Multiple pseudo cores required their user to know how and when to activate one or more of them at the same time whereas a single one once activated would follow its program until it was turned off.
It was the reason why Lith had decided to craft his first power core. To make sure that even someone with a bright red mana core like his parents could use several powerful types of magic with no effort and little training.
To assemble a power core, the Forgemaster had to merge several pseudo cores into one, making sure that their runes harmonized so that the resulting core would be greater than the sum of its parts.
Once Bonded with the metal, mana crystals generated a flow of world energy but during the Bonding process, before the mana circulatory system fully formed, the flow was actually a flood.
The time window between the start of the Bonding and its end was the only moment when the pseudo cores could be moved from their original position, like boats amid a storm on the surface of the sea.
Friya and Solus harnessed the power from the crystals to move all the pseudo cores near to each other so that Lith could merge them quickly. Yet they also had to keep them far enough from the Warp core to keep them from messing with the formation process of the power core.
Lith brought both the Warp core and the Construct core to the heart of the enchantment, splitting them both into the runes that comprised their energy body before they touched.
The mana pathways surrounding the different cores didn't interfere in the process because they were meant to keep the energy of the pseudo cores they protected from dispersing, not to stop new energy from getting in.
Otherwise imprinting an enchanted item would have been impossible due to the mana pathways blocking the mana of the mage that was supposed to grant them ownership and to the item the energy source it needed to last forever.
After several attempts, Lith knew both sequences of runes by heart and had already figured out where their compatibility was high.
The process involved not to just attach the runes of the Construct core to the Warp, but to alternate them as if cutting a strand of DNA in multiple places and fill the gaps between the various extremities with short strings of base pairs from a different strand without compromising the stability of the resulting DNA.
The red and golden runes rearranged themselves according to Lith's will, forming a Warp core capable of using Light Mastery. Its size and power surpassed what the mana pathways from the two single cores could contain but that wasn't a problem.
Yet.
Lith then moved the remaining pseudo cores that would grant the final enchantment mastery over the other elements as well. They were smaller and simpler than the previous two and Lith had kept them last for a good reason.
Even though merging them with either the Warp or the Construct core would have been quick and easy, with each step taken the complexity of the power core would increase.
This way, instead, he had performed the critical step of the process while the two most powerful cores were in their simplest form, reducing the chances of failure to the minimum.
The air core would grant the car speed, maneuverability, and stability. The fire and water cores served both in contingency situations and to create air conditioning. The earth core would soften a crash landing while the darkness core would keep the car clean.
With each pseudo core that Lith merged, Friya and Solus increased the number of mana pathways surrounding the heart of the enchantment. The pressure they generated kept the power core stable and helped Lith in the assembling process.
Once they finished, the power core resembled a white dwarf whose heat spread evenly throughout the car, exerting a mana pressure that made the hair on the back of the group's neck stand up.
Mana pathways weren't meant to contain something that powerful, they merely aided its creation. Lith, Friya, and Solus chanted the tier five Forgemastering spell, Seal, in unison.
Each one of them generated a string of Forgemastering runes with Spirit Magic that surrounded the power core like orbital rings a planet until all of its mana was sealed in the space between the core and the rings.
Friya's work was easily identifiable being of the silvery color of her Royal Forgemaster wand instead of emerald green like that of an Awakened.
A long tense silence followed as the trio waited to see if they had actually succeeded or if something would go wrong again, turning hours of sweat and hard work into scrap metal.
Then, a rainbow of different colored runes covered the surface of the silver as the magic from the power core spread throughout every nook and cranny of the structure, allowing the different spells to recognize the car as their own body.
After each enchantment that comprised the power core bonded with the section of the car it was intended to control and oversee, the runes disappeared forever from sight. Thanks to its cloaking system, even Invigoration would only show the magical equivalent of a Pollock painting.
"We did it!" Solus jumped with joy for the first time in days, hugging her partners to share with them her bliss for a job well done.
"We made a real power core in less than a week!" Lith was the first to not believe his own ears.
"I can finally go home and have a real vacation!" Friya was so happy that she almost kissed them both.
Faluel was a strict but fair teacher, but Lith was brutal. Failure with him meant to figure out what had gone wrong and start over the moment they had regained their mental focus.
Unfortunately for her, between the abundant world energy in the tower and Invigoration, such a break would last just long enough for her to eat an army's protein bar.
"What do you mean, go home?" Lith froze at her words. "We still have to fix the interior and then give it a test ride. Do you really want to miss-"
"Let me know how it goes, but don't you dare to contact me before two days unless it's a life-or-death situation." Friya cut him short while using the tower's Warping Mirror to reach Derios, the capital of the Distar Marquisate.
From there a City Gate would lead her home, away from the forced labor that in Lith's and Solus's mind passed as fun. She even turned off her communication amulet, just to stay safe.
"That was rude." Lith felt slightly offended. "I even prepared her meals to let her eat here while she rested."
"Yeah, you only had to grant Friya yard time to be a real jailer." Solus laughed her a.s.s off while she used her dimensional pocket to move the custom-made sofas inside the sealed chassis of the car.
Explaining to the artisan why the sofas' frame had to be made out of metal rather than of wood and why they needed to have something uncomfortable as a seat belt had been a hassle that only paying an extra in silver had avoided.
The metal frame allowed Lith to fuse them with the rest of the car, while the belts would keep both the children and the a.d.u.l.ts safe.
