Aric walked down the tilled roads of the academy with a small porcelain bottle in hand and a dazed expression covering his face.
The bottle contained a pair of basic fire convergence pills of the lowest grade, he retrieved them from the white pavilion using his token , as a white robe ,he receives such a batch once a month.
He walked down those roads with a wandering mind, he had a stiff smile covering his face whenever he remembered the Oldman praising him for his strong will, and felt the dark essence wandering around his heart.
He couldn't understand the events that had occurred, how come the chaos crystal thingy is able to digest a seal into its building block as if it was some sort of an arcane drug .
That shouldn't be possible, an arcane seal carries the will of its maker, and dealing with it is extremely hard, except if you have the assistance of an expert who is far stronger than the seal's creator, or through the use of a high rank arcane structure, it can be said to be an impossible act to replicate, yet it had just happened in front of Aric's eyes.
He inspected the dark essence wandering around the crystal, and he felt complete submission from it; he had the ability to control it however he liked.
He felt suspicious and afraid, dark essence was the most notorious of the bunch, it had a very prominent corrosive and corruptive characteristic, and it was extremely hard to handle.
Aric thus decided to get rid of the essence within him in the shortest time possible.
Until he got to understand the crystal's functions and uses, he would rather not deal with such a dangerous substance such as dark essence.
Aric rushed toward the hills where he trained the chaos Trinity art, he climbed to a rather auspicious place and checked around for anyone in his surroundings.
When he was certain that nobody was on the hill, he stretched his arm outwards and closed his eyes.
After that he tapped into the essence revolving around the chaos crystal and urged it to travel up his Lung's and toward his arm.
The speed at which the dark essence traveled was low, it seemed heavy and complex, which was obvious considering its source was that oldman who appeared to be quite the expert.
When the essence began to travel up his arm, it paled considerably as if it grew older by a couple of years in seconds, and Aric felt intense cold radiating from it, it felt like it was dropped into the depths of a purgatory of death and cold.
This feeling didn't last long however, before the essence seeped slowly off of his finger in the form of a very thin gas.
The moment it left his arm, the essence sank downward and seeped into the ground, and the moment it did, the surrounding forest and trees all turned pale and dry in seconds .
The grass turned into pitch black sprouts of ash and the flowers and vegetation all withered up completely.
The surrounding temperature dropped a couple of degrees and the entire place suddenly turned awfully eerie and silent.
Seeing this, Aric paled and didn't hesitate a second before he turned around and rushed down the hills and back to the dorms.
After several breaths of time, a handful of experts appeared around the primature of the forest, and they inspected the surrounding hills for the source of the dark aura that Appeared but nothing was found.
As for students roaming the hills, there was a handful, among Aric and a bunch , they were all checked and inspected but nothing was found.
It was thus considered an unsolved mystery as to where the aura came from, and was thus accepted as one of the wonders of the mystic, and left in a shelf as a notice that will soon be forgotten.
....
After being inspected thoroughly by guards while descending the hills, Aric went back to the dorms, and he finally had time to inspect himself.
His arm still appeared slightly pale and cold, his heart was beating slower than usual, and he had a splitting headache.
His chaos essence seemed to have lessened by a bit as well, of the five dots of essence he previously had , four remained .
He was astounded at that and thought " chaos essence can digest materials ! and in such a small amount of time at that ?!! "
Aric wasn't mad at the lost of chaos essence, it took about an hour to get as much essence as he've lost today, but to digest materials, it was an excruciating labor , it took several days of chipping and slowly crushing materials and using it at the same time, a time consuming and wasteful process that results in the loss of a good percentage of the medicine anyways.
If he was able to digest pills and materials so well using the chaos essence, he was more than willing to do so.
Aric looked down at the bottle of pills he held in his hand, and the booklet in his robe, and he couldn't help wonder, what effect the combination of both would bring about.
He then decided to try, and ran down the hill at top speed and back into his room, he closed his door behind him and sat on the bed.
He first reviewed the art of crimson dawn, and found that it was a handful of mantras and signs to recognize when handling flame essence.
Compared to the chaos Trinity art , it was so much simpler and easy to understand, it took Aric an afternoon to mostly grasp.
He then decided to sleep the night and wake up early at dawn to train the art , at the time it was most suited for.
At dawn the next day , Aric woke up, and decided to train at his room, in case of any signs appearing while doing so, his room's walls would provide minimal privacy.
He sat cross legged, he laid the two pills in front of him, then brought one to his mouth and swallowed it whole.
The moment the pill entered his mouth, it melted into a flow of essence that descended down his throat and towards his heart.
Normally, essence would scatter around the body in random directions, and it was up to the practitioner's to condense it and digest it into its different ingredients, disregard the useless and put the rest to use.
But this time, there seemed to be a pulse pulling at the essence towards his heart, and the material didn't seem to hold a candle of resistance to it.
Aric watched as the essence slowly descended towards the chaos crystal and the moment it made it there, he spactated as the remaining four drops of chaos essence launched at the block of materials and started breaking it down into its different types.
The process lasted much longer this time, since the amount of essence within the pill was much greater than the amount in the blood seal.
And although the blood seal was the work of an expert, at the end of the day he was laying it on a mortal, using too much essence would do more harm than good.
It took about two hours for the chaos essence to completely digest the block of essence, and all that remained of it was two drops only.
And now around the chaos crystal, Aric was able to see a ring of revolving fire essence , pure and vibrant slowly revolving around his heart.
The impurities were all released from his body through sweat and breathing , and all that remained now was pure, ready to use essence.
Aric sat there empty of words, he was so excited and couldn't believe the sight he beheld .
" ...This is too godly! " Aric sighed and his fist clenched so tight his palms became pale as snow.
He was suppressed and abused for most his life, and it seems heavens felt pity for him and sent him a tool to pay back what needs to be settled.