Rise Of The Infinite Sovereign-Chapter 342: Negative Crystal

Ten minutes later, the ditch had been widened on all sides, almost triple its former size.

Smoothing it out, Zydrax fills it with ice before jumping in.

Once inside, he places layers of magic circles to conceal it better before sitting taking a meditative posture.

With the abode widened, he now had adequate space for the gigantic orb of negative mana.

As such, he wills it out of the space ring.

It appears in front of him, negative mana held in an orb shape.

The change in the atmosphere is as expected.

Though, from where he was sitting, the negative mana had coalesced so much it looked like a round black boulder, the type that fell off mountains.

With the negative mana gathered, the next step was to change the ice source’s essence, turning it into a negative mana refiner.

Controlling the negative mana, he condenses it, making it thicker but smaller, as by the time he was done, the orb was much smaller.

Now, it was about just about five times the size of Ezra’s head, making the widening of the abode seem like wasted effort.

Taking out the ice source, he directly plunges it into the orb, albeit slowly and delicately.

Inside, like a sponge in water, it sucks in the negative mana at a rapid pace, but doesn’t release it.

Thanks to Zydrax tinkering with it a bit, a few things about it had changed.

Unlike mana, negative mana wasn’t naturally created, it was an essence imbibed into demons right from birth that automatically strengthened them.

To then increase their strength, they would take negative mana from other demons, that’s why Ezra’s healing factor increased explosively having eaten Ziltris’ heart.

Now, because negative mana was taken from slain opponents, emotions of malice, hatred, lust and greed were mixed, forming the corruption that almost took over Ezra’s mind at Arcadia.

So rather than refining the negative mana back into the atmosphere, Zydrax configured the ice source to act as a container, refining the negative mana within.

By now, the ice source had sucked in all the negative mana.

With the negative mana countering the mana originally within, a reaction took place as the ice source shook and the contrasting colours of black and white clashed.

Having expected it, Zydrax held the shaking ice source in place as it went through drastic changes.

The more it shook, the more white speckles fell out, and after thirty minutes, the entirety of the ice source had changed.

No longer was it letting out blinding white light, all that had been evicted, leaving a glowing blackness as dark as midnight.

Zydrax didn’t do anything though, things were far from over.

With the ice mana kicked out, the negative mana began assimilating with the ice source to permanently change its essence.

Wrapping around the core now isolated from mana, the negative mana burst into it, causing another round of friction to take place as the ice source underwent a fundamental change.

Ten minutes later, it settled and Zydrax pulled it towards him to check it at close range.

Filled to the brim with the negative mana, the inside looked like a hurricane made of black dust was brewing.

It looked as if it would burst, letting off waves of negative mana like wisps of smoke as it calmed from its such a major change.

The whiteness within had been completely snuffed out, the core now exhibited a similar shade of black.

Zydrax noted that even the feeling it gave was different from before.

Twirling it in his hands, he nods seeing no complications and awaits the next process.

Of course, things were not over.

Fifteen minutes later, it began to shake again, as if the negative mana within was agitated, it started moving weirdly.

Slowly but surely, it settles once more.

All the negative mana within was now connected to the core.

With that done, the actual refining began.

Throughout each process, pushing out the mana from within and forcefully taking over the core, vast amounts of negative mana had been expended.

Good thing Zydrax accumulated surplus, else it might’ve failed halfway, destroying or at least damaging the ice source, halving its efficiency by half.

With things as they are, Zydrax watched as the negative mana was refined within the bounds of what used to be the ice source.

With things going smoothly, Zydrax casts a floating spell on the...negative mana source?

Anyway, with the refinement underway, he places it at one side before taking out the mana cube.

Resplendent as always, Zydrax inspects it.

It would take at least a day for the negative mana to reach the satisfactory refinement level.

One might ask, if the mana cube was an essence refiner as well, why did Zydrax need something like the ice source.

Simple, the mana cube contains the purest form of mana one can have.

To even try to use such an item to refine negative mana would be disastrous, to actually do so would be catastrophic.

Furthermore, the mana cube was the base material for which the entire artifact was based on.

Zydrax picked it out as such because of its uniqueness.

Through his research, Zydrax found that creation for the ice source and mana cube were both caused by the same thing.

Nevertheless, the mana cube was the better of the two for one reason.

Its initial essence being pure mana.

The ice source took mana and transposed it to ice mana.

The mana cube was formed from mana stones coalescing, and then it continuously refined such mana.

Furthermore, as an essence refiner, any non-conflicting essence or material would be refined alongside the mana within.

Unlike negative mana that directly raised one’s strength, mana increased latent strength-one’s room to grow-and amplified one’s ability.

In order words, anything placed within the cube would have its functions amplified.

This function was the crux of the entire artifact, Zydrax was going to put the finished framework of his groundbreaking construct into it and then have them fuse.

Taking out the unfinished construct, which was but a discoloration of black, blue and gold energies at the moment, he tinkers with it.

Taking out the black energy which is the negative mana, the ice source sucks it in for refining.

It was also about time to give the ice source another name, at this point, he couldn’t keep calling it the ice source.

Negative mana source was too long a name.

Something not bad and not too long.

’Hmm...’

To think a name would have him stumped.

Ezra’s voice resounded. "Just call it the Negative crystal"

"...that works too"

It was decided just like that.

With the negative mana sucked into the ice, I mean negative crystal, Zydrax got working on the other energies of blue and gold distinctively.

Perfecting them while fantasizing the eventual completion, time passes.

Three days later, the negative crystal settled.

Yanking it, Zydrax puts it through thorough inspection.

He is astonished. "This is beyond expectations"

The negative mana had been refined beyond the level he’d hoped for.

Rather than just pure, the negative mana particles neared the stage of liquid, just like the mana in Ezra’s body.

Zydrax had conjectured that the mana in the mana cube was also in a liquid state, but couldn’t prove it.

Regardless, this made things much easier.

Controlling the negative crystal, Zydrax shattered the core within, and subsequently shattered the negative crystal, reducing it to a thousand tiny fragments just as he had done with the dungeon crystal.

With the negative mana refined, the negative crystal had no more use refining.

Remember, the reason the negative mana needed refining in the first place was so it wouldn’t need refilling or replacing after the artifact was created.

Meaning the negative mana was refined with the mind of lasting forever.

With the crystal dismantled, the negative mana lay naked. After refinement, the essence had thickened but the size had lessened.

The negative mana had reduced to the size of Ezra’s fist.

It lay floating alongside a thousand tiny crystals.

Flicking his fingers, the negative mana split into a thousand small portions and was sucked into a tiny crystal.

With the crystal already familiar with the essence there was no rejection and barely any reaction.

The last needed ingredient was ready.

Having had three days of preparation, Zydrax didn’t waste any time.

Steadying the framework, he places the crystals delicately and systematically.

Having done his due in the past three days, it took only three minutes for all the crystals to be lined in order.

Like this, he put the crystal to the best use by making it a part of the artifact

Once done, he begins the finishing touches, placing three energies against each other as if arranging a rubik’s cube, while placing more dimensional essence overall.

The energies shroud the artifact like a multicolored fog.

Click!

With a loud click, the artifact was set in place and the energies recede to reveal the artifacts framwork.

A cube.

Rotating to reveal colours of Black, Blue and Gold.