The creation of a mana core for a being of flesh was straightforward.
First came the crystalized mini core and then the mana core gathered mana, purified it with the essence of the body and make it grow until it was ready for a breakthrough.
Elemental creatures like Elly worked the other way around.
A natura mana core formed near a mass of free elemental particles and absorbed them slowly until it gave birth to a soul.
That was also a reason elementals were inherently powerful with their own element.
They were not users that used an element, but a living form of the element itself.
What is it for me then? I do not have a real body as I am a Soulwalker.
The bodies that I create are just an imitation of what they would have been in a body of flesh.
A created core would be a physical entity. That was a problem.
As a soul I wanted to return to my soul state. And an ethereal soul was, well, ethereal.
I needed a way for my soul to absorb mana.
The entire time Alexander was in deep thought, he would fly towards the first location that was marked on his map.
A quest he accepted told him to clear a dungeon in the small unnamed forest.
As this territory was surrounded by many small tribes of demons, it was unclaimed land that had no name.
Approximately 2 kilometers away from his destination, Alexander found a small lake that looked magical from above.
This place would suffice for the dumb idea that he was about to try.
His theory to create the mana core had evolved a little bit.
He could throw the ideas from the game he played or novels he read directly into the trash bin in his mind. Every genius thing the protagonists did were unreachable or not desirable for Alexander.
A physical core was out of question. To create an item that would be his core was also too risky.
The best thing he could come up with was the internal sight of the soul.
In many cultivation novels, a step down the line of the ascension towards immortality was the sea of qi.
This imaginary realm. Essentially, I was there before.
It was even said to me, but I did not understand at that time. The void I first heard Haniels voice in and the room we talked in were both my own soul realm.
I did not enter the room again after my second log in. Believing that this was happening for anyone was just pure ignorance.
But why should I need the room as a proxy to log into this world?
I am a soul and can connect to my soul avatar from anywhere I want to.
The other players were forcefully put into a stasis and through their soul, a connection was established with their avatars.
Not questioning there was a mistake on my part.
The void was likely only a void because it was filled with nothing but myself.
The room was a modification that was put into my soul by force.
Forcefully creating something without my knowledge and then making me believe that this is some part of the capsule system.
How could I ignore that there was no capsule system at all?
The was only magic, sure, but even an illusion would have to be created somewhere that the user would notice.
With his newly attained knowledge, Alexander in his soul form that was flying calmly above the lake, entered his own void.
Souls were inherently able to enter their introspection. It was part of their foundation. The only hard thing that close to no one was able to do without being told was to attain soul vision.
Soul vision was only used when the soul the soul tried looking at something.
This concept was hard to grasp for anyone with functioning eyes.
Especially since the void of the soul was empty.
With no eyes and nothing to look at in this void, it was not hard to understand why only a fraction of people have ever gained soul vision.
Slowly Alexander started to remember how the goddess selected his race.
Anything he said was most likely not used as the basis of the race selection.
He moved. And later even opened his eyes.
Blindly moving through the void led to Haniel picking him up and transporting him into the room.
Just a few minutes after entering the game he did something that was very rare.
Not even knowing that he did it.
He was led by his nose the entire time.
The percentile value for choosing his race was likely 100% as he formed his own soul body.
Everything he said or did outside of copying Haniel, was not put into consideration as the basis for his race.
To gain the form of a seraphim was only the cherry on top that the goddess needed to be interested in Alexander.
Alexander was recruited exactly at that moment.
Had the goddess let Alexander be, he would most likely play the game in a normal manner and not care about the development of the entire playerbase.
Now he was the follower of a God. The goddess of creation could order him around and he would do it.
Like the cute little highland wolf that he became afterwards.
Independence meant something different for sure.
But that didn't bother Alexander too much.
Just like the gods of his old world, he did enter a win-win relationship with the goddess of creation.
She was even more at risk than him because the divine spark, once it took root in his soul, it would forever be there.
It could only be extracted when he perished. Not physically but if his soul was destroyed.
The thing was, the location of the divine spark was in Alex's home world.
Not a world where the jurisdiction of the goddess of creation mattered too much.
She risked far more that she let him know. Alexander needed to be killed, for her to get the divine to get destroyed. It was fused with his soul and therefore could not be taken away.
There was always a chance that he would not follow his orders or even completely oppose her.
That was her risk.
Meanwhile Alexander was risking his life. Opposing her and becoming her enemy was something that he did not wish for.
If there ever came the day he would do so, then he needed at least more power to directly affect the world.
Not that he actively wanted to do that, there was always the possibility of things going south.
With his reflection done, Alexander assessed the status of his divine spark.
It was in the center of his soul. Now properly fused with the space it occupied.
The divine spark looked like an open circular sphere that sprouted roots in every direction.
It expanded at a slow rate. Wondering how he could make it grow faster made Alexanders head spin.
This soul realm was his own domain. He was only the consciousness of this realm.
The real and him being one.
So fusing the divine spark with his soul domain would make it completely his own.
Just what was needed to make it grow?
Alexander pondered for a while about his possibilities. He wanted to do it perfectly.
Can't I just stupidly use the mana in my surrounding to suck it in like a black hole and turn it into nourishment for this little divine spark?
Remembering how his mother beckoned the mana around her to gather in her hand, Alex used a weak suction force as if he would breathe in with his soul to gather mana around him.
The mana, without obstruction entered his soul realm and flew to the center as if it was attracted to the divine spark without Alex even needing to do anything.
At first nothing seemed to happen. The sliver of mana swirled around inside of the divine spark.
Suddenly it lost its color and what was left of the mana after it seemed to be processed was a strange liquid.
The processed product was pure in any shape or form. Even mana would have impurities from changing too much or simply by assimilating things.
This speck of pure colorless liquid possessed nothing but pure energy that Alex could use.
The divine spark in itself grew. Although it was only by a tiny amount. Now that Alex was fused to it he could perceive the change.
A wide grin could be seen on Alex's face.
"Don't mind if I am a little bit greedy."
He was now imitating a true black hole. Not that little suction from before.
Alexander sucked in a large portion of mana at once and then stopped.
Testing how fast his divine spark could cleanse the mana and how much pure essence he would get, Alexander started some experiments.
Slowly but surely, he tested his limits. Always increasing the amount of mana entering his soul realm.
The impurity of mana strongly differed from time to time as Alexander sucked in everything without regard.
Sometimes his divine spark would absorb 80% of the mana he took in. The other times only about 30%.
The amount was nor random by any means. It was just that the mana quality in this part of the world was not that great.
He had seen this order of events somewhere before. This strongly resembled the situation his parents were in before. Not having enough natural mana around herself, his mother took in the
mana of the stars.
Everything that had essence in it could be used as fuel for his divine spark.
He just needed to grasp the means to take that additional mana in.
The stars were already known to have mana. That was proven by Alexi's mother.
What else usually held mana? Underground crystals were a resource that humans and dwarfs dug up to extract mana from.
Alexander adjusted the capacity of the black hole he called his mana absorption technique.
Earlier it was an expanding dome that sucked in the mana around him.
It applied a suction force on the surrounding mana to come to him.
The strategy now differed in the application of the dome.
The dome structure was still there, just it now its application changed.
Before, it was transparent and could not be perceived. Only the suction force would be felt.
Now the entire dome turned into a large single solar panel that sucked in the light as well as the air inside the dome.
Every living thing that was inside or would enter the dome foolishly, got eaten and converted into essence.
This was not a fast process because after a while all the natural mana in the vicinity had been sucked up and only slowly regenerated.
But Alex couldn't move away from here. The goddess of creation would not be happy if he foolishly destroyed human lands or took away too much mana, too fast.
All things came in moderation, so Alex took it slow while accepting every bit of essence he got.
This pure liquid that was contained within his divine spark was nearly enough to condense a core out of it.
Just a little bit more.
…
Just a little bit more.
…
Just a teeny tiny bit more.
This continued for three days and three nights.
Alexanders divine spark put evenly pressure of the floating mass of pure essence.
He only needed to start the crystallization process.
But he was greedy. A usual core would be created in the size of a thumb and after countless evolution it would attain baseball size.
Alexanders core by now would be as large as over 10 meters in diameter.
And this, not being a mana core would be even more outrageous.
He did not know why, but after gathering a larger amount of that pure liquid essence and wanting to make a core out of it he somehow knew he could make it big.
Why waste such a prime opportunity.
In these three days and nights, his divine spark spread now through a good third of his souls realm.
The growth of it was exceptional.
He was now finally able to take action and initiate the crystallization of the core.