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Magic is the art of warping reality - that was an established fact. The world flows in a particular way, this way is defined by the natural laws that ensure the world's stability. A mage, or any wielder of magic, and mana can tamper with this flow and manipulate it, to a limited degree. A mage can spawn fire in their palms, make water levitate, cause the earth to ripple, steady wind to grow turbulent, generate lightning from their fingers, accelerate plant growth, heal injuries, and many more. However, an abstract line is drawn in place that inhibits them from warping the natural laws beyond a certain point.

This 'line' denotes the barrier beyond which the stability of the world itself is threatened. For instance, A mage can spawn fire in their palms by either infusing a 'Fire' nature to their mana or by combusting fuel in their environment. Mages can even use magic to manipulate existing fires, redirecting them, compressing them, and even in some niche cases eating them for sustenance. However, although these feats appear extraordinary, they stand on the plausible end of the 'line'. What if a mage wants to turn their entire body into fire? No, not self-immolation, but actually turning into a figure made of flame with all the properties of fire without losing their lives? This breaks an uncountable number of natural laws - transmuting organic matter into plasma without expending energy or mass to activate and sustain this conversion, all the while ensuring that the 'sentience' of the being undergoing the transmutation isn't lost so that they can once again reverse the conversion and assume human form.

Yet, even if this sounds impossible and downright ridiculous, it is still within the realms of a mage's power as long as a condition, or from another perspective, a sacrifice is met on the mage's part. This condition is derived from the cultivation method that the mage practices. The cultivation method, in essence, moulds the mage's mind to fathom these implausible scenarios and goes on to imprint this information into their will. This imprinting is permanent and rigid. If a mage has imprinted a specific 'line crossing power' into their will, it is often difficult to accommodate another one. The barrier that separates the Mana Condensation mage from the Foundation Establishment realm is somewhat connected to these 'line crossing powers', for a lack of a better word.

From a different standpoint, this is considered a sacrifice, since if the imprinted power lacks breadth and depth, it can often become difficult for a mage to advance past a specific cultivation realm since there are no longer any insights they can derive from it. The imprint becomes a shackle at this point. Taking the example of the flaming man, the power is extremely specific and the mage will find it hard to extract new inspiration to push forward in their cultivation unless they have some sort of breakthrough revelation that can maybe test their understanding of the power along a different trajectory without having to rehash their existing cultivation.

Markus' ability to observe and, to a small degree, manipulate spacetime is an example of this 'line crossing power'. The understanding of fate and its machinations is another type of power held by Marie and Krish Nara. While Guy didn't know much about the latter, he had enough assurance that there would be sufficient breadth and depth for Marie to work with since her Master had reached the Tesseract Transformation realm, which is the de facto pinnacle of magehood. As for the former, Guy was confident that there would be sufficient breadth and depth for Markus since he had only barely scratched the surface of that complicated topic.

"This is Markus' unique power," Al explained. He summarised the idea succinctly for Guy and his Disciple. "My special power tends to contradict my earlier explanation, in that it allows me to borrow the powers of others. In a sense, I am not shackled by my cultivation method."

"That sounds a bit overpowered," Guy responded with a scowl.

"The world is fair," Al said while shaking his head. "I must have a thorough understanding of the power exhibited by the mage to be able to replicate it. And even if I do satisfy that condition, replicating such powers drains me a lot. Additionally, I can only exhibit one special ability at a time - it's like I have to morph my own cultivation to attain the same flavour of the mage I am trying to replicate. And finally, I cannot benefit by obtaining new insights about that power - I can replicate but not innovate."

"I guess that IS fair," Guy muttered.

"In the same sense, you must also have a special ability," Al reiterated. "Why don't you try exercising it?"

"I'm not sure how... Do you think it might have something to do with how I can provide more potent |Soul Imprints| to my students?" Guy surmised.

"That's possible, but I feel like that is more in line with cultivating the soul. You should have an ability more aligned with the cultivation of your will, right?"

Guy hummed in understanding and then tilted his head, "Do you have any suggestions on how I can manifest it?"

"This is more to do with yourself," Al denied immediately. "Everyone has a different way, but a technique to get started is by meditating. You must inspect your cultivation core and determine it by yourself."

"That sounds incredibly haphazard," Guy commented.

"Well, your Disciple accomplished it, I don't see a reason why you can't," Al said with a mirthful chuckle. "Nonetheless, I have nothing else to do at the moment. I will take over from here and spar with Markus and Jean. Might as well use this opportunity to understand his cultivation. In the meanwhile, you should meditate."

Guy nodded affirmatively and receded to a space away from the sparring field and proceeded to cycle through the Yoga forms to initiate his meditation.

____

It had been some time since Guy entered his core space. His previous attempt was not so pleasant, as he ended up getting trapped in some kind of an illusion. This time, Guy was prepared.

The mist that induced the illusion still hung around him, but his mind was vigilant and refused to submit to its attempts to pull him into a false reality. His senses flickered between images of alternate scenarios from his past life and the default empty state of his core space.

This went on for what felt like five minutes before the mist finally dissipated and started to retreat to the clear pool of stagnant water at the centre of the space. Guy noticed that the water body had grown significantly larger. If it was a pond before, it was now closer to a lake. It wasn't so vast that Guy couldn't see its boundaries, but it sure was difficult given the heavy layer of mist still hanging over the water's surface. Unlike before, the mist hadn't fully disappeared into the water.

Guy reached out with his hands and grabbed the mist to try and disturb it in front of him; it was so heavy it was suffocating. Yet, the gaseous air did not behave as it should have. It started to stretch like an elastic solid until it reached a point of fracture and a chunk was torn off. In Guy's hands, the torn chunk started to liquefy and flowed through the gaps in his fingers. Once it was free, the dropping liquid deviated and merged with the gaseous mist in front of him.

"What is this thing?"

Curious, Guy proceeded to play around with the mist to understand its behaviour. Through some deduction, he could surmise that the illusion must have something to do with this mist.

Treating it like Play-Doh, Guy pulled another chunk from the mist and started to mould it into something from his memory. Back when he used to teach kids at the kindergarten level, Guy encouraged the use of Play-Doh and homemade alternatives of it as supplements to learning. For children, it helps develop fine motor skills, and hand-eye coordination and encourages creativity. Through repeated use, Guy was somewhat of an expert in making models out of it.

Within minutes, a near realistic miniature elephant started to form in Guy's hands. The mist had a translucent off-white colour, but as the elephant's shape started to solidify, the colour of the mist also began to shift to match a greyish-brown hue of an actual pachyderm.

When the final detail was placed on the model, a complete elephant took life in Guy's palms. With a comical poot, the elephant raised its elongated trunk and marched forward. It lifted off from Guy's palms and collapsed into the mist. The mist in turn cushioned its fall, and once the elephant landed, it was completed engulfed by and disappeared into it.

Suddenly, as though a switch was flipped, a series of intuitions started to click in Guy's mind. These came in the form of instructions which told him how the mist functioned. This phenomenon was similar to how Markus gained the insight to tangle with spacetime and influence the gravitational fields around objects. It wasn't scientific, but it made sense.

An incredulous smile formed across Guy's face as he finally understood what the mist could do.

He immediately dispersed his meditative state and returned to his senses. In front of him, Markus and Jean on one side were exchanging spells against Al as the latter provided key pointers about how certain spell combinations could be used and how they could increase their efficacy.

Guy ignored the trio and followed his intuition to pull the mana from his core. What Guy learned from his earlier revelation was that unlike with other mages, the liquid substance in the pool and the mist hanging over it were both the same.

Guy moved the mana through his palms and exuded it outwards. On queue, a familiar mist started to pour out from his pores. This sudden change caught Al's attention, who paused the spar and asked.

"Did you find something?"

"I did," Guy beamed back. "I'm eager to test it. Are you up for a small experiment?"

Al simply smiled back in anticipation.