"What?" Garran stared at him, disbelief written all over his face. "Young master… did I hear you correctly?"
Lucas met his gaze calmly.
"I want you to destroy my mana core."
For a moment, Garran thought he'd misheard.
"…Say that again," he said slowly.
"You didn't," Lucas replied evenly. "That's exactly what I'm asking."
Garran's expression hardened. "No. Absolutely not. Do you even understand what you're asking me to do?"
"I do."
"If I destroy your core," Garran said sharply, "you'll lose everything. Your training, your strength, your future. You'll be no different from an ordinary person."
"I know," Lucas said.
"Then why?" Garran demanded. "Why would you throw everything away?"
Lucas exhaled softly. "Just trust me. I'll be fine."
"No," Garran said firmly. "Not unless you give me a reason."
Lucas was silent for a moment.
Then he stood and handed Garran the book.
"This," he said. "The Grand Astral Method."
Garran frowned. "And?"
"This method can't be cultivated with a normal mana core," Lucas continued. "It requires a shattered one."
Garran stiffened.
"You're placing your future on this book?" he asked incredulously.
"I didn't negotiate with Aurelius for nothing," Lucas replied. "Everything I've done was for this."
Garran studied him closely.
This wasn't reckless confidence.
It was certainty.
"…Are you absolutely sure?" Garran asked quietly.
"Yes."
A long silence settled between them.
"At the very least," Garran said at last, his voice solemn, "tell me what happens next."
Lucas drew in a slow breath. "Once my mana core is destroyed, the book will rebuild it."
Garran's eyes narrowed. He was about to speak—
Lucas lifted a finger, stopping him.
"I know what that sounds like," he continued calmly. "A shattered mana core doesn't recover. It never has. But this method doesn't follow common rules. Trust me, Uncle Garran. Do it."
Garran studied him for a long moment.
Then he exhaled through his nose.
"…Very well."
Lucas sat down and crossed his legs, stripping off his shirt.
"Don't hesitate," Lucas said evenly. "I'm ready."
Garran opened his right hand.
Crimson mana surged forth, dense, compressed, humming with lethal precision. It wasn't explosive, but its weight was unmistakable. This was destruction refined.
"Do not resist," Garran said. "This will hurt."
"I know."
Garran stepped forward and placed his palm against the right side of Lucas's chest, where the mana core located.
For a heartbeat, nothing happened.
Then the mana surged inward.
Lucas's body reacted instantly.
Every muscle locked as if struck by lightning. His spine arched violently, veins erupting across his arms, neck, and temples. His eyes flew open, blood vessels bursting across the whites as his pupils trembled.
"AAAARGHHHH—!"
The pain wasn't blunt.
It was precise.
Deliberate.
Something deep inside him collapsed.
Not fractured.
Collapsed.
Agony erupted outward.
Lucas choked, a wet, broken sound tearing from his throat as blood spilled from his mouth. His hands clawed at the ground, fingers digging into the soil hard enough to tear skin.
His heart slammed against his ribs like it was trying to escape.
"AAAAAAARRRRGHHHHH!"
The scream ripped out of him, raw and uncontrolled.
It felt as though every mana channel in his body had been ripped open and reversed. Energy that once flowed in harmony now detonated chaotically, shredding him from the inside. His bones felt brittle, grinding against one another. His vision blurred, red bleeding into black.
Garran did not move.
His expression was rigid, carved from stone.
He knew exactly what was happening.
The mana core was not merely power, it was order. Stability. The axis around which the body functioned. Once destroyed, mana lost all discipline, rampaging through the body like a flood without banks.
There was no cure for this.
No recovery.
If Lucas had miscalculated...
Garran's jaw tightened.
Then the mana withdrew.
Lucas collapsed forward, his body convulsing as he sucked in shallow, ragged breaths. Blood dripped from his lips onto the ground beneath him. His limbs shook uncontrollably, nerves screaming in protest long after the damage was done.
The mana core was gone.
Completely.
Garran stood over him in silence, watching.
Waiting.
---
An hour slipped by almost unnoticed.
Lucas sat beneath the pale wash of moonlight, his back against the cold stone, chest rising and falling in uneven breaths. The sharp agony had faded, leaving behind a deep, lingering ache that settled into his bones. Every movement felt heavier than it should have, as though his body no longer remembered how to hold itself together.
Garran watched him quietly.
"So," he said at last, "how does it feel to be ordinary?"
Lucas let out a dry breath. "Weak," he said hoarsely. "Like I could drop dead if I blink wrong."
"And your next move?"
Lucas didn't answer.
Instead, he reached for the ancient tome resting beside him.
The Grand Astral Method.
He opened it.
The first page was nothing but history, names, eras, words that meant little to him now. He flipped to the next page.
Blank.
Another.
Still blank.
He kept turning pages, ten, twenty, nearly thirty, each one empty.
Garran's expression tightened. A sheen of sweat formed along his brow.
"Young master," he said carefully, "every page so far is blank. Are you certain this isn't—"
"Relax," Lucas said calmly.
He continued flipping.
Page fifty-three.
Blank.
Then...
Page fifty-four.
Light bloomed.
A faint glow seeped from the paper, soft at first, then growing brighter. Lucas leaned closer.
The page was no longer blank.
It was a vast, living image, a cosmos filled with countless stars, layered in impossible depth. The longer he stared, the more real it became, as though the book wasn't showing a picture, but opening a window.
Lucas lowered himself into a cross-legged position, eyes fixed on the page.
The stars seemed to move.
Slowly.
Invitingly.
His awareness drifted forward, pulled into the image.
And then—
His body went limp.
Lucas collapsed.
The paper turned white.
---
Lucas found himself into the darkness.
Then light.
Stars.
Endless, brilliant stars stretching in every direction.
Lucas floated weightlessly through a boundless cosmic expanse. There was no air, no ground, yet he felt no fear, only an overwhelming sense of comfort, as if he belonged here.
Ahead of him, a golden nebula formed a winding path.
His astral body drifted along it instinctively, floating across nothingness.
The silence was immense. Peaceful.
Until he stopped.
Before him loomed a colossal crimson star, radiant and alive, its surface roiling with immense energy. Lucas stared at it, awestruck.
Then something seized him.
He was dragged forward.
The moment he touched the star, agony erupted.
"AAAAAGH—!"
Blazing stellar plasma engulfed him, burning without consuming. It felt as though his body was being torn apart and reforged simultaneously, skin, muscle, bone, soul.
Inside his body, something changed.
The shattered structure of the mana core that once governed his power began to reform, but not as it was before.
Threads of light emerged, no longer singular, but vast, nebulae filled with spinning stars. They spread through his body, linking organs, veins, nerves, forming a new network entirely.
At its center, something took shape.
A mana core! But not like the usual one.
A galaxy!
Outside his body, surrounding stars began to move.
They drew closer to him.
Faster.
Then—
Collision.
BOOM!
A catastrophic explosion tore through the cosmos, a hypernova of blinding brilliance and chaos.
And then—
Everything collapsed inward.
Into Lucas.
Darkness swallowed the light.
Silence returned.
---
Three hours had passed since Lucas lost consciousness, and there was still no sign of him waking.
Garran hadn't moved the entire time.
Lucas lay motionless, breath shallow, body cold beneath the moon. Garran stood guard, arms crossed, jaw tight.
If this failed…
He didn't finish the thought.
Then—
"Gah!"
Lucas jolted upright.
Garran reacted instantly, at his side in a heartbeat. "Are you awake?"
Lucas gasped, eyes darting wildly, as if struggling to anchor himself to reality. It took several seconds before his gaze settled.
"…Uncle Garran?" he asked slowly.
"Yes," Garran said. "It's me."
Lucas stared at him.
Then a grin spread across his face.
"I did it," he said breathlessly. "I rebuilt it. Not just rebuilt, it's better."
Garran stiffened. He placed a hand against Lucas's chest.
His eyes widened.
He could feel it.
A presence.
Stable. Vast.
"How…" Garran whispered.
Lucas laughed weakly. "No idea. Felt like a dream. But the important part?"
He slowly raised his hand toward the sky, to billions of stars, fingers spreading as if reaching for something unseen. With every passing second, warmth seeped back into his limbs. Strength followed, quiet but undeniable, flowing through him in a way that felt right.
His breathing steadied.
His pulse calmed.
Then he closed his hand.
"The ability to draw power from the stars," Lucas said, a slow grin spreading across his face. "It's mine now."
And that wasn't all.
His mana core had changed fundamentally. It was no longer something fragile that could be shattered or crippled. It had become absolute immune to destruction by any force.
In the original timeline, this power was meant for Leon.
Back then, Leon only awakened it after his mana core was destroyed. Ironically, at the hands of the Drakebane family. What should have ended him instead became the turning point of his rise, forging him into something far stronger than before.
Star-based power was among the rarest forces in existence. So rare, in fact, that there's an Order existed solely to revere and study the stars.
If Leon ever learned the truth that this power had been meant for him, it would feel less like betrayal.
And more like being struck by lightning.