brother's retry (the beginning after the end)

the bigger picture

It's been about three days and no progress. I couldn't make sense of how she drew the mana from the beast core, I'd ran through about thirty so far. Which really proved my core wouldn't improve anymore since I absorbed half of them by accident.

"Hey, otherworld brat, come here!" I heard Ajax yell at me from across the cavern.

Getting up I eyed him curiously "what are you doing here?" I ran my thumb over the core as I kept it in the back of my head.

"Heard you couldn't figure it out so I thought I'd come show you how to do it with something you're more familiar with." he pulled a red and green core from his pocket as he held it up. "Ready?"

Nodding, I activated Eclipseforce as I made sure to watch with all of my focus. Mana flooded around his hand and then nox formed along his fingertips, it shifted slightly taking the form of hooked claws. Slowly he pressed the hooked claws into the core, it didn't shatter or crack shockingly.

"Now I know this looks strange but nox isn't some physical force, well it can be but it only takes that form if you want it to. I'd suggest looking at it without Eclipseforce to see that for yourself." Ajax offered as he kept his claws firmly planted into the core.

Deactivating it for a second I didn't see anything, just his fingers resting just above the core. "That's new... I guess I'll need to rethink a few spells." I sighed reactivating eclipseforce.

He nodded, "Indeed, this allows for nox arts far stronger than the physical ones." He started to pull the claws out from the core slowly. The mana within the core followed as if some guiding force was being applied around it. "You need to keep it together with your own mana but let the nox pull it free from the core." he added as he finally pulled the mana from the core.

I watched as he pulled a dagger from his dimension ring, there was no mana flowing through it. Slowly I watched him make a small mana container around the knife. Next he pushed the mana from the core into it and slowly retracted his claws.

"So, why didn't Serena need to do that? She just pulled the mana out and shoved it in." I started working on making my own set of claws out of nox.

"Lux and nox and fundamentally the same, yet they behave differently mainly that lux strengthens mana unlike nox which uses mana to strengthen itself." he sighed and then turned, throwing the dagger to the side. "It's annoying from an inventor's standpoint but what can we do right kid?" he laughed slightly but I could tell he was annoyed with the hand he was dealt.

"Yeah, makes life hard for a kid who's cursed too. Huh, who would've thought we'd have something in common." I chuckled as I turned back to go work on this core some more. "See you around Ajax," I waved over my shoulder and quickly got to work.

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Another week passed and I was able to add abilities to the knives I'd made but it took me about twenty minutes to safely extract the mana but after that point it was easy keeping it from dispersing. Sighing I was a bit annoyed I couldn't shave the time down faster but I was sure I could get it to a few minutes if I get another week, though with Darcel walking over I doubt that's the case.

"Alright, that's enough kiddo. Come over here and scan this spear real quick." He chimed as I let out another sigh.

"Alright." walking over I reached my hand out to grab the shaft but he quickly smacked my hand away. "What the hell?!" I grunted as the stinging kicked in.

"Scan it with your eyes dip shit." he sighed as if I was the stupid one.

'I think his beast will rubbed off on your personality'