Before long another month has passed I had tried to spend the time finding something constructive to do within this cold abyss.

I had grown used to the darkness of the cave, the only thing that kept us was the glowing of the crystals within the cavern. I was intrigued by them, so much so I decided to study them.

These crystals at first glance weren’t much to look at however after prolonged focus they intrigued me enough to keep me busy for the month.

Using my magic sight these crystals seem to first simply absorb low levels of magic within the earth and then release it later as light, however, there was a lot more to this process than met the eye. Within each crystal was a miniature network of magical veins that seemed to light up certain pathways as the magic flowed through the crystal.  

Being as bored as I was I took a small chunk off one to examine even more closely. At first I tried to force my pure mana within the chuck of ‘light crystal’ as Uncle Sig would call it, however, it seems just increasing the mana wouldn’t change the light output of the crystal. 

After that failure I tried to force my gravity magic into the crystal however instead of releasing light or different colors of light like I had originally presumed would happen it began to have a fuzzy look, similar to an object that was out of focus, I was disappointed. 

I then decided to use my mana to attempt to force the pathways wider. This took a lot of my raw mana. 

I had to spend hours resting at a time just to slightly alter each pathway, at first I wanted to see what wider pathways would allow, it appeared that the light which was emitted before had now turned into beams of light that flew out more focused rather than a glow. 

This time when I attempted to flow my gravity magic into the crystal, this caused a beam to be released. The beam was not made of light but rather a distortion of light.

At first the beam was a mystery, when aimed at tiny insects they would disappear and reappear when outside the beam’s reach, when aimed at rocks nothing seemed to happen.

 It was not until I got frustrated and decided to aim the beam at my hand that I understood the true nature of what I had created. 

When the beam was aimed at my own palm, I was now able to see the layer of muscle that laid beneath my skin, and when I forced as much mana as my young body could muster through the stone I created, I could strip my hand down to bones, albeit only for a few seconds at a time. 

I had to sit and consider what I remembered from my previous life. I remember that gravity can bend light to some degree depending on how strong it is, but my magic was far too weak to have such an effect, so it must be some unique natural magic sequence within the crystals themselves, I pondered.

I decided to make another copy of my dubiously named “X-ray Crystal” and then store both of them within my dimensional ring. My sister, unlike myself who spent a month looking at crystals, had spent the last two months meditating and absorbing the shadow elements that thrived in such a dark environment. 

Her shadow element grew in leaps and bounds over the past two months so much so that before we knew it she glowed in a bright light briefly lighting the entire cavern, she had now unlocked her seventh circle while I was still on my fifth circle. 

I had no such luck in my meditations, being tormented by the image of my mother being impaled stunted my growth. Instead of trying to break through to the next circle I spent most of my time refining the few I already had. 

The gains were slight, a few more meters on my range, and a slight mana increase, as far as my self-assessment went anyway. The only major increase came to my overall physical strength thanks to my gravity chains around myself that had now become second nature. 

In this cavern there was not much to be feared, it was protected by anti-detection runes, and was hard enough to keep out monsters. Despite this, some nights we could hear scraping against the barrier. 

Now and then we would have small numbers of terrier badgers slide through the cracks and try to attack us. These terrier badgers were tiny creatures about half the size of the average human, with sharp silver fingernails and a nose equally as sharp and a horn similar to that of a unicorn. 

The badger's eyes were always bright red, within the darkness of the cavern they stood out creepily. The badgers were not magically inclined, however, when they slashed with their claws it always took a sword to block their attacks.

One night, based on the light crystal’s recharge cycle at least, we were thrown out of our slumber when we heard a series of thumbs. When my sister and I awoke we saw Sigfreed with a sword in hand surrounded by an army of terrier badgers.

It seems that a group of them had finally decided to attack us all at once. Within the group of badgers, stood one, in particular, he stood twice as tall as the rest with claws and arms twice as large, the real shocker however was the horn on his head, it was the size of a two-handed sword that was equally as sharp around all it’s edges and it glowed a bright shade of crimson. 

Sigfreed was visibly exhausted, around him laid the body of at least three dozen terrier badgers already. 

Sigfreed had stepped back trying to catch his breath as he was already being pushed onto his back foot.

The slight lull in the battle was broken when the Leader looking badger raised his hand pointing towards Sigfreed and then roared fiercely.

The smaller badgers in a group jumped at uncle Sig with claws and horns aimed fiercely at his neck, the sheer numbers and speak more than enough to finish him in his tattered state. 

The shriek of the small badgers echoed as they closed in at uncle Sig.