"I'm sorry, but I can't help you with that." Lith shook his head. "I'm not going to cross Grandma to help a mass murderer and the Council's rules would make me responsible for you for the next one hundred years, which-"
"Is way more than you have left to live, I know." Manohar cut him short. "Let's keep things simple. I'll tell you what we know and you'll tell us if we are missing something, okay?"
"No." Lith's voice was reduced to a whisper.
"Why not? I'm not asking much." The god of healing asked.
"I mean, no, I have much longer to live. Awakening increases lifespan by about tenfold." Lith replied.
"I know about that." Manohar shrugged. "Otherwise Balkor would have been dead for years now."
"He is right." The god of death suddenly looked old and tired. "I had barely five years left to live when I accepted Salaark's offer and according to both her and Manohar, I have now another twenty more left."
"Twenty? It should be more than forty." Lith was flabbergasted.
"You don't understand. She didn't boost a healthy and vigorous life force, but a flickering one. It bought me some time, but the more time passes the weaker I become.
"I'm already in my twilight years and every effort I make puts a strain on my life force. Imagine me as an over 900 years old Awakened. Just like any old mage, every fight might be my last." Balkor said.
"The same applies to you, Lith." Manohar said while checking him with his tier five diagnostic spell, Third Eye. "As a kid, you would have lived until fifty at most, but only if you had a quiet life."
Third Eye was similar to Invigoration, allowing Manohar's mana to resonate with the patient's body. By shifting his focus whenever he perceived an anomaly, he would obtain detailed information almost up to the cellular.
"Instead, you've choose to live your life to its fullest, going from one battle to another. With every powerful artifact you create, with every life-or-death battle you endure, you are piling up more fatigue than you can take.
"Your life force is cracked, which means that a few drops of it slip out with every effort you make. You are indeed a Divine Beast now, but your starting life force was that of a human and the cracks are still there."
Manohar unraveled Lith's seemingly human life force, discerning its true shape. It was something so fascinating and unique that the god of healing stopped talking to study it to the best of his abilities.
"The good news is that I stand corrected. You have a few hundreds of years left to live, but I can't tell you exactly how many because I've never seen anything like this before." Manohar said.
"The bad news is that I'm positive that your life force has waned compared to both the time after Balkor's attack and the quarantine. Did you suffer some major trauma since then?"
'He's talking about the time you collapsed in Kulah after facing the Odi and that time in Jiera due to your Abomination side ravaging your body.' Solus said as she followed Third Eye with Abyssal Gaze and noticed the discolored areas highlighted by the spell.
"Yes." Lith replied.
"This is the reason I'm interested in Awakening. I failed to save your wolf friend, to heal your life force back when you were a student, and to destroy those like Night and Dawn who threaten the life of my patients."
The word failure didn't belong to Manohar's vocabulary, yet this time he used it without stuttering or shame.
"I'm not interested in a long life, but I'm tired of losing. If I become an Awakened, I'll have the power to kill the Horsemen. If I learn how the slowed aging process works, I can find a way to restore the life force of both of you.
"I consider you two my friends and I don't want to lose either of you. Ilyum, you are a self-centered asshole, but you are the only person I know as smart as I am. Without you, Mogar would be way less scary, but also very boring."
"That's rich coming from you." Balkor said with a wanly smile.
"Lith, you are all I ever wanted to be. Someone strong and talented who yet manages to have a normal life without pushing away with your antics everyone you care about. I failed you twice, don't let me do it for a third time."
His genuine honesty and care left Lith at a loss for words. He remained silent, pondering what he could and couldn't say.
"Even though I may have much less time left than I believed, it's still too long for me to make an enemy of Grandma and the Council." Lith said. "Yet there are a few things that should help you.
"First, the source of our magical powers is something called the mana core. The power of a core depends on the quality and quantity of mana it stores. The weakest core is deep red while the strongest is violet, just like it happens for fire."
Lith raised six fingers, lighting each one of them with a flame of a different color.
"I see. That's why the color of the mana coming out of the eyes of a mage when they are angry is used to estimate their talent." Manohar nodded as he and Balkor lit their eyes with bright violet light.
"One of the biggest differences between a normal mage and an Awakened, is that an Awakened can develop their core to violet even if they were destined to be stuck at red their whole life." Lith tuned his eyes ablaze as well, showing deep violet energy with several brighter streaks.
"That's how you've developed your talents even though you are not a natural like us. Balkor and I reached the bright violet way before twenty." The god of healing said.
"Yes, but there's also a catch. An Awakened can't exceed bright blue unless certain conditions are met. At the same time, anyone who reaches the blue level cannot Awaken without help and those who reach the violet can't do it at all."
"What do you mean? I was a bright violet before Awakening and here I am." Balkor said.
"Salaark is a Guardian, common sense doesn't apply to her." Lith shook his head. "Just know that an Awakened violet core has its mana spread evenly throughout the body whereas people like Manohar have their mana compressed inside their core.
"Once the Awakening process starts, without the power of a Guardian to contain it, his body would explode." Lith showed them a body refining process going awry through a hologram.
"The bones, skins, and even the internal organs have to undergo a mutation to withstand such a powerful mana flow. Last, but not least, even if for some reason a violet cored survived the Awaking process, they would be downgraded to bright blue."
"That's depressing." Manohar had Lith replay the hologram over and over, making questions and taking notes of the answers.
"I'm not going to divulge the secret of Awakening nor the method to reach the violet unless you find a way to survive. I'm willing to take calculated risks, not gamble on dumb luck.." Lith said.
