Corrin had spent the rest of that day, plus two more days, solely pushing mana towards his heart without condensing it. This meant that the mana density in Corrin's body was very high, he just had no way to actually use the mana. This was mainly due to Ophion's constant pumping of mana into Corrin's body at all times, which ordinarily wouldn't happen.
Corrin decided that today was the day he was going to condense his mana heart, and he was going to keep at it until he was finished.
"So Ophion, how do I know when my mana heart is finished?"
"I'd say a good reference point would be when you feel your control of mana rise exponentially. That, and you should be able to actually feel your mana heart and see that it's about a quarter of the size of your fist.
"Alright, got it."
Corrin settled into his usual spot and got to work. He could feel the heavy presence of mana in his body especially around his heart, and he focused directly in the center of his heart. Instead of pushing the mana in his body, he began to pull it, similarly to how he pulled in mana through his Daeman rune. Slowly, the particles began to congregate where he was focusing, lumping up with each other to form what looked like a big, multicolored globule of mana. The more mana he dragged in, the larger it got.
After he was happy with the amount of mana he had dragged in, he then switched from pulling to pushing. He pushed the mana together from all sides in order to condense it. It eventually started to work, but the globule was shrinking instead of just forming a ball. He kept pushing and pushing until it wouldn't shrink anymore, and he was left with a small ball of Gold mana that was an eighth of the size of the globule he started with.
"What the hell… why is it… so small?" he asked Ophion in between labored breaths.
"Your mana heart is just purely condensed mana. That means you have to condense a lot of mana. Again, a lot of mana. What you've done so far is good, but you're only a fraction of the way there.
Corrin sighed as he got back to work pulling in more particles of mana together, this time with the small orb of Gold mana as the focus point. This actually made it easier to pull mana in, which made Corrin very happy. Then he repeated the condensing process once he was happy with the size of the globule and he was met with a small increase in the size of the Gold mana orb.
He repeated those processes about a dozen times before a wave of what could only be described as euphoria washed over him and he could physically feel the mana around him, almost like it was alive.
Corrin, for the first time in a while, felt truly alive. He felt… powerful. His mana heart was exactly how Ophion had described it. It was about a quarter of the size of his fist, and it made him feel like he could control all the mana in his body.
Corrin wasn't exactly sure how to make his mana veins, but he suddenly came up with an idea.
With his devilish grin back on his face, he focused on his heart instead of his mana heart. He felt around the heart with his mana and looked for the pathways that took fresh blood away from the heart and eventually formed arteries. He picked one, gathered a significant amount of mana from his mana heart, and began coating the pathway with a layer of mana and then eventually the arteries that were connected to it. He repeated that for the remaining pathways that took blood away, and then moved onto those that brought blood to the heart. After a few hours, Corrin's entire circulatory system had gained another use: to circulate mana.
Just like Ophion had said, Corrin had created his mana veins. Except, his were a little different. He had created two kinds: those that brought ambient mana into his mana heart, and those that brought mana from his mana heart out.
"Corrin…holy shit…how did you even come up with that idea," Ophion said excitedly.
Corrin's response came in the form of maniacal laughter, and then passing out on his rock.
******
When Corrin woke up, he could feel the difference in his body. It had adapted to the new mana veins and arteries and had already begun circulating mana while he slept. Corrin could already see his mana zone when he looked closely at himself, something that Ophion said should have been impossible. Something else that was way outside of Ophion's expectations was that Corrin's mana zone was Golden instead of White.
"I haven't seen anything like this… I haven't even seen a Daelin with a Golden mana zone! Stop breaking the rules of the world Corrin!" Ophion shouted at him.
"You're just jealous, calm down." Corrin responded.
Ophion just responded with a harumph and left him alone.
Corrin made it back to the spot under a tree that he had been calling home for the past week or so. It consisted of a bed of leaves to sleep on and a smaller bed of leaves to keep his fruit and berries on.
Corrin sat down to eat breakfast and contemplated if he should try to manually circulate mana. He munched on a fruit that resembled a blue apple which tasted like oranges as he focused on his mana heart.
Corrin attempted to speed up the processes of mana circulation individually and he could increase the speed for both, however he figured it wouldn't make a difference in the long run since the fixed speed was good enough. This was both a good and bad thing for Corrin. It was bad because he couldn't really speed up the growth of his mana heart or mana zone if he just focused on doing that. It was good, though, because he would constantly be circulating mana without even thinking about it, which meant that he would constantly be getting stronger, just at a fixed pace. Overall, Corrin was pretty happy with how everything had turned out.
Now, it was time to start learning runes.
Corrin finished his meal with a handful of what looked like red blueberries that tasted like bananas before teleporting to the Workshop. There, he walked up to the statue and picked up the Grimoire.
"Hey Ophion, is there a way to edit the form of this room? Like make a table appear or something like that? I figured there's a possibility since it's magic and all."
"Yes, now that you have a mana heart, you can interact with the heart of this realm and ask it to edit the structure of the room as you desire. The statue is the heart of the realm, and you just need to ask it nicely for what you wish. You should know, though, that the statue can't just make things appear, it creates what you desire from the room itself."
"Interesting."
Corrin placed his hand on the statue and asked it out loud: "Dear statue, heart of the Workshop, could you please make me a nice table with a chair as well as a bed? Thank you."
The room grumbled a bit and Corrin looked around. The floor behind Corrin began to look like a liquid, then it began rising out of the ground to form a long column. The top of the column then stretched out and formed a square tabletop. More of the liquid floor formed and then spawned a comfortable looking chair in front of the table.
After the table and chair had been formed, the liquid floor began to make a bed, but Corrin became disappointed very quickly. Instead of making a nice, soft bed like he hoped, the statue had basically just made him a stone bedframe.
"Damn, guess I'm sticking with the leaves for now." Corrin thought to himself before turning back to the statue and thanking it again.
Corrin walked over to the newly formed table with the Grimoire under his arm. He put the Grimoire on the table and sat down before opening it up to the first page. The first page of the Grimoire basically acted as a tutorial for the basics of Runic Magic and it was pretty similar to what Ophion had explained before.
It basically said to first form your mana heart and mana veins, then practice the manipulation of mana within your mana zone. Once you get the hang of that, start to form shapes with your mana. Once you are really comfortable with forming shapes, forming actual runes out of mana is the next step.
Corrin figured that his mana zone would be strong enough by the next day for him to be able to effectively practice. For now, he was going to analyze what was in the Grimoire.
"Ophion, did you write the Grimoire?"
"Well…hahaha…I know that I said it was mine but…let's just say I had heavy inspiration from my Daelin friends." Ophion stated with a guilty chuckle.
"Right…I see." Corrin said shaking his head.
After he felt that he had sufficiently understood the tips the Grimoire gave for mana manipulation, he became interested in what runes he would be able to learn off the bat.
From what he could tell, he could only learn the basic mana runes plus a few activation and command runes. The mana runes dictated what kind of mana would be used for the enchantment or spell, the activation runes dictated what needed to happen for the enchantment or spell to activate, and the command runes dictated what the enchantment or spell would do.
The mana runes he could learn were:
[FIRE]
[WATER]
[EARTH]
[WIND]
[LIGHT]
[DARK]
[WHITE]
These didn't surprise Corrin because he had assumed that the runes for the mana types Ophion had told him about would be the first things he learned.
The activation runes he could learn were as follows:
[ALWAYS]
[CHANNEL]
[SWING DOWN]
These didn't surprise Corrin either because he had already heard Ophion mention them when he was initially explaining how to make enchantments. Corrin thought the same thing about the command runes.
For those, he could learn:
[ABSORB]
[UNTIL FULL]
[FORM ORB]
[CONTROL ORB]
[FORM DAGGER]
The only thing he wasn't expecting was the [FORM DAGGER] rune, but he could think of a few uses for it. Overall, Corrin wasn't really disappointed with what he could learn. He now had plenty of stuff to do to occupy his time. Even better, his mouth was already salivating at the thought of the taste of cooked meat. He really couldn't wait to be able to make fire.
Once he was done looking over the runes, he turned to the last page he could read. On this page was something that looked like two thinconcentric circles, and they were the only things on the page.
"Ophion, what do you make of this?"
"When I first saw it, I had no clue, but my hypothesis is that it tracks your progress in absorbing life energy. I'm guessing the more stuff you kill, the more the space in between the circles fills up."
Corrin nodded his head in agreement.
"We'll test that theory soon enough."