As John felt his core solidifying, he felt his core begin swirling at a terrifying rate. Huge amounts of aether coursed through his veins greatly speeding up the tempering pace of his body, in fact John even detected signs of rapid growth which greatly alarmed him.
Normally, children wouldn't have tempered their body so in order to avoid suspicion John quickly suppressed the rapid growth and instead channeled back the energy into his core. As his core began swirling and rapidly growing, John paid great attention to the outside and the inside of his core.
He observed as his Core began growing and adding new pathways inside his core. Curious, John wondered what would happen if he began circulating the breathing technique. So after a period of contemplation John began to circulate the breathing technique.
Whoosh, the speed of aether consumption suddenly tripped, with the aether around John congealing to the point it was visible. "Goodness, ladies and gentlemen, it looks like we have a genius on our hands." exclaimed the host.
Frowning, John paid no attention to the host's subtle attempt to arouse the Crown's hostility towards him, and continued to circulate the breathing technique. Unlike previous times, this time with him awakening the core and all, he had to manually control the technique as well as the flow of aether solidifying and growing his core.
Suddenly, John felt something being etched onto his core, carefully observing John realized that the the pathways that aether absorbed by the breathing technique took was being etched as a pathway.
Surprised, John's mind quickly raced as he deduced what the cause of it could be, and what effects it would cause. However before he could finish doing that, John suddenly felt a rush of violent aether be absorbed before his core began slowing down along with the breathing technique.
Now that John's mind wasn't mainly preoccupied with controlling the flow of aether, John quickly began controlling the flow of aether that had yet to be solidified to begin compressing his core.
He had practiced doing this before during the advancement ritual when he was a baby so John knew exactly what to do. As his core slowly began compressing John quietly thought about the reactions of the Crown. Although he had compressed his core he still needed to lay low in the future lest the Crown conclude that he was too much a threat to be kept alive even before an impending war. After all, the host had declared him to be a prodigy in front of all the Ducal families and the Crown. Clearly, the host had some sort of grudge or conflict with his family which was something that John took a mental note of. From the conversations that he eavesdropped on, he knew the old man to be an esteemed array master from the Stratos Family.
Soon, John's core finished condensing and he felt a great burst of impure aether begin gathering at the new pathways created on his core. Before he had been outputting and inputting aether from the same pathways, but John had a feeling that these new pathways were the ones most efficient from the task of outputting aether.
Contemplating, John let out a loud scream, expelling all of the impure aether. After expelling the aether, John felt that he had become a new person.His core began expelling and inhaling aether with its brand new pathway. The aether in his veins began circulating automatically with the pathlines of the breathing technique shining. His aether and his corenow felt much more condensed and solid. Due to the efficiency of his core as well as the breathing technique, John's core looked like it was covered by a glowing shield.
Suddenly John felt a small strand of aether from the outside quickly enter his core and before he could react circulate around his entire core before exiting. However, John knew that his core would be examined and had taken precautions disguising a part of his core with aether making circulation much slower.
"The Young Lord of the Verrien family now awakened with a…. BRILLIANT CORE," shouted the old man, his voice seemingly amplified by aether, drowning out all noise in the stadium.
"Goodness," thought John, "This guy really has a vendetta against the Verrien House huh, to the point where he's practically blasting the fact that I'm a genius to everybody."
Suddenly John heard another voice reverberate throughout the stadium, it was his father's. "Now, now, Elliot, it's just a low level Brilliant Core, barely higher than Miss Amber's nothing to boast about."
Before the old man, Elliot, could reply, a sudden presence descended upon the entire stadium. It was overbearing, suffocating, fear-inspiring, something that John had never experienced before, something even stronger than his father's presence.
"So this must be the Ascended Core Level never mentioned by my father, " mused John. While eavesdropping the two vassals of another Ducal family, he had heard about the Ascended Core, something not mentioned by his father. According to the two vassals only the King's were allowed to be at this level, which was why talents like him were suppressed.
"Indeed, if I were a king I would never let someone gain this level of power," thought John.
A voice sounded across the stadium, " Congratulations Peter, for birthing such a promising child, after the incident with your other one. I trust that you'll be naming him and sending him to the Central Academy, yes?"
"Yes, your majesty, I will be doing that soon." "Good, we'll need all the talents we have soon," replied the King.
After that, the overwhelming presence retracted leaving the entire stadium in silence.
"Alright now moving on to the top 10 most promising…"
John was quickly lifted back into his father's box via wind and he sat silent observing from the rest of the Awakening Ceremony. With his power brimming, John couldn't wait to do some new experiments. However while he was daydreaming about his experiments his father suddenly interrupted his daydream.
"Son, I'm sure you have a lot of questions. After the ceremony come with me to my office. We will be discussing your future years there."