
"I mean your will. Agrona told me it was safe, but using it exhausted you a lot. Why don't you use it at the end? Would be good if you also learn to use it in combat."
That was a good idea. I probed my core and let mana flow into the will. I could feel the tingling of my skin, as it turned pale. I could feel the warmth of the runes around my eyes as mana flowed through them. My vision changed and I was able to see the particles that surrounded Cadell and me.
But then I saw something weird. In Cadells core were red, brown and silver mana particles, but also black mana particles. I tried to remember if Agrona also had these black particles, but remembered that I could even look at him, so I had no way of knowing.
"What is your fourth mana affinity?" I asked him. He looked a bit surprised, but then answered: "Agrona had said, that you can see mana particles, but you can see that too? The fourth one you see is the special mana art of the Vritra." He raised his earthen sword and I could see how the black particles left his core and traveled into the sword.
The sword started to burn in a black flame. "This is called soulfire. It is indistinguishable, except the caster wills it to stop."
"Just like Amaterasu," I murmured. "What is that?" Cadell asked. "Nothing,. just something from my previous life." I answered with a smirk.
But I was mesmerized by the black flame. There was something that drew me to it. I started to walk toward Cadell. He lowered the sword, so I could take a closer look. I noticed that the flame did not radiate any heat.
"You said you can extinguish it? That also works when it burns something alive, right?" I asked.
"Yes, it does. What are you planning?" Cadell asked with an expression that told me that he didn't like where I was going.
His answer was all I needed. I reached out my hand and it started to burn.
"Why would you do that?" Cadell exclaimed. I could see how he was channeling mana in order to try to stop the flame from burning my hand. But then he saw that it didn't hurt me. While my hand was burning, I didn't get any wounds. It also didn't hurt. Well, the flame didn't hurt, but I could feel that my blood started to react to the decay magic. It felt like the blood in my hand was bubbling, and spikes were stabbing me at the same time.
I fell to my knees grabbing my hand. Because of Realmheart I saw how Cadells mana sickered into my blood, where my blood absorbed it. But I could feel that something changed in my blood.
In addition to the pain in my hand, I could feel how my core started to ache. The will was getting a lot worse, since this time I was already exhausted. Unsure if I could release my will, or if that would stop the reaction I screamed to Cadell "Use that one my whole body. I won't be able to stay in this form much longer, and I want to complete this process. I can feel that something good is happening; my blood is reacting to your fire!" Cadell reacted and started to use his whole core to draw in mana to change to the Vritra mana art and redirect it all over my body. Only then I noticed just how much he had held back. The amount of mana he used right now was more than a hundred times the amount he used against me in our spar. As his mana covered my body, I left out screams of pain. My whole body hurt like hell. In both my lives I haven't experienced anything that was close to the pain I was feeling now. Even the pain I had when the will rebelled during the assimilation process was not comparable. Cadell looked unsure if he should stop, but as he looked in my eyes he saw that I was determined.
But the pain only got worse and I could feel that the reaction that happened was only beginning. I knew the pain would get even worse. I wished Anena was here, but she wasnt. Her pain suppression spell would really come in handy about now.
Wait, thats it.
She had a pain suppression spell. While she could only do that with a rune and a core stronger than mine, I had two things she didnt:
First, I had a will that allowed me to manipulate mana with the precision of a surgeon.
Second and the even more important part, I had knowledge about the human anthology from my previous life. While this world may have discovered the basics, like the function of certain organs, my world has been much more advanced. We knew how to clone organs, we had cured almost all diseases and lifted the life expectancy to well above a hundred years.
I had always studied the human body, in hopes of finding another way to use my limited KI or to develop new fighting techniques.
Because I did that I know the way nerves work. You have pressure receptors all over your body, linked to your pain. If they got triggered they would send a signal to your brain and this would translate that signal back into feeling something. If these receptors detected something that wasn't supposed to be there they let out a certain signal, and the brain would let you feel pain. This way we understood what wasn't good and one would get warned.
I knew exactly this was happening in my body right now. And if I could block these receptors I wouldn't be able to feel pain. Sure, it had some risks, but as the pain got any worse, I knew I had to take these risks.
I tried to envelop my body in a combination of earth and water, covering my body with a kind of mud. While it helped for a short while, this wasn't a permanent solution.
I tried to block the receptors even more, but there were way too many.
If I couldn't stop my body from experiencing the thing that caused me pain, I at least could stop the distress signals from turning into this pain. These signals are small electronic sparks traveling through your nerves like blood did through your veins.
I started to refine the fire particles in my core into deviant lightning mana. lightning is nothing but electricity, just like the signals. If I did it right, I would be able to overwrite the signals causing me pain. I closed my eyes and focused. It was now or never as I was unsure if I would get another chance, if this spell would fail.
I concentrated on the point where the nerves from the spine entered the brain. I carefully probed lightning mana into the nerves.
One after another I blocked their signals to the brain. One time I couldn't see anymore. This must be the nerve from the eye. Oops.
Another time I lost all Orientation, causing me to fall to the ground. Those were the nerves from the ears.
After I tried a few nerves, I finally found what I was looking for. The nerves responsible were firing pulses non stop. I put in a bit of mana, and the pain stopped. Instead I was feeling...
Nothing.
I couldn't feel the pain that plagued me. I couldn't feel the ground pressing against my body. I couldn't feel my heartbeat in my chest. I couldn't feel the air being sucked into my lungs. I saw my hand move, but I couldn't feel it. I pinched myself and there was no reaction. Not even the numb feeling you had, when you sat yourself on your hand for a few minutes and then pinched the hand.
There was only Nothingness.
I just laid there and stared at the ceiling, while Cadells decay mana washed over me. I could only see it, since I didnt even have the feeling from my mana core anymore.
I didn't know how far the reaction was, It could be almost over or maybe it was just the beginning.
Cadell slowed down with the decay mana for a bit, and formed an earthen ball. He threw it in the direction of the door. I could hear it hitting the wall and an alarm started to ring. He then let out a mana burst, filling the whole room and passing through the walls. I was sure, everyone with a mana core must have felt that. Well, everyone except me that is.
I looked at my hand. It was converted with the soulfire Cadell continued to fuel.
'It looks so beautiful' I thought.
Then it happened. I could see how mana particles left my body. I exploded in an orb of soulfire, my vision entirely filled by it. Whatever this reaction did, it was done.
***
>2.5 words
I made some small changes to Realmheart compared to the og-Realmheart:
Wind is silver instead of green
Art is able to see the deviant forms of mana as their own mana class
That means he would see an lightning spell as yellow, instead of red for fire.
The deviant particles turn back into their 'normal' particles once they were used for the spell
That means that a lightning spell would have yellow particles, once an lightning particle used up all of its energy it would revert back into a red fire particle
This results in the following colors:
pure mana is white
water is dark blue
fire is red
wind is silver
earth is brown
ice is light blue
lighting is yellow
sound is light green
gravity is pink
plant is dark green
magma is orange
metall is dark silver (the color of iron)
Vritra decay mana art is black
aether (he can't see it now, but I still list it now) is purple
"healing" is golden
This also means that the following deviacies are built the following way:
ice, lighting, gravity and sound stay the same
plant is water and wind
magma is fire and earth
metall is fire and earth
decay is fire and wind
'healing' mana particles are made from pure mana
I hope these small changes dont bother you too much, but I would like to build a bit on these and this way it is much easier to paint a picture for you when art is using realmheart.
Just imagine art in a giant battle, with all these colorful spells flying through the air instead of only 5. I also wanted to change the deviant mana manipulation to a bit easier concept, closer to the real life physics/chemics.
I always imagine the mana particles to get charged by the core and then vibrate in a higher frequency (like atoms do), while I imagined the deviant mana as some kind of chemical reaction, where you would need some energy to let two substances react, to create a charged new substance (here water+wind = plant for example)
Then one could use that energy by letting the reaction reverse and using the energy for what you need it for (plant creating vines etc, and the plant mana particles revert back to water and wind). Kind of how rechargeable batteries work (like in your smartphone).
***