It was five years before Greg left the cave. Five years in which he was being taught how to walk. While he could walk from the very first moment he came into this vision, he couldn't walk the way obsidian earthmovers could. His mother would spend half her time outside the cave foraging for food. Both her own and some that she would bring to him. The other half, when they weren't resting was spent training. Her mother would walk around him in a circle, stop, and then look at him. Greg didn't know if being merged with the beast had made him stupider or if it was memory being a true reflection of how it had been with the real beast. However, it took a month for him to understand that when his mother stopped, he was supposed to mirror her actions by walking a full circle around her and coming to a stop where he started. And if that wasn't bad enough, it took him almost a year to understand that this wasn't just a game, his mother was actually trying to teach him something. In sharp cont

Having already grown steadily familiar with his earth connection over the course of that one year, he immediately picked up on the difference. For the first time in a long time, he just stood frozen in one place. It was one of those moments where just one piece falls into place and suddenly the whole puzzle snaps together into one coherent picture. It suddenly clicked in his mind why, despite never looking like she was moving with any haste, his mother was always moving far faster than he was. Even better, why, despite this, she never seemed to get tired the way he did! As it turns out, she wasn't wasting energy getting the earth to repeat what she was already doing. Instead, she was borrowing the strength of the earth to propel herself forward. As such she was moving at two, three, even four times the speed for less than half the energy simple walking would require. Just three days after making this discovery, he was easily and leisurely moving beside his mother... *** "You are h

Over the years, while they moved around with his mother, she had always avoided others of their kind whenever they encountered their territories. As such, the one thing his mother hadn't taught him, whether directly or by watching her do so, was how to fight. Sure, they had play-fought before, but it had all been in the spirit of play and not with any serious intent to harm. Which was why he was so unprepared for his first fight. When Greg left his cave and ran in the direction of the footsteps he felt through his earth connection, only to find another of his kind that he'd never met before, he was heartbroken. It felt like he'd been abandoned all over again. The pain quickly turned to anger and without thinking or care for his presently weakened state, he charged at the other male. The only reason he made it out of that fight alive was because the other male was a juvenile just like him. A few years older and more experienced in fighting yes, but not quite as lethal as a mature bull

It felt odd for Greg to see his own face without looking at a mirror and hear his voice when he wasn't speaking. But other than the strangeness of the situation, Greg was relieved that his family, at least, wasn't beside themselves with worry over him. "But how would an illusion cause any of this?" Greg asked turning his attention back to the subject at hand, even as he held up both his hands. On the one hand, was the fine dust remains of what had been the beast-core. On the other, was the Azra's bead that was glowing in his hands. The healer had already explained how she had noticed it on the second day and that the glow had steadily grown from then. He was no longer a bottom-of-the-barrel earth mage but an average one according to her. She'd also explained the strange weight he felt on his head as being the orb that she used to scan her pathways. In an unexpected turn of events, his theory about affinities had been proven correct just a day after he came up with it. His teacher got

To bring it back to the original question you asked. Yes, you've copied over the obsidian earthmover's mana pathways, but that's only because compared to your original mana pathway layout, the beast's was much closer to the ideal for an earth element mage. I suspect that in the future, the changes in the layout of your mana pathways won't be as drastic as it was this time. Instead, you'll only be picking those elements that will help you improve your affinity for the element, and discarding all other aspects that don't help you raise your affinity. What I can't tell at the moment, is whether this refinement process will only work while you are in the awakening stage and not yet a fully-fledged first-tier mage.""If it stops once you are past the awakening process, then you'll have to find the highest affinity tier-three beast-core to help refine your own mana pathways layout and increase your affinity. If, on the other hand, it doesn't, then we might very well have just discovered a w