Ankit stepped to the lake's edge, then walked straight onto the surface.
His personal gravity field shifted; water held him like solid glass. From there, he let his body slowly sink until the dark water closed over his head. Silence wrapped him, broken only by the dull beat of his own heart and the soft buzz of Essence‑rich currents brushing his skin.
He folded his legs beneath him and "sat" in mid‑water, stabilising his field so the lake neither crushed him nor pushed him away. Then he turned his awareness inward.
The Sacral Core pulsed in his lower abdomen, a sphere of cool, flowing power. Unlike the Root Core's heavy earth nature, Sacral's Essence was fluid and shifting: water, darkness, flexibility, regeneration, perception.
Step by step, he repeated the method he had used on the Root Core, but adapted for this element.
1. Essence gathering
- He opened the Sacral pathways and let the lake's water Essence seep in, guided, not forced. It flowed along meridians and settled around the Sacral Core in slow spirals.
- Instead of "weight," the sensation was of depth—like sinking through layers of an endless ocean.
2. Rotational compression
- With his will, Ankit set the Sacral Core spinning. Not a violent spin, but a controlled, layered rotation, different strata moving at slightly different speeds.
- The incoming water Essence joined this spin, forming shells that orbited closer and closer to the centre, squeezing the core from every direction.
3. Temper and bleed
- Whenever impurities, chaotic eddies, or unstable spikes appeared, he let them bleed out along secondary channels and dissolve into the lake.
- The core kept shrinking, its colour deepening from pale blue to a darker, almost ink‑like shade, threaded with soft silver lines of control.
Water Essence refined water Essence, supported by the ambient power of the underground lake. His Root Core's earth field kept his body stable, preventing external pressure from interfering. His Solar Core burned quietly in the background, ready to supply raw strength if anything went out of balance—but he carefully avoided letting its fire leak into this process.
Time in the lake lost its meaning. Hours blurred into days.
When the Sacral Core finally reached its limit, it pulsed once, sharply, then settled into a compact, heavy droplet of dark, crystalline water—small, but unimaginably dense. His entire body responded:
- Blood flowed smoother and faster.
- Wounds would now knit with a thought.
- His control over sacral Essence became as precise as a surgeon's hand.
Ankit opened his eyes in the dark water, exhaled a long stream of bubbles, and let gravity reverse.
He rose to the surface, stepped onto the shore, and without pausing, continued downward—through hidden shafts, deep tunnels, and passages that led beneath the crust into the zone he had used once before: the boundary between rock and molten fire.
Eventually, the world turned red.
Lava roared below like a slow, furious river. Heat here would have turned ordinary stone to dust and metal to slag; to Ankit, wrapped in earth‑and‑water tempered flesh, it felt like standing inside a furnace that had finally been turned up high enough to matter.
He stepped off the ledge and sank into the magma.
Earth field wrapped around his body; Sacral water Essence formed thin, shimmering layers under his skin, acting as buffers. Lava parted around him like thick, glowing syrup, flooding his senses with fire‑type Essence Flow so dense it felt almost solid.
This was where he had awakened and opened the Solar Core.
Now he had returned to finish what he started.
Unlike the Root and Sacral work, the Solar Core's compression could not be done fiercely. Fire that was squeezed too hard, too fast, exploded. He needed a constant, vast supply of fire Essence and a long period of steady pressure.
That was exactly what the mantle offered.
1. Sacral as the clamp
- Ankit channelled the freshly compressed Sacral Essence around the Solar Core, forming rings of cool, dark "water steel."
- These rings tightened very slowly, applying constant, even pressure from all sides—never enough to rupture, always enough to force the fire inward.
2. Lava as the fuel
- At the same time, he opened the Solar pathways and drew in fire Essence from the surrounding magma.
- Fresh fire entered, was purified by the outer Sacral rings, then pushed inward to join the shrinking core.
3. Controlled burn
- Inside the Solar Core, fire Essence raged, but every surge that tried to lash out met the cold discipline of Sacral's compression field.
- Excess heat flowed along designated vents into his meridians, strengthening bones and muscles before escaping harmlessly into the surrounding lava.
The process was painfully slow by design.
The Sacral Core acted like a master craftsman's press, never resting, never rushing.
For as long as Ankit could endure the heat and maintain focus, the Solar Core would continue to shrink—its temperature rising, its purity improving, its destructive potential becoming more compact and controllable.
In this substage, he did not seek immediate completion.
He sought momentum: a stable, unstoppable refinement that would continue even while he rested, as long as he remained submerged in this sea of fire Essence.
Wrapped in lava, eyes closed, three cores humming—earth steady, water deep, fire blazing—Ankit sank deeper into stillness.
Substage 5, Stage 2 had begun in earnest.