Mack closed his eyes and started to breathe using the nameless technique from the book.

A few minutes later, he then started to chant the phases from the book like it was a song.

He did one cycle of the chanting and alternated to the breathing.

After a few minutes of doing this, Mack stopped, feeling that something was odd in the process.

Didn’t feel natural to alternate. But he needed to stop the chanting to breathe from time to time.

This same process worked before to break his gates of Essence but wasn’t working for what he needed now.

It needed to be something way more strong. .

Mack believed that his gates were broken by an extremely huge influx of Essence passing by the gates in his body.

The breathing technique pulled essence from the surroundings to his body as a whole, the chanting imposed his will over the essence and the tattoos worked as a marker in his body for the essence to accumulate.

That was what Mack believed. But now he had no more gates in his body and his body was different from the others warlocks. It was way stronger. And resisted much more to the Essence from surroundings.

It was as if all the pieces of a puzzle were in front of Mack but he didn’t know how to connect them because he didn’t know what the final picture was.

“How am stupid! My body resists the surrounding essence because it is already saturated with Essence.”

“You can’t pour more water on an already full cup.”

“but…..”

“You can compress water. Will Essence work the same way?”

Mack thought about this problem for a long time but still could not find a solution.

Then Mack remembered of the Cubes. All of them produced very complex things that in total had much more mass than the cubes themselves.

“They must have some way to compress Essence”

Then Mack remembered the Cube he saw at the entrance of this trial.

“They are technological devices. But…. I may find my answers there. At least I will have some clues”

Mack stood up and started running back to the small hill.

One hour later at the entrance of the 4th gate of Hel floor.

Mack paced around the small cube but could not figure out anything from it.

No joints. No way to remove anything. No way to open it.

He even poured blood on it like in previous times. But nothing happened.

“Why the blood? Is it like a key to making them function? Like a password?”

Mack looked closely at the cube. More specifically at the several runes scribed on the cube. They were similar to the Ragnarok Language he knew but was not the same.

The cube was covered with them. Every single inch of the cube had a rune.

“The sizes!”

Every time a cube appeared in front of Mack the size was different. A huge one. Two very small, and this was a medium one.

“And the only thing that changed was the catalog”

In other words, what the cube could produce was related to the size of the cube.

“And all of them were full of those runes”

Mack came to a realization.

“There is nothing to open because there is nothing inside. All the mechanics are here plain in the sight. Inscribed all over the cube.”

“And that’s why the sizes vary. The catalog. And if my guess is correct then all the content inside the cube is compressed Essence.”

“Oh no. Here was I thinking that was all small talk from the book girl. All clues. All of them! From the very beginning. She was not doing small talk with me, she was supposed to say all of that one way or another!”

Said Mack, realizing why she suddenly said that the cubes had a kind of battery and were rechargeable but would take a millennium to recharge one.

“Because it needs to compress the Essence!”

Mack dropped to his knees. The realization was too huge for him to bear.

He was astonished by how wrong his assumptions were from the start.

“I’m am a huge moron. That’s for sure.”

“But as well….. a fucking genius!”

Mack pressed a finger on his own neck and the suit retracted itself from both his arms, leaving them naked.

Mack extended his arm and looked at the tattoo in his right hand.

The tattoo was formed with three parts, a small sun with a runic letter inside and a few very small runic letters around.

Mack looked at his left hand and the same pattern was there. A small moon with a Runic letter and small runes around.

But both had the same runic letter in the middle…..

“The compression rune”

Then Mack looked at the cube in front of him again.

“If I find the same rune. Then all my hypotheses are true.”

With that said, Mack started to look at one rune after another in the cube. There were big ones and very small ones. Some the size of a thumb while others were small as letters on the last page of contracts.

12 hours later.

“Found you! Now there is no doubt.”

Said Mack, looking at one rune identical to the one in his arm.

Then he started to see the runes that connected with that one.

The odd thing about runes was that Mack found that they always connected somehow to one another. Be it a minor detail or a big one. In the middle, or a small leg in the rune, or a small one connecting two big runes. There was always a pattern.

Just like computers from Earth.

The most impressive thing that Mack found in those 12 hours looking attentive to the cube was that the runes sometimes formed a bigger one.

And apart from one single rune, he knew nothing of what was the meaning or function of the other runes in the cube.

Now for the second part of his test, he would need a guinea pig.

And he knew exactly where to find thousands and thousands of them.

“An epic battle without a mad scientist is not an epic battle at all.”

Said Mack, unable to contain a devilish smile.