Unaware of the events taking place outside the cave, Nova calmly sat on the ground, making the final preparations before beginning to condense his first elemental core.

'I would've preferred to start with my lightning core, but I'm not sure a few tens of thousands of particles are enough to pull that off. That leaves me with wind, earth, and wood elements. If I push it, I could also add water but it's best to be cautious, at least for the first one.'

'Of the three, considering I have a wind mage to teach me, it makes the most sense to form a wind core first. I can slowly work on the others afterward.'

Having made up his mind, Nova took a deep breath and closed his eyes.

'First, gather the particles.'

His Will unfolded and his Wisdom assisted with the multitasking. In an instant, he took control of the dispersed wind particles within his body and guided them toward the Mana Core.

Hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of green-grey particles soon floated near the core. Even in such quantity, the wind particles didn't look threatening, they looked beautiful. Tens of thousands of glittering green-grey motes orbited calmly around the Mana Core

'This is harder than I thought. Even keeping them in place is a challenge. If I lose focus, they'll tear my body apart. I used to think the guy who came up with this was a genius, but now I can only see him as a madman.'

His words would've made the creator of the technique turn in their grave. How could they be blamed for someone else's recklessness? In the long history of this civilization, Nova was probably the first, and might very well be the last, to attempt condensing his first elemental core with so many Mana particles.

'Now, gather!'

He Willed and the wind particles responded, beginning to converge and stick together. At first, they grouped into clusters of dozens, then hundreds…

With each cluster formed, Nova's mental strain eased slightly. But in contrast, his Will bore the full weight of the process. The larger the cluster, the more Will it demanded to keep it bound. Those composed of thousands strained his control to the limit, threatening to break free at any moment, as tiny cuts, no longer than a fingernail and as thin as a hair, began appearing on his organs.

'Shit,' he cursed inwardly. Outwardly, he didn't even have the luxury to open his eyes.

Gritting his teeth, veins bulging across his body, he pressed on. He pulled the remaining clusters of hundreds into larger ones of thousands, easing the burden on his mind in one aspect while throwing an even bigger toll on the other.

But in doing so, he felt slightly less overwhelmed. He had gone from hundreds of clusters to just several dozen. The visual shift gave him a brief mental breather, one that lasted only a few short breaths before the strain on his Will reared its head once more.

"Hrgh," he grunted. His hands clenched, muscles tightening.

'Keep going. I can't stop now.'

The thousand-sized clusters began merging. Though not as seamlessly as before, they melded into each other, reducing their number by half. However, the remaining clusters were now twice the size of the previous ones.

"HNNNGGH!"

Under the immense strain, his Will faltered for just a moment. But that single lapse was enough.

A cluster slipped from his control, and in an instant, a wind blade the size of a finger tore out from within him.

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Without a hint of resistance, it ripped through his insides, exited cleanly from his back, missing his spine by mere millimeters, and crashed into the cave wall behind him.

Even weathered down by both his Will and body, the blade still carved a scar several meters deep into solid stone.

Perhaps luckily, Nova didn't witness the destruction behind him, his eyes still tightly shut, but the damage done inside his body would've made him shout in pain, if he had the luxury to spare the breath.

With a low, pained shout, he wrestled back control over the rogue cluster, reaching a temporary stalemate, one that earned him a few ragged, precious breaths.

'How… am I going to gather them all?' he thought. 'I think after the next merge, I'll pass out… and there'll still be several clusters left.'

This was the first time he had ever felt so close to death. Not even the old Goblin King in his first green portal had made him feel like this. Not even Vragor, the Troll King, had seemed as impossibly daunting as the task before him. And when he created his Nodes? Although he did act recklessly back then, not once did he think he would fail.

Sure, they were stronger than him. Sure, Vragor had even let him kill him, and the Nodes could've each ended his life with a single misstep. But back then, he could always see a path forward, a way to overcome them all.

Now, though, there was only one answer.

'The biggest gamble of my life. I'll either die or become stronger than ever before.'

'But first… I need to free up every bit of Will I can...'

//////

Outside, Melissa stood leaning against a tree, still troubled by whatever Nova had done to her. Letto had been no help at all, if anything, he had only added to her confusion with his random talks.

Her body jolted as she wracked her brain for answers.

"What was that? It felt… oddly familiar," she muttered, glancing down at her arms.

The pain had vanished as quickly as it came, but before she could inspect herself further—

BOOM.

An explosion erupted several hundred meters away, setting the forest ablaze and casting a flickering glow over the already sunlit canopy.

"What…?" Melissa whispered, eyes wide as heat brushed against her skin.

/////

'NOW!'

The few dozen remaining clusters in Nova's body surged toward a single point, converging all at once and then, they collided.

An explosion seemed to go off inside both his head and body. A splitting headache slammed into him as wind blades burst outward from within, cutting through muscle, bone, and flesh without mercy.

"AAAGHHH!"

A bloodcurdling scream tore from his throat.

Instinct took over. His body desperately channeled wood and water Mana particles inward, fueling Regeneration just enough to keep him from falling apart, albeit barely.

The merging process was quick… if one considered a couple of minutes "quick." To Nova, every passing second was its own personal hell.

His body tore itself open and immediately stitched itself back together, only to be ripped apart again—over and over. And his mind? It was likely in the worst shape of all. No coherent thought could form. He was running purely on instinct now. not that there was much he could consciously do in this state anyway.

Nova tossed and turned on the ground, bruising his already battered body in the process but he didn't even notice. At one point, he managed to stagger to his feet and slammed his fists against the cave wall, leaving deep imprints in the stone.

Only for a wind blade to tore downward from inside his stomach, slicing through everything in its path before exiting through his leg, severing it completely and causing him to collapsed on his knee.

His trembling mouth opened but no scream came out.

Three minutes later, deep inside his body, next to the Mana Core, a new core. this one green-grey, rotated quietly, glowing with a faint, ethereal light.

In stark contrast from the inside, outside Nova's body lay motionless in a pool of his own blood. Only the faint twitch of a finger confirmed the fact that he was still alive.

/////

"Did you hear screaming?" Melissa asked, glancing around nervously. Since the explosion, she'd been on constant edge.

Letto let out an exasperated sigh. "You already asked me. And I said no. Nothing's changed. My answer is still no. Why don't you just relax and enjoy the peace and quiet while it lasts?"

"What do you mean 'while it lasts'?" she asked, eyes narrowing.

"You never know," Letto said, his voice quieter now. Thinking back to Nova and everything that had happened, he continued, "In this line of work, anything can happen. One day, it's peaceful, you might even enjoy driving a carriage for a princess, even if it's your first time and you bathe in the sunlight. But the next? You're standing in the ruins of a village, forced to loot corpses…"

Melissa shot him a disdainful look. "Are you trying to scare me?"

"No," Letto replied, shaking his head. "I was hoping you'd say that could never happen…that's just fantasy so I could finally chalk it all up to a bad dream. But it seems… it's not one. Not yet."

He muttered the last part under his breath, but Melissa heard every word and she couldn't help but frown.

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