Chapter 33 - Moving on

  Time slowly slugged by as he sobbed for an eternity in his mind. And when the tears stopped coming, the memory of his mother's final moment pinched him like a dagger to the heart. He fell into a catatonic state as he lay curled up in the fetal position. The painful memories then turned sharper as the innocent incomprehension of the events turned to horrific realization.

  The urge in the back of his mind that he would spend the next two decades ignoring and suppressing, along with the related incident, was the manifestation of his soul ability. He recalled the God claiming him to have been gifted a Divine power from the universe or whatever kind of nonsense the old man was spouting, but what if that was true? He had this soul magic long before he ever got transported to this alien world. He didn’t know it at the time, but in hindsight, it was as clear as day.

  He treated soul mana like he had gotten used to doing with the standard mana, but it clearly wasn’t correct. He was doing the equivalent of driving a tank the same way one rides a bike, and that led to terrible results. He now understood that the world probably shouldn’t go black when he used his silver mana, it was no doubt the result of him forcing it to do something it wasn’t meant to do.

  Since his soul abilities had manifested at a young age, he assumed them to be normal. When he listened to the feeling, it helped him predict and generally provided him with better intuition, which he assumed to be special but not overly uncommon, after all, many kids were better at some things than others, like that skinny kid in middle school that always got full marks in math and that eventually jumped a grade.

  What he hadn’t known was that his own unique talent was far more powerful than he ever knew, he had literally used that same power to kill an entire pack of shadow fiends and other terrifyingly strong opponents with little issue. He was actually surprised he didn’t cause more damage as a kid. Mana helps grow his soul magic, but not in the normal way mana is converted by the core.

  His silver magic came from outside his core, as if lurking on the periphery, and wouldn’t replenish his reserve no matter how much mana he breathed in. That means that it had been there long before his core was formed and operated in a unique way with its almost imperceptible ghostly soul mana core that overlapped with his standard one.

  It was evident that his soul mana reserves had grown, so the standard mana must be somehow feeding his soul indirectly to grow his soul reserve. He thought back to the day he discovered his soul mana and remembered the magic affinity theory he had developed. He assumed that an affinity would manifest when one evolved the core to a high enough grade. But the first time he ever opened his status window, it showed Mana core: [black - early - (???)]

  Based on the fact that new information only showed up when he unlocked or discovered it, it was now obvious that his soul mana was with him from the very beginning; he simply wasn’t aware of it, so it was displayed as [(???)].

  His childhood memory of that day confused and terrorized him for the longest time as the intense anger he felt didn’t seem to make sense. Now, however, he understood that he had been sensing the older boy's soul, unaware that the emotions he felt weren’t his own, he wasn’t able to contain them as they took control of him. That absolute rage was what allowed him to unconsciously create the most amount of destruction he could by unknowingly pulling on that dormant soul energy that he flung at the person who had grabbed his shoulder.

  If he could describe the feeling he felt at the understanding of the events of that fateful day, he would say shame. Absolute disgust at his own lack of control, to have believed that anger coming from the tingling in the back of his mind was his own feelings… For not having recognized the truth and pushed back against the foreign emotions. If he had simply controlled his soul ability the slightest bit, then his mother would still be alive, and his life wouldn’t have collapsed around him.

  He hated the older boy for the longest time… He didn’t even know his name, but he always blamed him for that day. But as he lay curled up on the dark and cold stone floor, the words of the God resonated repeatedly in his mind.

  “Good luck, Adam Hartwell, and follow your soul, it is your strongest tool and safest asset. It will never betray you nor hold you back…”

  Stolen story; please report.

  If the God was speaking the truth, then everything he thought he knew about that day would hurt even more. If the overwhelming emotions he felt that pushed him to the edge was his own doing, like a man willingly jumping off a bridge, then he could no longer blame the boy. Even if it were his emotions that drove him to devastation, it was ultimately Adam's fault for allowing it to happen. After all, he could have listened to his mother and not gone all out, he could have walked away when the bully got angry… But instead, he let himself fall into a maddening rage.

  His soul was definitely his strongest asset… But not necessarily always for the better, it had enormous destructive capabilities.

  He had no tears left to shed when he finally got back to his feet after possibly hours of reliving the past. His mind suppressed the sadness as determination slowly took its place. He couldn’t change what happened all those years ago, but he can still make up for his mistakes, he can live a life with purpose, striving for power to help others. He would definitely return to Earth one day. He would figure out a way home and help others. With great power comes great responsibility they say, well, he didn’t have any responsibility here other than survival. But when he finally figured out a way to use magic to get home, he would stop being a self-isolating loser and make something of his life.

  His mother raised him to be kind and help others, and he had done none of that since she passed. Magic was his personal obsession and discovering its secrets was his drug. But the power that came with it wouldn’t be used for harm or for the sake of gaining more power.

  Adam finally realized the reason he didn’t want to go home despite the fact that he was literally alone in a hostile alien world, it was the same reason he locked himself away for all those years as he hid from the world. He was ashamed of himself for what he had done. But the time for self-loathing was over, now was the time to strive to make things better. It only took him two decades but he had finally come to terms with his past.

  He made his way back to where the white giants used to be before the attack. The giant ant corpses littered the tunnel with yellow blood covering the floor in an inch of putrid liquid as he navigated the battlefield of carnage he had created. It was the first time he had listened to the feeling in the back of his mind since the incident but this fight didn’t cause him to lose control, it simply allowed him to read all these enemies' moves before they even made them. Another piece of evidence that losing control wasn’t a normal outcome when listening to the sensation.

  He was still barefoot so it took him a few minutes to walk back across the decimated insect army. When he arrived at the spot, only one white giant remained. Its torso was punctured as it lay dead on the ground. He saw no sign of the second white ant and assumed it left during the battle. He vaguely recalled launching a couple of mana blades behind him without looking and assumed that it was one of them that killed the white giant. It wouldn’t have been enough to kill the grey-cored soldier ants but the white giant didn’t have a reinforced body or a mana core so the spell passed straight through the creature without issue.

  It was unfortunate since he didn’t think that the white ant had had time to fully digest the dense mana crystals but he had plenty of corpses with grey cores to absorb. He didn’t even remember why he had thought it was a good idea to go through all that effort simply to absorb the shadow hounds in the first place. He recalled feeling shit scared at the encounter and desperation to grow stronger to not be stuck at the bottom of the food chain drove him down a rather illogical path. I mean, he had literally crawled into a giant ants’ nest with creatures at the same magical level as himself.

  The only reason he made it out was his rediscovery of the supernatural intuition sensation he had buried in his childhood that allowed him to escape countless near-fatal strikes.

  The next few hours were spent absorbing as much mana as possible with the knowledge that another wave of assaults could come at any moment, as a result, he didn’t craft the internal mana barrier construct but simply accepted that some of the mana would be lost in the process but that the many available corpses would make up for the losses.

  The were at least a hundred corpses all included, now littering the tunnel. He ignored the older black-cored ants after he had absorbed all the mana he could from the white giant. It was a large amount, but actually rather underwhelming as his core was not any closer to evolving into red.

  He spent most of his time absorbing two mid-grade cores at the same time with one in each hand. This provided him with a flood of mana but still not at the limits of what his core could endure. He spent many hours watching for any future attacks while extracting and absorbing the mana from within the many cores, but when he finally got the last grey core, he knew that advancement wasn’t in the cards for today.

  Despite the hundred corpses and the fact that all of their cores were pure mana, he still didn’t have enough mana to push his core to evolve. The red cracks had grown stronger with the red gleam brighter than before, yet still it held strong.

  Adam now had a choice, to continue his hunt of the mana-filled white giants and their soldier ant protectors… Or return back up the tunnel to the open cavern above. Down here was the ant's home turf so he was more likely to get swarmed, however, up top held many unknowns that could strike at him from anywhere with unknown abilities, he didn’t even know if he would be able to get stronger off their cores if they had an affinity.

  Ultimately, his goal was to evolve to a red core and learn to use his soul mana properly. He suspected that this so-called Divine patriarch ability was somehow being partially fused with his soul mana, which caused unusual things to happen like the world turning black and his limited control over the silver energy. As he had just experienced in the fight, soul mana is a lot more complex than he expected so discovering what the Divine patriarch power was and how it worked was a top priority for him to be able to properly understand his magic.

  And so he decided to stick to what he could better predict as he continued on down the tunnel. Considering the amount of mana he had absorbed so far, he didn’t think evolving his core would be anywhere near as ‘simple’ as the previous times. But he knew for a fact that these ants were his best shot. Now he simply needed to figure out what the hell a divine power even was.

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