Mana swirled in the air in a vortex, so thick that if anyone were watching, they would have seen sparks in the air, visible to the naked eye. Earth had an absolutely astonishing amount of mana now. It took all of Max’s control to move it quickly, though. It was like trying to move an oar through honey. The density of the mana made it thick, but his control was so precise, it was still able to easily manipulate it--it just took time.

  Max could feel that he was getting close to a breakthrough. He was excited but now, for the first time in this life, he also dreaded it a little bit. A breakthrough into a four-star mana body would be much different than the first three levels.

  After he achieved a four-star mana body, his power was going to surpass anything he’d actually seen yet among other Challengers from Earth. Maybe there was a Challenger out there with a powerful Path who had achieved that kind of ability, but Max definitely hadn't met them yet. In fact, the only place he'd seen Challengers with the kind of power he was about to have had been in the memories of Ancilla. He also had a feeling that if he hadn't caught Adjudicator Swan off guard, she might have been a match too.

  As usual, as Max worked on his mana body, he let his mind work as well, taking the time to organize his thoughts and think about things he needed to–even things he'd been putting off. Since it had been over two weeks now that he'd first begun working on his mana body again seriously, he felt guilty for leaving earth, for going to the Quartet.

  Leaving his family behind had been a choice. He still rationally believed it was the best choice at the time. But no matter how angry he got at himself for feeling a little guilty, he just couldn't shake the feeling. A lot of it probably stemmed from not letting his family or friends know that he'd been back for a while.

  This was definitely not something that would have concerned him when he was Chasa de Milo, but he’d changed. Now he kept asking himself what his real priorities were and why. He second guessed himself, at least in the darkness of his own mind.

  Of course, anytime he was ready to beat himself up over that, all he needed to do was think about the sword of Damocles hanging over his head in the form of Quartet adjudicators and enforcers.

  He actually welcomed this kind of insecurity in his mind. It let him know it was there so he could savagely smash it down with logic and reality. However, not all of his negative emotions could be dispelled this way.

  The more real, visceral reason to feel guilty was not about his relationships, but instead about his very existence on earth. In the quiet of his mind, part of Max wondered if he even had the right to stay on the planet. After all, if he was here, then people from the Quartet would come. He felt very strongly that this was an inevitability. The only reason he hadn't put much effort yet into trying to find a way off-world was because of two reasons.

  First of all, if he were going to leave, he needed to make some changes first so that he could fulfill his obligations or otherwise live without guilt. That largely meant giving his friends and family a better chance of survival. The best way to do that was to strengthen the Trifecta Guild, take out some enemies, leave behind teachings about the Western Wind Style, and help out at the battlefront.

  The second reason there was no use in spending any time on the subject was because it was already being worked on. The Patriot Guild already had their science team led by Fujisawa Yukari. Max assumed that much of their research would also be relevant to leaving the planet, not just calling someone to it.

  He didn’t like it, but if everything fell apart, he had other options, too. Ultimately, he was pretty sure he already had the means to leave Earth in the form of the strange daggers that he'd taken off of Adjudicator Swan.

  Max had let many opportunities pass to ask Anansi what all of the daggers were and what they did. He knew that avoiding the subject was irrational, but he felt like it was such a heavy burden and such a large topic that he didn't want to deal with it until the Trifecta Guild's issues were taken care of.

  And of course, even though Max was about to be at least one of the most powerful Challengers on Earth, he was not arrogant enough to assume that the upcoming conflict would be easy. Whether he ended up fighting with words or weapons, it was patently obvious that the Lynch brothers–who had betrayed the Trifecta Guild–were not going to go down easily.

  Whenever Max took breaks from training, whether working on his mana body or practicing with all of his new weapons and skills, he continued to watch the news and get caught up on recent history. It was giving him a very good idea of what kind of people he was dealing with.

  Unfortunately, there were other things he was putting off too, like teaching his old students. Some of why he was waiting was for the same reason he was delaying other things; he was really hoping that after taking care of the Trifecta Guild's issues, he would be able to summon Momo and Gantry to Earth. Then he could teach everyone together. Or maybe he could just have Gantry or Momo teach his students on Earth since they were more advanced now.

  Either way, at least he had been giving mana pills to the original Trifecta Guild members. None of them had had a breakthrough yet, but it was helping them absorb mana from the atmosphere faster.

  Suddenly, a rumble echoed through Max's body. He could feel that the threshold for mana condensation and suppression had almost been reached. A four-star mana body was truly when Max believed that a Blade Sorcerer became a Blade Sorcerer. His opinion wasn't exactly rare on the subject, either, or at least it hadn't been when he was alive. On Albion, a Four-Star Blade Sorcerer had been considered a true battlefield asset. Anyone higher than four-star would be famous in the world, and armies would calculate their odds of winning wars or battles based on how many four-star Blade Sorcerers they had.

  Max reached into himself and carefully began observing the accumulated mana in his brain and a few of his other internal organs. He needed to prepare to remove the accumulated mana from some of his organs and push all of that mana into the rest of his body, further compressing it.

  This was an extremely difficult process, and the first time he'd ever done this in his first life, he'd almost died. However, having been through it once before made the process a bit less difficult. Now he knew first-hand what to expect. He could predict the pains that would actually hurt his soul as well as his body.

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  The secret to the evolution to 4-stars was removing all the mana from the most important systems, compressing it as far as he could, and then channeling the accumulated pressure directly back into all the organs that he cleared of mana before. This would begin a chain reaction that would start as equal parts pleasure and pain, but eventually just pain. Terrible, terrible, soul-fraying pain.

  Becoming a four-star mana body is really what took Blade Sorcerers to the next level. During the transformation, mana would rework their entire body, and afterward, they would be a better, faster, stronger, tougher version of themselves. But more importantly, their command of mana would speed up exponentially. Additionally, they would be able to project mana outside of their own body far easier. Of course, mana projection used up a lot of power, and Max didn't plan on throwing blades of mana around or conjuring shields if he could help it since he had other options.

  At least not until he had a five star mana body.

  Suddenly, the time was right. Slowly, carefully, meticulously, almost cell by cell, Max began removing the mana from his brain. Starting with the brain was risky. In fact, this was quite possibly the most dangerous method to become a four-star mana body blade sorcerer, but he'd also achieved it before. Doing so had helped him achieve the heights he had.

  Most Blade Sorcerers on Albion who reached a four-star mana body began with the lungs or the heart, since whatever organ the blade sorcerer began with would get the largest increase in power and functionality if they lived through the process. But long ago, in his first life, Max had realized that the most important weapon any warrior had was their mind.

  The work he was doing inside his body was tedious and nerve-wracking, but he didn’t lose his focus. After he finally purged the mana from his brain, which on a magical level almost felt like pulling Velcro apart cell by cell, Max controlled the mana , pushed it into the rest of his mana body in one go. He kept pushing until it assimilated. The pressure inside him grew.

  Now the amount of mana in his heart, lungs, spleen, liver, and stomach all increased. He’d already felt full of mana, now he felt like he could overload. The feeling was going to get worse as he continued working towards the transformation. In fact, this was one reason why some Blade Sorcerers died while attempting a breakthrough to a four-star mana body. The process meant every organ that the Blade Sorcerer cleared would make the next organ harder to deal with. On top of that, max started with his brain. That meant he’d actually weakened his brain, making it easier to pass out and also lowering his thinking and computation speed.

  Max gritted his teeth and got to work again. Part of his willpower was devoted to ignoring the passage of time. He didn't know how long it took, and at some point, he thought he might have died. The pain was excruciating. But with single-minded, stubborn focus, Max kept working on it until, finally, he purged the last organ, his stomach. Then, while the mana in his body was so compressed he felt like a nuclear, mana-charged bomb, the moment seemed to stretch.

  He wasn't out of the woods yet.

  The only good thing about this process was that he didn't need to be conscious for the duration once the transformation started. If it knocked him out, he wouldn’t die and his transformation would continue. However, if he did lose consciousness, the mana fluctuations would probably destroy the entire block around his Trifecta workout warehouse.

  That would be bad.

  As he sat on the floor, poised to unleash his mana, he let the moment linger. He was about to step into another world. After this, Max would not be able to justify being a passive observer when terrible things were happening around him. A four-star mana body would give him the power, theoretically at least, to have a fighting chance against almost anyone in the universe. Against exceptionally powerful Challengers, those odds still wouldn’t be great, but at least they wouldn’t be zero, though.

  From this point forward, skill would become far more important than raw power.

  Clenching his teeth, eyes glowing, Max thought, Oh well, not like I can stop at this point anyway. He released the mana.

  Flashing light coursed down his entire body. He gritted his teeth so hard that his molars exploded but were reformed again as his body was reshaped by mana. Not only did the mana break his bones as it rebuilt him, but Max accidentally damaged himself, too. The pain was too great. He couldn't stay still. The occasional flop of his body while he was under so much torment and receiving so much new power, was enough for him to accidentally flip his arm into the concrete. But compound fractures almost instantly moved bones around and reknit. Healing was just another pain among millions that ran through his body like a herd of furious, sun-sized bison, exploding in nuclear fire.

  Max didn't remember the process hurting so badly in his first life. But maybe it was because the purity of his mana was higher this time. Throughout the course of his tireless effort in restoring his mana body, Max had realized that his past experience helped him pack in more power and smooth it out better than in his first life. Not only that, he'd been shocked to discover that all the work he'd done in the Quartet, a place devoid of mana, and the way he’d scrounged mana together to pull into his body, resulted in some of the purest mana he'd ever seen in his life.

  All of this meant he had an absurdly strong foundation.

  He kept focusing on this fact as he gritted his teeth and his body broke and repaired itself over and over again. His clothes tore, and blood literally spurted out of his skin like a leak in the seam of a damaged boat.

  The torture felt like it lasted forever.

  One reason Max didn't keep track of the time in any way, shape, or form was because that would have led to madness. And if not madness, it definitely would have led to mana deviance where his mana body would be abnormal or crippled.

  I need to hold on. Don’t want to lose this gym. He was pretty sure nobody else was around the area, but he couldn’t be sure of it. Now he suddenly regretted not asking Lavina to send her spirits out and scout it out. That had been an oversight. But even if nobody else was around, he didn’t want to blow the area up. Murdering someone during a breakthrough was completely unacceptable, though.

  He prevented himself from continuing to shatter his own teeth by holding his mouth open slightly and using isometrics, tensing his jaw. Blood ran down his cheeks from his eyes.

  Somehow, Max made it through the entire process without ever losing consciousness. When it was done, he slowly opened his eyes, sighed, spit, and beheld the absolute travesty around him.

  He was surrounded by bodily fluids, including vomit, and even little pieces of his skin on the ground. In his first life, the sight had made his gorge rise. Mixed in with all the disgusting stuff that had spewed from his broken body was also the last of the impurities that he’d had as a mortal. Calling a Blade Sorcerer an immortal after they were four-star or higher was an affection since they weren't truly immortal, but it was still a more accurate description than considering them completely human anymore.

  Max shakily stood and glanced around himself again. All of his spirits were completely silent, all in shock at what they'd just witnessed. He sensed that Lavinia in particular, being from Albion, felt like she was having an almost religious experience. Max ignored her and tried to decide if he should clean up the gym before taking a shower.

  "Screw it," he said out loud, and he trudged over to the living quarters area. He was going to shower, come back clean, and shower again, and then maybe shower again after that. Max was tired, beat up, and still sore, but he knew intellectually that most of that was in his head right now. Physically, this was the most powerful he had ever been in this life, and he almost couldn't believe that he’d made it this far. After all, he could still vividly remember sitting at a table in his apartment, staring at student loan debts and wondering what the hell he was going to do about bills.

  "I wish it didn't hurt so much, though," he muttered to himself. When he finally stepped under the water of the shower, it felt like bliss.