Night brought Konrad no respite—if it even was night.
Only the darkness was constant—and the ceaseless draining. It wasn't the same as when he started magic weeks ago. He'd recover then, but this artifact? It drained every drop—always.
He needed a way out—fast.
"Eat, Konrad." Father Alastair stuffed moldy bread under his nose. He almost threw up.
"Nope, I'm good." Hunger was nowhere near as pressing as other matters.
The priest ate the nasty piece before he'd change his mind. Which at least got rid of that awful smell—apart from the unwashed bodies. Who were they—and how many?
The Code trapped them, instead of bringing Halaima back from ruin.
That single clause at the end that said, if everyone fails, the Church takes over—
The Inquisition didn't wait; they made them fail before the start.
"Splitting was a terrible idea," Konrad rubbed his temple.
Splitting, huh. So he had a twin all this time, too. Split at birth.
Or was that something Alastair made up? He had no reason to—but knew nothing more, either.
Konrad was an only child in his previous life, with only a handful of cousins. He'd never met them after dropping out of school. Which was also odd—Why'd he drop out?
He didn't remember. The most logical thing he could think of was—a relationship? But—
A splitting headache stopped that train of thought, as if Lu didn't want him to dig further.
The longer he lived, the less his guardian angel seemed honest. He gave him noble blood without a house—or magic, while his mana was useless. Well, that was in the past, except—
"Ah, what a disappointment, Ser Prodigy."
Sister Stella stomped on his thoughts. She came out of nowhere.
"This is less than half a pound, and I rushed here to replace it, first thing in the morning."
So it was morning now? He grunted. The bracelet only started to transform into adamantite. Not like he needed the executioner to remind him of his slow recharge rate, but—
The woman yanked his hair.
"So it was a fluke. Or are you sabotaging us on purpose?!"
"I would if I could," Konrad strained to ease the pull, too weak for anything else.
"Hah. How about some motivation?" She dragged him out of the cell. What a brute of a woman. No restraints, apart from the obvious, but she needed none.
He was so weak, physical or magical, that she could do whatever she wanted.
"I'll apologise in advance, Ser Prodigy," she chirped. "My profile is to be swift and execute the Church's enemies. Torture isn't something I do often, but I'll try to make it fun."
Konrad would've given her a response if his legs weren't scraping the floor.
"I have this scourge," she said. "Let's start with that."
His shirt ripped—what remained of it after a rat-infested night—then a sting. Considering how she threw him around, that didn't even feel that bad. Like with the hunger—
She couldn't top the torment this silver bracelet caused.
"Playing tough?" Stella sounded annoyed. "I'm not doing it for the screams, but—"
Another hard snap, and Konrad's skin ripped.
"Sorry, you started yet?" he gritted out. "Inquisitors do everything backwards, so hard to tell."
That earned him a scoff and an even stronger strike. It wasn't pleasant per se, but he'd been through worse. At least, after the fifth, he blanked out. Amateur mistake for a torturer.
When he came to, he was back in his cell, Father Alastair pestering him.
"What did they do to you?"
Was it hard to guess?
"She tried to get kinky," Konrad claimed, his back stinging. "But I already have a harem."
Blame the bracelet for the joke.
It was still about half a pound, so not much time must've passed.
"Harem? Are you hallucinating?" The priest wrung his hands. If only he knew—
His harem. Did Lily and Gabrielle wake up by now? How'd he meet up with Eyna and Welf?
If only he'd wait for Zoltan's book on the mana recharging research—but if there was one, there must've been a way. He only had to figure it out by himself.
Hours passed—or minutes?—before he got used to the dizziness enough to focus.
While he couldn't see the mana flow like Lily, he could focus on the feeling.
The density wasn't that hard to tell apart.
At that point, he'd only have to use his imagination. How long did it take? He couldn't tell, but he had nothing better to do, anyway. An hour? Another day? He blocked everything else out.
Mana floated like plankton in the oceans. He was a whale, sifting it through while swimming.
"I need numbers to work with," he mumbled. "If five pounds of adamantite took half my pool, let's say it's a hundred mana per pound." Then his max was at a thousand, uh—
Well, he called them mana points.
Since the first bracelet drained him, he'd made half a pound of adamantite. Fifty points. That checked out. Now, how to speed that up? If he chased the mana, rather than waiting for it—
Not like he had the freedom to move, but he didn't have to—not his body, at least.
His core, soul, or whatever had some leeway, too.
As he observed the flow, he'd intercept it, too. Only in a twenty-foot radius—but better than nothing. His soul moved much faster than his body ever could, anyway.
He gave it a try, sending his soul to suck up all the essence—and the bracelet began to swell.
"Fascinating. Focusing alone can double the rate."
It was lucky he couldn't see Father Alastair's face in the dark.
He must've thought he had gone crazy. But a hundred mana a day was still too slow; he needed at least five or six times that. And Halaima had no laylines like Aset; the mana was less dense.
Could he compress it somehow? Or—concentrate?!
He knew the focusing rune and the mana's symbol, too. He'd use it in spells to set the amount he'd want to burn. But what if he instead used it as the element to manipulate?
Concentrate the essence, instead of light. A simple syntax, a twenty-foot radius, and—
All mana got sucked into his core—before the bracelet drained it away.
Around him, an essence-vacuum remained, filling up at a snail's pace. This method wasn't sustainable, but it was fine for little boosts. Pushing the radius wouldn't help.
It'd give a larger boost, which would take even longer to recover.
The environment was the bottleneck now.
"I'd recover three hundred points like this, at most," he scratched his temple. It sounded amazing on paper, compared to the fifty he could do until now, but—he needed double that.
The sudden influx eased his dizziness, and—
Luminous little dots of mana streamed around him. They flowed, unaffected by the wind or matter, at their own pace, except—he saw some specks appear at random.
Others disappeared the same way.
"Is that how mana comes to be?" he wondered.
No, if he learned anything, it was that essence wasn't lost or created; it'd only transform. His bracelet was the brightest source in sight—even if he couldn't access it.
But if those specks came from somewhere—
"They're like cracks—wherever they go, if I could pry them open, I'd harvest those places, too."