And Aria could feel it. The immense, world-ending pain of her Mana Core destabilizing. It was so bad that she instantly couldn’t even feel anything anymore. Her physical pain receptors were completely fried in a millisecond.
Or at least, that was exactly what would have happened if she hadn’t rapidly shielded her own nervous system with a highly complex dampening spell at the exact same time. But it didn’t change the fact that she couldn’t feel her limbs anymore.
She did this specifically because she wanted to make sure the artifact was still securely in her hands. She wanted to make absolutely sure that she would destroy it and her own Core no matter what happened.
And just like that, before the panicked Hero could even do anything to stop her suicidal actions, the time locket had a massive, hole in it.
The Hero gritted his teeth, put all of his monstrous strength into his legs, and dashed forward. The stone tiles cracked under his boots.
Usually, it would only take him a tiny fraction of a second to cross a room and reach her. But her spell was way too fast.
The Hero had reached her, but by the time his hand reached out to grab her, her body was already done for. Her skin literally fell down and crumbled away as if it was just a fragile part of a dry clay statue. It just fell down and broke, turning into dust on the white floor.
The Hero just stood there right in front of the collapsing Aria, looking down at her in horror while her skin just fell apart.
But right then, just at that exact time, the ancient locket which had a hole burning through it exploded with a blinding light.
And a fraction of a second later, there was no locket. There was no Aria. And there was no Hero left in the blast radius.
A few seconds later, through the broken door of the temple room, another man rushed in.
It was none other than Royal Financial Minister Roderick.
He looked much older. A lot older in fact, with deep wrinkles and graying hair. But when he rushed in and saw the completely empty room, there was nothing but sheer despair and a deep, agonizing sense of loss written all over his usually smiley face.
Aria sat in the dark training room of Oresfall, tightly closed her eyes, and let out another heavy sigh as she forcefully pushed those memories away.
She stopped recalling what had happened in her past life and just slowly opened her eyes in the present.
That highly coveted core inside her body... when she finally found out about it, which she did find out only after she reached the legendary 9th Circle, it was something that had actually always been growing inside her body since birth.
She just couldn’t sense it for decades because of how highly concentrated and impossibly pure the mana inside it was. Her own personal quality of mana just did not reach that required level to even interact with it.
And at the exact same time, mana had to be at a certain specific frequency or wavelength of sorts to be properly used by people. A highly skilled mage that uses mana at a certain wavelength could theoretically also convert and forcefully use the raw mana of other mages.
This complex mechanic of mana was the main reason why multiple mages, once they reach a certain level, decide on using highly specific wavelengths for highly specific spells. Not a single master mage went with just one single generic wavelength of mana.
It was a highly advanced, top-tier concept that beginner mages just couldn’t understand. And if a master had to go into the complex details, it would easily take a top-tier mage maybe a few months or even years to properly teach the raw concepts to the beginners.
But Aria had already thoroughly experienced everything there was to know about magic. She knew all of the advanced, forbidden concepts by heart.
And due to that massive advantage, even though she was currently only stuck at the 4th Circle right now as a six-year-old, she had successfully managed to actively sense and tap into her Mana Core.
Which only meant one thing.
Extremely high, almost bottomless mana reserves were possible for her right now.
And thanks to the core, she could also actively absorb ambient mana at a much, much faster pace than even her father could with his dragon blessing. She could output raw mana at a much higher scale too, which meant that she now had much more stronger spells in her arsenal.
Even veteran 6th Circle mages right now would barely be able to match her raw destructive output, even though they would technically be two whole ranks higher than her.
Aria raised a small finger and easily created a small, condensed fireball.
She raised her entire hand and faced her palm forward toward the empty wall of the training room. At the exact same time, without even chanting, the solid stone floor expanded upward, rapidly forming a thick, small wall-like structure right in front of her.
Aria calmly looked at her hovering fireball.
This was none other than the most basic, generic fireball spell. It was the exact same low-tier one she had proudly first shown Adrian when she revealed her magic to him.
But the actual amount of internal mana she was actively using to conjure it and effortlessly keep it active right now was significantly lower than what she had done back at the start. It was an almost entirely negligible amount of mana when compared the past and it was all thanks to her current, core-boosted mana mixing.
And at the exact same time, the small fireball spell was, in fact, almost four times hotter and denser than the fireball she first created when she started training magic in front of Adrian.
That was the insane amount of change that actively tapping into a Mana Core brought to her.