Stardust Becomes Star Nebula!
Cold — like a thousand tiny needles drilling ceaselessly into her skin. Her blood felt frozen solid, unable to circulate through her body.
Inside the freezer, Ye Xinxia's breathing had grown slow and shallow, the rise and fall of her chest visibly fading.
Cold and exhaustion wove together around her, whispering that she could simply close her eyes and drift into a deep, dreamless sleep.
*Fall asleep, and you'll never open them again...* Ye Xinxia bit down hard on her lip and forced herself back.
The two Giant-Eyed Ape-Rats showed no sign of leaving. Their grating shrieks came from somewhere distressingly close.
She didn't know how much longer she could hold on. At least freezing to death in here, she thought, was better than becoming food for the Ape-Rats.
The air was growing thin. She tried to regulate her breathing, but her mind began to wander against her will.
...
...
***Skree-skree-skree — shrrriiick —***
**BANG!! BANG!!**
Deep dents slammed into the iron surface of the control room door. Beneath the thundering blows came the incessant scrape of Black-Beast Demon claws.
These Black-Beast Demons obeyed their master's commands without question. They knew Mo Fan was hiding inside, and they would not leave until they had torn him apart with their own claws.
Their sharp claws slowly raked open gaps in the iron door — and once a crack appeared, destroying the rest would only get easier. The moment they forced through the first opening, the Black-Beast Demons shrieked with excitement like convicts catching their first glimpse of daylight through prison bars. They set upon the door in shifts, raking and scraping in a frenzy.
Inside, Mo Fan sat perfectly still. Wounds marked his body in several places. The danger pressing in from the other side of the door might as well not have existed.
He could hear the door being forced apart, the Black-Beast Demons' shrieks growing sharper and cleaner through the widening gaps.
But what was the point of fear?
Whether he lived or died now depended entirely on the two Star Motes in his Inner World.
The purple Star Mote. The red Star Mote. Both pulsed with light that ebbed and flared by turns.
Beyond them, a thin membrane of light held them enclosed — and the radiance blooming from within was straining to break through that hazy veil.
The membrane was like an eggshell. Like a cocoon containing something about to hatch. It appeared motionless under the onslaught of Magical Energy, yet it bulged visibly from the churning force inside.
*Break, damn you!!!*
Mo Fan screamed inside his mind.
At his chest, the Loach Pendant blazed — its radiance pouring into his Star Motes like a battering ram. Energy that had been scattering in all directions suddenly gathered, converging into a single point.
Like countless small streams rushing together into one great river, the once-still river exploded into a torrent, crashing waves hammering against the banks!!
Cracks finally split the outer cocoon. Spider-web fractures spread outward in jagged, irregular patterns, the fissures growing larger by the second.
*It's working — it's actually working!!*
Excitement surged through Mo Fan — but as he hammered against the next threshold with everything he had, a massive recoil tore through his mind. The backlash was blinding, as if his skull were being split from the inside.
Under normal circumstances, he was certain he never could have endured it. The mental shockwave struck like swords driven through his skull, then swelled into a storm-tossed sea — crashing and churning without end. This kind of spiritual agony was something he had never once encountered in all his training. It dwarfed the bone-deep exhaustion of total magical depletion a thousandfold. It was like being broken apart inside a nightmare, piece by piece...
And if his concentration wavered for even a heartbeat — if he surrendered even a fraction — every ounce of momentum would dissolve in an instant, and he would have to begin all over again.
Mo Fan felt as if his skull were about to explode, veins standing out across every inch of his face. He refused to let go.
The truth was, the pain was no less than being torn apart alive by Black-Beast Demons. Anyone with a weaker will would have given up at the very start. Mo Fan clenched his jaw and held on.
When he closed his eyes, the last image he saw was that girl curled at the edge of death. If the Giant-Eyed Ape-Rats tore her apart while he failed here, he was certain he would spend the rest of his life enduring a pain a thousand times worse than this.
The spiritual agony intensified — five times what it had been!!
Mo Fan gritted his teeth and held on.
Ten times!!
He curled his tongue back, terrified that his body might act beyond his control and bite it clean through.
In his Inner World, the storm raged and the waves towered.
The Lightning Element Star Mote, the Fire Element Star Mote — both seemed on the verge of going dark, dimming suddenly inside the violently churning Inner World.
Their light grew fainter and fainter, fading until they were dimmer than the most distant star — on the edge of vanishing into the black curtain of night.
At that moment, Mo Fan's eyes snapped open.
His pupils dilated unlike anything human. Within his gaze lay a boundless cosmos, and at its uttermost depths burned the Lightning Element Star Mote and Fire Element Star Mote — still dimming, still retreating.
His pupils expanded further. His entire face trembled.
Then — the two Star Motes, moments from extinction, erupted.
The most blazing radiance imaginable burst from within them, flooding Mo Fan's entire Inner World at breakneck speed.
A purple so vivid it could illuminate the whole cosmos — beautiful, breathtaking.
A crimson so fierce it threatened to set every shadow ablaze — brilliant, overwhelming.
They streaked and swept and billowed, as though forging a new universe of their own — a home among the stars.
But what they created this time was no longer the faint, firefly-like glimmer of a small patch of Stardust huddled in some forgotten corner. They had formed a nebula — a vast cloud of stars, every single one radiant with full and brilliant light, every single one shining in concert with the rest!!
*Stardust becomes Star Nebula!!!*
The realization swept through Mo Fan like fire through his veins.
Stardust in the cosmos was nothing but scattered particles — present, yet infinitesimally small, the Magical Energy it could supply a Mage severely limited.
But Star Nebula was something else entirely. A sweeping expanse of clustered stars whose combined brilliance could truly be called light — luminous and clear in the boundless cosmos of his Inner World, scattered across what had once been formless void like constellations set against chaos!!
The gap between a mote of dust and a cloud of stars was staggering. If every tiny pinpoint of starlight contained Magical Energy, then how much power lay hidden within this dense, teeming nebula — and what kind of magic could that power Release?!!!
Within the Star Nebula, the Star Motes remained — the very core of how a Mage Releases magic.
Different from the Basic Level, within this brilliant Star Nebula there were now exactly forty-nine Star Motes in total.
They moved at dizzying speed through the nebula, just as they had at Mo Fan's original Awakening, swirling in patterns that dazzled the mind.
...
"This feeling..." Mo Fan stared at his own hands, barely able to believe what he was experiencing.
In his left hand, fire burned up the length of his arm — the force of flame that had been straining to be Released from within, blazing with what felt like an inexhaustible well of Magical Energy.
In his right hand, violet arcs of lightning spread like climbing vines across every surface, as if competing with the flames for attention — proud as children eager to show off everything they could do.