Liano woke up slowly, his eyes still heavy with sleep. He was lying on a comfortable bed, surrounded by herbs and colorful vials. The gentle scent of medicinal plants floated in the air, soothing his senses. As he tried to sit up, a sharp pain shot through his body, reminding him of recent events.
"You're finally awake," said a familiar and strict voice. It was the healer, a woman of respectable age with gray hair and piercing eyes. She approached him, hands on her hips, visibly annoyed.
"Liano, how many times do I have to tell you to be careful? You're a real hothead! Every time you get hurt, it's worse than the last," she scolded, her gaze hardened with worry.
Liano lowered his eyes, feeling both guilty and annoyed. "I'm sorry, Healer... I just wanted to..."
"You just wanted what? To get yourself killed?!" she interrupted. "Listen, Liano, this time it's serious. Your core has awakened. Once you're recovered, you need to talk to Ester. It's important."
Liano looked up at her in surprise. "My core has awakened? But I..."
"Yes, your core," the healer repeated with a sigh. "It means you're at a crucial turning point in your life. But for now, you need to rest." She turned to fetch some ingredients from a shelf.
Taking advantage of her moment of inattention, Liano slowly got up, grimacing in pain, and left the bed. He knew he had to leave before the healer returned. Silently, he headed for the door and started running.
"Come back here, young man!" the healer shouted as she turned around, but seeing Liano running with determination, she just sighed and shook her head. "If he has enough energy to run, he must be in better shape than I thought. At worst, he'll come back."
Liano escaped from the infirmary with a smile on his lips. He didn't fully understand the situation, but one thing was sure: he had no desire to meet Ester anytime soon, fearing a lengthy reprimand.
He headed towards his favorite spot, the forest, and specifically his hidden underground hut. The journey, usually twenty minutes, took him nearly an hour due to his weakened condition. Each step was a struggle, but he was determined to reach his refuge.
His hut was well hidden. He had built it by planting and arranging bushes over a concealed trapdoor. The hole itself wasn't his work but that of a family of moles he had followed and chased away a year ago. He still remembered that day as if it were yesterday, and the food he had obtained that night.
Reaching the trapdoor, Liano carefully opened it and slipped inside. The hut was small and cramped, even for a child. He had to stoop to stay inside, but that didn't bother him. A pile of fabrics served as a bed, and trinkets were scattered here and there. In a corner was his safe where he kept all his precious possessions.
Liano sat on his makeshift bed, exhausted but satisfied. Here, in his secret refuge, he felt safe, away from reprimands and responsibilities. He took a moment to rest, his mind drifting to past and future adventures. He knew the day wasn't over, but for now, he simply savored the calm of his hidden sanctuary.
Liano sat in a lotus position, his back against the earthy wall of his hidden hut. He closed his eyes and began to calm himself by breathing deeply. The coolness of the earth against his back, the smell of vegetation, and the silence of the forest gradually soothed him.
Liano was not an ordinary child of the village. Unlike other children who played and trained in the village, he loved to go out, travel, and discover everything around him. The forest was his first playground. At first, he explored the ground, but he grew tired of the flying animals and rodents that moved above him in the trees. He then started climbing trees. The first months were full of falls and fractures; a nine-year-old boy had no business being fifteen meters high. Yet, after a few months, it seemed like his natural habitat. He swung from branch to branch, built vine bridges, and had fun chasing animals through the trees.
While other children began to show interest in the outside world, Liano was already far ahead. After mastering the air, he discovered tunnels in the forest dug by animals and went through a phase of leaving the village with a shovel to dig his own paths. By the age of ten, the area around the village was no longer a forest where danger lurked, but rather a playground and hunting ground for Liano. Whether it was monkeys, deer, boars, or bears, he always managed to escape or kill them. However, he often returned with injuries that scared even the older children. Missing fingers, torn ears, or monstrously large gashes all over his body, nothing stopped him.
Such was the child Liano, so there was no one else like him in the village. If you were a member of Arcanix village, you definitely knew him. It wasn't hard to remember him when, every other day, adults shouted his name, exasperated by his antics.
But among all this, there was an important fact: when Liano wasn't out on his adventures, as he liked to call them, he enjoyed talking to the "adults" of the village. To him, adults were anyone who were at least adepts. Unlike his peers, Liano knew much more thanks to his conversations with older members.
In the village, children were there just to live and have fun, fed and housed without any work to do. Around the age of twelve, they became initiates and, for some, unlocked their core. This famous core, Liano had heard so much about in his discussions... Once initiated, the village no longer took care of you. No more free food; the clan allowed you to take on missions, either in groups or alone, and embarked on, according to the adepts, a long adventure rich in experiences. Just that excited Liano. If even the adepts said it, it must be something extraordinary, this darn adventure.
Adepts were clan members who had achieved the island's goal, which was to reach the level of leaving the island. This island, which was the only known place for the children, belonged to the Arcanix clan. Everyone on this island was part of the clan. And to be allowed to leave, you had to become an adept. Liano, however, disagreed. He wanted to leave the island right away and constantly argued with adults to let him go. But each time, either he got beaten up and stopped talking nonsense, or the adepts mocked him by taking him to the border of zone 1 and telling him to go straight to leave the island. The first time, he was so traumatized by the monsters he encountered in zone 2 that it took him a week to dare to approach that zone again. Of course, he often tried again; you couldn't change Liano that easily.
What he remembered from his discussions was that the island was there to prepare the clan's youth to leave the island. The island was composed of five zones, from the least dangerous, zone 1, to the most dangerous, zone 5. Adepts were people who, for the island, were no longer a threat, so strong people. But more than that, they were people who had already gone through the island, and for that, Liano respected them more than anything in the world, even if he sometimes liked to imitate and mock them.
Lost in his thoughts, Liano felt a thrill of excitement thinking about his own core that had just awakened. He didn't yet know what it meant exactly, but he was sure it was going to change his life. For now, he savored the calm of his hut, mentally preparing for the adventure that awaited him.
According to the adepts and old man Ester, once your core awakened, you really started to become a person capable of extraordinary things. At least for some. That was the problem with cores: you never knew what you were going to get. All that was known was that every member of Arcanix had a core and that once awakened, it granted them a unique magic. Sometimes, some had similar magic, but most of the time, they were unique. Once unlocked, you didn't know what you had awakened; it took many trials to discover the nature of your magic. Some were lucky, and it was quite easy to understand, like manipulating fire or having increased strength, while others took several years to really understand the essence of their magic. But the advice he always heard was that for an initiate, it was best to get an artifact as soon as possible.
Every self-respecting adept had at least one artifact, if not several. These objects, which only those with a core could use, were used to perform magic. Liano wasn't someone who liked to learn on the benches of the village's mini-school, where they were taught to read and write, and to look at pictures of mountains, volcanoes, glaciers, and snow. No, he liked hands-on experiences, adventures. That's why he often skipped classes. However, discussing and learning in the field, you didn't have to convince him to go, even if it meant talking to drunken adepts at the tavern in the evening or disturbing old man Ester during his naps. Once, he even climbed Ester's chimney because the old croûton, as Liano liked to call him, had ended their discussion because it was getting late. Midnight wasn't late, old croûton, it's when the action starts! And that's how he ended up climbing the chimney and nearly impaling himself on the iron bars stored below. That night, he got away with a bar of iron piercing his thigh.
Back to artifacts, L
iano knew there were two types of artifacts, category 1 and category 2. The first category was used to channel the user's core powers, amplify them, or help use magic. Ideal for a beginner like an initiate, and very practical for an adept. The second category was used to trigger another type of magic, this time not from the user's core, but rather the magic of the monsters' cores contained in the artifacts. Indeed, some beasts had cores, just like the clan members. The clan called creatures without cores beasts, and monsters those that had them. Monsters were not present in zone 1, but from zone 2 onwards, there were only monsters. A monster was several times more dangerous than the most powerful beasts in zone 1. And since they had cores, some also did magic. So yes, category 2 artifacts were used to use the magic that monsters had.
How did it work? Liano didn't know, or rather he had never experienced it, but he had inquired about it from passing adepts or adults of the clan who were also adepts but had chosen to stay on the island.
To use magic, you needed mana. It was a sort of energy stored in the core and used to perform magic, either directly or by infusing it into artifacts.
The first step was to feel the mana. This could take a day to a few weeks for the less skilled. Suffice it to say, Liano was already eager to sit in a lotus position and try to feel it as soon as possible. In his head: The sooner I start, the sooner I learn my magic and leave this damn island.
He wanted to leave this island and go on adventures like the other adepts. How many stories had he heard from adepts who traveled the world and encountered all kinds of incredible situations? He wanted to do the same.
He began to concentrate and follow the adepts' advice to feel the mana:
Visualize the core, try to feel it, it's an orb in your body...
Visualize a fluid inside, flowing inside the core and present at the edge, it's like water, it's a fluid that flows slowly...
It's like the blood in your body, it's the fluid that makes your core work like your blood brings nutrients to your heart...
Thus began a deep concentration. It was rare, but it happened for Liano to concentrate and stay calm when necessary. It was almost terrifying how he adapted to this new change and, only with the instructions of the adepts during their discussions, he seemed to do it as if he had been doing it for several years. Some time later, he opened his eyes with a smile. He had succeeded; he knew that deep down, by concentrating, he could visualize this orb they had talked about and his mana.
He left his hut, carefully putting the trapdoor and bushes back in place. He was finally ready for the second step: using his magic.