Whistling while he waited, after five minutes his turn finally came.
Adjusting the collar of his black shirt and preparing his usual smile, he stepped forward.
"Mirror, good morning" he said, handing his phone to the receptionist.
"Lag, good morning to you" the girl replied. After scanning the code on the phone's display, she began typing on her keyboard as usual.
"Contract completed. Do you want your payment credited in Flux or would you prefer to withdraw the 65 T1 cores?" she said with her usual nonchalance.
Her hair, more carefully styled than usual, magenta strands parted into two locks falling over her forehead, and a scent of narcissus froze Seran's cognitive functions.
"..."
Her graceful features, almost Michelangelo-like proportions, completely captured his attention.
"She's really stunning today" he thought, amused.
But a hand waving in front of him pulled him back to reality.
"Raider Lag, any problem?"
"You" slipped out of his mouth without thinking.
Both their cheeks turned red from the unexpected moment.
"Flux or cores?" the young woman asked, trying to break the embarrassment.
"Cores, I meant cores," he said, avoiding her gaze.
"Good. Third floor, second door on the right. One of my colleagues will handle the rest. Show him the code I'm entering into your phone" she continued, tapping away on her keyboard.
"I already feel luckier…" he said jokingly as usual.
"Opposite for me" Mirror replied with a laugh, then added:
"My system shows you have a pickup in two days from Ferrum Industries."
"Yes, it's a mission bonus" his tone no longer bright, his expression revealing more than he said.
"Did something go wrong?" she asked, curious and slightly concerned by his sudden mood shift.
Why do I care? the girl thought to herself.
"Let's just say we had some unpleasant surprises" he brushed it off.
After finishing the procedure, Mirror returned his phone, and her hand briefly brushed against his.
Their eyes met a little longer than usual.
"See you next time, lucky charm."
"Goodbye, Lag."
Today he was cuter and more absent-minded than usual, the girl thought, a faint smile coloring her face.
He went up to the third floor.
Following the receptionist's instructions, he found an operator behind another counter checking his station.
"Code, please."
The operator then pulled out a briefcase from a dispenser. Opening it, he showed it to the boy.
"Please transfer them into your ring."
As he placed his hand over the glowing contents, they vanished into his inventory.
"Bless the one who created this marvel of technology" he thought to himself.
After leaving the building, he decided to visit his parents.
His mother, as always worried, gave him all her attention, asking about his missions.
After reassuring her and deflecting the more difficult questions, the afternoon arrived.
Back in his apartment, he lay on the sofa staring at the ceiling.
"Chrono Cognition is still unstable. Even though my body is reinforced with mana, it can't match my perception…"
He closed his eyes to think more clearly.
"The saturation of mana in my body would allow me to increase the amount I can use. Training my physical body to withstand the strain could improve fatigue management…"
His mind kept spinning.
"Sixty-five cores are a lot, but from what I know, during absorption a part is lost into the environment…"
Yes, the organism could not fully exploit the energy potential of a core—almost fifty percent lost. Another reason why Towers constantly hunted them.
"Time… time…"
He kept repeating it, and as if it had answered him, he suddenly sat up.
"What if I tried…"
Without finishing the thought, he left the house.
He took a taxi toward one of the Presidium-affiliated facilities called Forge, comparable to gyms equipped with the best training rooms and facilities a Tower could ask for. Seran had been coming here for a month to refine his utility techniques and sword usage.
Entering the massive building, he reached the counter where a receptionist greeted him.
"Hey Lag, same as usual?" said Ruben, a muscular man with an easygoing tone.
"Yes," Seran replied, placing his phone on the screen and renting a Mana Chamber for five hours.
9,000 Flux disappeared from his account.
He went up to the fifth floor where the Mana Chambers were located and reached the one he had rented.
A Mana Chamber was an environment saturated with mana, created using materials such as Evonium which, after processing, released energy in a controlled way.
Without wasting a second, he stood at the center of the room and closed his eyes.
He took one of the seventy cores from his ring.
And began absorbing it.
But his focus was not on expanding his vessel, but on how the process itself worked.
Concentrating fully, he felt the flow passing from the surface layers like skin, to deeper tissues, muscles, bones, organs.
The cells composing every part of his body absorbed the new energy like sponges.
But once a certain level was reached, the process stopped—as if the body needed to digest a five-course meal before continuing.
This cycle repeated until the core was exhausted.
Ten seconds, more than half of which were spent in cellular pauses, where mitochondria slowed down to store the new energy.
"So much mana wasted…"
Experimenting with two cores at the same time, he realized efficiency dropped even further.
"Balance… a single core is more efficient when absorbed individually" he concluded.
He sat in the center of the room, immersed in silence.
"If Chrono Cognition accelerates my mind, then I need to accelerate only my body."
An argent aura ignited around him, covering a two-meter radius.
"From large to small…"
Slowly, he began compressing the aura without changing its density, only its volume.
It shrank by half a meter.
"More…"
Another half meter.
Sweat ran down his forehead.
Ten minutes against that silver glow.
A thin film now covered his body.
"Good. My control has improved significantly this month."
Now came the difficult part.
He had to not just wet the surface of his vessel with water, but bring it inside the clay that formed it without altering its structure.
"Slowly…"
He began moving the mana inside his body, making it adhere to the walls of his organism.
But as he tried to move it too quickly—
"Arghgrhhrg"
A short but intense surge of pain shot through his body.
Spasms hit his muscles and all the concentrated mana dispersed into the environment.
His focus was lost.
He lay on the floor, sighing, realizing this would be an exercise of patience and pain.
"You're not born knowing everything…" he thought, getting back up and re-centering his breathing.
He tried again.