Grey Aether Core 3

After a short break, the two of us began reaping the rewards of our latest victory. Rather than the hills of aether crystals inside the cavern, I focused my attention on the millipede.

It took less than a glance to realize that the aether beast corpse was the highest and most potent source of aether in this entire cavern. Climbing on top of the giant millipede, I got to work consuming the aether from its body.

As my aether core developed, so did the rate of absorption. Still, with how massive the size of the beast was, it took several sittings.

While the process of absorbing aether was fairly straightforward with my newly-forged core, the next steps had taken more than a third of the aetheric essence from the millipede in order to test out.

But with how much material I had to work with, I was able to experiment and tweak the process—enhancing its efficiency and building my body towards eventually being able to do something even asuras of the Indrath Clan can’t do: manipulate aether.

Since there wasn’t exactly a manual for what I was doing, I broke down the process into three stages and named them absorption, tempering, and lastly, the purging stage.

After absorbing aether, I found that filling my core to the point where it was nearly overflowing—and very painful—forced the aether inside me to more quickly condense and refine itself.

The purging stage, however, was the most important and required my utmost concentration. All at once, I needed to expel nearly all of the aether I had crammed into my core. While the surge of aether was spreading throughout my body, I needed to trace the paths that that aether used to move and slowly guide the rest of the aether to use those same paths.

Every time I purged the aether from my core, I was slowly training the aether to travel through more efficient “passages” within my body rather than just spread aimlessly.

I focused on training the passages within my arms. I realized that, while my technique and experience was able to make up for the loss of speed, they couldn’t make up for my loss of power.

With how widely the aether was distributed within my body every time I utilized its power, I wasn’t able to create enough force to do major damage without nearly exhausting most of my aether. Not without using Gauntlet form, that is.

Hours, if not days, later, after I had gone through nearly eighty percent of the millipede’s aetheric essence, I checked up on my progress.

Holding my hands out in front of me, I released aether from my core. On my first time, I let it simply distribute evenly throughout my body while trying to still feel the aether passages strengthen inside my arm.

On the second try, I focused more aether on my arms. This time, however, I could feel around a ten percent increase in aether around my arms compared to the rest of my body.

A smile crept up on my face as I looked down at my hands, clenching and unclenching them. “H-Haha…”

“You look like you’ve just discovered fire. What are you all excited about?” Regis asked as he floated toward me.

“Can you sense something different?” I answered back, spreading my arms. I let the aether distribute evenly around my body at first.

“The aether around you became a bit less pink,” he noted, not impressed.

“Not that.” I smiled as I coalesced more aether into my arms. “This.”

Regis’ white eyes bulged. “You can control aether now?”

The faint shroud of aether around me dissipated as I relaxed. “Not completely, but it’s a big step forward.”