Episode 7. An Unprecedented Acquisition (2)
[The Asrahan Heart Method, the secret art of the imperial direct line that was engraved upon your heart but could not be utilized due to your frail constitution, is awakening.]
A message appeared brazenly before his eyes.
Rakiel's eyes widened more and more.
It couldn't be helped.
"The Asrahan Heart Method?"
…This was huge.
In the original work of this world, The Emperor of the Demonic Sword, the special mana cultivation method used only by the Magentano imperial family was precisely the Asrahan Heart Method.
"It was said to have been created about three hundred years ago."
A Grand Master whose name was etched into history.
Habiel Asrahan, was it?
It was said that he had jointly devised it together with his lord, "Lloyd Frontera." After that, it became the heart method of the Magentano imperial family, passed down only to direct descendants.
"And now it's been passed down to me. No—strictly speaking, it must have been embedded in this body, Rakiel's body, all along. Rakiel is the crown prince, after all. The legitimate heir to the imperial line."
But until now?
"I had the heart method, but because of this frail body, I couldn't use it at all."
But now, things were different.
The message floating before his eyes told him so. That the Asrahan Heart Method was awakening. That it had become wholly his own.
Ding-dong.
[The Asrahan Heart Method skill has been unlocked.]
[Skill Name: Asrahan Heart Method]
[Stage: Single Circle Lv. 1]
[Absorbs the surrounding mana. Processes and amplifies the absorbed mana through a circle formed around the heart and puts it into operation. Each increase in the number of circles greatly increases the amplification rate.]
[Mana Amplification Rate: 120%]
[HP required for next level-up: 1,000]
[Current HP: 100]
Kiiiiing—!
"Oooh."
Have you ever felt something like a smooth donut spinning around your heart? That was exactly what the sensation of the circle rotating felt like right now.
"So this is mana."
Every time the mana circle rotated.
Every time he breathed.
A strange power was drawn from the air he inhaled into the circle. It was absorbed, amplified, and began flowing through his meridians. A slight vitality welled up within him. It was the first time he had felt this kind of energy since inhabiting Rakiel's feeble body.
"Feels like chugging an iced Americano in one shot on a morning when you can't wake up."
The mana circle rotated on its own through the heart method, but he could also control it a little. Like taking his first steps. Like right after learning the knack of riding a bicycle for the first time. Rakiel adjusted the rotation speed of the mana circle this way and that.
It was clumsy, but it worked, little by little.
"I'll need some practice."
Rakiel enjoyed the sensation of his first circle with a sense of wonder.
Then, at that moment—
Kuuung!
"Huh?"
The smoothly rotating circle faltered.
And then, suddenly—
Kiaaaaa—!
"...!"
It began to spin violently.
It was completely unexpected. Not something he had intended, nor wanted. Excruciating pain surged in, as if his heart were about to burst.
"…Ghk!"
Rakiel couldn't even scream.
It was too sudden.
He couldn't breathe.
Unable even to clutch his chest, only the veins in his neck bulged.
"What…?"
Why was this agony flooding in all of a sudden? Why did it feel like his heart was being torn out? Why was the circle rampaging like this? He couldn't understand any of it.
It was an utterly abrupt phenomenon.
"Wh-what is this?"
The circle wouldn't listen.
It wasn't just spinning wildly on its own. Originally, the circle was a ring of mana that loosely surrounded the heart. But the circle that had now formed—
Was different.
It was far too small.
The heart was wedged inside that tiny circle. No, it wasn't just wedged.
"At this rate… my heart will burst."
Like the tightening golden headband crushing the Monkey King's head. Or like a savage beast mercilessly biting into its prey's throat. The circle was pressing down on his heart as if to tear it apart, spinning as it constricted.
"Kh… hngh!"
He barely managed not to panic.
Amid cold sweat that had sprung up in an instant. Amid a vision that was rapidly blurring. He faintly saw Sir Gardin in front of him, seemingly shouting something.
Was he yelling?
Asking what was wrong.
Asking if he was all right.
Grabbing his shoulder, trying to check his condition.
"Tsk."
Sir Gardin wasn't the only one making a fuss.
Ding-dong.
[The mana circle is excessively compressing the heart.]
[The developmental balance between the mana circle and the heart is mismatched.]
[The heart is on the verge of fainting.]
His heart and other organs were sending scream-like messages. Messages flickering and fading within his blurred vision. It was dizzying. But thanks to them, he could guess the cause of this sudden crisis.
"The developmental balance between the mana circle and the heart is mismatched?"
Now that he thought about it, that was exactly right.
The Asrahan Heart Method had just awakened moments ago. The mana circle, having revealed its presence, had begun to rotate.
But the size of the circle was abnormal. The donut-shaped circle that should have comfortably surrounded the heart was now crushing it, like an impossibly tight ring squeezing a finger.
"Developmental state… balance…"
Wait.
Something slowly surfaced in his mind.
It was a hypothesis.
"If it's about development… then the physical heart is fully grown, but the circle isn't."
Consciousness growing hazy from pain.
A heart that had begun beating irregularly.
Amid the unmistakable signs of impending cardiac arrest, he continued thinking.
"Yeah, come to think of it, this might be only natural. The original owner of this body, Rakiel, was the crown prince. The emperor's firstborn from birth. And the Asrahan Heart Method is the imperial family's secret art, passed down only to direct descendants."
That was how it was described in the novel The Demonic Sword Emperor. The message that appeared when he first obtained the Asrahan Heart Method said the same thing.
The secret art of the imperial direct line had been "engraved" in his heart, but couldn't be used due to a frail constitution—until now, when it had "awakened."
"So Rakiel was born as the crown prince, and immediately after birth, he inherited the Asrahan Heart Method, the imperial family's secret art."
Most likely, the emperor himself had engraved the circle onto the heart of the newborn Rakiel. Just like the ritual the imperial direct line had performed for generations. He must have obtained the Asrahan Heart Method the moment he was born.
But what came after—that must have been the problem.
"Rakiel was born with a frail constitution. They said he'd been sickly even before he could open his eyes."
From childhood, he had suffered under illness his entire life. But with such a body, could he have ever used the Asrahan Heart Method?
"No."
That couldn't have been possible. With a body ravaged by disease, even dreaming of using a heart method would have been impossible. And so the mana circle, which only manifests when the heart method is actually used—
"He must have never rotated it even once. No—since it was implanted when he was a newborn, it was never awakened even a single time."
In other words, this circle had spent his entire life in a semi-forced state of hibernation. That was why it hadn't grown at all from the size and shape it had at infancy. Meanwhile, Rakiel's body grew—and only his heart did.
"Of course the balance is off."
An adult's heart.
A newborn's circle.
An absurd, rare, and ironic combination.
And now that very combination was throwing an absolute catastrophe party inside his chest, to the point tears nearly welled up.
"I have to do something."
At this rate, he would die.
Not metaphorically—literally.
In the original story, Rakiel never awakened his circle and thus died quietly. But his situation now was different.
He had already awakened the circle. That meant he had to do something. He had to balance the heart and the circle. Otherwise, he'd soon be buying a one-way ticket to cardiac arrest and starting a career counseling session with the King of the Underworld.
"Think. Anything is fine—just think."
He focused, forcing his mind to work.
The cause he had just deduced.
The solution to the problem.
He dug through his thoughts desperately.
Clung to them tenaciously.
At last, he reached a conclusion.
If he wanted to balance the two, there was only one way.
He couldn't shrink his heart, so—
"Expand the circle!"
The moment he found the answer, Rakiel stopped trying to calm the rampaging circle. Instead, he spurred its violent rotation even further.
Kiaaaaa—!
Faster.
Even faster.
Rough and breathless.
Savage and ferocious.
He increased the circle's rotation speed.
The goal was singular: to forcibly expand the circle using centrifugal force. It was, quite literally, a gamble with his life.
Kaaaah—ack!
"…Ghk!"
His heart was being ground against the circle.
A tremendous agony surged through him.
He nearly lost consciousness for real.
But he knew—if he passed out, it would be over.
So he endured.
He held on.
Was it because he was simply patient?
No.
"My chest… hurts. It hurts like hell. But still… this is nothing compared to back when my clinic in Korea was going under!"
He recalled the most heart-wrenching memory he had in recent years—the time when his traditional medicine clinic had been on the brink of collapse because of COVID.
"Just because two confirmed patients visited… the internet cafes… the apartment group chats… rumors spread everywhere… patients stopped coming altogether… I just sat there sighing in an empty clinic… even started losing hair I never had before…!"
No matter how painful this was—
Could it compare to that?
"And yet the rent and loan interest still got taken, right on time. I wanted to grab anyone—anyone at all—and beg. But I couldn't. I sold off my lease, moved into a tiny one-room rental, tried to scrape by like that… fuck, my deposit."
He didn't even know how much he'd cried alone on the day he packed up and left that leased apartment. And the pain he felt in his chest right now?
"Compared to that, this doesn't even hurt. That time was far more heart-rending!"
He ground his teeth.
This wasn't pain.
That meant he could endure it. This mere pain of a mana circle expanding—he could withstand it as much as necessary.
"Mana circle? Do you know what it feels like to watch your business fail? Do you know the suffering of a self-employed worker in South Korea?!"
He hurled the words at the circle.
Growled them out as if chewing them to pieces.
And he endured.
The pain that felt like it would last an eternity.
The rotation of the mana circle as it broke through its limits.
The agony of the circle being torn apart and stretched by centrifugal force.
He endured all of it.
Accepted it.
Bore it through.
At last, the circle answered.
Kaaaah—! Crack!
A sound like something breaking rang out.
In that instant, the circle expanded. Freedom came to the heart that had been crushed. The pain vanished as if it had been a lie. In its place, he felt the smooth, glass-like rotation of the circle.
Kiiiiing...
Like a well-trained beast.
Like a finely tuned engine.
A rotation that seemed to say: Whenever you want, I will unleash my greatest power.
As Rakiel opened his eyes to that new sensation, countless messages began to appear before him.
Ding-dong!
[You have perfectly balanced the developmental states of your heart and mana circle.]
[Your mana circle had been contracted due to a prolonged state of hibernation. Under those conditions, normal utilization was absolutely impossible.]
[However, through keen intuition, bold execution, resolute will, and indomitable endurance, you have succeeded in forcibly tearing and expanding your mana circle.]
[In the process, your mana heart underwent an extremely rare growth phase, being forcibly torn and expanded in accordance with its owner's will.]
[Due to this unique and unprecedented growth history, a special property has been granted to your mana circle.]
[You have acquired the unprecedented "Mana Circle Slot" in the history of this world.]
Messages of radiant brilliance filled his vision.
And only then did he truly realize—
This was the historic moment when a life-risking gamble paid off as a colossal jackpot.