1197 Tinkering with the fruit
Seeing that the two of them were just about to walk into the sunset merrily with all of their problems solved, Eldrin started panicking. But luckily for him, Liam did not seem to be ready yet to leave.
Liam nodded at Luna again, asking the little fox to stand guard. He then sat down in a cross-legged position and closed his eyes. Calming his mind and heart, he once more started from scratch, from the very beginning.
He began sucking in mana, trying to form a mana core. When he had done this before, he had relied quite heavily on the stone tablet to get a good enough mana concentration to be able to form a good-quality core.
However, now it was no longer needed. The world he was currently in naturally did that for him. Liam decided to first give it a go before summoning the big guns.
He started gathering and absorbing all the mana that he could, bringing it in through all of his pores and orifices to increase the rate of uptake. This was a method he had read in the theory of basics.
Just like he thought the mana density was so abundant that he was not required to use the stone tablet. Especially because he was sitting right next to the world tree of a B-ranked world, this effect was noticeable.
Liam casually breathed in and out as he sucked all the mana from the surroundings. There was no nervousness or hesitation on his face. While he might have struggled to form a similar core the first time around, this time he had a feeling it should happen very naturally and easily.
Not long after he started, Liam's brows shot up and he was pleasantly surprised. It looked like his work here was going to be even easier than he had assumed. Without any effort from him, the fruit embedded in his heart started doing all the work for him.
The fruit vibrated gently, resonating with the mana he was drawing in. The ambient mana consisted of multiple elemental essences. The fruit absorbed and converted all of the essences into pure mana seamlessly and filled the compartment Liam had already allocated for mana.
Observing this, Liam attempted something. Instead of purifying all the essences, Liam tried to direct the ice elemental essence alone to another compartment.
In the grand scheme of things, forming a pure mana core was rather easy when compared to forming specialized elemental cores.
Liam knew a little about this process from the hellish tutorial game and had also read a little about this from the basic manuals he had recently obtained.
But it did not matter. With or without this knowledge, Liam had never planned on forming any elemental cores but now that a treasure like this was in his grasp he wanted to try at least forming one, the one that he had the most compatibility with.
This would have been fire elemental essence before, and now his preference had changed after receiving the elven inheritance. He was a lot more compatible with the ice elemental essence now and had also made significant progress on ice elemental dao seed.
Since the mana core was naturally being generated at a steady fast enough pace, Liam started tinkering with the fruit also trying to form an ice elemental core simultaneously.
This should boost his fighting power further, giving him one more weapon to go up against that crafty, foul person.
Liam focused intently, channeling the ice elemental essence towards a separate compartment within the fruit in his heart. He could feel the essence, cold and crisp, flowing through his veins and converging towards the designated compartment.
To his delight, the fruit responded positively to his manipulation. The compartment dedicated to the ice elemental essence started to glow faintly, a cool blue light emanating from within.
Liam could feel the compartment absorbing the essence, condensing and storing it. At the same time, the rest of the essence was smoothly converted to pure mana and stored in another compartment.
However, problems started cropping up soon enough. While the speed of the mana core formation was quite remarkable, the same could not be said for the ice elemental core formation.
Even this B-Rank world's ambient conditions were not good enough for the job. Rather they were not good enough for the speed Liam wanted the process to occur.
If he was actually able to sit here and spend a few months or, at the most a year perhaps he could achieve this because of the fruit. Unfortunately, he did not have that luxury.
Hmmm. Liam stopped splitting the essence. Instead, he focused completely on first forming the mana core. This took a couple of hours, at the end of which he had a beautiful shining mana core sitting in his heart.
Surprisingly, the core was even better than the one had formed before. Liam did not know this but after reading the basics he came to know that there were mana cores far more powerful than a Red-grade core.
These mana cores were ranked Silver-grade, Gold-grade, Perfect-grade, Flawless-grade and Formless-grade. For example, the one Luna had formed was a Flawless-grade core.
This was technically a difficult thing to accomplish but being a heaven-blessed celestial beast, Luna had naturally formed such a superior core.
Not to mention she had the amount of treasures she had eaten. Liam's face twitched as he remembered all the treasure-eating-related titles the little thing had gained. It was no wonder her natural ability was stellar.
And now he was finally catching up to her, thanks to the opportunities he had managed to grab. The fruit treasure inside his heart turned his red grade core into a perfect grade core!
Even though he did not think that he would, Liam could feel the stark difference between both the mana cores. It was as if he had been riding a normal horse before but now had switched to a wild unruly beast like Luna. The difference was truly staggering.
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Author's Note: Guys, some of the comments gave me this idea. I see that you all have some creative suggestions for naming this guardian's blessing treasured fruit. So let's roll with it. Comment me your suggestions and I will pick the one with the most number of likes/ votes.
