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Refined Core VS Raw Core

Refined cores hold many advantages, including vast mana stores, greater durability, greater immunity to mana sickness and corruption, and more efficient mana consumption.

Raw cores are more wild, usually with less mana, or barely contained mana. They are far more easily corrupted and the owner is far more susceptible to mana sickness.

A person with a more refined core may have more control over their mana, and more concise, precise, powerful spells and magic in general, as well as a greater ability to gauge another person’s mana capability.

However, a person with a less refined or raw core, will have far more trouble casting sons ice spells and overall controlling their mana, and will have no ability to gauge another person’s capability at a glance.

The Refining of a Mana Core

This entails many things, from training your magic and mana into exhaustion, to meditation and spiritual practices. When refining ones core, an individual might panic when pieces chip away, slipping through their body—usually phasing through the chest—and fall off. This, in truth, is quite normal, and part of the core’s refining process: the pieces that chip and fall away from the core are those with impure mana or simple excess that is no longer useful or needed by the core, often turning black as they fall away, showing their lack of mana.

The shape the core eventually come out as once completely refined depends on the user and their idle preferences for jewels and the like. Though, more common than not, the shape is a simple or common cut; oddly more often a sleek, slightly elongated hexagonal cut.

The Growth of a Core

Cores grow steadily with the individual, starting as small as a pearl no bigger than the tip of your pinky finger, and can get up to as big as one’s fist. Though, size varies from person to person, each core individual to the next.

While rare, after a core is refined, one can sometimes achieve their core growing in size, or an entirely new core growing near the original one. It is widely believed this happens when the individual refined their core early, or their core simply could not hold the mana the individual was producing.

When the core grows further on its own, it is typically a second layer forming around the core, usually of the same core type, but vary rarely of a new type.

When a secondary core starts forming, it usually is simply a duplicate of the original, and experiences the same refinement process as the first core. Usually, an individual doesn’t even notice the existence of the secondary core unless the refinement of their original core was quite some time ago when the new one started refining. More often than not, they get checked by a doctor, or ask a fellow mage they trust to check their core through mana sharing.

Conditions Affecting the Mana Core

An External Core

The external core is uncommon, but can happen, where the core if formed through cultivating and serves as a direct extension of the body that can be created into whatever the user may desire it to be made into, be that the gem on a wand, in the guard of a sword, shield, bow, spear, whatever the owner may need or want.

If the core is left alone and not made into anything in particular, it hovers near and around the individual as an extension of their body they hardly need to think to control.

This condition does not affect mana density, manifestation, or the well being of the individual.

Most individuals with this condition are mages and not close range fighters.

People born with this condition are to be cared for carefully, as the mana core is extremely fragile during birth. Wrapping the core up for protection during this time is not recommended, as it could lead to the core being severed from the child. Optimal care is having the core in the child’s clothes with skin contact or kept nearby with a parent.

A Split Core

This condition is personified by the fact that the individual’s core is split from conception and birth. The core can be any number of pieces, but with time and cultivation, the mana core can be fused together.

A Protruding Core

A Protruding core is nothing to worry about, and surprisingly common. These cores, characterized by the fact that they protrude slightly from the skin, attached to the bone in that area, are completely harmless, and surprisingly sturdy. They are more akin to stones than the gems they may personify themselves as. These gems are easier to estimate and see the progress of.

A 'Misplaced' Core

Misplaced cores are rare, but not as rare as one would think. A condition usually paired alongside the ‘Protruding Core’ condition, resulting in the core being in considerably ‘random’ places, such as the back of the hand, the back of the neck, forehead, etc., instead of the chest or abdomen which are the considered ‘normal’ locations of a mana core.

Conditions Caused by the Mana Core

Mana Poisoning

Version 1: mana poisoning can be caused by the individual being ‘allergic’ or susceptible to their own mana, where it acts like a virus, slowly working it’s way through the individual system until they either die from the sickness or pain. ⁃ another form of the sickness, the mana core actively rejects it’s host, poisoning the area around it until either removed, or it falls out itself.