Chapter 5: Mana Core
Chapter 5
"Darn that god!" Grey shouted as his head was feeling heavy while his senses were still dull.
And then slowly, his senses were coming back first with his smell as he could perceive the scent of a fresh shampoo, then his sense of feeling as he could feel he was laying on something soft and smooth.
Then his sense of hearing was next as he could suddenly hear a soft angelic voice echoing in his ear.
"Grey! You are awake?!" The voice said.
Then his sense of seeing was next as his eyes snapped open and he could see a beautiful woman in front of him with her eyes all red and puffed up as if she had been crying for so long.
"Mom?" Grey said.
"Oh Grey my darling son!" Clara said as she threw her hands around Grey tightly while crying profusely.
"It's okay mom, I'm fine." Grey said while hugging her back and feeling sad that he had almost made his mom mourn a second time in a day.
After few minutes of hugging, Clara finally let Grey go as she wiped the tears off her face and sniffled a bit.
"Why did you go to the forest? Did you want to get yourself killed?" Clara shouted.
"That was the plan." Grey mumbled under his breath.
"I'm so sorry mom, I was in so much shock that I didn't know where I was headed. It felt like my body was on autopilot." Grey said.
"I'm so sorry son that you had to go through that bad experience." Clara said her eyes almost welled up but she quickly regained her composure.
That was when Grey turned around looking at his surroundings.
"Hold on, I'm back home? How is this possible?" Grey asked.
"When you left the house just like that, I was worried and began looking for you all around but I couldn't find you so I begged all our male neighbors to help me find you." Clara said.
"After they agreed, a search party was formed and we began looking for you everywhere we could until we ventured into the forest and could see a dead beast on the floor with you also laying on the floor out cold and you weren't waking up no matter what we did."
"I was scared for a moment that something bad had happened to you but someone reassured me that they could still hear a heartbeat. So we managed to bring you back home and the neighbors left."
"Even though so many hours passed, you weren't waking up and I was starting to think that the shock of your dad's passing and then facing a beast made you go into coma. Until you just suddenly woke up." Clara recounted.
Grey was now feeling terribly bad for putting his mother through the stress she went through today. And thinking of all these, his eyes welled up and he started crying then he quickly hugged his mom.
"I'm so sorry for putting you through all these, please forgive me. You are truly the best mom ever and I promise to take care of you." Grey said. "And I will never leave you again."
Clara hugged Grey back as the tears she bottled up just now came pouring down again and she was at a lost for words.
"And you are the best son I could ever wish for. I love you Grey."
"I love you too mom." Grey said as he let his mother go and then wiped the tears off his face. And right on cue, a rumbling noise was heard coming from Grey's stomach.
"You hungry?" Clara asked as she stood up to go to the kitchen in order to get something for Grey to eat.
'I promise to rid this world of beasts so they won't take someone dear to others like they did mine. And I will also have to take care of those at the top for creating this system that discriminated against the weak. That's a promise.' Grey thought and then he could see his mom coming with a plate of food.
Clara handed it to Grey and he didn't waste time in collecting and gobbling it up like a ravaged beast. In a flash, the whole food was gone and Grey thanked his mother while going into the kitchen to do the dishes.
After he was done, Grey went into his room and he could see the knife that he had wanted to use to commit suicide on the floor. Picking it up, Grey tossed it out the window and he went back to his bed.
"That mage didn't even tell me what my affinities were so I would know where to start. Darn that mage!" Grey cursed.
"I want to start training but where do I begin from now?" Grey thought as he paced around the small room and then an idea struck him.
"How about I start with cultivating mana. I still remember some basics of being a mage, I came across it in a book I read once about mages forming what was none as mana core before they could use their spells."
Grey then sat down cross legged in the centre of the room and kept his hands in front of him while joining it together and closing his eyes trying to concentrate.
'Good thing I'm good at remembering whatever I have read quickly. I remember seeing this technique and even trying but I wasn't able to.' Grey thought as he drew in a quick breath and then breathed back out.
Grey kept on repeating this process of breathing in and out while also moving his joined hands back and forth as if he was drawing something from the air into him.
And slowly after doing this for thirty minutes, Grey could feel something happening but he didn't know what it was. Unknown to him that the technique was drawing something from the air to him and it was mana.
As the mana in the air were all heading to the cross legged Grey and they were entering through his nostrils and going into his body. Slowly, Grey could feel something as his heart was shaking with power.
His heart was trembling as he could feel something forming around his heart.
'Is this what I think it is? Am I finally forming a mana core?' Grey thought excitedly still with his eyes closed.
The feeling was quite blissful to Grey as he kept on drawing mana after mana to his core rapidly. The energy was seeping into Grey rapidly as he kept pulling and pulling at it quickly trying to form his core as soon as possible.
But then, the rapid pull was now overloading him as the blissful feeling turned painful and Grey was feeling immense pain in his chest which caused him to roll and toss around in pain.
"What the f*ck is going on with me?" Grey managed to mumble.
The energy kept on spiraling within him, tightening like a vice around his heart. His breathing grew ragged, his body drenched in sweat. A searing pain surged through his chest, as if his heart might burst.
'Am I going to die from this?' was his last thought before darkness swallowed him.