Chapter 85. Supernova
Trash poured into him. The carefully separated trash visibly depleted. In moments, he reached the level of trash inside his core that he would usually ignite a trash star at, and he kept going. Compressing, pushing, crushing down the trash as much as he could into as small of a point as he could. When it started to fill his core, he used his core walls to clench down on it and crush it further. When he could crush it no more, he pushed at his walls instead, expanding them outwards. More trash. More!
His core stuttered. The flow of mana through his body sludged to a halt. Every piece of his core was full of condensed trash, and with nowhere for the mana in his core to go, it soaked into the trash itself, making it yet more powerful. Only the pure mana at the bottom of his core remained an exception, pushing a little dimple out of the bottom of his core. It was unsightly, but Rhys was used to that. He was trash. If he wasn’t able to accept a little ugliness, he’d never get anywhere on his trash journey.
There was no more room. He couldn’t absorb any more trash. Rhys raised his hand and stirred the tiny amount of mana he could still move. He eyed the trash, hesitating one moment before he pushed the mana inside to spark it to life. He called it a trash star, but he still ignited it manually with external mana. Actual stars were ignited due to the immense pressure and heat at their center, as huge quantities of mass pressed down on itself and down and down, until it couldn’t help but ignite. These were not true stars. They were artificial stars, not yet strong enough to ignite on their own.
His jaw set. His eyes lit up. That might be the case for now, but it won’t be the case forever! He would create true trash stars, even if it took him years to reach that height.
But for now… well, for now, he was trashy enough to take the easy way out. He shoved the shard of mana into the trash star, and the star came alight.
Instantly, mana overwhelmed him. Searing hot, blazing through every inch of his body, mana ravaged him. Sweat dotted his forehead and ran down his back. His body dried out as it baked from the inside out. His skin cracked open like a dry riverbed, and red hot embers glimmered in the depths of the cracks. Rhys fell to his knees and toppled forward, barely catching himself with his hands. He was so hot he didn’t know if he was hot or cold, his body waffling between the two, only sure of one thing: this was too much, far too much, far, far too much!
Biting the inside of his cheek, he forcibly pushed the mana into his body, enforcing it as much as he could in the moment the trash star was lit. Splitting his attention, he also compressed the mana in his core as much as he could, forcing it to hold the absolute maximum he could. Several drops of that new kind of mana condensed in the bottom of his core while he worked. The burned cells were reinforced and replaced with cells that could handle this heat. Those that were overloaded by the sheer momentary influx of mana were expanded, given more room to handle and condense mana within themselves. His baked body un-baked, and the cracks on his skin grew dark in their cores, then closed over.
It was there and gone in a split second. One moment, he was burning alive, on the verge of overwhelming himself from mana overdose; the next, he was fine once more. The mana he couldn’t absorb or imbue into his body escaped into the air around him, filling the trash heap with dense mana like some kind of mage’s paradise. The rats, raccoons, and other vermin gathered near, breathing deep as they sucked in as much mana as they could. Rhys wanted to absorb it back into himself, but his whole body brimmed over with mana. He’d enhanced his body, condensed mana tightly in his core, and still his mana passages and cells shimmered with excess mana. He felt like a fat kid after a big chicken dinner, his belly big and round, so full that he couldn’t possibly fit another morsel in his mouth… except it was mana, not food.
Feeling borderline drunk, Rhys sat back, resting his hand on his stomach, and let out a big satisfied sigh. He couldn’t do anything like this, not fight, not use techniques, not absorb more trash… hell, he could barely move. He stretched, then hauled himself upright and waddled back to his dorm. What he needed to do right now, was sleep all this off. It was either that, or sit here and stare at the stars until morning, and he figured he might as well get a good night’s sleep in, what with more battles tomorrow.
There were too many battles today, just based on the number of competitors, to do more than one battle per person. After he’d finished his, the ref had pushed them both away to ready the field for the next contestants. But tomorrow, that would be different. Half the competitors had been eliminated, leaving enough room for two, or even three battles in the day. He could use a good night’s rest, what with multiple battles before him tomorrow. Plus, they’d be tougher, now that the rankers had seen what he was capable of. He wouldn’t be up against unranked trash anymore, but instead, facing off against what the coordinators of the tournament considered equivalent battlers to his skill level.
And possibly even Ernesto’s champion.
So thinking, he waddled back up the hill and into his dorm, only to find the mattress still wet. He stared at it for a second, pushing his fingers into the cloth so the water oozed up, then sighed and backed away, lying down on the floor against the wall. One, he was trash, and could sleep anywhere; two, he was a mage, and barely needed to sleep. When he did sleep, his durable mage body meant that he took on no ill effects from sleeping in strange places or on the floor, though he wasn’t sure how much that was magehood, and how much that was his younger body. Even in his first life, he remembered sleeping in some weird places and postures as a kid, and ending up just fine. It was only in adulthood that he ended up having to worry about how he slept.