"Alright, you're gonna have to explain a little bit more than that." Corrin told Ophion.
Ophion stood there for a bit thinking of an appropriate explanation.
"Okay," Ophion started, "think about it like this. In order to preserve my mind and soul, I bound it to my Grimoire by making it my Soul Heart. Creating a Soul Heart is one of the highest possible tiers of magic and thus requires a bit more of a cost than all other magics. Because creating a Soul Heart increases your life span so drastically, you must give up a large part of your life force to make up for it. In my case, my memories constituted my life force, and thus they were what fueled the mana cost to create my Soul Heart. Now, most other Soul Hearts are different from mine. Many just chose to use a random rock to contain their soul until they were lucky enough for someone to chance upon it and refill it. I, on the other hand, had the brilliant idea to incorporate it into my Grimoire." Ophion said triumphantly.
"Alright, I get that the Grimoire is your Soul Heart, but why was it such a brilliant idea to do that?" Corrin asked, confused again.
"Well, my dear Corrin, that is a great question. It serves two main purposes. Primarily, by bounding my soul and mind to my Grimoire, my Grimoire becomes magically preserved similarly to my Soul Heart. That means that it becomes exceedingly hard to destroy. Secondly, it helps to mitigate the main cost of the process of creating a Soul Heart, which is the loss of memories. I figured that once I was reawakened, I wouldn't be too troubled by my loss of memories because I would have everything that I needed to know from my Grimoire. By making my Grimoire my Soul Heart, something unforeseen happened. Instead of the entire Grimoire being open to read, only the pages that I wrote up to when my memory cuts off are available to read freely. After that, the pages are like a solid brick and won't move. My theory is that the more that you charge the Grimoire the more pages will unlock."
Corrin began pacing around the white space that they were both still in, thinking.
"Alright," said Corrin, "so how do you give me this rune?"
"That's…where things get a little complicated. Not me giving you the rune, that's the easy part. The difficult part is…well…do you remember when I said the rune would basically rebuild your body?"
"Uhhh…yeah?"
"Well, let's just say it's not a very pleasant experience, and it's not a short one either. Take it from me, I've gone through it." Ophion said bitterly.
"Oh, fantastic. That's great, just great. Really splendid. More pain! I was really getting tired of not being in pain you know. I'm just itching for some agony!" Corrin spat.
"Oh…uh…I…uhhh." Ophion was a bit frazzled by Corrin's response.
"Whatever dude. Screw it. Just get it over with." Corrin said while shaking his head.
"…Got it. I need you to take your shirt off. The Daeman Rune goes right over your heart."
"Daeman Rune?" Corrin asked while cocking an eyebrow and taking his shirt off.
"Daeman. Combination of Daelin and Human. Thought it was pretty clever myself. And it sounds pretty cool. Better than 'hybrid' or something like that." Ophion said in the way he spoke when he was proud of himself.
Once Corrin had taken off his shirt, Ophion outstretched his hands similarly to the statue of the Daelin and closed his eyes. What looked like golden particles of light began to materialize all around Ophion. Corrin assumed that this was the Gold mana that Ophion had told him about earlier.
After a while, the Gold mana began to coalesce in a bright golden ball above his palms. When all of the particles had been absorbed into the ball, it began to stretch and morph. It soon took the shape of a long hexagon, with the middle four corners connected to almost form an 'X' and in the middle of that was a '+' symbol. It looked something like this:
/\
\/|
+|
/\|
\/
Ophion opened his eyes when the rune was finished forming. He walked over to Corrin and moved his palms to be behind the rune. He slowly pushed the rune, as if it was resisting attaching itself to Corrin, right over where his heart was. As the rune touched Corrin's skin, he let out a hiss while gritting his teeth and clenching his fists. It felt like getting branded.
Eventually, the searing pain stopped, and Ophion lifted his eyes from the rune to look at Corrin. Corrin had already begun to sweat and was breathing labored breaths. Ophion put his hand on Corrin's shoulder which made Corrin flinch.
He then told him in the most soothing voice he could muster: "You've done perfectly so far Corrin. I wish I could say that the worst is over, but I can't. That was just the beginning. I'll see you on the other side."
Ophion patted his shoulder and before Corrin could say anything Ophion touched the rune and his whole body began to glow a bright golden light like the sun. Then, it was like Ophion's whole body was sucked into the rune on Corrin's chest.
Suddenly, he was back in the room, staring at the statue, his shirt where it was before like nothing happened.
"That's weird, I don't feel any- AHHHHH FUUUUUUUUUUU-!"
Corrin fell to his knees screaming in pain. It first started in his heart, then moved to his inner organs, then his arms, then his legs. This was his muscle density rapidly increasing. Then it moved to his ears and he felt like they were bleeding. Then it moved to his eyes and he thought they were going to explode. Then his tongue and nose felt like he had tasted and smelled the foulest substance known to man. Finally, it moved to his brain, and Corrin just collapsed into a sobbing mess in a fetal position on the ground. He felt like he was going to die. He had no idea how he was still alive after the pain he was experiencing. His brain felt like it was melting, rebuilding itself, then repeating the process over and over again.
And then, just as suddenly as it had come, there was nothing. Corrin lay sprawled out on the floor just looking at the tiled ceiling in a daze. He was drenched in sweat, but there was no residual pain, save for a small headache. Corrin blinked a few times just to make sure he could still move.
"Hey buddy! Still alive?" Ophion asked a little too jubilantly for Corrin's liking.
"The next time I see you, you're fucking dead, Ophion." Corrin snarled.
"…I will admit I may have underestimated the toll the rune would take on your body considering that I was merging with you instead of you just becoming a Daeman. But on the bright side, it definitely worked. You're a Daeman now, and you can use magic."
'Yeah…just…great…" Corrin whispered right before passing out.
******
Corrin woke up in the same position he had fallen asleep in, sprawled on the ground in front of the Daelin statue.
He groggily got up from the cold tile and took in his surroundings for the first time as a Daeman. If he focused on his eyes hard enough, it was like he could zoom in on things in the distance. In this case, he could get a close up of the crevices between the tiles on the wall while standing 15 feet away.
"That's…actually very useful." Corrin thought to himself.
"Now, let's see if that brutal agony was worth it." Corrin said out loud as a devilish grin appeared on his face.
He sauntered up to the statue and picked up the Grimoire. It was surprisingly light despite its size, probably due to Corrin's newfound physical strength.
Corrin practically ripped off the cover when he opened the book due to his excitement. However, his excitement promptly vanished when he read more and more of the beginning of the Grimoire.
"Damn it. I don't know what I was expecting but this is going to take way longer than I thought."
"I hope you didn't think you were going to have the ability to blow up the continent as soon as you opened the book, right Corrin?" Ophion said to Corrin in his head.
Corrin was shocked at first to hear Ophion's words inside his head instead of out loud, but quickly recovered.
"Of course not," he responded, "but I was hoping things would take a little less…time. Even the basics seem like they're going to take dozens of hours for me to get the hang of." Corrin stated defeatedly.
"Hahahhahahhaha," Ophion burst out laughing, "Oh Corrin, if you are upset about the time investment the foundations take, you'll break down in tears once you learn about the higher tier magics."
"Whatever." Corrin responded, clearly not very pleased with Ophion's laughter at his expense.
After reading through what he could in the Grimoire, Corrin realized that all he could learn now was the basics of Runic Magic. He was hoping to get right into Natural Magic, but it seemed that that would take a little longer than expected.
Looking at what he could learn with Runic Magic, he was a little disheartened.
The time investment required just to understand the foundations of Runic Magic seemed…extravagant. Before he could even practice forming runes and enchanting things, he had to first be able to circulate mana throughout his body and then externalize it. Only after that could he focus on the practice of manipulating mana and forming runes. The problem was that each one of those steps would take several days at the least of constant practice to reach a beginner level. At least, that's what Ophion told Corrin.
Realistically, at the beginner level in Runic Magic, Corrin would already be average among adult mages who used Chanting Magic. However, neither Ophion nor Corrin knew that.
"How do I even start with this stuff, Ophion?" Corrin asked while squinting at the pages in front of his face, struggling to comprehend what they meant.
Ophion contemplated for a moment before responding: "The first thing you need to do is to form your mana heart and mana veins. I'm not going to lie to you, this is quite a daunting task and is going to take a lot of time and effort to get right. The main reason why humans can't do Natural Magic like Daelin and magical creatures can from birth is because they both have an actual organ that functions as a mana heart. However, humans have to form their own out of mana."
"What's it do?"
"Think about it like this. A mana heart is like a container for all of your personal mana and is necessary to pump it to the rest of your body through mana veins in order for it to be manipulated. Mana veins also work in the opposite way since they are what brings ambient mana into your body and to your mana heart. There, it becomes converted into personal mana. These are the central processes to circulating mana. You first push your personal mana throughout all of your mana veins and out of your body which strengthens your body, mana veins, and your mana control. Then, you absorb ambient mana through your mana veins to increase the size, purity, and power of your mana heart. This is the circulation of mana. This is not only necessary to increase the amount of personal mana at your disposal, but also to create your mana zone."
"Okay, I think I understand, but explain what a mana zone is."
Corrin began pacing around the room as Ophion began to explain: "Your mana zone is the immediate area around your body where you have absolute control over your personal mana, and a greatly enhanced ability to manipulate ambient mana. When you first form it, it won't look like much, almost like a light aura of white around your body. However, as time goes on and you circulate more mana, that aura will not only thicken, but expand beyond just your body. When I was 25, my mana zone went about a foot outside of any given part of my body. I think that with my training your mana zone should get much larger much quicker."
Corrin nodded his head. "How do I start forming my mana heart and veins?"
"I'd say the first thing you should do is go to someplace that's more mana rich than here. I'm not sure where exactly you entered this realm, I'll call it the Workshop from now on since that's what I used to call it, but it's probably richer in ambient mana than here."
"Yeah, I entered through a cave behind a waterfall."
"Yep, that'll do it."
"Okay so…how do we leave. I should just bring the Grimoire right?"
"Oh, I guess I forgot to mention this. Remember how I said this was basically my own personal dimension/workshop? Well, now it's yours. All you have to do to leave or enter is to focus on your Daeman rune. Since we're leaving the dimension, you should focus on the last place you were before you entered here. I'd leave the Grimoire here for safe keeping."
Corrin nodded his head in response. He closed his eyes and began imagining looking at the back of the waterfall from the inside of the cave, while also thinking really hard about his Daeman rune.
After a little while, he opened his eyes and was greeted with the same image he had been imagining moments ago.