The Beginning After The End novel Chapter 256

Chapter 256

Chapter 256: The Core

“This is crazy. It’s not going to work.”

“It might if you stop your relentless badgering,” I quipped, flexing the fingers of my newly regenerated arm.

Regis zipped up to my face. “Oh, I’m sorry. Is my genuine concern that you might blow yourself up bothering you?”

I swatted him away. “Yes.”

My floating companion’s smoky black head sizzled in anger. “Why are you even attempting this anyway? You just demolished the hidden boss of this level with a punch! I think you’re strong enough.”

“I can’t just rely on sustaining my body temporarily by eating aetheric essence off of monsters.”

“So your plan is just to form your own power source? Geez, I wonder why the wise and powerful dragons of the Indrath Clan haven’t thought of something like that...oh wait, they have!”

“Yes, I remember the story of the elders of the Indrath Clan attempting to form a core out of pure aether within the body of an infant clan member that was born without a core. You literally just told me.”

“And what did we learn from that story?” Regis asked as if he were speaking to an infant himself.

I sighed. “That the baby was met with a bloody death.”

“So why are you still trying to do this?” Regis seethed.

“Because I have no other choice if I want to get stronger. I don’t want to rely on temporary power boosts that I can’t even control from consuming another lifeform’s aetheric essence. You saw how fast it depletes from my body even when I’m not fighting.”

“‘That’s no reason to kill yourself over this!”

“Regis.” I stared coldly into the eyes of the black will-o-wisp. “I’m sure you know this from being fed my memories, but I’ve barely been able to fight against retainers while scythes are in a whole other league. I’m not just looking at surviving this hellish dungeon or ruin—whatever this place is. I’m looking at obtaining strength that can put me above them and up on the same level as asuras. Otherwise, getting out of here just means giving the enemy another chance at beating me back down.”

Regis remained silent as he studied me, his expression laced in a mixture of frustration and concern.

Finally, he let out a sigh. “Fine. Aside from the fact that you can physically eat aether, why do you think that your attempt won’t be any different from what the asuras attempted?”

“You’re forgetting that I was responsible for prematurely forming my own mana core when I was three. I’ll figure something out.”

***

The first step of my plan was to spend some time closely studying the chimera.

I studied how the aetheric essence had become bound to the chimera corpse. Despite the fact that the chimera couldn’t control or manipulate aether, unlike my own body, there was no leakage of the essence.

Utilizing my unique perception of the aether around me, I conducted experiments on the corpse.

Because it had been killed, the aether didn’t actively try to regenerate the broken parts of the chimera corpse. Instead, it seemed like it was in an almost suspended state.

Injuries that I had inflicted on the corpse postmortem weren’t being regenerated, and while there was some loss of aetheric essence from the wound, there was no leakage beyond that.

“Regis, try going inside the chimera and absorbing the aether directly,” I said, not taking my eyes off the corpse.

“Well, I wasn’t able to when it was alive, but I never tried it on a dead chimera,” Regis replied, floating toward the giant body.

Rather than sink inside the surface of the chimera corpse, however, he bounced off.

Regis let out a pained grunt from the impact before turning to me. “Happy?”

“Not particularly,” I replied, not even bothering to look at him as I continued studying the flow of aether around the chimera corpse.

Not able to find anything particularly insightful, I moved on to the next step—hoping I’d learn more.

Closing my eyes, I sensed the aether flowing in my body just like I had when I was first trying to form my mana core.

The entirety of my mental faculties was focused on observing how aether moved within me—how they interacted with my muscles, bones, organs, and how it dissipated from the surface of my skin constantly.

Next, I focused on the shattered pieces of my mana core. I couldn’t gather or produce mana and Sylvia’s dragon will was no longer there. That meant that I had no way of using Static Void or Realmheart Physique, but the fragmented shell of my mana core was still here inside me.

Worse yet, the aether was slowly dissolving the broken pieces of my mana core—seeing them as imperfections in my body that needed to be discarded since it served no purpose.

Thinking that all of the painstaking years of work refining and strengthening my mana core would soon disappear, sent a sharp pain through my chest, and it took all I could to pry myself out of that pithole.

That’s when it struck me. The aether saw the broken shards of my mana core as an injury... however, because it didn’t serve a function anymore, it was trying to remove it from my body.

But what if it thought that it did?

My eyes shot open, surprising Regis who had been observing me.

Scrambling up to my feet, I looked at the various sections of its body where multiple corpses had conjoined together to form the fused chimera, studying the creature once more from a different angle.

The act of fusing the chimera bodies together was neither regenerating or healing—but the fact that the aether determined that this course of action was the best choice told me something.

With my plan slowly solidifying, I went back to meditating with a slight grin on my face. Unsurprisingly, just like how the chimeras couldn’t actively control the aether that powered their bodies, I was unable to actively manipulate it as well.

I tested a few theories. I would purposely injure myself to study how the aether would behave and interact within my body depending on the injury while paying close attention to my thoughts. My actions would be considered insane to any passing set of eyes but I didn’t care.

I had learned something pivotal through my battles against the chimeras, namely, when I launched the final attack against the fused chimera despite the stub of my arm bleeding profusely.

It took a few dozen times of injuring myself to actually confirm my hypothesis, but what I realized was that intent influenced the movement of the aetheric essence within me.

This was nowhere near the point of manipulation like I had done with mana, but if I thought that regenerating a certain part of my body took precedence over another part, the aether took heed of that advice.

I wasn’t able to forcefully manipulate aether like I had been able to with mana. But the very fact that aether could be influenced to do something as crazy as fusing multiple bodies together meant that the chimera’s intent had tricked it.