Lohan concentrated.
He closed his "eyes" and dove into the white bird’s memory.
He could feel the cold rising from the center of the bird’s core, passing through small channels throughout its body, and the way the energy condensed in its beak as it left its body.
Once it left the body, part of the energy dispersed into the air, but most of it was still under the bird’s control in these memories.
-xXx-
Lohan sought out that cold energy leaking from his new core. Unlike Bio-Mass, which was dense and heavy, Mana was fluid, electric, and, at that moment, sharp.
He felt the flow run through the new blue lines of his core and spread through the jelly of his body.
Where the mana passed, his temperature dropped dramatically. He felt no pain, only an invigorating numbness.
Gradually, he forced the jelly at the front of his body to mold itself. Following the bird’s instinct, he not only opened his mouth and spat out the energy, but he compressed it!
The frozen mana began to spin at a central point, the humid air around Lohan slowly freezing, creating small shards of ice that merged into a translucent spike, sharp as a crystal dagger, which shot out from his membrane.
’Now... GO!’
-- SHIIIIIIING!
The ice spike shot out with a hissing sound, cutting through the air in a straight blue line. The projectile traveled the meters away in the blink of an eye and hit the trunk of an ancient tree.
-- CRACK!
The impact did not knock the tree down, but the ice was so dense that it pierced the thick bark, leaving a hole the size of Lohan’s small fist made with tentacles, surrounded by a crust of frost that began to spread slowly through the wood.
Lohan didn’t even have time to celebrate. The moment the thorn left his body, the feeling of "fullness" disappeared, replaced by a frightening vacuum.
[Mana: 0 / 15] [Warning: Magic Exhaustion Detected!]
Lohan’s 360-degree vision spun. The blue glow of the lines in his core instantly faded. If before he felt like a charged battery, now he felt like a deflated balloon.
His gelatin, once firm and agile because of his evolutions, became heavy and flaccid.
He tried to move, but his body just swayed uselessly in place, like a lazy puddle of water.
’Damn... that hurts... my mind feels like it’s been chewed up...’
The effort of converting that raw mana into a structured spell, without ever having done so before, drained not only his energy, but his mental stamina.
Even exhausted and "withered" on the dirt floor, Lohan looked at the hole in the tree with a pride he had never felt before.
"I did it... I used magic!"
He thought excitedly as he began to absorb the other Mana Stone quickly.
His body wanted to sleep for a week, completely exhausted from what he had just done, but since his gaming hours were limited daily, especially since today was still Monday, with so many days left until the weekend, Lohan forced himself to stay awake and actively absorb Biomass from the second Mana Stone.
-xXx-
The process was painfully slow. If he were to rely on recovering Mana naturally, according to his calculations, it would take him more than 20 hours to recover the Mana he had spent.
Fortunately, he could use biomass to nourish the [Magic Core Lv 1] as fuel, accelerating Mana generation in exchange for Biomass, which at the moment was not a problem, since Lohan had more than 40 Biomass stored in his body.
’The feeling of helplessness sucks...’
Although he felt great when casting magic, like a huge rush of dopamine, the helplessness that came afterwards made him feel like he was back in his hospital bed.
Feeling an anxiety attack coming on, Lohan didn’t think twice and spent 10 Biomass to level up this Skill.
[Magic Core Lv 1 → Lv 2] -
As soon as this skill leveled up, the amount of Mana converted increased, the core consumed even more Biomass, but the Mana that was produced was denser and of higher quality.
Feeling his own body, Lohan realized that his Mana had increased, but he didn’t know exactly how much.
’I can just look at my Status...’
[Mana: 15 / 16.5]
Glancing quickly at his Mana section, below Experience, Lohan was shocked to realize that his Mana had increased by 1.5 points after evolving the magic core!
’My Mana increased by 10%, but was it exponential like Efficient Digestion, or just a fixed increase like Passive Digestion?’
To confirm this doubt, Lohan decided to spend another 13 Bio and evolve the skill again.
[Magic Core Lv 2 → Lv 3]
[Mana: 15 / 18.1]
Seeing that the increase was 1.65 instead of the previous 1.5, Lohan was delighted.
’Another skill with exponential growth!!! Great!’
Excited by this, Lohan decided to explore the area further, looking for a worthy opponent to test his magic on.
With a Biomass gain of 17.56 Bio/h, in two hours Lohan recovered what he spent on evolving the [Magic Core] and the Biomass spent to replenish his Mana.
Unfortunately, in those two hours he did not encounter any magical creatures.
When Lohan was considering whether it was worth moving further away from the place where he had met the Elf girl, he heard a sharp cry.
Looking up at the sky, he saw a bird descending at high speed with its claws pointed at him.
Frightened, Lohan activated all the skills he had available.
He made his exoskeleton more resistant, reinforced the membrane, accelerated his speed in the opposite direction of the bird, and finally activated the weapon he had been so eager to test.
In a few seconds, a transparent and sharp ice spike smaller than the first one he made formed in front of him, and before the bird that looked like a brown eagle could react, the spike was thrown in its direction, cutting through the air with ease.
-- SHHHIIIUU
Trying to struggle to dodge that almost invisible object, the bird screamed for the last time.
-- THUD
In a few seconds, the bird’s body fell to the ground, with an open hole in its belly that strangely did not bleed.
Looking closely, Lohan confirmed that the bird was still alive and approached it carefully.
The bird looked at him with a mixture of anger, disbelief, and fear.
Lohan rolled closer, the bird tried to crawl away, but despite not bleeding, having its stomach cut open prevented blood from circulating through its body, causing it to slowly lose the ability to move, and in a few seconds, consciousness also disappeared.
Waiting another five minutes, Lohan finally confirmed that the bird was dead and covered it, ready to absorb the creature that had tried to take his life just a few minutes earlier.