TBATE - Brother's Once More

Ryu

'Good, good, just like that. Keep going, nice and steady. Enhance the left arm a bit.'

It's been almost four months since I've begun my career as Arax. I broke through last month and entered the Initial Silver stage.

I've noticed a visible strain my body's been taking from the amount of mana that sits in my nine year old body, so I've been integrating mana into my limbs bit by bit.

While it's proven to work a bit, I'll eventually have to start double or even triple layering just to handle the mana.

I've also gotten to building Ryu's new body. We decided it should be about the same as mine and just slowly increase the size.

Because his body's essentially just made out of reinforced mana and beast parts, he's going to have a much stronger body than I do.

At this point, we're basically done forging his body and we're just adding more mana to the body's muscles and bones for strengthening to withstand the core.

"So, Ryu. How strong a core are we adding to create such a strong body? I mean, I don't think a month and a half long strengthening process would be needed."

'What other core could we possibly be adding to fit a body like this than a White one?'

"Jesus. A White core? Man, you really need to cut me some slack here. I only have so many, you know."

'Losing one out of twenty is nothing when you can just reform it.'

"Yeah, because I won't have to spend another three months bringing it back to the Silver stage."

'Please, with the rate you've been improving, half that time would be more than enough. You'll live.

Also, this is the last round of mana coating. The body should be strong enough to handle core insertion after this. If not, then say goodbye to creating another body in time.'

"Right. Totally not under pressure now that you bring another pointless obstacle up."

'It's not pointless. I'm being serious here. We made the body out of mana and beast parts for a reason, and that was to handle the sheer amount of mana that would be placed into it.'

"Right. I'll be sure not to forget that while placing in the potential cause of your downfall. I'm done, by the way."

I stood up and wiped my sweat as I looked at the new body I'd created. I must say this. Learning a new concept of mana construction really helped me in this.

"Now for the core." I closed my eyes as I focused and searched through my body.

I searched through the cores in my body until I found one of my stronger White cores.

Carefully, I placed my hand over my left arm, directly on top of the core.

"I think this one'll be just fine. Not too weak or strong; just right."

I closed my eyes and prepared for the approaching pain that would come. I created a special blade for this extraction.

It was about five inches in length and could clamp onto a core of just about any size, including this tiny one.

I stabbed my arm, trying to ignore the burning pain that followed to the best of my abilities.

With Mana Control, I injected my own mana into the stab wound and drew it out while it was still wrapped in mana.

As I slowly, steadily, carefully pulled out the small white orb of mana, it began growing in size as soon as it was extracted in its entirety.

It grew and grew until it reached the size of a normal core.