Mending Cracks

Despite the threads appearing, Osho didn't immediately go to find what they were pointing at and instead focused on them better.

Sadly, he couldn't inspect the threads under a microscope, but he could use his Mana to enhance his vision, allowing him to see them better, and the first thing he took note of was their color as he added more notes to the tablet.

[Initial inspection shows that the threads which I will designate as Repair Threads hold no inherent Affinity as they are mostly colorless, making it difficult to ascertain the property of whatever item may be needed to repair the cracks they stem from.] He nodded to himself and continued inspecting the threads.

There weren't a lot of them, six in total, but their existence was unmistakable, and they all led to different parts of the lab, primarily the spot where the different materials were kept, but something that surprised him was that 2 of the 6 threads led to two different Beast remains that were being preserved.

This wasn't overly surprising, as Osho had used beast remains to evolve some beasts and beast eggs before. However, what caught his interest was the nature of the remains.

Moving over to them, he saw that they had been drained of their affinities.

If a creature died, two things would happen, depending on the power of the beast.

If the beast were weak, it would slowly decompose while the Affinity tied to its existence would slowly erode until there was nothing left. This process wasn't particularly fast due to how Mana worked, but it was still faster than the second thing.

Now, if a beast were strong and it died, then if it wasn't immediately consumed, its body would merge with the surroundings, and whatever Affinity of Mana they possessed before death would leak out and slowly transform the surrounding area into an area where that particular form of Mana dominated.

A lot of locations containing rare natural resources are places where a strong beast died and its corpse merged with the environment, giving birth to an area suitable for rare resources to spawn.

Now, there was a third option that was rare due to it being mostly artificial in how it occurred, and that was if a beast strong enough to affect the environment died, but instead of that happening, an external force would come and drain it of the Mana Affinity, leaving nothing but neutral Mana and the corpse.

Humans did this sometimes to experiment with how Mana worked in relation to beast corpses and Affinities, and it would appear that such specimens had been put into the lab, as when Osho went over to see what the threads were pointing at, he saw two things.

First was a skull of what Osho guessed was an elephant-type beast due to the horns, being kept in a large transparent pod surrounded by liquid. The second was the skin of some reptile which was kept in a freezer that was oddly moist.

What these two things had in common was that no matter how Osho stared at them, even using his Mana sense, he couldn't sense any traces of Mana related to any Affinity. It was wall neutral Mana.

He rubbed his chin.

'Interesting. Are the other things needed to repair the cracks like this? Items without any particular Affinity? Why would that be, hm?' He wondered despite knowing that his ability would explain the 'why' as soon as he started the process of fixing the fractures. He learned that while his ability just handed certain things to him on a platter, learning more about the process could lead to different results, which is how he managed to perform the batch evolution on eggs.

Granted, he had no idea what else he could learn from understanding the reasoning behind why specific things were needed for fixing the fractures besides maybe knowing how to fix only a few instead of everything at once, but it never hurt to know the information.

He went around to check out the other 4 items. Not retrieving them quite yet, but simply wanting to confirm something as, sure enough, they were all things that didn't have a dedicated Affinity but were all potent sources of pure Mana with some differences here and there.

It was at this point that he noticed that when he looked at the different threads, the names of what items they led to didn't appear in his brain, and he had to strain before their names became known to him.

'I'm guessing that means I have to break through to the next rank before it's something I can use passively, similar to how I had to concentrate before getting the names of items beforehand.' Osho thought.

Speaking of, his time of experimenting was over, as his headache was getting worse, and he'd wiped his nose of blood a few more times over the past couple of minutes, with the frequency increasing.

'It seems like this is something I shouldn't be doing too often right now, seeing as the strain is worse despite me being stronger than before.' Osho concluded, perfectly calm as he started gathering the items.

For the elephant skull, he didn't need the entire thing, just a chunk from any of the tusks. Luckily, there was a panel next to the pod that was pretty complicated, but Osho quickly got the hang of it as he sent a command, and mechanical arms came in through the top of the pod, maneuvering through the clear liquid as Osho controlled them to remove a bit of the right tusk at the tip.

The tips of the arms glowed red-hot before releasing lasers that sliced through the tusk cleanly, removing a chunk that was the exact weight that Osho needed. One arm then grabbed the chunk as both returned from where they came from, and a moment later, a slot opened beneath the panel Osho was controlling from, and a tray with the small chunk was revealed.

'Neat.' Osho nodded and grabbed the chunk off the tray which promptly slid back into the pod.

He then went to the place where the skin was kept and also carved out a bit of it using a Mana-tipped scalpel and went to grab the other materials.

He returned to the table and placed the egg a bit to the side as he placed everything on the table and stared at them for a moment.

Besides the skin and tusk chunk, there was a bottle of clear liquid that looked like water, but if one were to use their Mana sense, they'd see that it was instead a bottle of pure, liquefied Mana, something that could only form under pretty extreme conditions, with each drop being extremely potent.

Next to that was a small container filled with clear powder, almost resembling salt. However, the tag on it said "Emergence Powder", and similar to the water, it largely consisted of pure Mana, but there was something else that Osho couldn't quite describe as he looked at it.

The next two items were the same thing, just that there were two of them.

They looked like cubes of Jell-O with how they wobbled at the smallest movement. They too consisted largely of pure Mana with this strange underlying presence that Osho couldn't quite describe when he insoected them with his Mana sense, but if he had to guess, it was whatever this is that the ribbons needed to repair themselves.

Everything was on a large sheet tray, and Osho stared at it all for a few seconds before exhaling.

'Let's get started.' He hummed as he allowed his ability to guide him.

He first took a chemical burner which used Mana (like everything else) and turned it on, putting it on medium heat before placing a glass beaker over it. He then grabbed the two cubes and placed them inside the beaker. Contrary to their appearance, the two cubes had a pretty high melting point, so he wasn't going to do much with that until it had fully melted.

While that was happening, he got a large transparent container and placed the egg inside before getting a hose and filling it with ordinary water until the egg was fully submerged, the water stopping exactly one inch above the egg.

Osho then opened the bottle of pure Mana and cringed as the sheer potency of the stuff slammed into his face. Unlike the dense Mana outside that was gentler, this one was a lot more violent due to the concentration, so it certainly wouldn't be advisable to ingest it.

He shook his head and unceremoniously dumped its contents into the container. Immediately, the water started to bubble as though it were boiling, the potent Mana causing the water to react.

Osho grabbed a lid and covered the container before facing the beaker with the slowly melting cubes inside as he carried the Emergence Powder.

He then just... stared at the slowly melting cubes, his mind wandering elsewhere, not exactly moving.

A few minutes later, the cubes had melted into a pretty watery consistency, and Osho was snapped out of his thoughts.

Without hesitation, he opened the container and dumped all the powder inside before cranking up the heat of the burner to the max. He then grabbed a glass rod and started to stir rapidly, and he didn't stop until all the Emergence Powder had melted and mixed with the new liquid.

When this finished, he used a set of crucible tongs and quickly grabbed the liquid off the burner, moving it towards the still bubbling container where the egg was.

He removed the lid, and without hesitation, he poured the contents of the beaker into the container before jumping back, and not a moment too soon and a pillar of steam shot out of the container, the heat making him sweat.

However, it didn't last long as it quickly faded, and when it did, he smiled a bit as he stared at the egg within the container.

It looked exactly the same. Like, there were no changes to it whatsoever. However, that was only to normal people.

Because to Osho, the ribbons that had been filled with cracks were now whole again. And not just that.

They seemed even brighter that before.

***

A/N. Yeah so I might low key be retarded. Any insult coming my way for posting the wrong chapter again, is wholly deserved. But you know the drill, skip the next chapter, that's not for this book.