After considering everything, the conclusion Emery arrived to wasn't a hard fought battle. It verily relied on the question: what else does he have to lose? The answer was nothing. He no longer had a place to call home, no family or relatives, and the people he had grown close with died a gruesome death. Gwen cut off ties with him and even though he had Julian, Klea, Thrax, and Chumo back in the Magus Academy, time was the only thing they needed to eclipse him in terms of cultivating the elements. Perhaps, they had already progressed so far ahead of him that once he returned to the academy, he would only be spending the rest of his time trying to catch up with their shadows. So, his only choice was to go big or die trying to go against the cruel world that was unforgiving to the ordinary and achieve whatever cold mission he had left.
Now that a chance to turn things around had presented itself to him, he needed to grab it. Again, there was nothing that he could lose other than his unfortunate life.
Emery silently turned from the black dragon and headed back to the spot he had been cultivating on. He sat in a cross-legged position, ordered the symbol on his palm to bring up the darkness manual he had bought from Golden City's Magus Guild.
[Darkness is the home of the void; within its emptiness, there you'll find yourself]
Emery's surroundings, including himself, became nothingness. He couldn't perceive anything within his five senses other than what others referred to as self-consciousness. However, even that thought was somehow fading as if he was emptiness itself.
A few moments passed, and just like his previous attempts in understanding the basics of the dark element, three great different colored lights appeared within the darkness and whipped away his concentration. Emery opened his eyes as he tried to catch his breath. He figured what he needed to do, so once more he focused, deeply looking into himself and not through the darkness element.
Within the dark room of his mind, he saw a sphere that resembled his spirit core and within it, he could only see the green, yellow and blue lights. From afar, he watched the three lights cover the whole sphere, where the dark colored lights, a miniscule dark blob, hovered alone, staying still.
Emery unconsciously reached out and the spirit core seemed to contract as it tried to touch the black light inside. The three lights suddenly darted, and the green light at the head shoved away the small dark blob. So this was what Killgragah had mentioned about and his experience just now. Whenever he practiced the darkness element, the three lights would always try to deny opportunity for the dark to grow. All this was due to his talent not having the capacity to cultivate and to hold them all effectively. The more he tried, the more the elements wanted to break apart.
He watched the sad little blob of darkness lurked in the edges of his spirit core by itself. A sense of familiarity rose within him, and this time, Emery's eyes became sharp as he tried again and focused all the attention and energy into the dark element.
He consciously reached out for the dark blob. And like earlier, the three lights shot itselves and he created a wall to block all three elements. Once he felt like he was connected with the darkness, unlike the other times he had probably been doing with the other elements, he broke down a small portion of the wall and let the green light collide with the dark element.
Emery returned to the void and all his senses were once again blurred. Within the emptiness of space, a faint green light was growing larger and as he focused his eyes intently, he saw a multitude of trees, flowers, roots, everything related to plants and felt a sense of involvement in relation to the creation of them all.
Right now, he was trying to cultivate the plant element in the attempt to merge it with the darkness element as the core. Unbeknownst to him all this time, Killgragah, in the form of the Faceless Man, was beside him and said, "Since we are both connected through Khaos, I can feel your progress. Right now, I can see you're making the darkness as your core while the plant as the second subservient. Although you can do that one at a time, the difficulty of merging the others will exponentially be a whole lot harder, making it close to impossible, because those elements will think you are eliminating them. Connect with all of them concurrently, and you will have a significant increase in power, of course the chance of failure will also increase."
The way he had learned the path of cultivating the elements were different. However, since this was a dragon, a mythical being that was probably even more powerful than all of the magi he had met so far, Emery accepted the black dragon's suggestion and completely demolished the barrier blocking the other two elements and let them collide with the dark and green elements.
Back in the emptiness, the yellow light appeared in the distance and a world of sand and a giant rock seemed to reside in it. Not far away was the blue light with its world showing great torrents of water, rushing in from all different directions.
All four elements; the dark, the plant, the earth and the water, converged into one spot of his spirit core and the feeling of overwhelming energy current became painful as if a thousand blades were slashing his whole being at the same time.
Emery gritted his teeth, not letting even a grunt come out from his throat, and focused entirely on incorporating the dark blob into his spirit core. His physical body was trembling and blood was dripping from his mouth.
He lost sense of time and the black light eventually dimmed, then became smaller and smaller until it completely disappeared. At that moment, his spirit core became a translucent dark core, however since it had become so, the other three lights thrashed and tried to break free from the spirit core creating cracks.
As if Emery had eyes everywhere, he saw the trees withering, the water turning murky, and the stone breaking.
"This is the crucial part, kid. Don't give up now!" said Killgragah to Emery, whose face paled into snow-white. However, the more Emery concentrated, the more his environment was breaking into pieces, and Killgragah suddenly disappeared! Emery could tell his spirit core was cracking countlessly and just when it created what seemed to be on the verge of shattering, a surge of Khaos energy rushed into his body and the Faceless Man appeared once more.
The whole body of the Faceless Man twisted and curled and transformed into a mirror of himself. It said, "You are not going to make it!"
"Yes, I can!" he shouted back.
"Give up already!"
"I won't give up. I won't fail!" said Emery with gritted teeth.
"Then prove it!"
If he died, then he would die. He was already past the point of return, so all thoughts of the same nature were meaningless. Emery roared at the top of his lungs as he threw all doubts away. He grabbed on to the three lights in his core and then the images of the elements' environments shattered as a black vortex formed and sucked them all in. And in that moment in his spirit core, the final crack appeared making it explode into countless pieces. However, in the place of a translucent dark core, a solid grayish dark core appeared as the three colorful lights of green, yellow and blue, stopped thrashing around and started spinning within the new core as if they were merrily chasing, synergized with each other.
[Congratulations! You have mastered the foundation of the darkness element]
Emery's eyes opened before vomiting blood. He fell on his back on the ground, barely able to lift a finger.
The black dragon's face looked down on him and said, "Hahaha, you've succeeded, kid."
Emery gave a weak smile but after just a few seconds, he felt energized once more and checked his status through the symbol on his hand.
[Spirit Affinity: Plant, Earth, Water]
[Plant Spirit - High Stage]
[Water Spirit - Middle Stage]
[Earth Spirit - High Stage]
[Battle power 24 (17)]
[Spirit force 55 (31)]
[Spirit Core of Darkness - foundation]
[Fey Bloodline - stage 1]
[Acolyte Rank 4]
The first thing he noticed was that his darkness was taken out of the list of spirit affinity but all three reached the high stage at the same time. Not only that, an additional five points had been added in his spirit force. However, what really caught his eye was the newest line of information.
[Spirit Core of Darkness]
This was what the black dragon had helped him achieve and clearly, the benefits were evident. Aside from recovering his energy in almost an instant, when he tried to cultivate the elements, the spirit energy around him flowed like a steady stream into his spirit core and distributed the energy equally.