When the last 'Mack' died, a door made of light appeared at the center of the stadium, but Mack was in no hurry to enter.
With his eyes closed, Mack focused completely on the changes happening in his body.
This time was different from the others. Mack was not only making his body able to contain more essence using the mix of runespells but also actively telling his body where to become better.
His muscles already were harder than steel because of essence, but now they were like this in the natural form, even if Mack had no essence in his body he would still be a monster.
But the thing Mack noticed more was the fine tune with Essence.
It seemed at each evolution he became more and more familiar with it, as if a baby learning how to use his own arms.
Mack noticed his hearing becoming better, his teeth becoming sharper and the hair over his body disappearing, with only his beard and long hair in his head remaining.
A few hours later, the process finally ended and Mack could literally feel in his bones the changes that came with the new evolution.
But one thing bugged Mack.
His eyes.
He didn't need to look at himself to see the changes in his own body, essence could do that for him, and his eyes had become more sharper and incisive like one of a predator, but the color of his eyes changed, from green to opaque red, it was subtle but yet noticeable.
Essence had this kind of power, to chance things to make it more tuned to it
That red eyes were a problem for him in the future. It could easily make him stand out.
But that would be a good help for Mack in the next tests he would do today.
Mack mustered his will using the domain runespell and focused on his eyes, picturing the image of his own green eyes.
But nothing happened.
Then Mack thought about the pigment in his eyes changing.
But nothing happened again.
"It seems will be way harder than I thought"
But that for Mack was only the start.
The 'epiphany' he had during the fight was yet to be fully tested.
Mack deactivated the gravity runespell but kept active the domain runespell.
"Maybe the color of the eyes is too much to begin"
Mack pulled from his memories all times he had used the domain runespell until now and how it was easy for him to blow a head or move something using only his will.
'What am I missing?'
Mack had to test again.
He expanded his domain runespell a bit and tried to levitate like as if he was flying.
Still with eyes closed, Mack paid full attention to how the essence behaved and he could see that small and strong gusts of wind the size of a rice grain pushed him up.
Mack threw a dagger to the front and used his will to make it come back to him and paid full attention to the details.
'Again the wind'
Mack thought about every time he used his will in the domain and he could not believe how dumb he was.
"It seems I still have a lot to learn. Every time until now I was only controlling the air."
Mack pondered over the matter and still didn't understand the principles behind.
"Why the air?"
It was then that Mack remembered the spells that the mages used.
Most of them used fireballs, and the natural fuel for fire was air.
The ones that used earth only made earth walls or stalactites that came from the ground.
"So, it seems they only use the natural properties of the things in an enhanced way"
But Mack still could not understand one thing. If he could control air easily with his domain runespell, why mages didn't use air as their main spells?
"Right! It's their bodies. They don't have the gates opened. Air is free and can be fast and strong or still, but the tendency is to stop. If they used air spells, their output would be very limited, but fire use air and the target as a fuel, its tendency is to burn until it has fuel, they only need to maintain a small spark until it reaches the target, theoretically"
Then Mack thought about the other spells he saw until now and how they behaved until he made his mind.
All spells used the natural laws of things but twisted it a little. Rocks could not appear from nowhere in the air as the same applied to what Mack was trying to do with his body now.
He needed to use the natural laws of the body. The natural laws of the cells.
"Maybe that's why I could evolve in the first place. I always thought of my cells adapting to essence by dying and generating new ones at my marrows"
Now Mack understood why changing the color of his eyes was not working. For that, Mack would need to kill these cells and produce new ones that behaved differently.
~sigh~
"I guess I will need to get used to having red eyes for a while"
Mack was too inexperienced to be able to change the behavior of cells to this deep level of changing the colors of his eyes, adapt to essence seemed hard on paper but in true was extremely easy because was a force method that essence alone could impart its new rules over the cells.
"I guess I'm too green to do what I want, to be able to freely control my body using essence and boost only parts of it like warlocks do. It seems more easy on paper than doing"
With that, Mack deactivated his domain, the tests for today were finished.
He would need to spend a lot of time to achieve what he thought.
It was time to finish this gate and enter the last gate of the tower.
Mack grabbed the other black sword and put on his belt.
One sword on each side.
"I guess I will need to learn to dual welding now"
With that said, Mack took a look at the bodies of the other 'Macks'
~sigh~
And entered the door of light.