“Finally fresh air and mana!” Kaden thought as he climbed up from the so called ‘creepy hole’. It was already a day. He had to have been in the remnant at least the entire night.

His gains had been big this time. It was well worth the injuries that were still left. Due to the effects of Devour, none of the wounds were significant anymore. What he needed was time due to limits of the spell.

Indeed, the understanding of how spells were cast was probably the greatest thing he could have gained! He thought he was extremely lucky to have found this knowledge so early. If he had found about it only much later, there was no telling how much he would be missing up to that point.

Kaden decided once he returned home, he would adjust his mana system with the ideas he had from spell casting. During that time he would have time to heal and eat the remaining cores. After all that there were still his formation studies.

In the remnant he had already been able to examine and adjust existing formations. Then again, the adjustment had been just to explode the pot that did not even kill anyone. Yet, it did involve understanding how mana flowed and make it use the new paths that Kaden had created. He figured it was progress. He seemed to be good at making things explode.

“Perhaps I should look into creating bombs!” Kaden thought. He didn’t really know anything about such things. Hunters in Dashire rarely used any. Therefore, if he did want to go with it, he would have to experiment by himself.

Kaden left the area carefully. He did not want to attract any attention. Despite everything, he was not fully healed yet.

He wondered for a moment as he left the area behind him, if he would ever see another remnant. The creepy hole was not even major one, but it had already been quite dangerous. What if he some day found an unexplored one? Such places were where human empires had gained lot of inspiration for technology. Still, despite being so ancient, the tech was beyond anyone’s understanding, even if it could be imitated with magic. Such a place would be truly a treasure trove! That is, if you could survive it. More mana. More dangers.

Kaden also considered for a moment, if he could devise any traps. The location of the place was apparently being sold. More saints could be coming and they should just die. He thought of the bombs once again, but then decided to forget about it. There was no way he could make it work.

Return trip was uneventful. He did try to look, if the saints had built a camp before entering the remnant, but found nothing. Afterwards he returned straight home. Kaden didn’t like straying too far from his territory for no reason.

Once home, Kaden sat down and took a deep breath. It was time to start messing with spell crafting again.

Kaden had high hopes from his ideas. A lot of problems could be solved, if he could adjust his mana system. He had no idea what kind of dangers there were, but in his opinion, if it could be even though as actual spell or technique, it would be extremely minor one. It didn’t ever even reach the point of casting anything. Just the mana collection part. He felt there was little danger at that point.

He only needed a way to sift through mana released from his core and gather the useful parts. It would take some mana from the core, but it would not be lost more than how he normally used mana. As for how to achieve that, Kaden wasn’t sure.

Just how many mana types would he need to separate? Before Kaden had abandoned the gods, mana system did that automatically, but these days he only absorbed chaotic mana anyway. Core took whatever was left in his body. His human type mana was replenished slowly through his body. To begin with, Kaden mostly used his core to do things since there was very little supply of human type mana.

Well, these days he could eat things with Devour, but that was not something he could rely on.

First Kaden tried pulling out as many different types of mana he could, but it was difficult to do and even less efficient. It was also easy to tell that he had not taken all he needed. Chaotic mana had it all. Everything. Just how many concepts were there to absorb from your surroundings at any given time? Then concepts underlaying those concepts. There was a bit of mana mixed in for each of these. Something useful might have something harmful in it too and opposite too.

There was a reason human’s relied on gods for purification. Beasts didn’t care or couldn’t care. They lost some advantages for producing a core, but they could absorb everything. Human’s could use beast cores to support spells they cast, but it used up the core eventually and they had to get new ones. But since Kaden had his own core, he could resuply it. He was sure his idea was possible.

There had to be a better way. Some kind of cut off. Kaden felt like higher level mana systems could make this cut off more accurate and efficient.

“At the moment my mana system is nearly useless”, Kaden thought to himself. “I can take in chaotic mana otherwise easily and it doesn’t help much at all. Therefore, where ever I put the cut, it is probably better, if I can do it efficiently unlike my previous attempt. I cannot pick separately. I must allow it all in.”

Kaden began cycling his mana system. He observed as the chaotic mana was being absorbed into his core. Then he exerted intent and desire to take out mana that resembled that of his mana channel had. It didn’t work that way, but then he tried to use the more ordered kind he could get from his core.

That time there was some effect. It was as if the stream of dense mana was deviated slightly as something pulled on it. Still, he could not separate anything useful out of it like he could when he took just a few types to cast a spell. It was like scooping a bit of water out of a river and then comparing that to adjusting the flow of river entirely.

This stumped Kaden for quite a while. He could not figure out how to get around this problem.

“Damn it!” Kaden cursed after hours of trying. “I can only bend the mana stream, but it isn’t allowing me to get anything out! I can make it react to desirable mana. Yet it still drags along the unusable type.”

He had tried different ways with varying levels of power exerted, but result was allways the same.

“Perhaps?” Kaden suddenly thought. He had tried to pull out usable mana or separate unusable in many ways. What, if he did the both at the same time?

That was somewhat problematic. It would increase complexity and control of the mana, but Kaden expected it to be possible.

What if he exterted pulling force on opposite sides. Drag usable and unusable mana opposite ways?

At first there was again control problems that Kaden was quite familiar with. By now he was already aware of it and had experience in mitigating it. There were a few failures before he managed to achieve a minor success.

He was able to finally separate usable mana!

Only a little, but still a success. He also had ideas on how to do it better.

This was it!

He could cultivate with this method. Core was easy to cultivate, but human side not. Now he was able to get pure mana for his mana channel and progress other ways than devouring corpses, which wasn’t efficient. He would consider devouring people as easy expendable boosts of mana, but not main cultivation method.

Feeling excited Kaden carefully adjusted his method and could increase his mana gains significantly. He felt like the mana system functioned at only slightly less efficiency as before his rebirth. Perhaps about seventy percent, but before it had been almost neglible so it was good. It was not completely useless and was entirely usable for his current level.

There was still the problem that his mana system was made for humans. It still functioned as good as before, but this time he could use it to relatively well to cultivate his core and then take that mana from the core and transform it into human type mana. It was working, but his spell enhanced mana system was at best a clever contraption.

“I will have to research formations far enough that I can create myself a mana system that is specially tailored for some like me”, Kaden thought. He then felt quite happy. “I’m free from the damn gods. I can spit on their altars and purify my own mana.“

Kaden didn’t even think what he had just done! Whether or not Kaden was a human, he was using a human mana system and was able to bypass the influence of gods! It was a heresy! But who could tell or even guess he was able to do it?!

Kaden spent moment rejoicing his success. He decided it was time to celebrate his success. He felt confident and wanted to consume another core. This time he picked largest one he had.

His mana channel had already reached the mid stage. While he didn’t have exact details on how beast cores progressed, he still felt he was almost about to progress with his core too. Even with his terrible self inspection skill, he could see it be bright and some kind of flame colored glow blinked within weakly. That had not been there before. It must have appeared there between the previous core he ate and now.

He stuffed the core into his mouth and started chewing. The usual rush of mana came and then was pulled inside the core. The core grew brighter and brighter as it consumed the mana. There was very little change otherwise.

“Could it be I’m wrong?” Kaden murmured as he inspected his core carefully. He did notice that faint glow pulsing slightly more and not just blink. “That thing appeared in there over a period of time. Perhaps core’s need time to truly absorb mana?”

There was too little he knew about cores. Just how much did humans generally even know of beasts and how they cultivate? He wanted to know more.

Also, wasn’t cultivating core important information to beasts? Wouldn’t this sort of informatio be the kind that Anuu should have left in the birth flame? He had not specifically noticed any other information than reading. Was most of it just instinctual information? He had noticed himself do lot of things that humans don’t generally do. Was that it?

Kaden sighed. He felt like he was bumbling around in darkness. There was no helping it. He couldn’t even be sure, if anything Anuu might have done, functioned perfectly when the birth flame was given to him.

He decided to put that aside and continue studying formations. There were some ideas he had after he had seen the formations made my Trohin inside the remnant. They were relatively simple and he wanted to see, if he could imitate them.

After a few hours passed quickly while Kaden was experimenting. He suddenly started feeling quite hot. Unusually so. It was that quirk of his that he always felt warm. It was getting stronger. Still, Kaden did not feel much surprise. While he had not been aware of what to expect, he did expect something to happen. It was exactly the core. His assumption that once mana was absorbed, core would grow slowly afterwards.

He inspected the core once again. This time there was no longer faint flicker, but instead like a small pulsating spark right in the center. Phoenixes were extremely sensitive for fire type mana so it didn’t surprise Kaden at all that his core seemed to be the same. Fire mana was something he had always been able to use after his rebirth. It didn’t even require intent or any spell casting.

After some time the spark stopped pulsating and stabilized. Rest of the core was slightly glowing with similar colors. Kaden felt that heat reduce, but he felt that usual warmth was slightly higher. With his inspect he could determine such things as body heat, but that had not changed at all. It had to be some effect tied to nature of his mana.

Kaden released some of the fire mana. It was faster and easier. He burned some wood with it and assumed it was similiraly stronger, even if he couldn’t accurately determine how much.

“I guess this is the mid stage Dire Beast level”, Kaden decided and continued with his studies.