Class had lasted nearly two hours. Instructor Cooper, a middle-aged Rank 6 Magus, had spent the session explaining the fundamentals of meditation and basic spellcasting. He paced at the front of the blackstone lecture hall, his crimson robes flaring with each motion.
"Meditation is the foundation of a magus," he said while writing simultaneously. "And for you apprentices, the key to slowly refine your cores and gathering ambient elemental essence. You'll need reagents for spellcasting at this stage like crushed salamander scales, bloodroot sap, flameweed powder. But once you reach Rank 1, you'll no longer need such things.
Then... you'll be able to summon flame with nothing but will and air."
Most of the class hadn't paid him much mind.
Many of the students were already Rank 1 or 2 magi. Their robes were cleaner, their stares more confident, their presences more oppressive. They barely acknowledged Cooper's lecture, let alone each other. For them, basic meditation was old knowledge, and the concept of using reagents to cast spells was a joke.
But not for Kai, this was starting for his foundation.
After a quick lunch in the academy food hall, he returned to his private dormitory. It was small but clean, with stone walls etched with faint magical runes and a small desk stocked with beginner's tomes. Sitting cross-legged on his bedding, he opened the meditation manual Cooper had distributed.
The instructions were clear and structured:
"Breathe slowly. Visualize the core. Expand your consciousness like a net, pulling in the ambient essence feel it, let it pass through your skin, your bones, your soul."
Kai followed it step by step. Thirty minutes passed.
Then an hour.
Nothing.
Not even a flicker of death essence responded. He had at least expected a slight increase in absorption rate, but there was no change. Not even a tremble in the flow. His thoughts began to drift, frustration bubbling beneath the surface.
'What's wrong with me?' he wondered. 'I followed every instruction…'
But deep down, he already suspected the reason. His power didn't work like others'. His cores does not contain life, but death. He didn't possess the same kind of elemental flow as ordinary magi. His core his essence was born in darkness, blood, and tragedy.
Then he summoned Nyx.
The black serpent appeared with a shimmer of dark mist, materializing in his palm and curling around his wrist affectionately. She rubbed her scaled head against his hand and flicked her tongue in the air, sensing his unrest.
"Hey, Nyxl," he whispered. "I need your help."
With Nyx resting on his shoulder, he closed his eyes again and restarted his meditation.
And this time… something did happen.
A current entered his body but it was immediately obliterated. A searing flash like oil meeting fire.
He focused harder. It was Qi (life-based essence) trying to enter his core, but the moment it touched his death Qi… it was annihilated.
Kai's eyes snapped open.
That's it. He wasn't absorbing the right kind of energy.
Now he knew the problem but what now…
He flipped through the book again until his eyes landed on a short paragraph buried beneath the main text. A warning written in red text countless red skull was around it making its user to take it to the heart.
"It is not advised to reverse a known meditation technique. Although many seekers of power create custom paths, attempting to invert a foundational flow, but it backfires to them, it may cause soul destabilization, crippling, or instant death."
A revelation struck him like lightning.
Death Qi is the opposite of life Qi… and all traditional meditations are designed to absorb life Qi. That's why he can't absorb it using simple methods.
Then those who tried reversing it those, who died may have unknowingly absorbed death Qi into bodies which was not made for it. Because death Qi was stronger they ended up dying.
But he was different. He can contain it in his core.
He hesitated for several long minutes to try his new theory. Even with his affinity, even with his new powers, this was dangerous. Suicidal, even.
But he had already lost everything. What did he have to fear now?
Gritting his teeth, he began the meditation again in reverse.
Instead of opening his body to the surrounding mana, he contracted it. Instead of pulling in gently, he invited it vigorously inside his body. His breathing changed rhythm. His heartbeat slowed.
His mind emptied.
And then BOOM.
Something in the air shifted.
The very fabric of his dorm room thickened with shadows. Cold crept into his lungs like a fog, but it was right. The death essence in the air surged toward him like moths to flame.
Within seconds he ended up reviewing his new meditaion, it was twice as fast as before, death essence was rushing into his body, feeding his core.
And then
Nyx leapt from the floor, coiling around his right arm before vanishing into his skin. A glowing tattoo appeared on the back of his hand in the shape of a coiling black serpent.
Kai blinked, stunned.
A flood of information poured into his mind. Blueprints. Circuits. Flow diagrams of the reversed technique all got modified.
Nyx had improved the reversed meditation.
It was now three times more effective.
Kai gasped. His entire body felt lighter, more energized. Death essence flooded into his core, transforming into Death Qi at an astonishing rate
.
"Nyx…" he muttered. "You… improved the technique?"
The snake in his soul space hissed softly, as if proud of her work.
He laughed in disbelief. She can enhance circuits. Even meditation…
This was a gift beyond reason. With this new technique, he estimated that he could reach peak Apprentice level in a month even without absorbing Death Essence from the dead. Just pure meditation.
But power alone wasn't enough.
He needed to master spellcasting next.
Casting spells was simple in theory. One only needed to chant the name of the spell and fuel it with Qi. But not everyone could cast every spell.
Each magus had specific affinities. Kai's were fire, dark, and water. He could not cast earth, wind, or light spells they were fundamentally incompatible with his core. And even within his affinities, there were limitations.
Apprentices typically could not cast Rank 1 spells.
Their Qi reserves were too small. Trying to do so would drain them dry or cause the spell to fail completely. But Kai wasn't a normal apprentice.
'I have a physical core and a magical core', he thought. 'My Death Qi reservoir… is massive'.
"Let's test this."
He started writing down the structure of this spell and gaining insights it took him almost 6 hours to know the structure and how to perform it.
He closed his eyes, whispering the incantation of a Rank 1 fire spell he had memorized from the spellbook earlier.
This spellbook provided by the Academy contain spell upto Rank 2. They did not care less about their apprentice student dying using Rank 2 spell.
He stood up and walk towards the window and putted his hand up in air as if chocking someone.
"Fireball."
Qi surged from both of his cores and distructive and volatile death energy surged from his body. It raced through his channels, reacting with his fire affinity. A reddish-black flame sparked in the air in front of his palm his palm.
Then it roared into existence.
A curved, talon-like arc of fire, laced with flickers of darkness, floated in his hand. It pulsed with heat.
Kai's eyes widened.
He had done it.
He had cast a Rank 1 spell as an Apprentice.
He thought of throwing it outside the window. And it followed his intruction, it flew otside the window, it's speed was much greater than he expected, a tree got hit by the crimson fire and got instantly blazed.
Kai let out a breath, slightly dizzy but intact. His reservoir had dropped almost half. He could probably cast it two times while being inept. And can cast it four times when he is peak apprentice.
When a person reach Rank one from peak apprentice his Qi ressoviar will get quality of changes in their magic core. Rank 1 magus can cast fireball alsmost 5 times and if Kai reached Rank 1 he can almost cast it 15 times that was a fucking big difference.
A smirk crept across his face.
He wasn't just a simple Warlock. He was an anomaly a monster in the making.
Now he needed to buy reagents. Apprentice Spell like spark needed reagents for their casting but it's upgraded version Rank 1 illumination can be casted without any reagent.
He did not want to analyse another rank 1 spell like fireball because fireball was most simple one of them and it had taken him 6 hours to analyse it. He first needed better understandig of the apprentice spells. To lay a good foundation of understanding spells.