CHAPTER 45: 45: THE PATH OF THE MAGE XVIII

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John approached slowly, his heartbeat matching the soft pulse of the mana particle. He knelt before it, hesitating for a moment. His hands trembled slightly. This was it... the final step to unlocking his Black Hole Core, to officially becoming a Circle One mage.

He reached out.

The particle shivered, then rose gently from the stone, drifting into his palm as if it had been waiting for him all along. Cold energy pierced his skin, racing up his arm in a shock of sensation that stole his breath.

[Ding! Mana Particle Detected.

Do you want to Absorb?

Yes / No]

"Yes," John whispered.

The world seemed to slow down. John stood before the stone cradle, his heart hammering against his ribs. The third and final mana particle floated within its rocky nest, pulsing softly in hues of deep sapphire and violet. Its glow painted the mist in an otherworldly sheen, like a star that had fallen from a silent night sky.

Fizz hovered nearby, for once not making a joke. His wide eyes reflected the swirling light.

"Well," he whispered, "there it is. Awakening marble number three. The grand finale. Either you ascend to greatness, or you explode in a way that gets me a dramatic sad ending."

John exhaled slowly, ignoring him. His hand trembled as he reached toward the sphere. A hum resonated in his bones before his fingers even touched it. The particle rose from the cradle, drawn to his palm as if it had been waiting all along for his touch.

The moment it met his skin, the world shattered.

A flood of mana roared through his veins, nothing like the streams of the first two particles. This was a storm, a river breaking its dam, and John’s body was the channel. His chest burned as if a sun had ignited inside his ribcage. His vision went white, then black, and his breath hitched in his throat.

He fell to one knee, clutching his chest, and heard Fizz’s faint, panicked voice somewhere distant.

"Oh boy. Oh boy. You are either ascending or exploding. I am voting for ascending, but I am keeping an eye out for chunks. Please don’t die!"

Then everything went silent. The ground disappeared beneath him, and he was no longer in the ravine.

John floated in a void so vast and silent it swallowed thought itself. There was no up or down, no light or shadow, just endless nothing. He glanced at his hands, they glowed faintly, his skin limned in silver light. His body felt weightless, suspended between heartbeat and breath.

Then, below his feet, darkness started to gather.

It started as a tiny dot of ball pen, then a single drop of ink in an infinite blank canvas. It spun slowly, almost lazily, but John’s chest tightened at the sight of it. He knew instinctively what it was even before it fully formed.

The BLACK HOLE. 🕳️

The speck widened, swirling into a spiral of shadows, pulling the nothingness around it into a gentle whirl. Its hum was deep and resonant, like the heartbeat of some sleeping god.

John floated, motionless, as the hole grew larger. Soon it was the size of a cart, then a house, then a mountain, and still it expanded, devouring the void itself. Stars sparked into existence at the edges of the abyss, distant suns and fragments of broken worlds pulled into the spiral.

It was beautiful and terrifying at the same time.

A river of starlight poured into the growing black hole, twisting like silver threads before vanishing past the event horizon. Whole suns flickered and collapsed into it, their brilliance extinguished without a sound. Asteroids shattered like glass, caught in its pull. Time itself seemed to stretch and bend, and for a heartbeat, John felt like he was watching the birth and death of entire universes.

And yet, he was not afraid. It felt so close to him. He felt that he belonged here. The pull of the black hole was not hostile to him. It was his. It called to him like a long forgotten home.

Then, without warning, a streak of pure black light shot out from the swirling abyss and struck him in the chest.

John gasped, arching as the energy spread through his body. His arms turned to shadow, his legs to night. For a moment, he ceased to exist as a man and became something else entirely — a silhouette of darkness wreathed in cosmic light.

Then the colors came.

Light burst from him in radiant waves, it was white, gold, crimson, azure, violet and many more. Each color spiraling through his veins and into the void. He felt like a prism breaking the universe apart and reassembling it in harmony. Power thrummed in his bones, in his heart, in the very core of his soul.

A whisper echoed all around him, the cold voice of the system, but it felt deeper, older now.

[Ding! Congratulations Host- Mission Complete: Three Mana Particles Absorbed.]

[Ding! Black Hole Core Unsealed.]

[Ding! The host has officially entered Circle One. Mana Veins 💯 Activated.]

[Primary Skill Awakened: Black Hole Palm (Rank ???).]

John lifted his right hand instinctively, and in that infinite void, a small black hole flickered into existence above his palm. It was no larger than a coin, yet it was impossibly dense. It bent the light around it, drawing in drifting motes of starlight and shreds of color like a hungry god.

His breath caught. He could feel it, not just the mana flowing through him, but the weight of gravity, the primal force that could devour anything if given the chance. It hummed in his hand, silent and patient.

"This... is mine," he whispered to no one, awe trembling in his voice. Then the vision began to collapse.

The void twisted, the black hole and its cosmic feast spinning faster and faster until the stars blurred into a single streak of light. John felt himself falling, pulled down through reality, through shadow, through the veil that separated his mind from his body.

With a sharp inhale, he returned to the ravine.