As Feyat continued to stare at Kayn with interest while Lydia was crying, he decided to let them rest for the night in the same room as he could tell Lydia wouldn't get any work done with her current mental state, but he had stipulations.
"Lydia, tonight you may rest to recover to your peak. If we discover you healed the boy, we will punish him even more tomorrow. However, I will allow you to use any tonics or potions you have in your bag on him. Also, this building is sealed on the outside with several magic negation stones, so your communication crystals will not work. Rest up, you have a lot of work to do tomorrow."
Feyat waved as he took the torturer out of the room with him after removing Lydia's bindings. Lydia immediately got up and ran next to Kayn.
Kayn looked miserable. His arms were drenched in blood leaking from the four long wounds on each arm. His finger tips and toes were pouring out more blood from the nail beds and his breathing was ragged. She could even see blood coming from his mouth since he was clenching his teeth so hard that his gums had started to bleed.
Taking out several tonics and a healing potion that in total would cost several platinum coins, she began to pour them down his throat. He couldn't swallow them himself, so she decided to disobey a tiny bit and use tier 0 water magic to make it flow smoothly down his throat. Using that small amount of mana wouldn't affect her by the morning.
After she ensured every tonic and the healing potion went smoothly into Kayn's system, she finally undid his bindings since she didn't want him moving during the process. There was a small bed in the corner of the room that she carried him to, laying him down. After she laid him down, she wrapped his wounds with bandages as the bleeding hadn't stopped yet.
The bed had no pillow so she sat at the head of the bed and placed Kayn's head on her lap. She ran her fingers through his hair and began to cry again.
'I'm so sorry child. I've failed you as your master. I never meant to involve you in things like this. If I had known someone was targeting me, I would have never brought you along.'
She didn't believe anyone would target their party for Kayn. She never revealed his name, only she knew who he really was, and only she knew why they gathered at a village outside of the capital.
But never in her wildest dreams did she think someone would target her to utilize her organ transplant spell she had just completed a few months ago and informed the royal counselors about. Now she knew that there was at least one counselor that was a traitor and acted for their own purposes with the information that was submitted to them. None of her past spells had drawn this kind of attention though.
Due to the travel and the day's events, her mind was over exhausted. Lydia ended up falling asleep while Kayn lay unconscious on her lap.
…
Lydia woke up in the middle of the night to a sweating and shivering Kayn. He was extremely hot to the touch and her mind took a minute to realize what was happening.
'Dammit! I forgot that those who don't have a core can't safely use health potions due to the influx of mana into the body as it has no core to flow through!'
"Kayn! Kayn! Wake up!" Lydia shouted as she began to shake Kayn trying to get his consciousness to come back from the torture he had experienced. As Kayn woke up, he began to scream due to the pain and heat running through his body. He felt like his entire body was about to explode.
"Master, what's happening?" Kayn asked in between shouts, he was about to pass out again due to the pain, but his master was the one who woke him up so she must have done so for a purpose.
"Kayn, I'm so sorry, this is all my fault. You have an influx of mana in your body due to the health potion I fed you. Since you have no core, the mana is just running rampant through your entire body. I will do what I can to help you remove it, I promise I won't let you get injured more. Just stay still."
Lydia needed to inject her mana into his body in order to convert the rampant mana into her own in order to remove it, but this process would also risk poisoning Kayn with her mana as the spell wasn't used for healing normally. It would take several hours to remove it properly.
When Lydia was about to put both of her hands onto his exposed stomach, Kayn suddenly sat up with a grunt and put his hand out to stop her.
"Hold on Master, I have an idea. Please don't help unless I pass out again."
Lydia looked at Kayn in worry, she knew that her disciple had ideas outside of the norm, but this was risking his life! She decided to let him carry out his idea, but was ready to stop him at the slightest sign of his condition worsening. Kayn sat up into a lotus position and formed his hands into a circle over his diaphragm to help better visual what he wanted to do.
'Maybe, just maybe, if I can move the mana in my body all to my middle dantian, I'll be able to compress it into a core. Also, if I can use the mana in its current state, my core will theoretically contain attributes for every element, with even stronger affinities for my racial and inborn elements.'
Kayn thought to himself as he proceeded to use all of his experiences from the past year and his willpower to move the mana in his body to his dantian just above his diaphragm.
He focused the mana to the middle of the circle made by his hands and pictured a spinning sphere much like black hole, sucking in all the mana. As the mana began to move, the pain moved from his extremities to where his hands were placed.
Lydia could see the bloating of Kayn's upper abdomen and his discomfort reaching new levels, but just when she was about to interrupt the process Kayn looked her straight into the eyes as if begging her not to interrupt.
"Please move to the other side of the room Master, I don't know what is about to happen." Kayn urged Lydia through gritted teeth as he felt like he was on the precipice of exploding.
Lydia had learned to trust her disciple's crazy ideas over the last year, so even though she was worried she immediately went to the other side of the room and erected a barrier of water in front of her just high enough so she could still see over it.
'This child is crazy; he must to be trying to force condense his core. If it was that easy countless others would have done it in the past. Not to mention he's just 8! Luckily, I'm still close enough that my spells can still reach him if needed. It will just be much more uncomfortable for him.'
Just as Lydia was about to make her move, and eerie aura spread out from Kayn and his eyes rolled into the back of his head. At that moment an explosion occurred. Black fire and lightning destroyed everything 5m (16.5 ft) around Kayn as his body floated in the air before plummeting into the crater he just made.
The walls and ceiling around the area were destroyed and a translucent black fire continued to blaze at the edges of the crater. Lydia attempted to put them out with a tier 0 water spell, but when that failed, she continued to move up the tier list.
She was finally able to extinguish the flames after they had shrunk considerably by using a tier 6 area control water spell that was similar to the water cyclone she used during the ambush.
Lydia jumped into the hole and found Kayn once again unconscious with blood coming out of his eyes, ears, mouth, and nose as well as a slightly opaque black substance covering his skin and what was left of his pants. She immediately cast her personal diagnostic spell, Tidal Perception, to assess his current state.
Her eyes immediately widened when she noticed that aside from his poor visual state, his body was fine, even his ribs were fully healed. Her eyes widened even further when the spell showed her a small sphere sitting just under his diaphragm.
Kayn would need to use an enchanted item called an Aptitude Orb before his affinities were confirmed. But the fact he had formed a mana core at 8 years old was inconceivable! He was the youngest mage in history to her knowledge!
It was at this moment though that the door on the other side of the room was burst open violently and Feyat as well as the torturer and several other mercenaries entered the room.
"WHAT DID YOU DO?!?" Feyat was enraged, the corner of the building where Lydia and Kayn were located was in shambles.
There was water all over the place and he could only assume that Lydia had somehow destroyed everything. The only problem with that was that the wall was supposed to be immune to any spells below tier 8 and there was no way Lydia could cast a tier 8 spell with her mana core, at least according to his previous research.
Lydia spent around 75% of her mana just to put out the fire and approach Kayn, but she didn't forget to pour mana into the enchanted distress signal hanging around her neck.
"Farewell Feyat, you made a big mistake injuring this child." Lydia gave him a mocking and sinister glare. She lifted Kayn off the ground and used tier 0 water magic to clean off his face while cradling him in her arms.
"You think you can get away just because you made a hole?" Feyat began to laugh after he said this while lifting his sword into position to attack, but a sudden uneasy feeling began to sprout inside of him. After he thought about what she said for half a second, he decided to ask Lydia what came into his mind.
"Wait…who is this boy?" Unfortunately, his question was asked too little and too late.
Before Lydia could answer, a bolt of lightning flew into the building followed closely by a loud thunderclap.
"He's my son, you bastard." A figure with crimson hair that was flowing with electric currents and pure red eyes filled with malice spoke out.
Ezekiel had been flying around the route between his mansion and Corsa since contact with Lydia vanished. However, once the distress signal alerted him to her position, he used every movement ability he had to get there as fast as possible.
"Now, who wants to die first?" Ezekiel asked as his pure rage manifested as lightning that crackled all around his body with large concentrations forming at his fists.