The Mechanical Era

As soon as Kant held up the dagger, its blade turned jet-black in color, stunning everyone. From what they had seen before, it wouldn't have turned unless Kant had wanted it to flow to the dagger. With this, Kant gets an idea.

He keeps the manacite dagger down on the table. The manacite blade's jet-black color immediately dissipates, returning it to its regular old color, indistinguishable from any other danger one could find.

He then picks it up, turning the blade back to jet-black, before keeping it down. He does this multiple times over, for the researchers to see and observe. Observations are made, and things are written down on the clipboards.

"From my observations, it appears that the dagger only turns jet-black if I hold it," Kant remarked.

"Are you concentrating on the dagger, sir?" one of the researchers questioned Kant.

"No. I am not," Kant answered.

"Can you try focusing on the blade, and then put it down?" he asked. A good request.

"Hmm... Alright." Kant picked up the blade again. This time, Kant focused on the blade first, before placing it down. Although once he places the blade down and takes his hand off, the blade still remains black.

The researchers write this observation down while Kant just looks at the blade. He then focuses away from the blade to something else. He then turns back his head to face the blade, only to see that the metal was still jet-black in color.

"What is the matter, sir?"

"It appears I cannot remove the void energy off the dagger without contact. Although..." Kant picks up the blade and focuses on his free arm. He then places the weapon back on the table.

"I can do it directly," he finishes his sentence. The researchers took note of that and wrote it down on their clipboards. They then turned to observe Kant himself, to see whether he had seen any changes in his body. So far, they had found none, with the exception of his pale skin.

With their observations, comes a new question. Why? Why was this happening? What changed? Kant thought about it for a minute, but couldn't come up with any reason as to why. He blamed this on his lack of knowledge of how Void energy worked, or how magic really worked, considering he never had to use it in his life.

"Does anyone here have a good hypothesis on why this is occurring? Please raise your hand if you might have one," Kant asked.

His Vantablack eyes scanned the entire room, yet, not a single hand was seen raised above their heads, meaning nobody had any idea what it was. Kant was about to give up, until suddenly, he spots it!

One hand rises above the rest! It separated the wielder of the hand, allowing him to be distinguished from the other researchers, who all wore a similar line of clothing. Kant points at him and asks what he thinks.

"You sir. What is your hypothesis?" Kant asks.

"Well, your majesty, I think Void energy works in a similar way to how mana generally works, when it comes to the body that is. This might be a case of your body not knowing how to deal with your current levels of void energy.

As you all know, when someone is born with mana reserves, they need general exposure to growing that mana reserve to their full potential. The younger it is, the better. Since you have just started out to discover these mysterious powers, it was guaranteed that you would run into this problem.

From what I observe, the body might be halfway to reaching your reserve and would like to use tools, in this case, the manacite dagger, to hold in more void energy. It also is trying to present symptoms, to make sure that you won't 'overflow' with void energy, as it could imply a lot of health risks.

pαndα,noνɐ1,сoМ This is similar to how mana works. To ensure that the over won't overload their body with too much mana, the body had made sure to signs of early warning symptoms to get a user to stop taking in more mana.

Early warning symptoms could be involuntary reflexes of muscles, large emotional swings, an increased desire to use magic, headaches, and dizziness, with the first and minor symptom being the paleness of one's skin.

So far, the only symptom that you may be reaching your reserve limit, is the paleness of your skin. This could mean that you are halfway close to reaching your limit. Whether or not you want to take in more void energy, is up to you." the researcher explained.

Kant listened in closely. He thought about the researcher's hypothesis. To Kant, it seems like the best hypothesis for what is going on with him right now.

"Alright then, but how do I make it stop?"

"Stop what, sir?"

"The void energy transferring to a manacite blade. Is there any proven way to stop it?" Kant asked.

"Oh! That! Well, I am not sure sir. Normally, mana doesn't flow through manacite when touched by anyone with a filled mana pool. This might be a feature exclusive to void energy itself." he suggested.

"I see. Well, I guess we will have to perform more tests. However, I do not think that we have the time for today, is that right?"

"Yes, sir. We do not. I think it is best we move on to the crystals. To see whether they can be damaged by a manacite blade, powered with void energy," The researcher replied. Kant walked up to the crystals while holding his dagger.

Before he placed the dagger on the crystal, he turned to the researchers.

"Test 1. White crystal." he then tries to cut the crystal in half, which turned out to be a success. He then moved on to the next one, the green one, and see if it worked.

"Test 2. Green Crystal." He then tries cutting through it as well, only to end in failure. He was not strong enough, just yet.