What was happening outside my body did not concern me as much as what was happening inside me.
I was curled up on the ground, and I knew that whatever was happening was out of what I controlled or understood.
From the meld state, I had been able to collect a bit of information on Demon Slayer and why the Earth Gate was affecting my body in this manner, knowing that this Title was never supposed to reach my hand, but somehow it did. Now, I am stuck inside this nightmare and madness.
I was dying, but only because I lacked knowledge, and I was wise enough to allow those with a greater understanding of the situation to take charge when it was needed.
Letting myself sink deeper into the meld, where the slight discomfort I was feeling became nothing but statistics, the Hollow Avatar fully snapped into place.
The marrow transformation cannot be reversed. It can only be completed or aborted. Abortion results in death within ninety seconds. Completion requires direct manipulation of the skeletal interior. Recommend immediate cessation of motor control to this framework.
The body suddenly went still, and I was able to fully access the Cor Telluris without bothering with the minor twitch that would break my concentration.
This situation was partly my fault. If I had used Cor Telluris in the way it was designed for, the channels all over the body would have been durable enough to easily withstand the changes happening, but with the presence of the loop and the availability of prime materials, I sought to make every single channel in my body become supreme.
Not the most efficient path, but the one that would pay off in the long run, and even though I ran multiple calculations, this was still the best option.
Nevertheless, these challenges were not minimal, but could be used to my advantage.
Tracing the channel that led to the spine, I borrowed its pathway and pushed my perception into the bone, and with access to this, I began to thoroughly destroy the foundation of this body.
The old marrow was drawn into the channels and expelled through any opening in my body, and I ensured that during this process, I scraped off the Root Bone of this body.
[Endurance: 79 → 71 → 67 → 64]
This act was costly, and the body could not last long without any Root Bone, else everything built on the foundation of this flesh would be catastrophically displaced.
The inside of every long bone in the body, the femurs and the humerus, and the bones of the forearms, the flat bones of the pelvis, the deep core of the spine, all of it emptied, and I ensured that the Root Bone was taken out too.
[Endurance: 64 → 53 → 43 → 33]
The steep fall stopped as Mortal Shell halted the degradation of the body, but this skill would not hold for long before I collapsed into myself.
Still, this sacrifice and pain had been necessary, as it created a clean slate for this body, and with the old out of the way, the new could occupy the space that was left.
[Cor Telluris — Marrow Integration Initiated]
[Channels Grown: 42 → 87 → 127 / 10,008]
In the empty spaces, the Celestial Marrow finally began to flow into the hollow inside the bones and took root in them.
Grafting celestial roots was a complicated process, but Cor Telluris aided my efforts and took up ninety-five percent of the workload, leaving my mind free to work.
The Celestial Marrow that was settling into the channel-lined cavities of the skeleton was heavier. It pulsed with the same white-silver light as the Creation-Anima.
[Endurance: 33 → 35 → 37 → 39(Broken-Celestial)]
This was a bit... unexpected. Remaking the Root Bone was supposed to make crafting newer channels much faster, but it seemed that this body was more malleable than I thought.
While I was grafting, I peeled off another part of my consciousness to focus on the second problem.
[Anima Depth: 59 — Reservoir Damage: 81%]
[Effective Operating Capacity: 12/59]
Adding a fresh wave of Anima to this broken container was problematic, but the problem had been easily resolved by moving out all the Anima into the new channels.
I had sacrificed a bit of the durability in the newly created channels since I pushed Cor Telluris to work faster than normal, and in return, I had gained 127 new channels to work with.
With this number of channels, I was able to remove every Anima inside the reservoir, giving Mortal Shell the time to repair it. Still, there was an opportunity here.
This body might be incredibly weak, but if grafting Celestial Blood to the root bone could change his Innate state to that of a Celestial, then his Anima Depth could be changed as well.
Cor Telluris was discontinued due to the fact that it melded with the host and did not transform them. I had chosen it for this reason, but the combination of a human body, their channel, and this Celestial Core was creating something unprecedented.
I did not have the time to deliberate; demons would soon reach my position, and what decision should I make?
Shatter It.
This voice... then it would be broken.
Breaking the Anima Depth was easy; this body had practised the shattering of the soul multiple times, and the framework was there.
I could not control Anima, but with Cor Telluris, I could move it. Rotating the core, the heavy weight of the Creation-Anima flooded into my core and shattered it.
A normal mage would instantly perish at this moment, but the core of who Elric had become was no longer rooted in his soul alone; there was another, deeper place inside of him, the Hollow Space, and he could survive even though his soul was gone.
Using the same method he had used when I flushed out my body’s Root Bone, I began pushing Creation-Anima through the empty space left behind by the soul’s destruction.
If I did not do this, the Hollow Space behind it would consume this emptiness, and Elric would no longer have a soul.
There was a reason why there was a warning beside the Hollow Avatar skill, but with the loop, Elric had been able to mostly escape this danger.