“six seven eight nine fifty one two three four five six seven eight nine sixty o-”

“Hey Ankorr, time for food” Fadrim whispers crosslegged from atop Ankorr as he continues his one handed press ups, only responding by turning his head to the side, mouth open and waiting.

Taking deep, calm breaths, Fadrim slowly draws mana from his mana fountain, mentally nitpicking through all the impurities he can sense in his mana.

Drawing an okayish purity, he sends it into his bloodstream, feeling it lightly singe its way around his body, till it reaches his heart.

Entering the Aorta, his mana continues down till it passes his arm and then solidifies under his will.

At this point, he forces himself to breathe erratically, willing terrifying memories upon himself, rising his heart beat till the sound drummed violently in his ears.

The pressure build up immediately brings along the feeling of his left arm bursting, but he holds concentration, letting blood flow into his arm, pushing against the walls of his arteries.

With a scream, he lets loose some feeling of the pressure and holds his mana, keeping it thick and forcing its presence to stay, blocking up his arteries.

His screams intensify when finally his capillaries in his arm burst causing blood to gush through his arm.

Immediately, all concentration is lost in white as he falls off Ankorr, smacking into the ground and clutching his arm which looks normal from the outside, but is immersed in blood on the inside.

Letting the white pain die down a small amount, he moves to a seated position trying not to pass out due to the painful pressure in his arm.

Grabbing his knife, he slices off his finger, wailing as blood explodes out his hand like the opening of a damn.

Using his other arm, he places his cut finger in Ankorr’s mouth, letting the pressure die down as blood gushes out.

Ankorr gargles the massive amount of blood, gulping without stop at the feast.

Raising himself to standing, Fadrim lets gravity do the work.

Though he quickly falls back to his knees as blood keeps gushing out from the small finger hole, since he had burst an opening to the Aorta, so blood just kept coming.

Until it ran out…then he died from bleeding out, the damage draining him of life in under a minute.

Ankorr, although decently shocked Fadrim just killed himself, regarded it as quite normal for Fadrim.

It had been a month since Fadrim had foced that field test on him, a month since they had started this strange routine.

Without rest, he would exercise, doing all kinds of things from squats to handstand pushups, never stopping.

A normal person would stop due to the pain of burning muscles, but Ankorr did not feel any pain, just a numbness he could ignore.

A normal person would stop due to the exhaustion from having a constantly high heart rate, especially through day long sprints, but Ankorr did not feel exhaustion or fatigue.

A normal person would simply be unable to use their muscles as this routine would destroy them, but blood restored Ankorr, fueling him forevermore.

Ankorr was kind of grateful for not being normal in this situation for once, as it has allowed him to spend an entire month exercising, ripping and tearing his muscles before regrowing them stronger in a constant brutal cycle.

Honestly, he was feeling slightly bored with the routine and had to constantly ramp it up to keep him from utter boredom.

While he was doing this, Fadarim had sat by him or on him, cutting Ankorr before bleeding onto him, observing the results and taking notes scientifically.

Every half hour, Fadrim would provide a large amount of blood by slitting a wrist, but made sure he wouldn’t die.

It was only since two weeks ago that he had stopped the cutting and began fully meditating or that was what it looked like to Ankorr.

He suspected, but Ankorr did not know that Fadrim had spent the last two weeks trying to gather mana, purify it and send it into his bloodstream.

The first time Fadrim succeeded in doing all that was this time, where he died.

While Ankorr moved to one hand handstand pushups on fingertips, Fadrim returned, his face a mixture of sweet and sour.

“What’s wrong? Or right?” Ankorr asks confused at the strange facial expression. He thought fadrim would be happy that he succeeded in manipulating blood, or so Ankorr thought.

Little did he know that Fadrim did not use blood magic.

“I used magic…” He says wistfully.

Ankorr jumps in the air, giving a clap before landing on one hand fingertips and continuing.

“But the wrong kind” He continues, stroking his shaven chin musingly.

“Wasn’t that blood magic?” Ankorr cocks his head, looking confused.

“No…I’m not quite sure what I did” Shaking his head, he plops down crosslegged and closes his eyes in meditation once more.

Ankorr shrugged and continued his workout, watching the still Fadrim mumble quietly to himself.

Fadrim did the same with his mana as before, but split it into two and left it flowing in the capillaries in his left arm.

With a burst of will, he makes two thin cylindrical shapes, fitting tightly in the capillary and a distance from eachother.

Manipulating them, he has them rush towards eachother, increasing the pressure and bursting a capillary with a painful pinch.

Letting the mana dissipate, he looks towards his arm and where a new bruise is forming.

He grins with one side of his mouth, while the other droops sadly.

His little experiment showed him three very important things. The first was that he was using force magic, due to his mana having an effect on his bloodstream without the mana being tangible.

If it were a natural element, he would have felt the fire or the air. Light would not have that effect and although Dark could the element did not feel dark.

Rather, he knew it was force more because the element he could garnish from his mana was ethereal, as if it were just pure mana.

Rather, it was just pure mana.

It made him realize that actually force magic is just pure mana, condensed and manipulated.

That led to his second and more negative realization: any magic user could do it; rather it was so easy to understand if word got out how to do it, Force would be one of the most common types of element used.

All those books told him the wonders of force magic, but the truth sucked; he had gained the attribute of the commonest and probably crappiest mana possible since all magic users can use pure mana, he just specializes in only that.

Sure enough, when he looked on his character sheet, his attribute was set to Force.

This led to his third and rather sucking realization: he was unable to learn blood magic, at least till level one hundred; ninety nine levels away.

At least he was able to gain the attribute since he had successfully reached level fifteen before Ankorr had killed him back down to level one, but that meant that he had gotten the attribute and wasn’t able to try get another before it was too late.

“Well that’s shit” He spits on the ground and kicks a rock angrily, while Ankorr looks on, confused.

“What’s wrong?”

“I’m a Force mage” His lips turn sour as he states the cold truth.

“Like a sith?” Ankorr cocks his head as he goes into Chinese fullbody pushups.

Fadrim rolls his eyes at the quite accurate distinction. “Yes, but we’re in a world where any that use magic can be one”

“…oh” The realization kicks in as Ankorr understands “Well at least both of us got the shitty end of the stick” He chuckles darkly and continues his pushups.

Fadrim nods, and begins the long grueling task of learning how to use his Force magic.

…

“That son of Aegi”

“Moren? What’s wrong?” Yisra pops out from the cathedral doors, holding the brush and a worried look on her face.

Moren turns around with a smile on his face.

“I’m missing out on an adventure, again” he looks towards the right, assuming the usual unamused position that has been his for the past month.

Yisra raises an eyebrow, still oddend by the fact that he’s spent the past month looking over to the right with no viable reason except for that fact that there’s an ‘adventure’ he wants to go on.

‘Then why don’t you go and not miss out on it?” She plonks him lightly on the head with the broom, sitting down on the fourty second step as per usual.

“Two reasons. One, I’ll die. Two…” He hesitates slightly, changing the thought in his mind “Helia’s told me to stay here”

“Really?” She looks up into the sky, believing of the goddess, yet not fully trusting Moren’s word that she’s watching him. “Let the poor man have an adventure, jeez all he’s done is sit here for seven months now. Even I'm getting sick of seeing him do nothing but relax on the steps all day” She waves a fist towards the air while Moren chuckles heartily.

Moren hear more chuckling join in his own, directed towards Yisra too.

After a short but thorough sweeping of the stairs, along with conversation about her studious life, Moren finally finishes sweeping and Yisra takes the brush, walking back inside.

“Ah Yisra” He calls out to her as she’s about to slip through the open door.

“What is it?” She turns around with a cheery smile

“Good luck with the ceremony”

“Dude, it’s a month away still, no need to wish me luck just yet” She sticks out her tongue with a jeer and skips inside chuckling.

“I said good luck because I might not see you then” He whispers to himself, shaking his head.

Standing up, he begins walking down the stairs melancholicly, taking in all the sights he can.

In truth, he had not been given an order by Helia to remain here; he remained because he was not prepared to leave yet, not this cathedral, not this life, not Yisra.

But now that his friend has disappeared off once more, he needs to be prepared, to be strong enough to go looking for his friend and drag him back to become priests as they promised eachother.

He reached the final step, took a deep calming breath and with a gleaming smile at finally getting closer to Helia, walked into the light.

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Author's Corner: So short chapter today, just sort of finishing up like the half-arc waypoint or whatever you call it.

Basically after this chapter it'll be the same overrulling arc just in you know a different world following our MC and Tandra. So don't expect much of anyone else for a short while!

Apart from that, hope you enjoyed it so please comment and review

Also I'M DONE WITH EXAMS WHOO! SO CHAPTERS MAY BE FLYING OUT QUITE A BIT!

NOT THIS WEEKEND THOUGH BECAUSE RE-ENACTMENT STUFF HAPPENING, I'M ACTUALLY FIGHTING THIS TIME ROUND!!!

-TRUE NORRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRD