Chapter 176: Chapter 175 – Solid Mana Pathways

After spending a few hours recovering, Dream got back to work. 

The particle dome and solid mana was only the first part of his plan. He had two more parts, both of which actually revolved around himself. If he wanted to help them, then strength and ability was his foremost guarantor. 

The solid mana that he made was actually going to be used by both himself and the girls. While he recovered, Iris had already done some tests and successfully converted the solid mana to her own, confirming his assumption that she could use it. As for himself, he was planning on enchanting his body using the solid mana.

Putting it simply, he was going to form himself a core!

While it's known as a core, as per Dream's plan, it was going to be a full-body enchantment. Not only that, he would convert the liquid mana pathways going from his body to soul into solid mana pathways. That's how Riddick described the advancement process, and while it was usually extremely difficult to pull off, Dream and Sophia already had the whole thing planned out. 

And since he had his plans, he immediately got to work. Over the next three days, alongside Luna and Iris he would constantly create lung sized pieces of mana. He made enough to fill his entire body as well as the bodies of both girls, both fox and human forms. Then he made enough to cover the area that the mana pathways of the three took up, ensuring that they could convert everything. Finally, he made extra just in case.

After that, he rested. Creating solid mana wasn't easy, and while it had gotten easier as he made more, it still took lots of energy. 

But with the help of the girls, he was soon recovered. And once he was, he began the first part of his plan: Enchanting his body!

Dream's body was filled to the brim with enchantments. In fact, nothing within it wasn't enchanted. Everything from his eyes to his blood cells to his muscles was interconnected by the unbelievably complex magic network that was his body. 

Along with these enchantments, there were 2 things that made his physical body stronger. One, his material composition. If you were to strip Dream of all his magical ability leaving behind only his body, it would be incredibly strong. Nothing short of railguns would be able to pierce through his defenses. And his strength was thousands of times that of the world's strongest human. This was all due to the way his body was constructed.

The second thing that made him stronger was the magical aspect of his body. When it came to normal people in the magical world Dream was on, they were enhanced by the mana and flux content in their bodies. This was why powerful people, no matter if they were mages or fighters, had stronger bodies. Their souls could control higher concentrations of mana and flux, and this higher concentration would enhance their bodies similar to how metals could be enhanced.

This natural enhancement was only that though, a natural enhancement. The mana in people's bodies would only boost the systems of the body. Strength was the most obvious example, but there was also the immune system, regeneration, stamina, the senses, and even the brain. Everything was boosted, but not in an intentional way.

This is what made Dream's enchantments stand out from everyone. His body was totally enchanted, giving rise to intentional systems that could be controlled and boosted even more so than normal. Another benefit to this was that his bodily power increased when his enchanting abilities strengthened. This gave him a body far surpassing that of a powerful warrior while having the magical ability of a supreme Magus.

Combine that with other things like his electrical overdrive and Aegis, and you had a being that defied logic. But that very being was about the be strengthened once more, because he was about to turn his liquid mana enchantments into solid mana enchantments!

When speaking in terms of solid, liquid, or gas mana, it's usually difficult for people to truly understand the difference between them. Primarily, the difference in power when one is used over the other. But Dream had come to slowly figure this difference out.

When Dream did things, it was usually by his influence. Influence or Will is the ability of a soul to control magical energies around it. There are only three magical energies that Dream has discovered. Mana, Flux, and Riddick's destruction type mana. And he could control all three of these with his influence.

And even controlling these energies isn't as simple as just controlling them. The ability to control things like mana and flux came from skills, which were soul strings formed into patterns that enabled certain applications of influence, and therefore mana or flux. And yet, these skills weren't even where power stemmed from.

The true power of the soul came from its nucleus, the jumbled ball of soul strings that's covered by the shell of skill signatures. Dream wasn't sure why or how, but the Will of a soul came from that nucleus. 

With all that in mind, one might wonder why using solid mana is better than using liquid. And as far as Dream knew, the answer to that was because solid mana could 'contain' more influence, and therefore be utilized with greater strength. 

Dream thought of it as a weapon and its weight. When one got stronger, one could move greater weights. In the instance of a weapon like a sword or an axe, heavier weapons were better for stronger people. Lighter weapons would only be detrimental to the power they could unleash. It was the same with mana.

Solid mana was metaphorically heavier. It required greater strength to use, but in turn it would unleash greater power. Gas mana was lighter, and if Dream used it, it would greatly limit the power he could unleash. But if he used solid mana, he could properly utilize his full potential.

This explanation is merely metaphorical however, and the actual characteristics of mana and their interactions with Influence were much more complex. It gave a better overview though, and it helped Dream come to understand how things were used.

So with all that knowledge in mind, Dream decided that it was time to begin his upgrades. And the first thing he would be upgrading was going to be his mana pathways. 

Dream could work on his body one piece at a time, but upgrading his mana pathways was a process that couldn't be interrupted. So in order to get the best results, he made sure he was at full power before proceeding with the upgrade.

Once he was, he began with Luna and Iris by his side. 

When it came to replacing his pathways, it wasn't as simple as just taking out one pathway and putting in another. During the swap, Dream couldn't break the pathways. Instead, he had to directly integrate the liquid mana into the solid. Basically, if the liquid pathways were a river, he was going to pipe it with the solid mana, seep the liquid into the solid pipe, and then convert it all into one solid structure. 

And that's exactly what he did. Taking two of the lung sized pieces of solid mana, he moved it into the 4th dimension where his pathways connected to the soul. After deforming the solid mana into strips, he piped one pathway at a time. 

Once all the paths were piped, he controlled all the pathways at once to seep into the solid mana. 

While Dream controlled the seeping, Sophia was controlling the transfer of the enchantment. The seeping wasn't just to combine the two manas, but hand off the data in the liquid pathway to its new shell. This required not only precision, but for Sophia to maintain the active state of the enchantments. Should things go awry, Dream would lose his direct connection from body to soul. 

But given Sophia's expertise, she lost control of nothing and allowed everything to progress smoothly. After all the mana was seeped and the data was transferred, Dream began the process of turning the seeped liquid into solid mana as well as filling the hollow pathways. 

As Dream had much practice doing so, he was able to easily pull flux from the extra solid mana and mana from the environment, solidifying the liquid and filling the pathways. With that, he was done. With the pathways at least.

This pathway upgrade was actually only 80% of the work. The other 20% came in when he had to connect the pathways to the soul.

This was where Dream was most cautious. He was confident in easily converting the pathways, but as for changing their anchor to the soul, he wasn't as confident. 

The way the mana pathways anchored to the soul was by connecting to the mana environment of the soul. The soul consisted of the nucleus and the shell, and mana would accumulate inside and around the shell and nucleus. This was where Dream believed his mana pool to exist, but even on this point he wasn't entirely sure. 

Either way, Dream had connected the liquid pathways to the accumulated mana within his entire soul. Those pathways all conglomerated together into one big anchor encompassing everything and even connecting to his skill signatures. In this sense, it also acted as a defensive barrier.

Now, Dream would have to turn all that liquid mana into solid mana. It was obvious how much caution was necessary as if they let their control slip, it could not only disrupt the pathways but also harm his soul and skill signatures. While he could recover, Dream still shivered in fear at the thought of feeling the pain that came with injuring his soul. 

He wouldn't let it stop him though. This was a necessary step, and his thirst for improvement outweighed his fear of pain. With that, he proceeded with the operation.

The plan was to intertwine strips of solid mana with the liquid mana. After weaving through everything, he would do the same seep and data transfer he did with the pathways, and after all that, he would solidify everything. The plan was straightforward, and at least with the live practice earlier, he had some semblance of confidence.

So he and Sophia got to work. Dream's control followed Sophia's precision as they weaved outside, through, and within the shell. They slowly encompassed every bit of liquid mana, and only when everything was in place did they begin the transfer.

Immediately after starting this step, Dream felt his energy draining. He had already been a bit tired after the pathways, but this really drove that exhaustion in. While it didn't show on the surface, Luna and Iris could quickly detect his wavering aura. They didn't send him energy though. That was actually an instruction of his. Dream wasn't sure if it would interfere with anything, and considering he was so close to the soul, he didn't want external factors playing in. 

So he had to suck it up and forge onward. Luckily he was no stranger to soul exhaustion, so as he worked, he prevented his control from slipping.

Like this, nearly 6 hours passed. It was only after that time that the transfer completed. No hiccups occurred.

'*sigh* Let's finish this up.'

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Taking a deep, relieved breath, Dream continued on. The solidification was actually the easy part as he didn't need to be so precise. So after only 10 minutes, he opened his eyes. He had totally upgraded his pathways.

Luna saw this and felt his aura that had stabilized. 

"...Done?"

"Mm."

"Good job. You should rest up now."

Saying that, both she and Iris started sending energy that quickly nourished Dream's soul. She also stroked his hair as he laid down on her legs, holding nothing back as he got comfortable.

"Mmm, I love these juicy thighs."

"...Squishing them isn't gonna soften them. You do that with mine too, but I don't know why." (Iris)

"It works with pillows."

"If you want pillows, then use boobs."

"Maybe if you come over here I'll use yours."

"...Just pet my tails."

Flushing a bit, Iris transformed into her fox form before cuddling up and draping her tails over his body. He just accepted it with a smile as her fur radiated heat that warmed him. Her tails were definitely one of his favorite things to fondle. 

.........

......

After enjoying a rest for a while, Dream got back to work.

He still needed to upgrade his bodily enchantments. Luckily, doing that would be much easier than messing with his pathways. 

For his enchantments, Dream wouldn't need to through the troublesome process of solidifying everything. He could just directly swap out the liquid mana for solid. It was many times less energy-consuming, and considering he already had solid mana ready, it would also go very quickly.

And it did. Dream and Sophia were able to upgrade all of his enchantments in only 2 hours. And after those 2 hours, his entire body was filled to the brim with solid mana.

Luna and Iris also watched every step of the process. Since they were going to be doing something like this themselves, they wanted as much knowledge about it as possible. This was actually the only reason Dream took 2 hours. He had slowed himself down to let them watch, taking nearly double the time.

"So now what?"

Iris asked Dream as he laid there. He never bothered getting up as he never needed to. 

"Well, I've created a core out of my entire body, so my magic stat has gone up again."

"S+? Seriously?"

"I don't mean gone up a letter. It increased, but not that much. Before, my Influence has about a 5 km radius. Now it has a 7.2 km radius."

"Oh wow. Big jump."

"By about 40% or so, yes. Plus my mana pool has expanded a lot. I would say by about 60%? While I can still only naturally produce liquid mana, the density has gone up."

"*sigh* You just keep getting stronger."

"Doing this whole core thing is literally part of the advancement, so I would hope so. You guys are going to get a big jump in power too, don't worry."

"Mm. Didn't answer my question though. What now?"

"Now, I'm gonna move on to the second part of my plan. Aegis."

"My lord."

"Sophia and I are ready. Are you?"

"Always, my lord."

"Good. Sophia."

[Understood. Emulating the Passive Skill: [Hierarchy].]

After she spoke, Dream could feel a part of his soul quiver and slightly weaken. Luna and Iris could also feel the fluctuations in his soul.

Within Dream's soul, the shell expanded and opened up, creating an empty void. After that, a string was suddenly created from another portion of the shell. It was Sophia's portion, and the string floated straight over to the empty void.

This string was a creation of the Emulator skill under Sophia, and it held enormous amounts of data. It was a different type of skill than the others Dream had, one on a seemingly higher level of complexity. It seemed that only Sophia could surpass it in sheer complexity. 

And contained within that string, was the Hierarchy skill.

 

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