-Sigh, Brance…I know you are a muscle-headed jock, but you should have known better than to try doing things with physicality. You are dealing with Mana, not a steel beam and a door. What you are attempting is a delicate procedure, not a **ing baseball game.-

Smacking her face with an open palm, Tobs dragged her fingers from her forehead to her chin and groaned loudly, causing Brance to give her a look as if saying, “My bad.”

-Don’t give me that look; get back to it; you need to rebuild the Mana streams and line them up again.-

-When you get lined up, instead of treating the stream’s entrance like a battering ram, articulate them as if you are threading a needle.-

-Finely tune the two streams into pinprick-sized points, and stab them into the Codex.-

‘A needle and thread…wouldn’t it be better to view it like getting a booster shot?’ Although Brance nodded his head, he still countered the tiny fairy with his own question.

-I like that you are using your head, but you are incorrect. Injections are one-time stab push flush. What you want to go for is more like an IV.-

-You need to continuously feed Mana to the stream while using it to attack the Codex, so think of yourself as a big, hunky IV Bag, the streams themselves as the tube leading to the vein, and the fine tip point of the streams as the needle.-

As Tobs spoke, she tapped on her chin in thought while trying to find a good example that Brance could relate to. Luckily she gave him just that because when her young host lined up the HolyFire and Light Affinity Streams again, he breached the Ginger’s Mana Circuits with any issue the second time.

Feeling sweat pooling on his forehead, Brance raised his forearm up and wiped it away. Having completed the first step in seconds this time, he had inadvertently made the task seem effortless. Unfortunately, It was anything but.

Since he had always struggled with Mana Control, making such micro-sized articulations was an arduous task for him, one that saw his MP steadily dropping as he wasted a good majority of the points due to his inexperience.

-Good job, Brancie; the first hurdle is out of the way; now I need you to follow the flow of the veins and ensure you don’t bump them; just float in the middle like you are rafting in a river.-

‘Probably a dumb question, but what happens if my Mana comes in contact with the Circuit Walls?’ Following her directions, Brance slowly navigated the narrow channel with his side-by-side streams of Light and Holy fire, careful not to touch or interact with the circuits in any way.

-If you do, since you have an incompatible Mana Type, the veins will constrict and enter what I can only call “Panic Mode,” where they forcefully eject the intruder.-

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Hearing how bad things would get if he did bump the walls, Brance felt his butthole pucker, and more sweat built up on his brow and the small of his back.

The sudden tensing of muscles felt like a mini Earthquake to Tobs, and she had to clutch onto his shoulder to stop from falling off.

-Stay focused, idiot; you are doing fine; just float the lazy river until you find a prominent gate-like structure.-

With a loud huff and crawling back to her feet, the little fairy ran over and thumped Brance’s cheek while admonishing him.

It took roughly five minutes for Brance’s Mana streams to reach the so-called Gate, and when they did, he noticed the strange structure on the Codex looked more like a heart valve than a gate, as Tobs had described.

However, with that realization, Brance frowned as he watched the Valve open and close half a second later, similar to the beat of a heart.

‘Tobs…don’t tell me I have to shoot the gap…didn’t you say I needed to supply a steady stream to the attack force? How am I supposed to do that if the Valve closes? Wouldn’t that cut off my flow?’

Brance’s mind whirled as he counted the window between opening and closing.

‘3 seconds; what the hell am I supposed to do with three seconds?’

-Sigh, Brancie, you have got to be the dumbest intelligent person I’ve ever met. All those books and your Brain is still made of mush.-

‘Hey…no need to be rude, Tobs,’ wearing a pout, Brance stared at the open and closing Valve, trying to figure out the best time to make a move.

-Oh, for crying out loud, Brancie, what is one of the staples that come along with being a Light Affinity User.-

Wearing a deadpan expression, Tobs hopped off his shoulder and floated directly in his line of sight.

‘Uh…healing…no WAIT, CONSTRUCTS! Hold up, will that even work? I thought you said that I can’t touch anything; if I construct a box or something that will allow unhindered access through the Valve, wouldn’t that trigger a response from the body?’

-Nope, that only applies to the Circuits; that little Valve, as you keep calling it, is part of the Codex, so long as you don’t try and force the whole thing open for an extended period, there won’t be an internal attack.-

‘Gotcha, so make a little box with grooves on all sides that allow the valve to open and close freely on top of it, and make two small holes to allow my Mana streams to pass through.’ With a nod, Brance’s fingers twitched as he broke off a piece of his Light Stream to construct the said manifestation, and within a couple of seconds, it was complete.

‘Now I just need to slot the box in place…’ Sticking out his tongue unconsciously and pressing it against the top left corner of his upper lip, Brance willed the box to float forward and, with perfect timing, slotted it in place right as the Valve closed.

‘NICE!’ Brance cheered as he watched the box firmly stay in place as the Valve opened back up and closed a few seconds later.

-Indeed, nicely done, Brancie; you are almost there; now for the final push. Remember, this is by far the process’s most delicate and complex part.-

-From here on out, you can’t lose focus for even a microsecond because if you do, all hell will break loose. The biggest thing you need to watch out for is allowing the Death Mana to consume the…huh…well, that is interesting.-

Halting her sentence and allowing it to trail off into incoherent mumbles, Tobs peeked into the Ginger’s Codex and located the young man’s Mana with a weird expression.

‘Uh…Tobs, I don’t mean to sound needy or demanding, but since you are so good at helping me with visualization, can you give me another example to help beat the Death Mana without causing a riot?’ Holding back his Mana streams and not allowing them to pass through the Valve, Brance turned and looked at the tiny fairy who had returned to perch on his shoulder.

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