Mack felt as if drunk while fighting, but for the first time he understood something, Essence flowed like water, like a virus it infected everything, it resonated with the will of things, and the stronger a emotion the stronger the will, if he wished to use it better he had to let himself loose. 

All that come to him because a single word …. Drunk…  Because people often got stronger while drunk Mack’s mind started to race to conclusions as thoughts flashed to his mind.

He always thought that the gates at the tower had the aim to make his will stronger by shutting down his own emotions, by not letting them get over his real thoughts, but he was wrong, now he finally realized that they true goals was to make him grasp the edges, to know himself, to accept himself and his own past and problems and utilize that to his own advantage.

‘Indeed, there is no stronger will than a emotion’ Thought Mack while slashing a bearded man in half and jumping to the side to avoid a dagger.

And as to prove his own conjectures and realizations, Mack suddenly remembered all the weird events that happened at the tower. He waking up in the middle of destroyed building after almost going insane, and the warlock light constructs hearing his warcry in the first day of the battle, when is blood was pumping so hard that he himself almost forgot how he got to the front line.

Those two times, he was immersed in his emotions.

Those two times, he was facing death in a way that he unconsciously knew was almost impossible to survive.

‘The gates pushed me to my limit, so I could know them, so I could know and accept myself’

Mack avoided a weird ability that froze the ground and came to several realizations at once, as if all that happened in the tower finally started making sense.

He never understood why he failed the last gate, even after Harlack, that old fogey, told him, it seemed way too much of a bullshit in his view, as if he was trying to avoid the subject, but now it all made sense, and why he came back to Earth, and why he could not keep advancing in the tower.

‘The Hel floor was just the beginning, it was my basic training, to make me grasp the basic use of Essence in the correct way, using emotions as fuel, or in better words using emotions as a guide. yes a guide.’

And just as he came to this conclusion, he stopped.

He looked around in the battlefield and he was basically fighting against a thousand people alone, some people were taking a chance in the chaos to kill others and get tokens but those were exceptions, almost everyone was starring straight to Mack, trying to anticipate his moves, trying to stop him, trying to bind him or hurt him.

A thousand people trying to kill him.

He knew better than everyone that if things progressed this way he had no way to leave this trial alive, one thing was to kill thousands of light constructs, another one was to kill humans and ability users.

At each second that passed his area of effect and his control over the Essence that surrounded him became stronger due to the runespell way of working, but at each second that passed he was closer to the death. His vision was already showing black spots from time to time due to the lost of blood and his legs were now barely responding his own thoughts as the nerves failed to transmit the brain commands.

He was almost only using essence to control his body.

Like a ghost trapped in his own body, or like a human inside a war tank, he used Essence to control his body each movement. It was not natural enough and was prone to fail soon, and when that happened it will be his doom.

That or he would just faint from blood lost, whatever comes first.

In that brief stop that barely took a few seconds, Mack made his mind, he was going to test if his conjecture was right.

If all failed, he would just use his trump card to gain time and escape inside the jungle, his last resort, the thing that he should not expose easily never. His domain runespell. He would use the last bits of blood and activate it and run for his life, he would probably be scolded by the old man and , he would had to leave the trial and the planet someway, but was better than dying.

The domain runespell was currently the only way to expose his nature as a Warlock, because people would easily associate it with ‘some kind’ of Essence Arts that the warlocks were famous for. Mages had spell similar to this, but not to that extent, and not unless someone was a really important figure in the mage community. 

‘That old man already told me to never use it unless all witness became corpses, I must try using my emotions as guide, otherwise the entire plan will go down with a stupid mistake.’

Reaching a conclusion, Mack thought about the more simple emotion he could use now, and the one that was always present when using the current runespell…

PAIN!

Way too much of repressed pain. Pain that would make a man faint in the first second, pain akin to needles stabbing each and every single cell of his body from inside out, pain worst than the feeling of having the skin peeled off slowly, way too much pain for a simple man to endure.

Mack let loose his guard, let himself feel, let himself feel the pain inside his body, inside his soul and emotions about his past came together, bundled and mixed as if one could not go out without the other….

And he screamed because of pain for the first time in a long time.

“ArghHhHHhH!!!!!”

And as if to make himself believe, he screamed to let himself loose, he screamed to feel.

He screamed with all his lungs to be able to live.

He screamed for life.