CHAPTER 104: THE CALAMITY FORGE

Caius looked down at the velvet-lined box, the soft violet glow of the essence bead reflecting off his pale eyes. A quiet warmth settled in his chest, and he looked up at the exhausted, wounded old assassin resting against the stone archway.

"Master Old Bones," Caius said, his voice calm. "Can I absorb it now?"

Old Bones opened one eye, scoffing as he waved a dismissive hand. "Absorb it? Are you out of your mind, brat? You can't just swallow a raw Beast Essence Bead whole. It's packed with a wild beast's residual will and corrupted elemental traces. You need a team of high-tier mages and a specialized alchemy array to purify and filter the energy first, or it'll shatter your mana core."

Caius smiled faintly, holding up the crystal sphere. "No, it's fine. It's completely safe for me. Sereth taught me a cultivation method months ago. He said it wasn't a secret."

Old Bones sat up straight, his sharp eyes narrowing. "Sereth? What method did that fool teach you?"

"The Calamity Forge," Caius replied smoothly. "He said it's an internal refining technique. Instead of allowing the beast's energy to mix directly with my own, I force the two energies into rapid circulation to create friction between them. My personal mana circulates at extreme speed, generating what he called the Calamity Flame."

Old Bones's jaw slowly slackened.

"The friction burns away the impurities," Caius continued, reciting the explanation as if reading from a ledger. "The beast's residual will and foreign elemental traces are separated and expelled as waste, while the purified mana incorporates directly into the foundation—strengthening the core's density and expanding its capacity."

"That brat taught you that?!" Old Bones barked, rubbing his temples in utter disbelief. "The Calamity Forge is a high-tier, experimental cultivation method from the inner archives! It's still in the study stage—it's completely unrefined and extremely dangerous! I'm going to smack that disciple of mine twice across the head the second he steps out of the Moon Palace!"

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Caius let out a soft laugh, tossing out the lie with a completely straight face. "Well, I'm still alive, aren't I? It worked perfectly for me before. Maybe the technique was just meant for my body structure."

He deliberately left out the truth. The technique was indeed suicidal for ordinary mages, but Caius didn't possess a standard mana core. His liquid obsidian Crown Core possessed an absolute hierarchy that consumed foreign energies, using the Calamity Forge merely as a cover to disguise the terrifying absorption process.

Old Bones stared at Caius for a long moment before letting out an exhausted sigh and leaning his head back against the wall.

"Fine," Old Bones grunted, resting his hands on the hilts of his daggers. "Go on, absorb it now. I'll guard you while you refine it. If your core starts to tear itself apart, I'm knocking you out."

"Thank you, Teacher," Caius said.

Caius sat cross-legged on the cold stone floor, placing the thrumming Sabre Lightning Tiger bead between his palms. He closed his eyes, drawing a deep breath as he activated the internal circulation of the Calamity Forge.

Instantly, the violet essence bead cracked open. A surge of wild, crackling lightning energy flooded through his palms, roaring like a trapped beast as it rushed into his meridians.

Deep within his chest, Caius's Crown Core flared to life.

Instead of deploying standard mana, Caius released a torrent of pitch-black, liquid energy to meet the wild lightning. The two opposing forces collided violently inside his chest.

Old Bones's eyes snapped open.

The air in the subterranean courtyard instantly turned suffocatingly heavy. Old Bones felt the hair on his arms stand on end as a terrifying aura radiated from the boy who would be turning fifteen tomorrow. Pure, crackling violet lightning erupted around Caius's frame, clashing violently against a dark, pitch-black energy that surged from his skin like living shadows.

The collision of the two energies generated an intense, invisible friction—a dark, suffocating heat that began burning away the tiger's residual will, filling the room with the faint, crackling sound of ozone and incinerated mana.

Old Bones gripped his daggers tightly, his heart hammering against his ribs as he watched the pitch-black mana devour and digest the violent lightning, entirely unbothered by the volatile energy.

That black energy... Old Bones thought, his throat dry as he stared at the boy. That's not normal mana.