Caspian continued to practice the workout for the day without rest, his body was aching all over by the time he stopped but he didn’t stop and began to meditate according to the technique.

Minutes passed and he couldn’t feel anything, his body was completely devoid of Mana. Caspian didn’t rush to ask the System, he felt that being too reliant on it would cause him issues in the future when and if he encountered something even it didn’t understand.

Curiously he tried to cast a fireball only for the flames to surprisingly swirl from his fingers into a familiar ball, his instincts were telling him that he was staring the answer in the face, but he didn’t know what it was.

He dispelled the fireball and watched as it dissipated before summoning another, this time he watched closely. From the moment a tiny spark appeared just above his ring finger to when the mana in the air rushed towards it using itself as fuel to increase the size of the flame artificially.

“So that’s how it is…” Caspian muttered as he closed his eyes once more and tried to meditate, he dissipated the fireball once more and then summoned it again while concentrating on the situation within his body.

As the fireball was being formed there was no movement of Mana within his body in fact there was nothing at all. The Mana being used to create the flame wasn’t from him but from the air around him, he concentrated on the hand where the fireball was currently floating from and detected a weak thread of Mana in his ring finger connecting the fireball to his body and nothing else.

Curiously he tried to pull on the thread like one would pull on a ball of string, without much resistance the small thread grew larger and larger as there were now threads of Mana floating aimlessly within his hand.

He broke his concentration and opened his eyes to see that the fireball he had summoned was less than half its original size, the Mana within had quite literally been pulled into his own body and while he wasn’t able to use it that was simply because he hadn’t discovered how yet.

For the next ten minutes Caspian spent his time ‘untangling’ several fireballs until he had formed a thick ball of Mana from the threads he had assimilated. He had carefully pulled the threads through his body before assembling the ball close to his chest.

He noticed that as soon as the Mana entered his body from the fireball it was his to control freely, it was as natural as controlling his own arm as he guided them through the thin channels of the body.

Finally, after another ten minutes the ball in his stomach was about half the size of a watermelon as it floated aimlessly inside of him.

‘That should be enough.’ He thought after a while, he wasn’t sure as to how much Mana a person was normally born with but with the amount, he had accumulated here it should be more than enough for him to practice the Meditation Technique.

So, once more, Caspian tried to meditate – but this time he pulled threads from the ball of Mana in his stomach and circulated them along the Mana Channels that the technique described, he was careful as he forced them to assimilate with the channels causing them to strengthen and widen.

This process was like a fine art as he had to carefully use the Mana to break open the channels before fusing the mana threads with them, if he cut too deeply using the Mana he would have to use even more Mana to fill the space he had created; the technique described the Mana Channels as the most delicate channels in the body, if you didn’t repair them through the assimilation of Mana properly then they would never heal but they would become impossible to repair if you left them alone and injured for too long.

It was for this reason that the technique recommended that this process be done gradually, one Mana Channel after your Mana had fully just in case you opened up a wound much bigger than expected and needed more Mana than you had to fix it.

Unsurprisingly with the Mana that Caspian had accumulated and his ability to simply gather more it was no difficulty for him to simply sit there and slowly strengthen them all in one sitting.

After two hours he had finished half of the four-hundred and twenty-four thin channels that were spread all over his body, although he knew he shouldn’t be by now he was still surprised at how intricately the black-stone could embody another living organism.

Caspian glanced up at the dark sky and sighed, he felt it was fortunate that his body no longer needed sleep. His enthusiasm to complete the strengthening of his body was no joke as without hesitation he immediately dived back into the strengthening process.

On the three-hundredth Mana Channel he suddenly had a dangerous but interesting idea although he hesitated slightly as he thought of the potentially disastrous consequences the thought of doing something that had potentially never been done before in this world was what finally tipped the scales.

The three-hundredth and first Mana Channel. Instead of a single Mana thread Caspian had assembled a structure similar in shape to the Mana channel itself with a combination of several hundreds of threads.

Gritting his teeth and preparing for the worst he used the slicing nature of the mana to destroy the wall of the Mana channel, instantly he felt a disturbance from within his body as if his body was beginning to crumble – it was like he had just destroyed a vital part of the foundation of a building and the rest was beginning to collapse without it.

Knowing that he couldn’t waste anymore time he forcefully fused his ‘Mana channel’ where the original channel had been, several seconds passed as nothing happened and the internal structure of his body began to shake even more as it struggled to hold its own weight any longer.

‘Fuck fuck fuck, I couldn’t just leave it alone could I?’ He worriedly berated himself as he impatiently waited and watched, there was nothing else he could do but hope they would fuse, at least he knew if this body was destroyed he would still be ‘alive’ but without a physical body he would be extremely vulnerable.

‘System?’ He called out.

Nothing.

‘Where the hell are you?’ He shouted internally after several seconds of no response but, once more, there was no response from it.

It was the first time that it hadn’t responded to him when he’d asked, Caspians’ naturally calm attitude was finally beginning to shatter as he noticed cracks appearing on other Mana channels whilst the one he had created was still simply floating there without doing anything.

‘Fine, if you don’t want to attach naturally, I’ll just force you to.’ He said to himself firmly as he gathered a mass of Mana threads and directed them towards the channel. As soon as they arrived, he used the thin gaps between the natural and artificial channel to gather the threads outside of the system of channels exposing them to a matrix of arteries and veins that he skilfully avoided.

From the outside of the channels he used the threads to create two rope-like structures and began to wrap them around the artificial channel and the natural ones forcefully tying the two together.

He sent over even more threads and began to assimilate them with the artificial channel to reinforce it even further.

It only took a minute for his make-shift solution to complete itself, as soon as the threads holding them together were in place.

…

Caspian bit his own tongue as he waited, the hope in his eyes gradually dimming every second longer.

Finally, or fortunately, the collapse began to ease up until it came to a sudden halt as if it had never happened in the first place. He looked at the artificial channel he had ‘installed’ to see that it had completely fused with the natural Mana channel.

He could tell simply from looking at it that it was several times more powerful than the natural channels in his body but for now the risk far out-weighed the reward, he didn’t know if his body could handle consecutive collapses like that.

Sighing with relief he gathered up several threads and navigated the channels fixing any damage he found to them caused by his little experiment.

[Yes?]

Finally, the System appeared.

‘Where the hell did you go?’ He blew up instantly as soon as its mechanical voice appeared in his mind, he flew into a rage as he thought about how he had almost destroyed himself.

[I was observing]

‘Observing me almost kill myself?!’ He raged.

[It would have been impossible for me to have helped your situation. Naturally if you had asked beforehand, I would have advised against such a procedure]

It said noncommittally as it directed all the blame, rightfully, back at Caspian for his recklessness. Caspian bit his lip knowing that he couldn’t retort forcefully calming himself, no one had forced him to not ask the System for assistance, so it wasn’t its fault if he almost killed himself.

[There was a 94% chance of self-destruction had you not improvised in the end]

His eyes went wide as he heard this, if he’d simply placed all his chances on natural fusion it was almost certain that he’d fail.

[Your current solution leaves much to be desired however, you will need to reinforce the Mana binding the channels together every week or your body will collapse without warning]

‘It’s better than dying at least…’ He thought as he continued to repair his body, fortunately most of the damage was done to the channels that hadn’t yet been strengthened so it was easy for him to use this opportunity to finish the reinforcement while improving himself.

TheWorldTree

I'll try get another chapter out today but my neighbours are currently doing housework that I can't drown out so I'm having trouble concentrating on writing currently.

If you spot any errors/mistakes don't hesitate to tell me in the comments, if you enjoyed please leave a favourite, comment or rating to show some support ;P

Enjoy the rest of your day!