Rise of the Archmage Alister

“Hello!” the petite pink-haired half-elf tapped a wooden rod against the air in a wide, blank space as she grinned wildly, “I’m Demerieth, one of Raalin’s old buddies, and the system has me doing a lesson on magic cores today!!” She had on a simple black dress that flowed around her knees and climbed to her neck, though it had no sleeves. She was thin, and her small pointed ears had scars on the tips.

She held out her hands and rather theatrically allowed mana to pool in her hands like a bright blue liquid, threatening to spill over. The half-elf tossed the liquid mana into the air where it dispersed like steaming water in the snow. The particles tinkled and shone before they coalesced into a floating orb.

The watermelon-sized sphere floated down until it hovered just at eye level. She cupped it in her hands, a ball as clear as spring water, with swirling waves inside it, “This one is the first, the one most infants are graced with. It is a clear core, and like all cores, they start out large and vacant. The particles of mana in it are strewn throughout with lots of space between them. This is then tightened and condensed through training.” The sphere condensed into the size of a marble in her palm, and she released it back into the air.

“You go through Light, Middle, and Dense. After it reaches the size of a marble, you undergo a core explosion,” she smiled up at the clear marble as it shook and shone. It burst out in white light, and what returned to her hands was a milky white sphere that was once again the size of a melon.

It swirled like a storm unhindered by the air, and her smile was one of such love and respect, her pink curls drifting in front of her face. There was a pause, and she sighed, “The process repeats. It gets harder each time, and most often, it is painful to go through a core explosion. Your core gets denser and denser, darker and darker as it moves through the colors. It’s fascinating.”

The orb lifted into the air, condensed, and exploded, going through many colors in a cycle. From white to red, then orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, indigo, and finally, violet.

The violet orb condensed into a marble, stunningly beautiful, and drifted into her hands again, “This was where I was stuck… well… sort of. I was Light Violet. My core was the size of a melon… Raalin’s was so small, not even a marble, a pea! He was the best of us…”

She sighed, the sound resonating in the empty space, and her voice hushed to a whisper, “The best…” Demerieth shook her head forcefully and her hair bounced around messily, “None of that! Now then! The cool stuff is next. Transcendence!!”

“Being a violet core mage is already super cool, but there’s a whole other world beyond it!” she pointed at nowhere in particular with the rod in her hand, keeping the violet marble in her other one, “There are only three more cores known. Silver, black, and finally, void.”

She let the marble go again and it shone brighter than any before it. One hand over her eyes, the orb was blinding. It burst suddenly, exploding with a deafening shatter of reality. “Ahh… gosh, why did I make that so loud? I’m the one making this scene! I didn’t need to be so loud,” she grumbled and huffed as the orb hovered above her. It was now a metallic silver, swirling with a shimmer to it that gave the core great depth.

Demerieth rubbed her ears, “Anyway! It goes from silver to black and then from black to void… supposedly. I never saw more than silver, so I don’t know how to make it look. But going from violet to silver - transcending - usually ends in death. You have to undergo a complicated ritual and it's a big mess and it's super scary.”

“If you can live through it, though, you’re like… as strong as a young god! It’s incredible!” she looked more animated suddenly as she spoke of the strength of it, “Violet might be like… a demi-god, or an older member of one of the greater races? But transcendent cores are like being a god without a divine spark! It’s fascinating stuff! I did some res-”

She looked to something in the distance and gave it a small grimace, “Oh. Right right. Sorry! Sorry. Cores make a mage or in general, a being, stronger. You don’t have to be a mage to benefit from it. Swordsmen benefit from it, for instance. It generally makes the body stronger, harder to harm, makes your spells have more oomph behind them, and it tends to coincide with a larger mana pool. It doesn’t have to match, but usually, if your mana pool is big then your core is going to match and vice versa.”

“It has a lot of benefits. Your aura will be denser as a result as well, which can catch some… interesting attention… but that’s good for training anyway!” she grinned again, “With a denser core you also have more… oh what’s the word? You have more delicate, purposeful control over mana and your spells. It’s like using a knife to skin a boar instead of your bare hands!”

Her attention was pulled to the spot in the distance again, and she frowned, for the first time looking genuinely sad, “Oh… Okay. Well… That’s all the time I have right now, apparently… I’m sorry… Hopefully, I’ll get to talk more later… it’s… lonely here.”