Something had happened that neither he nor his teacher had anticipated after Greg gained an increased affinity for the earth element from the obsidian earthmover's beast-core. If the healer hadn't been so meticulous with her work, they would have completely missed it until it was too late. His teacher, however, had been monitoring the development of his mana pathways from the very first day that Greg began using the sigil, so it had only taken five days for her to notice it. And that was the fact that the rate of development of his mana pathways had picked up speed. According to their initial assessment, he was supposed to enter the first tier early in the spring. At this new pace, he would have entered the first tier a week or two before the end of winter.
It would seem that an increased affinity led to an equivalent increase in the pace of one forming their mana pathways. This had completely thrown off the schedule they had come up with. They had planned to have Greg use a beast core every twenty or so days to increase his affinity. Now, however, every time he used a beast-core to increase his affinity, the day he would become a first-tier mage was brought forward. Given the fact that they still weren't sure he would be able to increase his affinity after he had crossed into the first tier, this meant that they had to cut the gap between the use of beast-cores in half.
Now, every ten or so days, Greg had been making use of a beast-core to increase his affinity. Greg had been tempted to start with the cores that drew him in the most. His teacher, however, had advised that he take the opposite approach and begin with the cores that drew him in the least and progress from there. According to her, slow and steady progress would lead to a more stable foundation as opposed to sharp increases in power that large modifications to his mana pathways promised. Despite his desires, Greg had chosen to go with the healer's advice.
Outside of the deep respect he had for his teacher, there was also the fact that the more soul battles he was exposed to, the more he tempered his soul. After getting the aftereffects of his dungeon dives reduced because of an increase in soul strength, Greg was more than happy to see that trend continue. This led to a bit of a disagreement between him and his teacher. Greg had wanted to tackle the next beast-core without the aid of the soul-reinforcing formation she had carved around the sigil. That way, his soul would bear the burden of the illusion and grow stronger as a result. With a safe room in his mind carved out by a deity-level being, Greg wasn't afraid that a tier-three beast-core would harm him.
It had taken a lot of convincing, but eventually, his teacher had given in and allowed him to do it. This, however, was on the condition that if anything went wrong then all future beast-core assimilations would be done with the aid of the soul-reinforcing sigil. Unable to move her from this, Greg had been forced to agree to it. Luckily for him, thus far, he had managed to come out of all the assimilation sessions without coming to any harm. His teacher's instruction to go slow but steady with the beast-cores instead of going straight for the one with the biggest draw turned out to be great advice. Outside of giving him a chance to engage in various soul battles, Greg gained two more benefits that he hadn't even considered when he began.
The first was a deepening of his connection to the earth. Before his connection was a passive thing that usually faded into the background unless Greg actively paid attention to it. The more the types of creatures whose life and experiences connecting to the earth he assimilated, however, the more that sense grew. Before, it did little more than tell him that there was earth under him. The more it developed, however, the more information this sense picked from the earth under and around him. So far, Greg had yet to refine this sense or learn how to control it, as such what he got out of it was usually a mix of useful and random information that sometimes didn't make any sense. For example, in one moment, the connection would make him aware of the fact that some animal had burrowed a hole a few feet under the ground he was stepping on. At other times, it would tell him that the soil composition was wrong. How it was wrong or what Greg was supposed to do about it, he couldn't as yet puzzle out.
The second and more exciting benefit that Greg obtained was a growing list of innate spells. Preoccupied with the desire that the best cores evoked within him, Greg hadn't even paused to consider all the innate spells that each of the beast-cores could confer to him. Not every single beast core gave one and not every single ability given was that useful. However, given that these were abilities that he didn't have before, Greg wasn't exactly complaining. After making use of six beast-cores so far, Greg had gained four innate abilities. From the obsidian earthmover, Greg had gotten the earth step, as he had dubbed it. The next ability he'd gotten was from a rock lizard that looked a lot like a gecko, except it was the size of a small truck. From it, Greg had gotten a camouflage ability, except it wasn't of the chameleon kind. The beast, usually found in rocky areas, can turn its scales into any kind of stone based on the rocks around it. It can also stay still for days on end which is how it fools its prey into thinking that it's just another boulder. While Greg didn't have scales, he could turn his skin to stone in much the same way the lizard did with its scales. Like the lizard, this transformation was only good for camouflage. Skin turned to stone sounded like a formidable defense, until one considered the fact that human skin was only a few milliliters thick, if that. Even a mundane human with a decent enough punch could punch right through such a flimsy defense.
His third ability was from a strange quadruped that looked a lot like a gargoyle. Large bat ears, a pair of prominent, ashen-colored horns rising from its forehead, and a long prehensile tail that it can control just as easily as any of its other four limbs. The only thing missing was a pair of leathery bat-like wings to complete the ensemble. These beasts have a peculiar way of fighting. When faced with a threat, they will sink their hands into the ground and 'pull out' an earthen javelin which they will then lob at whatever the perceived threat is. Given that they can live in troops of fifty or more, a perceived threat can easily find themselves pinned with more than a hundred earthen javelins in short order. It isn't that the beasts keep a cache of earthen javelins handy just below the ground. Instead, they have the ability to harden any type of earth they touch into the shape they want, which often, for the admittedly unintelligent beings, is a javelin. Unfortunately for Greg, he didn't get to create instant javelins out of dirt. Instead, he only got the first half of the ability. So long as he concentrated on it, Greg could turn any earthen material harder by a factor of two or three times what it previously was.
The last one and the one that Greg was most excited about was a creature that looked a lot like a crab, though it didn't live anywhere near the ocean. The thing was born a creature of flesh and blood. Over the course of its lifetime, however, it would consciously turn its flesh into some kind of Green crystal that was damn near unbreakable. The most peculiar part of it was that even after it was fully turned into crystal, the creature didn't die. Given that he'd already encountered a deity-level being, Greg suspected that a being made entirely of crystal wouldn't be the last peculiar being he encountered. From this being, Greg had gained the ability to turn parts of himself into that same crystal. Greg had been very careful in testing out this ability, not willing to permanently turn any part of himself into crystal.
He had started with his nails, not really expecting it to work seeing as nails were supposed to be dead. To his pleasant surprise, his nails had turned to crystal without any issue. He could even get the crystal nails to elongate and narrow into sharp points turning them into dangerous claws. And from the grooves left behind when he scratched at a wooden surface, they were just as strong as the crystal the beast made. Unfortunately for Greg, he also painfully learned that unless he reinforced the flesh into which the nail was embedded he would just rip the thing off, which is what he almost did. The experimentation, however, led to the discovery that his ability to change parts of himself into crystal was nowhere near as advanced as that of the actual creature.
For starters, when Greg finally got brave enough to try it on his actual flesh, he quickly learned that it wouldn't be as easy as he'd expected. For one, it required a sustained infusion of mana to keep the transformation going. As soon as he stopped supplying mana to the transformed parts, it would quickly turn back to normal flesh. Secondly, and unsurprisingly, the more of his flesh that he turned to crystal, the more of his mana was consumed. At present, Greg could maintain the transformation of two fingers into crystal indefinitely. Beyond this, the rate at which he naturally generated mana was outpaced by the rate at which the transformation consumed mana. The most that Greg had managed was to turn his fists into crystal before the consumption got to be too much. And even that transformation, Greg could only maintain for thirty or so seconds before they turned back to normal fists.
"Anything new?" The healer's voice brought Greg back to the present.
