The next flash came, even more frightening than all the others. It was practically dozens of times stronger than the fifth ray; his strength could not be put into words. He fell without stopping for several seconds straight. The large crater widened even more; for several kilometers, there was absolutely nothing. A strangely loud sound was heard by everyone in the region.
It was the sound of air coming in at high speed to balance the pressure; this meant the lightning decimated anything in the area it struck. Even the air was affected. When the flash passed, there was no sign of the tree. There was just a small round ball floating in mid-air... within seconds, it began to grow ridiculously large. In an accelerated manner, trunks and roots were expelled from his body at high speed.
It didn’t even take 10 seconds for the tree to be back with all its roots and trunks; even its leaves were back to normal. This degree of regeneration was completely surreal. The size of a fingernail, it grew to several kilometers.
And even more was to come; The next flash was even more ridiculous and Kayden saw something he only read about in novels. Reality itself began to show cracks as if it were made of glass.
He fell for several seconds; a ridiculous amount of mana was pouring out from every point of the cracks. The mana was enough to kill a mage in the fourth realm just by its quantity, without entering the rift.
It took a while for him to stop falling, but once he did, there was no sign of the tree. At least no one could see it, not even Azir was seeing her. Maybe she would have died after facing seven lightning bolts. Kayden blinked his eyes and the tree was growing in front of him again. In the blink of an eye, she returned to the shape she was in previously. He couldn’t even see where she grew up from; progress was much faster.
Nobody said anything; the two were waiting for Azir’s orders. This situation was far above his scope. The old man began to float with them toward the tree; they saw several hundred people in the air heading in the opposite direction of the tree; only a few people approached the ipê.
"It will increase the mana density to something close to 1000 times for a few hours. Don’t ask me why, just enjoy cultivating. I will erect a bubble around us so that you can cultivate without being overwhelmed by mana," said Azir. Just as he said, just a few seconds later, the air began to shake as the mana turned liquid.
Once again, Kayden felt like he was in a river, but this time the man wasn’t tied to a ridiculously strong will; they could use it with ease. Before he started cultivating, Kayden became reflective.
What is the level of the tree to be able to do something ? The amount of mana was so great that it seemed like a river crossing the entire sky; its density was so high that it became liquid.
And what was that ridiculous regeneration? This was beyond common sense. The tree could easily grow in seconds, regardless of the level of the injury. Kayden was sure this was beyond what any human could do; perhaps only Eden had wizards at this level.
Kayden still had his doubts about that, especially after seeing how Adam became a docile dog next to that dragon in the college test staircase illusion. Leaving that aside, he began to cultivate.
The amount of mana was ridiculous; Kayden had never felt anything before. If he didn’t count his body’s stress, he could recover all of his body’s mana in just one breath.
Wasting no time, Kayden began improving his base even further; he could take the opportunity to improve his rank, but he knew that would be a waste of this opportunity. It was better to increase his growth ceiling than his current power.
Kayden began using all the mana he could to improve just one small, insignificant detail in his base. Every inch of his veins was being studied and improved, whether in endurance or anything else.
His heart went through dozens of full mana cycles; this meant he absorbed mana until it burst and then released it. All this is to observe your body’s response and find the points that should be improved.
He did this by using his path to move mana, thus ensuring that the stress was not on his body and only on his mind. And that was insignificant to Kayden; It had been a long time since he had the surgery so he couldn’t sleep and since then his mind had been heavy and throbbing ridiculously.
It felt like he had a nail driven deep into his skull and yet he continued to do everything he needed to do without worrying about the pain. This time would be no different; even if the pain is magnified dozens of times because of the incessant use of your path.
"I found it," Kayden muttered after cycling the mana ten times and managing to fix a small spot in his heart that made the mana tend to come out more unstable. He would never have achieved this alone, as the amount of mana needed for him to find this small error would have cost him months of hard work.
A few more rotations of mana and he found a defect in his veins where some cavities were larger on one side of his body than the other. This caused the force on each side to be slightly different; it was so insignificant that in ten thousand cases the force would only be different in 1 of them.
"Only perfection is acceptable," Kayden continued looking for the problems. His heart was feeling ridiculously strong at this point, but Kayden noticed a small problem with his body’s balance. The mana that reached the tip of his hand or foot was about 1% weaker than that in the central area of his body.
This was because the mana received friction from the walls of the veins and lost strength. It was a ridiculously small thing, but it still existed. Kayden didn’t waste even 1 minute to think of a solution and...
Kayden began breaking four stitches on his body. The point of breaking it was to destroy everything he had there, be it veins or anything related to mana. The pain, once again, was ridiculous, but Kayden continued to smile. This was something he had thought about previously but was putting off until the ideal opportunity.
On each shoulder, a mana hole was opened. On his waist, two other holes were made, one on each side of his body. His body previously felt like there was mana in every point of it, but now four empty points could be felt.
Kayden began to gather mana around him, a ridiculous amount. First, he started with the right shoulder. His first action was to build a small base similar to a magic core.
His body automatically tried to reject the new core, and Kayden just laughed to himself as he controlled his most basic instincts in the same way he chose to open or close the fingers on his hand.
After a few minutes, four false cores were modeled at each of the points. Then Kayden began working on a structure he had rehearsed thousands of times in the past, enough so that dozens of years had passed and he could still remember it.
First, the smaller cavities were constructed, and then the ventricles. The other time, Kayden took over half an hour, but now it was barely 2 minutes for each of the holes.
The valves were made to perfection, with the highest quality that a craftsman could put into his work. The only difference between this moment and the previous one was storage. None of the four structures had any form of storage.
The integration of the mind with the new organ was done in just a few seconds. Kayden had complete control over her body; he just had to order it and it would be done no matter what.
"Perfect," Kayden smiled, seeing the four new hearts he built in just a few minutes. Logically, they weren’t as strong as the first one and didn’t even function as a mana core for him to advance through the ranks of mages.
Their only use was to redirect the mana impulse to the extremities of the body as well as the main heart. They worked as a kind of high-speed system. Kayden only needed to think, and the mana would be at his fingertips at a much greater speed.
The pain of the process was negligible for Kayden, and he just kept looking for improvements. His veins were tidied up, and the flow of mana was fixed at some points that made the mana travel a greater distance than it needed to.
Ten hours later, Kayden was awakened by a tap on his shoulders from Azir. The mana flow had ended, but he was fixing a specific spot that didn’t need mana and he didn’t pay attention to it.