After an unknown time, Jacob's eyelids trembled before they sprang open, and his amber eyes were filled with bewilderment.
When he saw the familiar runic ceiling, clarity started to return in them, and he finally remembered how he fell into slumber.
Shocked replaced his eyes, and he quickly tried to get on his feet. But then he instantly groaned in pain all over his body as if he had exercised like crazy and all his muscles were sore.
"What happened? Was it a dream or illusion?" Jacob thought aloud in his hoarse voice, and he instantly felt thirsty as his mouth felt as dry as a desert.
He then took a water jar and started to drink in a large mouth, and he chunked down the entire five litter of it, and only then he felt somewhat alive.
"Well, I'm still in the mine? Then was that really just an illusion? It was simply too real." When Jacob thought about how real that feeling of getting frozen to death and completely helpless under that pathway was, gloom filled his heart.
No matter how much he considered himself stronger, he was still not powerful enough to do anything in front of the unknown.
"Wait, what about the book?" Jacob then quickly remembered the book in that illusion and looked around, and he was astonished.
Because he was standing only a meter away from the end of the runic passage, and right beside the wall, there lay a pile of black ashes, and a crimson edge of something was sticking out from that pile of black ashes.
However, Jacob didn't grab it as he was still feeling quite apprehensive when he thought about how he fell into that illusion, and not only was he fine somehow, but he appeared at the end of this passage.
No matter how he looked at this, it was completely suspicious, and that pile of ashes also spelled trouble.
But right at this moment, a sudden pain stabbed in his brain, and he groaned softly and instantly thought that he was indeed in a trap.
However, Jacob was astonished because that pain originated not because of some mental attack but because Jacob received many foreign memories out of nowhere.
It took him a while to reorganize those chaotic pieces of foreign memories, but when he did, his eyes were blazing like the sun, and he quickly looked over his chest.
When he finally noticed his naked torso and saw the Infinity Pendant, which now has a crimson gem etched into one of the empty sockets of the Infinity symbol, he knew those memories were not fake.
Furthermore, inside that crimson gem was a single black rune, and Jacob could fully understand it because that rune was actually written in the same language as the Cursed Immortality.
That word was actually spelling a single word, 'Common.'
In those foreign memories, there were detailed descriptions about this crimson gem called the Cursed Path Glory Gem and how it is connected with the new growth-type magic core in his chest called the Hex Magic Core.
The Hex Magic Core was actually the manifestation of the Cursed Path Glory Gem, and the 'Common' written within the gem was the current rank of the Hex Magic Core.
In layperson's terms, without the Cursed Path Glory Gem, this growth-type Hex Magic Core can't exist, and to further increase the Hex Magic Core's Rank, it can only be done by feeding the Cursed Path Glory Gem.
By 'feeding' means what it literally means, Jacob can't evolve the Hex Magic Core by some scripture or other method, but by only feeding it, the Dark Being's Dead Flames!
As for how he could collect the dead flames which can extinguish the moment the Dark Begins was killed, it was very simple, as long as Jacob was the one who killed a Dark Being, the Cursed Path Glory Gem would automatically absorb the dark flames.
This was a straightforward method, but when Jacob saw the requirement to evolve the Hex Magic Core to the Rare Rank, he didn't believe it.
He needed to kill 100,000 Rare Rank (Any Tier) Dark Beings or 10,000 Extraordinary Tier Dark Beings or 1,000 Epic Tier Dark Beings, or 100 Unique Tier Dark Beings, or just 1 Legendary Dark Being.
As for the magic related to the Hex Magic Core, it was not a fighting magic that can be used in direct confrontation, like the Brain Hunter, Jacob's Hex Magic Core was not made for fighting; instead, to use a nefarious type of black magic, the Hex Magic.
Although Jacob got the method to circulate the Hex Mana from his Hex Magic Core from his body, he has no idea how to use it expect its nefarious properties.
Not only this Hex Mana was useless when used without a proper spell, but its nefarious nature was also harmless to others in direct confrontation with other Mana.
Right now, Jacob only got one memory of a hex magic innate ability, the Slumber Hex, which can put anyone to sleep under the Extraordinary Rank, which seemed completely useless.
But what made this ability fascinating as it could be used as long as the target was under Jacob's sight and the distance seemed as far as he could see!
This was evidence of how vile this Hex Magic was if Jacob knew its proper spells.
As for the price of killing the Dark Beings to evolve it, Jacob felt it was completely worth it for his terrifying magic core.
Lastly, the mana capacity of this magic core will depend on his infinity pendant space. Right now, the entire 25-meter space of the infinity pendant was filled with ethereal crimson fog. This was the Hex Mana, and as he used it, the Mana within the pendant would decrease like a tank.
By the way, this Hex Mana won't harm anything stored inside his pendant, as it is completely harmless.
But the main tricky part was replenishing the exhausted Hex Mana because it can only be replenished by the Dark Beings Magic Core of the same rank as the Hex Magic Core.
For example, right now, since the Hex Magic Core is a common rank magic core, the Hex Mana could be recovered by Common Magic Cores of the Dark Being or higher rank magic cores.
But when it enters the rare rank, the common rank magic cores will no longer provide any mana recovery.
Nevertheless, Jacob was very excited about finally getting the ability to use magic, and it was the magic that also originated from Cursed Immortality.
But this didn't mean he was going to overlook the entire thing about how he got this magic core and what was inside that pile of ash.
'This is the magic core Immortika was talking about, but it said it was a book… no, it was cut off in the middle of completing its sentence. So, I got this gem automatically after dying in that place?
'Furthermore, if the infinity pendant's infinity symbol's two sockets are incomplete, then what about the other empty socket? Could it be there is one more magic core missing somewhere? Only Immortika can answer this question.' Jacob thought with uncertainty as well as anticipation when he thought about the other magic core.
It still appeared like a dream to him, another illusion, but very real at the same time. Especially when he tried to draw the Hex Mana from his pendant, he felt a foreign substance suddenly coursing through his body, and something close to his heart seemed to be moving.
The very next moment, his palm started to glow red before flame-like ethereal crimson mana began to emit from his hand.
This feeling was extremely novel for Jacob, and he felt he could get addicted to it. But he quickly stopped using it as he was wasting the Hex Mana from his pendant.
Then his focus was again turned toward the pile of ash!