Extra's Path: The Eternal Frost Monarch

In his dormitory room, Noah was absorbing mana from the core once again.

It had been more than a week since he first started using monster cores to absorb mana.

Sweat dripped down his face from hours of meditation. His snow-white hair clung to his forehead, damp and heavy. His white t-shirt stuck to his skin.

He sat cross-legged with his hands resting on his knees and his back straight, breathing heavily from the effort of meditating for so long.

He had not gone to training today.

He was too close to let anything interrupt it.

For the past week he had been completely focused. The moment classes ended each day, he would head straight to the training hall.

Stretching first, then weapon practice, working through both his bow and blade arts until his arms were sore. After that he would sit down and absorb mana from the cores, cycling it through his body late into the night.

He had also spent time learning his new spell, Snow Mist, in between sessions. That had taken him less than a week to fully grasp. His proficiency with both weapon arts had grown steadily as well, improving a little more with each day of drilling.

But today was different.

Today, he was not training. He was finishing something.

The raw mana circulated through his entire body in slow, wide loops. As it moved, he filtered it carefully, pushing the impurities out with each pass until what remained was clean and smooth. That purified mana then moved downward, toward his core.

The core was full.

It had been filling gradually over the past week, mana layering over its surface and pressing into it session by session. Now it had reached its absolute limit. There was no more room inside it and no more room around it. It had taken everything it could take.

It was time.

Noah wrapped the remaining pure mana around the outside of his black core and began to compress it. Layer after layer pressing inward, tightening, squeezing the core from every direction at once.

His breathing became ragged. His heart beat faster. His blood felt hot as it moved through him.

He kept pressing.

More. Tighter. He pushed the compression as far as it would go, holding it at the limit until the strain ran through every part of him.

Then came the sound.

A sharp crack from somewhere deep inside his body.

The mana layered over the core began to glow. A bright blue light bloomed in his lower abdomen, and the same faint blue radiance spread outward, bleeding softly through his skin until his whole body was lit with a quiet azure glow.

The surface of the core began to fracture. Fine lines spreading outward from the centre, branching and crossing like ice breaking under pressure.

’Just a little more.’

He gathered every last trace of mana he had and drove it into the core.

CRACK!!

The fractures split wide.

BOOM

A shockwave rolled outward from his body, silent but physical, pressing against the walls of the room.

The core that had once been black was black no longer.

It was bronze.

The azure glow faded from his skin slowly, like a light being turned down. On his lap, the empty monster core sat dull and colorless, completely spent. Every last trace of mana drained out of it.

His eyelids fluttered. He opened his eyes slowly.

A smile spread across his face.

"Hah... haah..." He exhaled hard, chest heaving. "Finally. I broke through into Awakened Core, low stage."

He sat with it for a moment, just breathing.

Then, quietly. "Status."

His status window opened in front of him.

===STATUS===

Name: Noah Eldritch

Race: Human

Age: 19 years

Strength: 108

Speed: 98

Stamina: 105

Endurance: 90

Charm: 556

Mana: 1048

Core Rank: Awakened (low)

Potential: Refined Core (High)

Profession: [Combatant Lvl.1]

Technique: [Frozen Lotus Blade Art]>, [Flowing String Archery]>

Affinity: Ice

Spells: [Ice Shard], [Frost Bind],[Snow Mist]

Innate Ability: Ice Creation

---

He stared at it for a moment.

Then he laughed.

"Hahaha! Finally some progress! I actually did it!"

He let himself fall backward, his back hitting the floor with a soft thud. He lay there, staring up at the ceiling with a wide grin on his face, breathing slowly as the tension drained out of his body.

After a while the grin faded into something quieter.

"But I can’t stop here." He spoke to the ceiling, his voice low and even. "I need to get stronger. A lot stronger. Before whatever comes next. Which I still have no idea about."

He thought about his potential rank. Refined Core, High Grade. It was decent. But decent was not enough for what he suspected was coming. He needed a way to push past that limit. Break the ceiling on his potential entirely if he could.

’I just need to find something that can do that.’

He turned his head and looked at the clock on the wall.

5:30 in the evening.

He sat up slowly, rolled his neck, and exhaled.

"Alright. That’s enough for today. I’ll take the night off."

He got up and went to the bathroom for a long, warm shower. He stayed in longer than he needed to, letting the heat work through his shoulders and back.

When he stepped out, he changed into casual clothes and stood in front of the mirror.

He looked at his reflection for a moment.

Then his expression shifted into something amused.

"Hmm." He tilted his head slightly. "I think I actually look better after the breakthrough. Hah. At this rate I might end up being the most handsome man alive. Hehe."

He stood there admiring his reflection for a full ten minutes before he finally left the room.

---

The academy campus was calm in the evening light. A cool breeze moved through the open walkways, touching his skin as he strolled without any particular destination in mind. The sky had turned a soft orange at the edges.

He walked slowly, hands in his pockets.

’Today is Thursday,’ he thought. ’Next Saturday is the first unit test. A VR battle. Our class against Class B-2.’

He wasn’t worried about the result. His class was strong. Strong enough that a loss would genuinely be surprising.

But then his expression became more focused.

’What I’m curious about is the point system. How do individual points work inside a team battle format?’

That was the part he actually wanted to understand before the day arrived.