After walking a little bit longer, Lucas reached the outside again, feeling the sunshine on his skin, he was glad he made it out. The soldier had shocked faces when they saw him covered in green blood. "Hahaha, you did it didn't you?" Venion looked a lot more enthusiastic than the soldiers. They were playing with some cards while Venion was reading a book when he reached the surface. He was happy that his pupil fulfilled his task and wanted to reward him even. "Tell me, what happened?"
While he was resting Lucas told him what he had been through the last couple of hours. The darkness of the cave, the spider, and the fight was a story that brought the soldiers a lot of uneasiness. They were scared to explore the mine now that they saw what it could do. Mages, even beginning ones, were in theory stronger than any soldier. So the fact that Lucas could barely escape alive meant that they didn't stand a chance. But they weren't completely scared because Venion was still here and was the bastion of hope in this situation.
"So you killed one of the steel spiders? Fantastic, hahaha, tell me, Lucas, you deserve a reward for completing your task, what do you want?" Venion looked very happy at Lucas' success. "Can we first heal up my leg?" Noticing that he still had a wound on his leg Venion used a Light spell to heal up the wound before listening to Lucas' request.
'There are multiple things we could ask of him now, depending on how generous he is, we could gain a ton.'
'What should we ask for? Higher leveled dark runes, a better tome about the monsters, an instruction book on how the circulations work, how to create a mental sphere, there's just too much we could ask.'
'Start with what we need now, even if we know how we can circulate our core, that won't help us in that place, we need something more practical for now.'
"In the cave, it was extremely dark, I couldn't see anything without the torch, is there a spell to see in the dark?"
"Excellent question Lucas, seeing in the dark has always been a problem for most beginner mages. It took me some work, but I gained this spell from my own family. Using the runes of fire we can create lenses for our eyes to see different things. Using this spell you won't exactly see in the dark, but you'll be capable of seeing heat signatures and warmth. Thought this spell is considered useless by most mages, you can ask for one additional thing.", normally Venion wouldn't give away that information, no matter how useless.
'At least now I'll see without giving away my own position.'
It wasn't much, but he could at least navigate the darkness now, though it did take some energy from his core. Luckily it was a one-time effect that lasted for a very long time, so he could recover the lost energy before the spell went out. It did however limit his vision to only see the heat something gave off, so looking for colors or specific objects would be a lot more difficult. The downsides didn't outweigh the advantages, the choice was obvious. After learning the spell Lucas was thinking about the spider and whether it even gave off any warmth, but remembering the warm bloody shower he pushed it to the back of his mind.
"So, what do we now, sir mage?" one of the soldiers asked, wishing he could just go back to the mansion. "Isn't it obvious? Lucas is still training and he needs to get another lesson. This time we'll all go inside and take out every spider we find. Simple, right?"
'Now that I think about it, I do feel compelled to go back.'
'So the conditions of the orders need to be followed, but to what extend?'
'We'll have to clear out a few other mines as well, let's try to figure out how this contract works later on.'
"Euhm, yes, sir." The soldier looked a bit distressed and clearly wanted to avoid the mine now that they knew what it contained. Lucas was still reciting the runes to remember them correctly, he didn't bother cleaning himself after hearing he had to kill another one. The blood started to dry up a bit, and his skin started to look like dirt that was dried up, but green of course.
Thinking back on what he had accomplished the ethical question of taking a life wasn't even a struggle. 'Only when you're living in peace and haven't fought for your life do you think that they deserve any kindness'
He wasn't sure how he felt about that, especially since his first potential targets were the soldiers. If he felt the same way about killing humans, would he still be human himself? Forcing his mind on the problem at hand, he started to create a few more battle plans. When he was standing still in front of the spider and could barely come up with any strategies he knew that preparing them was a necessity.
"Mentor, is there a spell that can make my sword stronger or sharper?"
"Hmm, I don't know, using a sword while you're a mage already seems a bit strange, so I would rather you just use spells. Though, I guess you're still too weak to actually fight with spells. Hmm, there is a spell that might come in handy now, although it is very dangerous, would you still like to try it out?"
Nodding in affirmation, Lucas wanted every tool that could help him fight against those monsters. The spell Venion was talking about wasn't actually a spell that you had to speak any runes for.
"When you extract a bit of mana from your core and make sure that it has a bigger earth compound you can let it flow throughout your muscles, strengthening them. When the energy you extract has an elemental compound it has to be limited and perfectly controlled, or you can set yourself on fire or cut every vein in your body. You also can't use any runes or the energy would manifest itself, creating stones within your body. Knowing the risks, are you willing to potentially cripple yourself in order to gain a bit of muscle strength?"
Lucas didn't answer, rather, he was thinking about how the energy came out of the core. When he said a certain rune, the core recognizes it and will send appropriate energy. 'So the core must either hold the energy in the forms of different elements or has a special energy that doesn't contain any element.'
'According to what Venion said, the energy is elementless in the beginning and we give it meaning, so there has to be pure mana in the core'
Focusing on his core he tried to visualize his theories, he said the beginner rune for every element, except dark, to see how the core reacted. After seeing that the core didn't use a different outlet and the reaction time was exactly the same, he concluded that it must contain strange energy without any elements.
The only question was how to get that energy to become charged with the earth element and let it flow through his muscles. He could feel it as a separate organ, but it wasn't as easily influenced as the lungs where you can manually breathe. It was more like the heart, you could lower your heartbeat by calming down or increasing it by breathing heavily, but there was no direct control.
'The core wasn't influenced by the lungs as much as the mind. Using the mind we chose which runes we want and speak them aloud, but by the time the runes are spoken the spell already starts to form.'
'This must mean that the energy was already on its way to one of the gateways of the body. The core must react to our intentions first before the spoken runes create the form as intended.'
'So the mind creates the spell, but the mouth confirms the idea and forms it?'
Using his willpower he sends intentions toward the core to test his idea out. 'Earth energy, earth energy, …'. After a second or two the core started to exhibit changes from its unmoving state. It started to send energy that seemed to be charged with earth, the energy didn't have any place to go yet, so the center of his body started to feel heavy. Lucas couldn't breathe as well and it felt like his heartbeat was also slowing down. 'Move to the muscles' realizing that he needed to be more clear in his intentions or suggestions he gave a few more details. First, he moved it to all the muscles, making his heart feel stuck. Regretting his decision he gave certain muscles to move towards and stopped the energy from being produced. Yet the heaviness stayed and started to hurt him.
'We need to get rid of this energy, now!'
'The energy is in our muscles, not the pathways, we can't just create a spell with that energy, we need to do what Venion wants!'
Forcing the energy to spread all over his body, he started to feel tired and heavy, as if he was carrying giant boulders on his back. But his muscles were indeed stronger, though Lucas could feel he was a bit off. There weren't any runes that gave a fixed form, only his own intentions, so as long as those are precise and steady it would work. The energy had already stopped production, so after waiting a few minutes the rest dissipated into the muscles. The boulders turned into stones, which eventually turned into grains of sand. With the dissipating heaviness, his strength was also recessing.
"You were close, but it looks like you used too much elemental power, try again."
Lucas sat in a meditative state and started once more. Letting the energy leave the core wasn't that difficult. It was the constant strain on his mind to repeat the same thing over and over. He needed to be exact, one mistake and he could create stones in his heart. To avoid it he needed to be calm, collected, the embodiment of rest. Meditating was the best way to calm yourself down, so after a while, he started to spread the energy once more. The heaviness decreased, and the flow was also a lot smoother.
Once he was done, Lucas felt like he could lift twice as much. Venion was looking towards Lucas who sat in a meditative state, feeling proud he could make such a talented mage. 'He truly is one of a kind, any beginner mage has trouble reaching this level so early. Only the young geniuses could do this so quickly. It seems we have a budding genius in our midst, he'll be the perfect test subject'
Lucas stood up and was very happy he could succeed in his little experiment. It wasn't perfect and it still took a lot of time, but Lucas was confident that after a few more attempts, he could use it in live combat.
'So the trick was to not overthink it, focussing all your attention on it would make you pay precious time on details, while if you just let it flow like normal it would be fine.'
'Just like if you focus on breathing it would get disrupted, we merely need to let it go and let it do its own thing.'
"It seems I've underestimated you once again, you really do have a high talent for magic. I guess the rumor about Light Cores being extremely proficient and talented in magic might hold some truth."
Hearing Venion's remark Lucas had a question dominating his mind, "Mentor, if the dark is the antithesis of light does that mean that Dark Cores are inept in magic?"
"Hmmm, were you not paying attention during my lessons? Dark cores don't exist, even if they did, the Order of Light would have already hunted them down. Although, if it were to exist, I couldn't tell you what it would do, I would need to research someone with such a core."
"But they don't exist, right?"
"That's right, as far as I know, Dark cores are a mere legend, unlike complete light cores, they do exist, but are extremely rare. Now that's enough chatting, I assume you're ready for another trip inside the mines?"
Lucas showed his resolve and readiness by grabbing new supplies from the wooden construction.