Chapter 35 - The cusp of evolution

  Adam was covered in yellow blood as he extracted himself from the corpse of the large red-cored ant. He had now annihilated several groups of the giant insects as he made his way deeper into the tunnels. He was trying to understand his soul mana and its strange effects on his intuition by only using his mana to reinforce his body.

  Where once he would have cowardly launched spells from a distance, now he ran straight for danger with a smile on his face. The near invincibility he felt reminded him of his innocent childhood, but it also allowed him to let off steam under the guise of ‘studying’. His adrenaline would shoot through the roof and he found himself enjoying the fights rather than simply surviving them.

  He did discover that his heightened intuition only came into effect when he was in a certain state of mind. Intense battle would awaken the tingling in his mind but he couldn’t get it to activate when he wasn’t in action. Therefore he had gone from one group to another in order to learn more about the strange feeling.

  His constant fights also allowed him to improve his fighting style against these opponents while also improving his use of mana for body enhancement. Despite this, he wasn’t suddenly some battle-crazed maniac who enjoyed bathing in the blood of his enemies or anything like that.

  His interests were more practical than chasing a high. He was actually more interested in the outcome of the battles. After all, all those lovely mana cores shouldn’t simply go to waste now, should they? He was shocked at just how many he had absorbed so far and how little change it had on his core. He never quite had enough to push it over the edge and evolve to red.

  That did make him think about all these other creatures and how they grew their cores, he hadn’t seen them actually hunting anything or dragging back food. It was actually rather frustrating that they were all so high leveled despite not seeming to do anything other than guard the white insects that would always be present in these groups of twenty or so ants.

  His intuition had gotten stronger since he once again began to listen to it, but it also required immense focus in battle for it to function, meaning he had trouble understanding it and questioning how it worked, since he was too busy heeding its warnings and escaping critical attacks.

  One thing he discovered with certainty was that this was indeed an effect of soul magic as that same intuition was completely silent when he was almost crushed to death from some falling rocks. It only warned of danger when a living being was behind the assault, therefore he made a mental note not to rely on it too much and rather use it in tandem with his other senses.

  The ants were fast, strong, and would often swarm him but one thing they weren’t good at was surprisingly, fighting in a group.

  The large insects would gang up on him but usually only end up harming each other rather than the smaller and more nimble Adam. As a result, they would wound and occasionally accidentally kill one another while Adam tried to use his powerful body to leap above the insects and attack the back of their heads and necks.

  When they were all dead, he would rest up and consume all their mana cores. He had discovered that the ant groups were rather regular in their movements as he would have a few hours between each new group arriving. He continued exploring the many branching tunnels and found them suspiciously empty. They were not only devoid of life but also barren of any sort of crystals or minerals. All the tunnels were filled with the exact same bland rock and the ants that appeared here were always simply traveling through.

  This wasn’t necessarily a bad thing though, he was pretty sure the ant's overwhelming tactic would be more effective if there were hundreds rather than two dozen.

  He once again continued his now almost routine exercise of switching to and from his soul mana state in rapid succession. The detached souls of the dead ants would still linger behind for a while even after their deaths, but they didn’t appear to be conscious of this as the silver energies lazily swirled in the air.

  He had successfully reduced the amount of time needed to flip states as the black world he would be plunged into when accessing his soul mana was beginning to be less intense. For the first time ever, he could now see a glimpse of a soul without the world turning black.

  This may seem marginally useful but you have to remember, his vision down here in the dark depth of the tunnel labyrinth was completely black and only using his eyesight enhancement spell could he see anything. The fact that he could still see soul energies at the same time as his surroundings meant that he was able to use the two distinct magics simultaneously for a moment.

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  His mind raced at the possibilities as he practiced his exercise in a lotus position on the tunnel floor, while also consuming two grey mana cores in each hand. His core was now truly shining as the red glow had grown to encompass almost the entire core. It looked like the grey skin of the core could shed itself off at any moment to reveal the blood-red sphere beneath it.

  If only it was that simple. In reality, the red color wasn’t his would-be second-core evolution slowly growing but rather a concentration of veins like mana that was being compressed by the ever-growing weight of his mana. It was essentially being crushed into diamonds so to speak. The vein-like pattern was actually due to his mana flow in and out of his core which had formed current-like shapes.

  He could feel his core beginning to struggle with the internal pressure as he sat in concentration. It wouldn’t be long now until the time was right, the real question was would his hypothesis be proven true?

  But before he got to that, he wanted to create some sort of soul-sight spell, perhaps even integrate it into his existing greater sight, after all, if he could get that effect for a split second it proved it was possible with enough effort.

  He continued to cycle through his mana states while carefully observing the movement of his own soul when he switched to that state. It was hard to see, but he did eventually find that his soul would shift in a specific pattern when he switched his inner sight to and from it.

  Adam had been confused about the souls' purpose and function for a long time now. Ever since he experienced the split sensation of half of him floating outside of his body, he knew that the mind was a huge part of the soul. Yet magic also had a complex and intricate connection with the ethereal silver energy as the pathways his mana would follow were located in his soul.

  He still didn’t understand how that worked as soul energy couldn’t interact with anything else as far as he could tell, so it was added to the endless list of ‘Things that seem really important but that I probably won’t be able to find the explanations too.’

  Yes, he actually had a mental list called that. Since looking for answers to questions so massive and complex was a surefire way to make him either go mad or simply lead him down the wrong path, he opted to discover aspects of his magic that he could realistically understand and control for now.

  Adam could now categorize his soul mana into two camps.

  Light and Dark.

  He defined light as ‘simple’ soul mana that could be controlled and fed to his own soul like with the soul circulation spell. It was pretty simple to tell since it was the stuff he could do with it without having the world become a dark void around him.

  Therefore, the dark was everything that involved soul mana outside of his body like forming soul weapons and seeing others' souls.

  He had no illusions that this was in any way correct since he himself was able to see the remaining souls of the dead ants for a moment without the world turning black so his own categorization was already disproven, yet he still classified it like this for now. His main reason was that he had no reference to what a soul actually was or what soul mana could realistically do.

  The lack of reference meant that he had no clear line of demarcation between his silver mana and divine ability. He had an incline that the dark void he would see had something to do with his divine ability and that was accidentally being partially used when he attempted to use his soul mana.

  His running theory was that he was partially using both abilities at the same time and therefore none was being fully actioned. Like trying to have two large people exit a door at the same time, each might fit an arm or a leg but none would fully fit through.

  In an attempt to remedy this situation, he had practiced using his soul mana without having the world turn dark. His soul-sensing intuition was his only success so far in that regard but it gave him hope that once he separated the two abilities enough, he might be able to both see and sense the souls at the same time. That would no doubt multiply his ‘premonition’ ability since the soul seemed to move and flow in distinct ways based on his own experience.

  He recalled the steady flowing pattern his soul had taken on when he absorbed a mana core while in his soul state for the first time. It was practically hypnotic and also proved that the soul had its own distinctive rules and behaviors. This was important to understand since it would need to be applied for any future soul vision spells. Unlike standard mana that can simply be pumped into whichever body part needs the most enhancement, his soul had no distinct sections.

  When he had his accidental out-of-body incident, his soul had basically pushed his soul's equivalent to a head and shoulders outside of himself, yet his soul still kept his body's rough shape. It had dimed in brightness from what he remembered but his disembodied soul version didn’t have that same shape. It was rather similar to the now-dead ants, a simple spherical ball of ethereal energy.

  The interesting thing was that his mind was still intact in both versions. His soul didn’t have specific portions that served different purposes, it was rather his entire soul that served the same purpose and could therefore be divided and still function as long as its energies didn’t dissipate. His detached soul piece was still tethered to himself via a thin soul link and therefore he no longer believed he would actually have died if he stayed like that for longer back then, at least not from his soul's condition anyway.

  It did raise some questions about what sort of power that was. If it was his divine patriarch ability then he might be better off trying to replicate that situation to better separate the two powers, yet he hesitated to do so. After all, if that was genuinely a freak accident that was the result of the two supposedly rare and powerful powers clashing, then he didn’t want to risk permanently crippling his soul by having it break into pieces. He didn’t know much about its real purpose, but he figured that that outcome would be pretty bad for him. He also was in the middle of an ant tunnel with regular new waves of giant insects coming across him every so often.

  But all those ideas and theories running rampant in his faster and clearer mana-infused mind were suddenly pushed aside as a strong sensation could be felt within his chest. Adam dropped the two cores he was absorbing as he smiled in a mix of nervousness and anticipation. The time had come for his little experiment, and to finally evolve his core to the next stage.

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