Chapter 126:  Mana Control, Complete.

“...Oooooh!”

It worked, it really worked!

Mikkelsen, who had succeeded in enveloping his sword with a blue aura, gripped it tightly with an ecstatic look on his face.

“Good heavens...”

“It really works?”

Just as astonishment filled the faces of the observing knights—

Fzzzt!

“Argh!”

Sparks burst from the branch Mikkelsen was holding, and he lost his grip on it.

With a heavy sigh, Hardin spoke up.

“What are you doing? You’re supposed to concentrate, concentrate.”

“S-sorry, sir.”

As Mikkelsen picked up the branch and focused again, the blue light reappeared.

Hardin watched for a while before giving another instruction.

“Alright, now you two. Try using Weapon Enchant.”

“Ah… yes.”

Manton and Beryl simultaneously activated Weapon Enchant, lighting up their branches.

“From that state, try applying pressure as if you're compressing the mana within the branch as much as possible. No need to rush, do it slowly.”

“...What exactly are we trying to do?”

“Just do it.”

The two focused on the flow of their circuits and began compressing the mana within the branches.

Crack! Crackle-crackle!

The mana, trying to escape, raged violently, but their wills forced it back in.

Sweat formed on their foreheads, and their teeth clenched.

Snap! Szzzzzt!

The branches trembled violently as sparks erupted around them without pause.

“Focus, maintain that state. Compress it more, more.”

“Grrrrrrrrrgh!”

Hardin’s push.

Their hair fluttered, and their faces twisted further in pain.

“Y-Young Master!”

“Gaaaaaah!”

Just as their faces turned bright red as if they might burst—

Hardin snapped his fingers.

“Thrust it.”

Vwooooooom!

The two simultaneously thrust their branches forward.

Kraaaaaaaaash!

Blue flashes shot out from the tips of their weapons.

Boom!

Two towering columns of water rose from the sea.

“...”

Manton, Beryl, and all the other knights—

All stood with jaws dropped at the unbelievable sight.

“Shockwave?”

“W-was... was that a Shockwave just now?”

Shockwave.

A type of decisive technique where one condenses mana into a weapon to its limit and releases it all at once from a distance.

Not only did it require advanced mana control, but it also consumed a massive amount of mana, so being able to use it meant...

“Both of you... have become 3-star Knights?”

It meant they had reached a level admired by many knights.

“Huhhh... is that so?”

“I’m... a 3-star Knight?”

Was this even possible? In such a short time?

Both Beryl and Manton stared blankly at their hands, unable to believe the reality.

Just as everyone was still in shock—

Manton looked toward Hardin and asked:

“How… how did you do it, Young Master?”

“What do you mean.”

“No matter how intense the special training was, it hasn’t even been a full month. But how… how did you raise our level this much?”

At that, Hardin stroked his chin and replied.

“What are you talking about? It took a bloody long time.”

“Pardon?”

“How long has it been since I became the commander of the Knight Order?”

“Almost two years… I believe.”

“And you think you were just slacking off during that whole time?”

“...Excuse me?”

“You don’t remember training under me for those two years?”

At those words, everyone’s eyes widened.

‘We didn’t exactly rest...’

‘No, if anything, we were pushed to the brink of death.’

—

“Get up, you lot!”

“Argh! P-please don’t hit us!”

—

“Run! I said run!”

“Can’t we just drop... at least this log while running?”

—

Memories of those nightmare days came flooding back.

They constantly carried heavy loads on their backs, rolling their bodies on the ground. They were dragged into all sorts of unreasonable missions, suffering hell.

Objectively speaking, just that alone meant they trained several times harder—no, easily ten times harder—than the average knight.

Hardin crossed his arms and finished.

“You went through all that hell for two years—wouldn’t it be stranger if your level didn’t go up?”

Manton, after a moment of thought, hesitated before replying.

“You’re… right.”

Hardin scoffed.

‘These little punks.’

All he had done during this training was fill in the final missing piece they lacked.

In truth… it was the two years of suffering that had made today’s result possible.

Well, not that this was enough to impress Hardin in the slightest.

‘Still, they did work hard.’

Thud!

Wiping away the faint sentimentality that briefly surfaced, Hardin placed his hands on the shoulders of Manton and Beryl and said,

“Alright, enough chatter. You get it now, right? Then you two train the rest.”

“Eh? Us?”

“Pull an all-nighter if you have to, but get it all done tonight.”

“All of it, tonight?”

“How long are we planning to stay here? I’m starving to death thanks to you lot.”

As Hardin let out a sigh, Beryl scratched the back of his head and asked again,

“Then… are you stepping out, Young Master?”

“Yeah, I’ve got some things to do. You can handle it, right?”

“I’ll… do my best.”

“Good.”

As Beryl and Manton bowed their heads, Hardin turned to the rest of the knights.

“You lot, listen to them and train hard. If you don’t finish everything by tonight…”

Hardin clenched his fist.

BOOOOM!

And with that, he pulverized a jagged rocky outcrop nearby into stone dust, then continued.

“After that, I’ll be forced to take… extraordinary measures.”

“...Y-yes, sir!”

“I-I’ll definitely make it!”

As everyone quickly nodded their heads—

Hardin turned and walked slowly toward the other side of the island.

---

The special training on Rocky Isle carried out in preparation for facing the Count of Tread.

Now, as that training neared its end—

Hardin sat down on the ground in a corner of the island, taking deep breaths as he gazed into the distance.

“Huuuuuuu…”

The sun slowly sank into the sea, dyeing it in a hue of orange.

As he stared blankly at that sight, the memories of the past few weeks on this island came flooding back.

—

Bleeeugh!

He remembered forcing too much mana into his body in an attempt to forcefully grow his mana core, only to have his insides twist and vomit blood.

—

“Damn it... m-my arm...”

He recalled the time he attempted to transform the very shape of the core, which ended up paralyzing one of his arms.

—

He had tried countless experiments to improve his core, and failed countless times.

The capillaries in his eyes burst, leaving them bloodshot. He lost weight until he was skin and bones. The organs near his core stopped functioning properly.

If it had been any ordinary person, they would’ve already died—or lost their sanity from the pain.

But even through that, Hardin continued narrowing his thoughts, jotting down his trials and errors onto parchment.

This endeavor may have been insane, but he couldn’t bring himself to stop.

‘I need more power.’

This wasn’t just about dealing with the Count of Tread.

It was to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past.

No matter if it were the Seven Great Houses or Shagrath that appeared—

He needed overwhelming power that wouldn’t let him falter ever again.

And perhaps, thanks to the blood he coughed up while refining his thoughts—

Hardin finally discovered an answer that made sense to him.

‘With this body, it’s impossible to grow the core any larger.’

It was a conclusion drawn after repeated experimentation.

Once the core exceeded the size of a thumbnail, it collapsed under the pressure from within and without.

From the start, Shagrath and Hardin had different physical structures and limits. That explained the constraint.

‘And I can’t change its shape either.’

This too had proven problematic—the core’s efficiency plummeted when its shape was altered.

In the end, that meant he could neither enlarge the core nor reshape it.

Which left only one answer.

‘Create more cores inside the body.’

Cores the size of a thumbnail—what the body could withstand.

If he could create more of those within himself, then both his mana reserve and his mana control would increase dramatically.

Of course, he couldn’t say with certainty that it was 100% possible yet.

There was already a core in his body, and it repelled foreign mana like magnetic poles.

Creating another core of the same size in the same way... well, that was—

It was no different than being told to scale a wall without arms or legs.

Hardin curled up the corners of his lips into a smirk.

‘I’ll do it. No—I can do it.’

A path no one else dared... or could walk.

Because he had spent his whole life walking such paths, thanks to his stubborn contrarian nature, he had confidence in this kind of thing.

“Let’s go.”

Hardin picked up the Heart of the Sea laid out before him.

As he chewed and swallowed it—

Gulp.

Mana flowed into his body along with the neutralized Skull Puffer toxin.

The mana core greedily tugged at it as if it meant to devour it all.

‘No.’

Crackkk.

Hardin consciously controlled the core’s attractive force, stopping it from pulling in the mana, and instead extracted only the purified mana.

Sweat beaded on his forehead, and his veins bulged.

By the time the first step of the process ended—

Ptoo!

Hardin spat out a glob of purple liquid from his mouth, then swallowed another Heart of the Sea.

Crunch! Crunch!

And the same process repeated again.

“Grrrrrrrr...”

While resisting the interference of the core that madly tried to suck the mana in, he drew out, extracted, and extracted again the pure mana.

And that wasn’t the only problem.

The mana he had accumulated within his body up to now interfered and clashed, pulling at each other, disturbing the flow.

In an ordinary person, the mana would have already gone berserk and killed them.

But he endured it.

And so... after he devoured every Heart of the Sea he had prepared—

‘Gather.’

The mana he had collected until now, combined with that drawn from the Hearts of the Sea, began to gather near his solar plexus.

Not too quickly—slowly.

Carefully controlling the pace so as not to trigger a runaway, he steadily concentrated the energy.

And the moment the mana gathered into a single mass—

Crack! Crack-crack!

He forced the dozens of mana clusters into a single point.

Just like when he first created his core, he replicated Shagrath’s internal structure within the mass, and afterward, built a solid outer shell to keep the mana from leaking out.

Drip.

A single drop of blood from his nose fell and stained his training uniform red.

Vwooooooom...

A core almost identical in shape to the one in his lower abdomen floated up near his solar plexus.

But...

‘This is only the beginning.’

To create a new core under the influence of the existing one—

That alone was already an insane feat, but compared to what Hardin still had to do, it was child’s play.

Because...

‘I have to make this core... exactly the same size.’

From this point on, he had to match this new core with the existing one without a single margin of error.

Because the original core had its own gravitational and repelling forces... he had to perfectly cancel them out with equal force to allow both cores to coexist.

“Hrrrrgh.”

Hardin trembled as he focused his consciousness even deeper.

Enduring the pull of the new core as it resisted like territorial instinct, he began carefully trimming the outer shell of the freshly created core.

Cautiously—so it wouldn’t crack.

Balancing it precisely with the energy from below, he shaped the core delicately, like walking on thin ice.

How much time had passed?

‘It’s done.’

The new core, which had been constantly pulled downward, finally stopped moving. Then, slowly, its vibration lessened and it stabilized in place.

It looked like the two cores had achieved perfect equilibrium.

With that, Hardin twisted up the corner of his mouth into a smirk.

‘Let’s go.’

He slowly began lowering the new core.

If he could just place it next to the original core as planned, the total amount of mana his body could store would increase. On top of that, the speed of both mana discharge and absorption, using gravitational and repulsive forces, would improve dramatically.

Slowly, slowly, the core descended.

And after maintaining intense concentration and pouring his full awareness into the new core for a long while—

“Phew... that was insanely hard.”

Hardin let out a deep breath and observed the cores.

Vwoooooom...

Two cores now sat side by side in his lower abdomen, spaced a palm-width apart.

Identical in size and shape, as if cloned with magic.

If his theory was correct, having two cores alone would already make his mana capacity comparable to, or even greater than, that of a 3-star Knight.

Moreover...

‘If I can keep developing this, the potential for application is practically limitless.’

With one more vessel capable of producing gravitational and repulsive force, the range of techniques he could create and use would go far beyond what’s possible with an ordinary mana circuit.

If Hardin could fully harness that potential... taking down higher-ranked knights at his current level wouldn’t even be a challenge.

‘Good. After all that suffering, I better get at least this much out of it.’

Just as he smiled in satisfaction and began to wrap up the mana flow—

Vwoooooooom!

‘Huh?’

Suddenly, the two cores, which had just been in perfect equilibrium, began moving rapidly toward each other.

Crack! Crack-crack!

In an instant, they slammed together, rattling each other’s outer shells.

Hardin’s eyes widened to their limits.

“Khak!”

A mouthful of bright red blood burst from his lips.

‘Damn it! Stay conscious!’

Crunch! Crack-crack!

The two cores, pulling toward each other like mad, ground their outer walls against each other furiously.

Scrape—scrape scrape!

Cracks formed across the outer shells, and the cores began to tremble.

If—by any chance—the cores shattered now, it wouldn’t just end with a little pain.

If that happened—

‘If this keeps going... I’ll seriously die!’

Gnash!

Gritting his teeth so hard it felt like they might break, Hardin sharpened every ounce of his focus across his entire body.

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