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"They really dared to do it! In my care!" Maxim clamored and threw a half-full glass of expensive brandy against the wall, much to the servant's panicked discomfort. The splinters, quite unlike what the terrified servant had thought, sank deep into the wood-paneled wall with a clang and an explosion of glass, instead of shattering in all directions as one would normally expect.

What a monster, with that power! trembled the young man who had just delivered the message and the condition of one of the slaves in the healer's quarters to the arena master.

The shattered glass rained down the wall in splinters and fine grains, emitting only a soft clink as the individual small pieces hit the floor.

Where the glass had sunk into the wall was a crater twenty centimeters deep, stopped only by the thickness of the stone wall behind the wood paneling.

Maxim turned around, furious, and glared at the messenger. "I want to know about the patient's condition immediately! No matter what the leading healer has claimed! And no matter how! No one else, and only to me you report!" He spoke with controlled anger, and took a threatening step towards the young man, who was filled with fear and covered with sweat. "And let's get this straight. I will hold YOU responsible for everything if my order is not carried out like this. And you have certainly heard what I do to traitors..." He let the threat hang in the air, while the shaky young man in front of him nodded hastily.

"Let's go then! What are you waiting for. I want to be informed of any new condition or development immediately!" With these words, the messenger hurried quickly through the door, leaving a grating Arena Master in his office.

"That fool... Thinks he's the only gold rank outside the royal palace. Not again, you damned crow." Whispering to no one in particular, he turned away from his desk as he gazed down over the bleachers to the interior of the colloseum as his aura burst forth.

Every guard in the hallway outside his office and within twenty yards suddenly felt a beastly pressure, a maid stumbled and could not get up under the pressure of the sudden mana eruption, and the window directly in front of the arena master himself showed a sudden crack and a tear traveled ominously slowly from the bottom center to the upper left side of the large window.

He clenched his right fist and looked down, still gritting his teeth, at his prominent forearm muscles and the waves of mana emanating from Maxim. "I must not fail... I have sworn my blood oath. And this bastard dares to put me in danger.... Just you wait, you fly... Your time will come too." he whispered, finally calming down, which brought a collective sigh of relief from all the guards and staff around him, while he himself let his gaze wander across the arena and over to the black tower.

 

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And so the next days passed by for Avan.

Surprisingly, except for the slightly blushing young nurse, no one else came by to check on him. No one came to ask what had happened, and no one came to take him back to the other slave gladiators in his group. The loneliness, where as a child you thought it would be boredom, was in fact a welcome change to unravel your thoughts and finally devote more time and mental power to his dungeon skills.

He had the feeling that he was being left alone on purpose. Could it be some kind of guilt? the thought flashed past him. Apart from the young nurse, whose name he still did not know, no one else came to visit him. She had told him, blushing under his gaze, that he had been brought to the ward three days ago, and that the head healer at the time had treated him but found him hopeless.

According to the young woman, no one knew that he was still alive and had even largely recovered. But I don't really believe that, when she always averts her eyes when it comes to this topic...

Satisfied nonetheless, and struggling with phantom pains throughout his lower body, mental scars and outbreaks of fear sweat, Avan focused once again on his inner self.

He had accomplished a remarkable feat in the last two days, and the fist-thick strand of mana had once again doubled in size, while it had finally confirmed his own theory that his own mana, like a leak in a dam, was gradually leaking more and more with use.

And unlike before, with hundreds of sweaty mental attempts, he had managed to make the ray no longer strike his innermost being, his soul core, but flow into his veins beforehand and mix with his blood. The blood, constantly and permanently strengthened by the constant influx of heavenly energy, flooded his entire body and within the first day had healed all the flesh wounds in his inner being. The broken bones and the thousands of splinters, however, were a much bigger problem.

Avan had noticed how much mana in his blood was being drained as it flowed down his legs, just to repair the smallest cracks in the dense mass of his bones. With all the individual bone splinters, and not just cracks, it had taken two whole more days to even get the splinters in the right position.

Another important detail that Avan noticed was the fact that the mana in his blood was still very diluted, releasing too much of the precious energy into every cell on the way from his heart to his legs. This resulted in an even more diluted accumulation of mana, which caused it to be so slow and sluggish.

If I can't solve this somehow, it will be weeks before I can even walk again! And in addition then still muscle atrophy! Simply fuck. he cursed again inwardly, for the repeated time, because he just did not want to think of what he did wrong or could change.

He had tried to redirect the mana beam, but for some reason it seemed to use his inner soul core, the center of himself, as an anchor point. Avan still painfully remembered what had happened when he had compulsively tried to direct the beam directly at his legs.

The mana that had previously flowed through his veins had hit his legs, but the sudden absence of the supporting healing force around his core had brought back the pain of all the pain receptors with a tremendous jolt, and he had collapsed with a cry.

Only with a further effort of will he had directed the access of the mana again to the direction of his soul core and the pain had subsided again after a few minutes.

Panting and breathing heavily, he had cursed and inwardly scolded, and since then had searched for another solution.

The mana MUST be directed to my innermost. But why? Because it is the origin? He continued to puzzle while staring at the ceiling with his eyes open and staring at the magic neon tube.

He blinked, trying to get rid of the afterglow on his lens, because he had been so stupid to stare directly into the light.

Sighing, Avan rubbed his eyelids and continued to think feverishly.

I do not understand it! Damn it! What don't I see? Horn could use my mana forms like a natural talent. Just like that. He drew it directly from the environment, and didn't have to flow it through himself as a catalyst. Why is there no other way? What am I doing wrong? And this damnable ray wants to point at my soul core, although I destroy the mana in all directions before it hits my inner self anyway...

Hmmm... Why does THAT actually work without problems? From the flood of the mana, to a fog in my inner...

Avan looked again with a blink at the ceiling, a realization lying on the tongue, which did not want to be opened simply in such a way.

He stared directly at the fluorescent tube one more time. Idiot! Why haven't I tried that yet? A sudden flash of inspiration came to him as he was about to curse the glaring light on his lens again.

Light travels through the glass. Fog, I have pores. Why does it have to be a beam? Why does it have to have a solid form at all? Why not draw a FOG around me and into EVERY one of my pores? Is it really that simple? He adjusted his thought streams to the new goal and scolded himself for such a supposedly simple solution.

If it's really that simple, I'll eat my hat. And I thought about complicated ways all the time!

With newfound motivation, he set to work. Instead of drawing the mana to him in a river or the strand as usual and as before, since the little trickle of mana had appeared for the first time, he tried to crush the energy and draw it from all directions simultaneously to his inner soul core. Keeping the anchor focused on his innermost being, he concentrated on absorbing the mana not just from one direction, but equally in a mist around him.

Somewhat frustrated at first, as Avan couldn't really grasp anything, the concept slipped out of his imaginary hands each time.

Until suddenly it clicked. And the beam dissipated into tiny, unrecognizable particles. He winced briefly, prepared for the pain to return in a moment, and crampedly counted down a few seconds.

After five seconds, nothing happened, and Avan breathed a sigh of relief. Slowly expelling his breath, he focused his gaze on his inner self. The core of his soul, still unreachable and surrounded by a barrier, hovered in his midst.

There, where the beam of Celestial Mana had previously been split in all directions shortly before hitting the barrier, he could no longer see anything clearly at first glance.

With a glance from further outside, however, Avan suddenly laughed.

Exactly as he had imagined, he was now surrounded by a golden and blue mist in his mind's eye. This mist wafted in streaks and swirls, almost as if one had pulled an infinite number of small plugs in a bathtub, and small maelstroms of mana flowed by the thousands, even millions, into his pores.

He had, without knowing it exactly and only by feeling, provided each of his pores with a suction, which drew in the foggy mana evenly distributed everywhere.

Avan let his gaze wander down his body and noted with satisfaction that the cracks in the neatly arranged bone splinters were growing together many times faster than before.

But still not... enough. he mused inwardly, not yet completely satisfied and not ready to simply stop now.

"Akkalon's touch could also be concentrated in one place.... namely with the phyical contact... But I myself could also direct the mana to certain wounds before. That must also work..." he whispered to himself, while his body felt refreshed and full of power and mana for the first time since he got the slave bracelet. "Concentration..."

He sent his will down in small tendrils to his slowly healing bone fractures, watching in fascination as the smallest cracks connected and welded back together with the mana as mortar. With another feeling, now more instinctive and with more certainty that he should trust it, he increased the mental and magical suction of his pores exactly at the places closest to all the bones and with the least density of tendons and muscles in the path between skin and bone.

Avan watched with excitement as the cracks grew together again many times faster, and not only that, but he got the feeling of making them denser, more concentrated, and at the same time much harder.

Avan opened his eyes and blinked as he noticed the telltale blue glow around his bed. Panicked, and once again more out of instinct, he destroyed the blue mana and let it dissipate, focused on using only his own filtered and celestial mana.

A relieved sigh escaped his dry throat, and, lost in thought but happy at his immense leap forward with healing, he reached for the glass of water on the small table beside his hospital bed.

Unnoticed and out of Avan's sight, a frozen young nurse stood staring with fear at the just-dissipating blue mist, while inwardly she was in a frenzy because a slave with a mana-suppressing slave bracelet had just used mana.

She stepped carefully backward, and just before the exit from the healing room, turned around, cursing inwardly as she briefly bumped into the door frame.

Avan listened, not sure if he had just heard anything, and could do nothing but hope that no one had seen the telltale blue mist before he banished it.

While the nurse ran to the servant, who had told her to immediately call on her about any development with the slave, Avan himself had turned his gaze to other things.

He sat in his bed, feeling the nerves, muscles, tendons, bones, and everything else gradually growing back into place, while he was already thinking about the next thing.

When I am finally able to control the mana better... Can I then also use the mana forms again? His thoughts raced on to his dungeon skills. And can I also direct the mana outward to access my dungeon storage? He finished his thoughts, almost fidgeting and full of anticipation, for the first time in days.

Still feeling the pain phantom-like in his legs, he had locked the night of his torture away in the deepest corner of his subconscious, not daring to bring out the horrors for fear of what it would do to him mentally.

Happy to be rid of this physical residue and evidence of his repressed night, he set about plumbing the other dungeon abilities with his new knowledge and control over his mana.

 

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