[Light-Mastery]

Description

Rarity

Cost

Allows the user to manipulate the White sub-branch of magic with more skill.

Very Rare

Passive

… That certainly turned out better than the Core had expected. The actual sizes for each box could have been altered in minor ways but it was nonetheless happy with what the [System] gave out. Though… the actual contents of the boxes did need some minor explanations, some of them being quite new to the Entity’s sight.

The first and most striking detail was the [Rarity]. While [Rare] was the normal rarity for a skill, it seemed that the new one had taken it a step further, becoming a [Very Rare] skill. While the Core didn’t truly have any basis for which this was, it could only make a few suggestions on why it worked in such a way. The most immediate guess even came from the description of the skill. Instead of just showing up as a mastery of coloured Mana in general, it had instead become something within the branch of magic. The skill was helping the Core with an [Sub-Field] of Magic. Instead of fulfilling the requirements for the general skill, the Entity had instead focused so deeply on a single one that it had become its very own skill. Such a thing was perhaps not an easy attainment, to the point where it required much time and effort to get.

Which made it even harder to understand why the Entity had been granted it. There had never been a moment where it had known how to use the White Mana and much less know how to even make it appear. Yet… the [System] had seemingly decided that he had met all the other prerequisites to gain it, to a point where all the required external information had just been thrown into its face. The Core wasn't complaining, of course, only thinking it quite peculiar.

Were the other requirements besides the simple knowledge of how to do it so vast and varied that the Entity couldn't even have gained the skill with the concepts of practice alone? Just what was one meant to know before the [System] would see it as true effort? The ideas and information granted before the system even took notice began to flood in.

The White was able to combat the Black. That which consumed all could be resisted by that which only sought balance. Was that one fact important enough to know that the [System] saw it as more important than anything else? Was the idea that Blackness, and the darkness that followed, could be resisted so vital to [Light-Mastery] that nothing else mattered, as long as that fact was known? The Core had nothing else but determination alongside it, though that could also have been a minor requirement, meaning that it must have held some vital role in it.

Nevertheless… it was quite the boon to be given. While the Core wouldn't be able to ever say what had been needed before the [System] liked what it saw, it understood that a few more ideas about White Mana had been sent over from another’s life. In the memories, those that had been… forced into the Core’s mind, bits and pieces of lessons was still remembered.

It was never more than a sentence, an impression, or a visual image of a board having symbols that granted understanding of a subject. All were centred around the White Mana and what it could grant. The Core understood that the skill had been taught to it previously, that something must have come across, something deeper than it could inherently access in the conscious parts of its mind. Something made the skill work better than it was supposed to, and it just wasn't the influence of a few missing spots. There was even a chance it had tried it all before.

…

Another wild idea. But not one that had too much to be said about, lest the Core would fall into silence again, slowly pondering what was true about its existence. There were a few things that it never wanted back on its mind, and that would be adhered to for as long as it could. Until then, there were still many things to do.

Looking at what the [System] had granted was only one of many tasks that needed to be completed before another offence could take place. The Core had been at it with finding problems during the last defence while also finding ideas for improvement. As an example, it had tried to figure out how to add memory to rocks, how to increase the levels of creatures artificially and last to make sure that it could get attacked from unknown positions without losing all the Mana in the air. Each of those subjects was held dear to the Core’s crystal insides, all having the potential of allowing great things to come around.

Choosing to take things from one end instead of trying to pick out from importance again, the Entity simply took the last one mentioned. The loss of Mana in the air due to holes in the barriers.

Through thick and thin, the Core had realised one fact about all those Panels that had been created. They were likely one of the most vital pieces of ingenuity that had come from it, the sheer concept allowing for many great things, the least of all being the extreme expansion of the Core’s domain. Previously, it had been forced to survive only being able to look out twenty meters in total on all fronts, its natural Mana-Regeneration not able to withstand any more pressure to it. Constantly, it had been forced to send out Mana into the air, lest it would all thin out too much to be useful, the lack of any real density causing it all to wither into its natural state, and then joining the air around it. The Entity could have simply refrained from sending out any Mana but that would have caused it to lose sight completely.

And that was one concept it would never allow. Yet the constant cost of its natural Mana-Regeneration was still extreme. While manual Mana-Regeneration was more effective than anything else that could be hoped for, the idea of giving up any other method was still without any good thoughts attached. Instead, the Core had at the time pondered on what the problem had truly held. The constant use of the natural Mana had been due to the Mana spreading out into the air. So… why not constrain where its Mana could move.

That was then handled through the use of higher Densities inside the Panel of Mana which were positioned all around its domain, every part encapsulated perfectly. And with that, the Mana was steadily able to grow large and wide, never needing that constant output to work out fine. And as a bonus, it also allowed the ideas of expansion to foster quite nicely, another whole room being added within a day while it would have normally taken months or even years previously. It was a grand achievement.

But also one that had extreme drawbacks. While unable to figure out how the Core knew of such an item, the Entity thought it much like a balloon. With the pressure inside, the red fabric was able to expand into great sizes and varieties, making it seem quite large and imposing, it would only take a single prick of something sharp before it all deflated into nothing when compared to what had been there previously.

The Core’s domain was the same in many ways. If one of the Domains Panels ever faltered, the Mana inside would slip away into the area outside of the panelling, creating a rather large loss of density. And if ever were to happen, the Core fully understood that control over its entire domain would be lost for quite a while, it being forced to slowly regain land over what had already been claimed previously in a desperate attempt to seal the wound created. While the main domains leaks could easily be fixed, those in the new room would be quite hard to do the same with since any chance of gaining ground down there would be with the requirement of already having fixed the damage. It was quite the problem if such a thing were to happen.

A single panel out of several thousand could destabilise the entirety of the Core’s domain. That was not something that needed to be known at all, much less by the enemy forces who could quite easily make that scenario a reality. It would take much less of a force to even do it. Ten or so [Undead] ants could move through one of the sides, slowly digging out the anchor to one of the Panels. If the Core was rather distracted at the time, it likely wouldn't even notice the act before it was too late, which would then allow the Queen to attack without any real resistance, the Entity much too busy trying to fix its mistakes.

So… that was something that needed fixing. And it was something that already had a solution that could be implemented, though it would take some time to get right. The main issue at that current moment was that the entire domain worked as a single balloon. If one was popped, everything within the balloon would be lost. From that sentence alone, it was already obvious what needed to be done. The Core needed to divide the whole domain into hundreds of smaller ones.

It needed to section off every single part of its domain to make sure that everything just independent enough to survive the destabilisation of the areas around it. And how would this be done? With more Panels, of course, this time being inside the domain instead of around it. Here, it would be a more elongated version, while also having a more… hexagonal structure to it. Each hexagonal would be one section of the domain with all sides being the Panels that separated them. The connections would likely assist the Core with the act of setting the Panels up with minor amounts of reinforcement, the structure allowing for strength instead. Though… a hundred or so Mana to each section wouldn't hurt the act of safety.

Such an extreme sense of splitting up the area was perhaps not the most efficient way to spend the Core’s time, but it allowed for extreme amounts of comfort. By creating so many smaller sections, the destruction of one of the outer Panels meant very little. Though, that didn't mean that the outer panels were useless, of course. The inner ones would be close to enough to bear the pressure put on them if not for the outer ones making sure that everything else was taken care of at the same time. Those recently created weren't attached to much else but each other, after all. Without the anchoring from the outer Panels, the new ones would do nothing but seem fancy for the briefest of moments before showing off how little there worked on a larger scale.

How did the panels fair in an extreme scenario? Well, the Core wasn't exactly sure, not having any intention of making any stress tests while it was at it. The actual process of setting it all up had been quite the expenditure to get through with, the cost in resources to get everything to the perfect density and strength being quite higher than one would expect. Or… what the Core had optimistically hoped it would cost, at the very least. Nobody would have expected a wide-scale change in how the Panelling was set up through the entirety of the Core’s domain would cost such a massive amount of Mana, right? It certainly hadn't, thinking the costs would lie below five thousand Mana in total. Yet it had almost reached ten, being at the level of what the original set of Panels had cost during the initial creation, certainly not counting the further increases to their density over time. The Core had done that out of precaution more than anything, a few of the more pressured Panels now having something close to a thousand Mana inside them, their locations promising much strain in the future.

The current and previous densities were more than enough to handle double of what the Core was even able to produce consistently, yet the need to make sure nothing extreme would happen by pure chance was important. When the [Willpower] was finally added in, allowing the Core to reach an unprecedented height in densities, it didn't want to accidentally blast through walls upon walls of carefully created Panels just because it didn't think it needed them at the time. Making sure everything was designed to work for years at a time allowed for much to only be replaced marginally, never putting too much stress alongside other sides of progress. If the Entity needed to increase the strength of the panels each time a new point was added to any stat at all, it certainly would be a waste of time. Doing it all in one fell swoop was the best course of action to take.

Now there was also the question of it being too much reinforcement, seeing as the levels needed to even come halfway to breaking the Panel would require so much growth that the Core would have likely already torn the Panels down due to requirements surrounding expansions. But… there wasn't care about that at the current moment. Making sure it felt safe was more important than anything else, lest it would worry itself half to death. And, being fully honest with itself, the Core liked the thought of being fully alive.

Not truly wanting pressure on that topic too much, the Entity instead looked back on its work. The hexagonal structure was working fine enough, separating the different places inside the domain perfectly. Mana was able to flow through at the command of the Core but no amount of pressure allowed it to move without the permission of the Entity as well. That certainly a good function, seeing as it allowed for the main requirement to hold up beautifully. The costs were high but the results were even higher, the main worries eased away the moment that it all began working so well together. Now was the time to move on from the art, the Core ready to start on another project that it had thought of.

What was that again? It had to think for a moment, not entirely sure of the order of which it had named them. Memory was beginning to seem harder and harder to get through, there being so many thoughts it needed to think about before an answer was found. Perhaps that perfect memory seen before was less due to a perfect recollection and more a lack of things to actually recollect? While a dull thought it was beginning to seem a rather full argument, the Entity truly having trouble thinking about it. But, alas, something did finally seem to come up, a smidgen of memory dug up at the perfect moment.

The memory of rocks. Such a stupid way to quantify the Core’s desires. But, it nonetheless held as true as before. There was never a moment where the Entity hadn't thought about sentience and what it allowed. For one, the [System] had clearly stated it only gave stats and abilities to those sentient, granting them extreme power and growth when compared to others. While the Core did want to comment on what it found to be sentient enough and what requirements there were before the abilities were granted since the [Blood-Moss] and [Giant-Ants] very clearly couldn't have gone through the [Tutorial] without some extra assistance. The Core did have some ideas surrounding the System changing itself according to the Mental Capacity of the user, allowing itself to have more advanced choices later on. It was certainly an idea to keep in mind as it continued along.

Because what were those without the [System]’s assistance? They were nothing, in the ideas of the gods maybe? Or were they more than that? The Core couldn't truly feel more important than the stone and dirt around it since those materials were the only reason that it could grow. Without having the ability to study their Mana and use it for itself, there would have been no real chance of starting. Space, devoid of anything not-sentient, would have left the Entity with nothing to interact with, nothing to learn from. The non-sentient things in the universe were the true teachers that one could learn from, no matter how much they seemed to be the opposite.

Rocks and the Air around it were not tools but gifts from the natural world. While they all seemed weak, they had Mana inside just the same as the Core and every other living being. It was in a world of chaos instead of order, yes, but was that truly a sign of weakness? Nobody could predict its movements in the same way, nobody was able to create a certain semblance of recognition. The Core knew it could sit for hours and stare at the rocks, never able to guess how the Mana would move. It could certainly make guesses and be right a lot of times, but those would be pure luck. It knew. It had tried to see the pattern by itself.

The Mana was chaos. But so was the world in its entirety. There was logic inside some parts but those pieces of logic were as unknown and multi-functional that there was no point trying to figure them out. The Mana of the non-sentients were powerful and that was that. What power had the Core taken from every time that it had used the energies of Mana? Had it simply created it out of the spot? No. It had taken it from the air, the earth, the stone, and had then used it for its own methods and techniques, letting the energy be converted to whatever it needed. Through Will it had changed from one state to another and then made to rejoin nature after its use, falling back into where it had come from.

It was the cycle of Mana. A cycle not broken by the Core taking the energy for itself but merely accelerating a process that would happen no matter what. Air would harden and become moisture. That moisture would feed the [Moss] which would then grow mighty and powerful, perhaps creating a variant smarter and able to use the [Mana] in a whole new way, all without the sentient creature ever having to do much but just exist. Nature was geared towards actions taken and those actions have happened no matter what. It was too large to refuse, too large to destroy. It would always exist and had likely always existed at some level. Some parts could have been destroyed or moved, but there was never a time where it didn't exist at all. At least… that’s what the Core imagined.

For it had seen the scale of the world. The scale at which the planet’s crust could move, how the random energies could work together to create movement not possible to comprehend in a single mind. The lack of reference for the sheer size was without relation to anything ever seen before, just from the cumulative movements of the wind.

And the Core had to remind itself yet again that it was all about dirt, rock, and the wind that came with it. Everything related to it was nothing but non-sentient creatures. Yet the scale of power they held was greater than any sentient could hold. Even the gods had to take a step back, lest they would be swept up in the chaos as well. That was how the Core saw it at least.

For it was true in some ways. The pressure, the tidal wave of the earth and everything below was so strong, so fierce that trying to contain it for long would only make it worse. It had to always erupt, always push out, lest the consequences would only build and build, the potential reaching ever higher without end. It could sit there for a thousand years without break, for it was not of a mind that could falter. It had no mind, it had nobody, and it had nothing that would stop it from reaching a maddening explosion the second that the pressure was taken off.

The potential had was immense but what power for as long as it wasn't contained, lest it would all stream away into nothingness. That was the message the Core could make for it was as true as anything else. And while it did perhaps desire a world where it could create things close to the thoughts had from before, it knew that it needed to contain its joys to something simpler. One step at a time, let the entire walk be tried and failed in a second.

What did the Core hope to gain? There had been something at the start which had spurred the entire speech on, something that had made it decide everything needed to be set up in such away. What had that been? Thinking about it time and time again, it finally remembered it. Did stone have memory?

It might have seemed like a very peculiar question, one that would certainly have created a rather large rift in what would appear to be a good way to spend its time. But it held questions within that were deemed more important, the first being a rather more specific one. If rocks could remember, could they remember what shape they were supposed to be? As in not just realise what shape they are in but also what shape they are intended to be in.

For that was something the Core wanted most of all. For the rocks, the material, to know what the Entity wanted them to be, to understand that when damaged, they needed to repair themselves with the Mana around them. It wasn't too large a dream to have, right? The Panels of Mana from before, those used to stop the precious energy from escaping the COre’s domain, had already shown the ability to take complicated orders even if it was just Pure Mana. Non-sentient material wasn't much different since it was just a different state of Mana with the real energy being held inside.

So it should work. That was the gist of what the Core thought. When orders came around and showed off their talents, one of the things that needed to be shown off was the ability to survive and complete a set of orders sent out for the material. If the Core wanted a rock to stay the same shape after getting damaged, it needed that.

And since the Core already knew the basics of how to get such a thing completed rather easily, it just had to make sure that it… worked more than just in pure theory. What was needed to set up such experiments, however?

Well, the first thing to be done was to create a suitable environment to test things out at. Which… when the Core thought about it, it didn't truly have. The main part of the domain had slowly but surely gotten overrun with [Blood-Moss], barely at the amount where it could be safely contained. While the growth was slowed dramatically due to the lacking amount of Mana being sent into it, there was still the fact that it was very large already, and had been given the ideal conditions to grow. Soon it would be competing with the lower parts of the regular Moss, though the latter had taken up quite a bit of space on the ceiling.

Wait. Why did it have that piece of Moss around now? It wasn't very efficient to have such a thing around anymore, since the entire basis for it staying there wasn't applicable. There was no need to create a critical mass that would start creating Mana instead of taking it. Natural Mana-Regeneration wasn't that crucial anymore, no matter how much one liked to think it. Manual regeneration was the way to go. So, not thinking anymore of it, half of the entire Main domain was cleaned up, any parts of normal Moss removed. While it would certainly be used the moment that the Core could find a good reason for it, the moss would lie inside the Core’s mind for a long time.

Now… an area for testing had just popped up with all the freed space. And the Core most certainly had a few techniques that it needed to test out. Just as long as it remembers that its core sat right at the edge of the new testing area.

…

Thinking about it again, the Core moved back to the middle of the room temporarily, not having a real desire to stay that close to stone that would be getting Mana pumped inside of it. Too much could go wrong.