Chapter 956: The First Condensation

Kaiser stood opposite Ludwig, watching the sphere of Mana suspended between his hands. Faint currents moved beneath its pale surface, gathering toward the center before slipping outward again. Ludwig corrected the movement each time, though keeping it contained was becoming considerably more work than forming it had been.

"That’s closer to the proper method. Now you only need to understand the final part. Once you can condense Mana until it produces a physical manifestation, we can move on."

Ludwig slowly separated his palms. The sphere remained suspended for a moment, almost transparent around the edges, before a ripple passed through its center. Its structure collapsed without a sound, dissolving into particles that disappeared before reaching the table.

He kept his hands where they were and stared at the empty space between them. A week of this, and he had become exceptionally good at producing brief lights above furniture.

"You genuinely expect me to turn something immaterial into actual matter."

"Yes."

"That shouldn’t be possible."

Kaiser looked at him for long enough that Ludwig already regretted giving him the opening.

"You’re undead, you have a heart created from condensed divine Authority, and your armor is living metal. Which part of your existence would you like me to use as an example?"

"My point is that Mana is energy."

"And you recently carried a piece of Gluttony that somebody turned into a marble. We are considerably past arguing about whether this is possible."

Ludwig lowered his hands. The marble was difficult to argue with, particularly when it remained across the room, apparently managing its impossible existence without suffering any inconvenience.

"You want me to turn energy into something I can pick up."

Kaiser raised both hands, and Mana gathered between his palms.

"Yes. Watch."

Unlike Ludwig’s attempts, the sphere showed almost no instability. Its currents began rotating slowly before gathering speed, drawing inward as the entire structure shrank. Kaiser’s hands barely moved. He seemed to be guiding something already inclined to cooperate, which Ludwig found personally offensive.

The sphere became smaller than the tip of his finger, its light sharpening until he could no longer follow the currents inside it. Then the glow vanished, and something struck the table with a faint tick.

A translucent crystal rested on the wood, barely larger than a grain of rice. Ludwig picked it up and rolled it between his fingers. Kaiser had lowered his hands, yet the object remained solid without receiving another trace of Mana.

There was no spell for Ludwig to keep feeding, no structure waiting to collapse when his attention wandered. He pressed it between his thumb and forefinger, then held it toward the laboratory light. Something faint moved inside, resembling mist caught within glass.

"You made that from Mana."

"You watched me do it. More importantly, you’ve seen the result hundreds of times."

Ludwig frowned at the crystal. Nothing about it looked particularly familiar beyond being another small magical object he would probably have put into his inventory and forgotten.

"Where?"

"Monster cores."

He stopped turning it. Memories of dissected creatures came back to him, along with the small crystals found near their hearts or buried among their organs. Some had been large enough to fill his palm. Others had barely been worth extracting.

"You mean those crystals inside magical beasts."

"Exactly. Most monsters capable of accumulating significant Mana eventually develop some form of internal core. The method differs between species, but the underlying process is similar. They condense energy until it develops a physical structure."

Ludwig placed the crystal back on the table and looked at his own hands.

"So I’ve spent the last week failing at something animals do by instinct."

"Many animals, yes."

"I appreciate you leaving room for the ones I might still be ahead of."

A quiet laugh came from the communication crystal beside them. Van Dijk’s image hovered above it in pale blue light, looking far too entertained by a lesson he had not needed to endure.

The device rested in a skeletal hand rising from the tabletop. Kaiser had apparently decided that a stand would be an inadequate use of his education, so a construct had been assigned the important duty of holding it upright. Ludwig had yet to see the fingers move, although he suspected Kaiser would claim that proved how well it performed its task.

"Monster cores aren’t the only examples. Demonkind develops similar structures."

"Demonic cores."

Kaiser nodded and pointed toward Ludwig’s chest.

"Different composition, similar principle. Then there is the best example standing in this room."

Ludwig rested a hand over the Wrathful Heart. Beneath the flesh of his Living Vessel sat Authority condensed into something capable of behaving like an organ. It moved blood and energy through him, along with Wrath and whatever else had become entangled with his existence.

He lived with it closely enough that he rarely considered how it had become a thing he could carry inside his chest. Apparently familiarity had allowed him to overlook a fairly important question.

"That heart demonstrates how far the process can go."

"It wasn’t exactly created under controlled laboratory conditions."

"Which is why we’re starting with this."

Kaiser tapped the tiny Mana crystal.

"We are not trying to reproduce your heart. We are trying to understand the process that eventually makes something like your heart possible."

Ludwig glanced toward the sealed containment chamber farther across the laboratory. The green-gold marble rested inside, unchanged despite everything Kaiser had subjected it to. Heat, cold, magical pressure, soul manipulation, and resonance had all failed to reveal how its structure had formed.

The thing was becoming irritating simply by continuing to exist.

"We’ve spent a month examining a finished result without understanding the steps that produced it."

"And failed."

"Repeatedly. Failure is useful when properly documented."

"That sounds like something you put at the top of a report before explaining why you need another laboratory."

Van Dijk shifted within the projection, drawing Ludwig’s attention back toward him.

"Which is why the direction changed. We already know Authority can become physical. Your heart proves that, and the Gluttony sample gives us another example. What we do not understand is the transition."

Kaiser pushed his little crystal across the table.

"So we begin with something we can reproduce. Your assignment is to create one of these."

"A monster core."

"A Mana crystal."

"You just explained how they were the same thing."

"I explained the principle they share. I had hoped you were listening to the rest."

Ludwig raised his hands before the distinction became another lecture. Mana gathered between them, forming a pale sphere similar to the one he had lost earlier.

Kaiser stepped closer as Ludwig began pressing the energy inward.

"Don’t compress it yet."

"That is the entire reason I’m doing this."

"Condensation is the goal. Forcing Mana against itself until you lose control is what you’ve been doing."

Van Dijk leaned forward, studying the sphere through the communication crystal.

"Think of it as a current."

"That sounds like another metaphor."

"If you understood the process, I wouldn’t need one."

Ludwig glanced toward him, then returned his attention to the Mana. Having two teachers meant there was always someone available to explain why the other one was right.

"Fine. Where is this current supposed to go?"

"Give it a circular motion."

He adjusted the energy, guiding it around the sphere’s outer edge. A thin band began rotating while the rest remained contained at the center. Van Dijk shook his head before Ludwig could ask whether that was sufficient.

"The entire volume needs to move. You’re creating a shell around stationary Mana."

"Imagine a whirlpool. Everything inside it follows the flow."

Kaiser traced the motion with one finger. Ludwig watched, then drew the inner Mana into the movement. The sphere changed as its center began circulating with the rest, and the constant pressure against his control eased slightly.

He increased the speed. Light strengthened between his hands, and the sphere started shrinking almost immediately.

"Don’t add more."

Ludwig stopped with the additional Mana already gathering in his arms.

"I haven’t yet."

"You were about to. Every time it becomes smaller, you feed energy into it to preserve the size."

"Because it looks as though it’s collapsing."

"It is supposed to become smaller. Let the current draw it together, then add more once that shrinking becomes stable."

Ludwig held back the waiting Mana and watched. The sphere continued tightening, its light growing brighter as the rotating energy occupied less space. Nothing broke when he allowed it to happen.

Once the movement steadied, he fed a small amount into the current. The new Mana joined the rotation without disrupting it.

Kaiser nodded, and Ludwig resisted the temptation to feel pleased. There was still plenty of time for it to disappear.

For several minutes, he repeated the process, increasing the rotation, allowing the sphere to shrink, then feeding it only what it could accept. Every adjustment changed the pressure against his control. He began to recognize the difference between the structure becoming denser and the structure preparing to fall apart.

Unfortunately, recognizing the second did not immediately teach him how to prevent it.

The sphere expanded abruptly. Ludwig cut the supply, and the gathered Mana dissipated above the table. Kaiser said nothing, which somehow encouraged him more than another explanation would have.

He formed a new sphere and began again. That attempt lasted longer, though it ended for much the same reason. The next failed when he added Mana before the current had settled.

The difficult part was leaving it alone when his instincts told him to apply more force. Combat had taught him to answer resistance with enough power to overcome it. Here, every attempt to hurry the result ruined the structure he needed.

Gradually, he stopped treating each hesitation in the flow as something that required intervention. He let the current settle before feeding it, adjusted its speed without gripping the entire sphere tighter, and discovered that the process worked considerably better when he stopped trying to bully it.

Half an hour later, the sphere between his hands had become smaller than a coin. Its glow sharpened, and the rotation grew too fine for his eyes to follow. He could still feel it through his control, though something else had begun resisting his adjustments.

The resistance had substance. Mana no longer slipped freely through the space he gave it, and when he eased his control, the structure retained its shape.

Ludwig slowed the flow and stopped feeding it. The light faded, leaving a small object to drop onto the table.

He picked it up before Kaiser could say anything. It resembled a poorly formed glass bead, almost spherical except for an uneven bulge along one side. He pressed a thumbnail against it and felt the solid surface push back.

Kaiser examined it over his hand.

"Finally. We now have the bare minimum required to begin actual work."