The next few days passed quickly, as Reed had his hands full throughout the day.
In the morning, he would wake up early, and train, after breakfast, he would head to the dungeon with Mordhal and the others for their training.
After lunch, he would go to the library and read, followed by the second trip into the dungeon led by him for their strategy and planning lessons. Afterwards, he would return, have dinner, practise his magic, and sleep.
Reed learned quite a few spells from his session with the students.
This cycle continued till they had to leave.
"Well then, this is goodbye for now." Mordhal shook hands with Reed, followed by his students.
"May we meet again." Reed responded calmly, and watched them leave, before turning back and walking back to the library.
He picked up the book on runes, and looked at it for a few moments with an impassive face, before sighing.
'I don't have time for this, I can pick it up later.' He placed it back in it's place, and chose another book and took it to a table and sat down.
He was looking through one of the few spells books in the library, it contained quite a few spells that could be learnt just by reading the book, some practise, and some patience.
'Most likely that most people don't know about these, otherwise, I wouldn't have the chance to have a look through these.'
Due to his nightly magic practise, his control over mana was improving steadily, but he was facing a problem, that he had an idea to deal with.
Reed had discovered, that his mana quantity was much smaller than that of the students he had seen, almost half of their average, and this made him feel uncomfortable.
Regular efforts of condensing mana were working, but it felt too slow. he could increase his capacity by an approximate 2 or 3% every time he tried to expand his core by pulling mana from the outside, similar to the way he had condensed the core, which gave him an idea.
He decided to try it out.
Which led him to this moment, sitting on his bed, pulling the mana particles around him in the same manner as before, but this time, instead of pushing it into the core to have most of it leak out and scatter, he put it into rotation around the core.
He continuously kept it moving, adding more and more mana to the stream. After 5 minutes, he decided it was time, he stopped pulling in the mana, and focused his efforts in controlling the mana present in his body.
He changed the path of the mana from a circle around the core, to a small circle at one point on the outside of the core. He kept shrinking the circle, while compressing the mana, he formed another, smaller, secondary core, attached to the main core.
He couldn't make another core separate from the main core, because the makeup of the body wouldn't allow it, and even if he managed that feat, his mana streams would be in disarray, so this was the solution he came up with, to create a secondary core, acting like a an attachment to the main core.
It would allow him to have a much increased reserve of mana, which would increase his capabilities by quite a bit.
'Success!!' He had a small smile on his face.
However, a small problem arose.
'It's not stable.' His brows furrowed as he concentrated. 'But it won't dissipate unless emptied.' He relaxed himself, feeling the mental strain he had put himself under.
'Time to sleep.'
...
The next morning he repeated the same process, forming another, secondary core on the side of the main core.
He rubbed his forehead. The strain on his mind was slightly heavy due to the fact that it hadn't been long since his last taxing activity.
Suddenly, as he concentrated on his cores, a thought struck his mind.
'H20 molecule, hehe.' He smiled, the thought running through his head as he remembered the depiction of said molecule he had seen multiple times throughout his life.
'Dihydrogen Monoxide, or something like that.'
After reminiscing for a few minutes, he got up and prepared for the day.
'Best to lay off the magic for today, don't want to overwork my 'spirit'.'
He didn't use magic throughout the day, neither did he go to the library, he just made two trips to the dungeon, picked up some resources from it, fought a few goblins, and relaxed the rest of the day, just walking around, exploring some more of the city.
He also did wander through the forest for an hour or so, keeping close to the city.
It was now time for his nightly magic practise.
Reed had had a few thoughts throughout the day, he pondered whether he wanted to do this this night, or the morning after, and he had decided on this night, so that even if his efforts went to waste, he could just sleep it off.
He took a meditative pose.
He concentrated on his secondary cores, and started to pull them inwards, into the main core.
It was quite a heavy load on his mind, since the mana he was dealing with was almost 8 times the amount he had ever used at once, but since he was only compressing it, it wasn't hard to control.
Slowly, the secondary cores started to merge into the main core, causing it to flood with mana trying to escape as Reed kept the mana in a tight grip to prevent it from leaking.
From what Reed had read about mana cores, there was a phenomenon known as core explosion. It occurred when the core was infused with multiple times the mana that it could safely contain, causing it to rupture and shatter from the inside pressure.
But the mana inside Reed's core wasn't even three times it's max capacity, which did cause it to bloat, yes, but it wasn't about to explode, instead the extra mana started to fuse with the cores walls, causing it it increase in volume, which is exactly what Reed was pushing to do.
Slowly, the pressure decreased, until there was almost no pressure on the core's walls, but Reed kept infusing them with the mana present inside the core, causing it keep growing.
He kept this going until the mana in his body was almost depleted, transformed into a part of the now, much bigger core.
Reed fell on his back, a chuckle escaping his lips, as his vision darkened and he fell into a deep sleep.