2004 Partial Cores (Part 2)

It was something that she could achieve only thanks to her eidetic memory and her mastery over controlling several different spells at the same time. On the other hand, her creation was far from finished.

To keep the partial core stable despite the interferences between the single pseudo cores, the partial core she had created had been imbued with as little energy as possible.

Solus now had to slowly pour mana into the partial core, making sure that it was distributed evenly between the single pseudo cores while also keeping the increasing repulsive effects between them in check as well.

Necro Forge was simpler to use but could only be used by a powerful Forgemaster. Bloom Forge, instead, relied on finesse and precision to achieve the same results but with twice the effort.

'What the fuck?' Solus allowed herself a moment of distraction to point at Lith what was happening on the other side of the room.

Faluel knew about the Eyes of Menadion and had no intention of sharing with Lith and Solus the techniques of her bloodline legacy. Yet even without them, her ability as a Forgemaster left them in awe.

The Hydra weaved the pseudo cores in the form of string of runes as if they were simple spells, removing what she didn't need during the final step. By keeping the pseudo cores in such a form, their energy was spread thin and the repulsive effects between them kept to a minimum.

Friya used a similar approach, but compared to Faluel her movements were clumsy and more than one string of runes faded due to a single moment of distraction, forcing her to waste time and mana to weave them again from scratch.

The method required less focus compared to Bloom Forge and less power than Necro Forge, but it also required surgical precision and great spatial awareness. The runes had to be kept in a delicate balance that Faluel adjusted every time she added a new pseudo core.

The position of every single rune in the three dimensions had to be kept in line with those of the pseudo core it belonged to and with those it would become a part of.

Her method looked simple at first, but after a few minutes the air above Faluel's head was filled with so many runes that even Solus had trouble recognizing the single strings and visualizing how they needed to be folded to become pseudo cores.

'If not for Friya performing it as well, I would think this technique is something exclusive to the seven heads of the Hydras.' Lith thought. 'Any chance you can record it with the Eyes to study it later?'

'Way ahead of you.' Solus replied. 'The problem is that it's not even a technique, it's something you already achieved the day Faluel explained us the secret of Awakened Forgemastery.

'Yet dismantling and rearranging one single core like you did is a cake walk. Doing it with so many cores at the same time while also destabilizing them on purpose gives me a headache just thinking about it.'

They would have loved to keep admiring the Hydra at work, but even those brief moments of distraction had slowed down their own work and compromised the integrity of their respective partial cores.

"My eyes are down here." Faluel said with a chuckle after noticing their gaze.

A final wave of her hand made the multiple strings of runes form a golden sphere. 

Each enchantment departed from the runes it had in common with the others so that while forming their respective pseudo core, the different strings would naturally rearrange themselves to minimize the repulsive effects.

'That's amazing!' Lith thought. 'She used Necro Forge in a way that allowed her final product to find the same perfect disposition of the runes that Solus will obtain with Bloom Forge.'

'Less gawking, more working!' Solus warned him as his partial core started to crumble.

Lith inwardly cursed at his stupidity and hurried to fix the mess he had made.

Once he was done, he could afford to look at how the others were faring.

Phloria and Quylla had almost completed their part as well. Tista had stored inside the Mouth the spells that formed her pseudo cores and had used the artifact to weave them in her place.

This way, she had been able to focus solely on merging them and keeping them stable.

As for Protector, he was the oldest of Faluel's disciples and had Lith's memories, yet he was also the one with less experience with power cores so he was lagging behind the others.

He carefully weaved every single layer of runes, making sure that the partial core was stable before moving on to the next. The Ernas girls had helped their father to enchant every piece of the War series and were familiar with the process, instead.

"Are you ready for phase two?" Solus asked once all the partial cores were done and stable.

"Give me a second." Tista conjured a small array that kept the fruit of her work in stasis while she changed the spells recorded inside the Mouth.

"Faluel, how come you didn't use the Hands to cast arrays and make your job easier like Salaark suggested?" Quylla asked.

"For the same reason Solus didn't either." The Hydra replied. "The Hands can conjure arrays on their own, but only those attuned to one specific element. The Mouth, instead, can conjure any kind of array but it drains the mana of its wielder."

"Yeah. If I used the Mouth, I would have lacked the mana to craft my partial core and keep the Forgemastering circle we are all using active at the same time." Solus pointed at the magical formation around them.

It compressed huge amounts of world energy for each one of them in order to boost their abilities and create boundaries that kept the different partial cores from clashing with each other.

Without it, eight mages conjuring such powerful and unstable spells inside a confined place would have had disastrous consequences.

"Okay, I'm done." Tista said, using Invigoration to regain her strength.

The members of the group picked up their respective Fury, using its most basic enchantment to replace their energy signature with Lith's again. Once their mana flow matched, Solus put the partial cores in stasis.

Then, she removed the Boundary Array and brought the partial cores close to each other before activating the Confinement Formation.

"Phase two is a go!" She said as she dispelled the stasis fields.

The new array gave Lith full awareness of the position of every rune of every partial core as if he had crafted them all himself. Also, it allowed him to manipulate them freely and kept them stable while he made any change that he saw fit.

Once he was sure that everything was in other and no other correction was needed, Lith had the partial cores converge into a single spot. First, he arranged them so that their matching pieces would fit together like a puzzle and then he merged them into the power core.

Even with the synergy between the partial cores, the repulsive effect between them was still overwhelming and their collective energy mass dwarfed Lith's core.

It would have been an impossible situation if not for the Mouth of Menadion that Solus used to switch the Confinement Formation with the Light Cocoon array.