"Witch Trip, Black Rose."

The words left Colin's lips like a humble melody. His eyes darted from left to right taking note of the mannequins dancing his way, and observing the chandelier that brought down massive icicles toward him.

Colin gathered the dark mana, the exact moment he finished invoking the name of the witch trip, he already gathered enough mana to unleash it in all it's violent glory. 'How much mana does this kid have!?' He thought. The mana in the area was suffocating, even when purified, the sheer amount of energy and mana that was in the area would make anyone sick. If Colin wasn't a magic-born, he would have passed out already.

Colin's head throbbed as he stomped on the ground, making a gigantic purple bud sprout from the darkened grass. He then jumped off the bud and tried to get closer to Clailip to cut off the source of the corrupted mana and hopefully incapacitate the boy before a demon finds its way into the world through Clailip's dense corruption.

Demons used areas with high concentrations of corrupted mana as places where they could manifest in the world, and in this place where the grass grew black and the skies ever dark, Colin was sure it was only a matter of time before some sort of demon wriggles its way into the Isles.

Colin was definitely strong, but demons were terrifying creatures. The weakest ones were mid-B Rank at the very least. The strongest demons were creatures that were considered to be undefeatable even by the average S-Ranker. The Isles guardians—powerful creatures and their subordinates tasked by the gods to protect the islands and maintain it—and the champions of each main island, were the ones tasked to eliminate these forces of evil, but even the guardians wouldn't have an easy win against these monsters.

Colin firmly grasped the nape of Clailip's neck, making sure that the flow of corruption is cut off by swiftly taking a few flowers from his crown and sticking them into Clailip's hair. They quickly latched themselves onto the little boy by spreading out their dismembered stems all around the boy's scalp. Colin did this so as to make sure that even if Clailip pushed him away, his Sandata would still keep purifying the evil mana the boy was spreading.

Clailip quickly turned to Colin, his eyes that were once full of life were now soulless, not a single speck of hope or light could be found. This unnerved Colin. "Colin… how… I need to stitch them back together, Colin. They can't leave me. Them and the spirits are all I have." He croaked, his voice was hoarse and dry, a product of his intense screaming earlier.

Colin pitied the little boy, watching as the streams of blood that came from his eyes dripped down onto the dark grass.

"I just have to make them into a doll. I just have to stitch them back together." Clailip muttered as he stitched, the appendages on his back were working too, he looked like an insect desperately using its limbs to stitch.

His threads weren't staying, he put mana into them but they disintegrated whenever he was done stitching the animals into a doll. It was like the spell wasn't working, like his stitching wasn't enough. The threads just disappear and come loose the moment he is successful in making a toy, a doll, or anything that he thinks would let his pets take material form once more.

"Clailip, they're dead." Colin said in a soft tone, he watched the black bud from the sidelines, waiting for it to bloom and gather up the dense corruption that infected the area. Once it blooms, Colin hopes it would gather up all of the corrupted mana in the area, and then it was only a matter of purifying the corrupted mana with more witch trips.

"No… they're not dead. I'll bring them back. They will come back." Clailip's voice shook with anger, irritated by the truth. He kept stitching.

"Clailip, you're not strong enough. You can't just bring back the dead by making miniature effigies." Colin firmly said, sneakily formulating a gas to induce sleep using his pharmacy magic.

"NO!" Clailip yelled, a ball of water with enough force to break a boulder assaulted Colin. Luckily he put up a barrier that absorbed most of the impact, unfortunately he was still sent flying and was now way too far from Clailip to affect him with his Sandata.

Colin was about to congratulate himself for planting flowers on Clailip's head, when the boy took out his scissors and cut the magical connection between the flowers and Colin's Sandata. Effectively making them useless and causing them to wilt and drop out of his scalp.

"I don't know why you're trying to keep me away from getting them back. But you will not interrupt me again!" Clailip yelled, but the dryness of his throat and the abuse it went through earlier made it almost unintelligible. He was a few words away from completely losing his voice, it seems.

"Stitch, pull, cut, sew…" Clailip turned his back from Clailip and continued his work. He stitched, he pulled, he cut, and he sewed. He could feel that he was close to an epiphany. 'Maybe turning them into an accessory will work… a weapon… a living weapon…' Clailip thought. It was a stupid thought, but he was desperate enough to try.

Colin tried to get closer but Clailip's anger towards him made the mannequins and the chandelier focus fire on him. He struggled as he dodged and attacked the mannequins, while also trying to avoid the sizable icicles being sent his way. There was no way to get closer to Clailip now, he knew that, so he just prayed to Danzel that the little boy's mana would run out soon.

"It's not just clothing I can make… I can weave spells too… I can weave spells too… I can weave… spells too." Clailip repeated as he worked, as he stitched a spell. "Spells… weapons… as long as they'll come back I don't care…" He muttered, he sounded deranged as he said that, his voice was nothing more than a silent whisper carried away by the harsh winds.

"I'll stitch up a patchwork heart for them… I'll stitch them up… I'll put them together." He tried to speak but there was no sound coming out from his destroyed vocal chords. "I'll get them back, I need them back. I want them back." But he didn't care, he kept speaking to himself despite no sound escaping his mouth.

"I'll give them life… power… utility… a tool… no… a member of my family. They'll live. They'll live." He used the snake-skin and the carabao's coat as the fabric, cutting it with scissors and stitching in his desires like a pattern on the scaly and furry material.

"They'll protect me, and I'll protect them." With threads of ice-mana, he sewed his love for the animals into the snake-skin.

"They won't ever leave me. They won't. They're not dead." He used the carabao's innards and heart as stuffing, he grabbed them with his bone appendages and carefully placed them in the center of the fabric shaped like a cartoon heart. It was the size of his head.

"Nawa… Kabao… you're home now." Clailip uttered, as he stitched in the other piece of cartoon heart fabric, sealing the innards inside.

"Please… please… please… come alive… come alive… shine bright for me… come back to me… I can't lose you too… you can't leave me like Mommy and Papa did…" The blood that flowed from his eyes turned clear, turned into genuine tears, as his delusions, anger, and hatred cleared up. Leaving only a bitter melancholy in his heart. He was starting to accept that maybe they won't come back.

"Now, crystallize." He commanded, pouring mana into the patchwork heart made of coat and skin, watching it as it glowed. As it morphed. As it stitched and sewed itself to life. He watched with wide eyes.

The sky was starting to clear up, the mannequin's dissolved into black liquid, and the chandelier sublimated. Bitter melancholy and grief isn't enough to sustain the Witch Factor. It needed hatred and fear too, and Clailip has already embraced those feelings and caused it to simmer down until only an inexplicable emptiness was left.

But the light that shone from the cartoonist heart gave him some sort of childish hope. That maybe, Nawa and Kabao would come back, that the cartoon heart would split into two and morph into his best friends.

The dress dissolved, and the bony appendages shattered as he watched. He was back in his usual outfit, his empty eyes shone with the tiny spark of hope that he was finally starting to have.

"Hope really is evil...fuck…" Clailip cried, as he watched the cartoon heart turn into something that wasn't either of his two best friends.

Clailip's eyes glazed over with genuine tears, he sobbed quietly. Mourning the death of his beloved pets. He buried his face into the palm of his hands as he weeped.

"I'll miss both of you…" He tried to say these words but no sound would come out of his mouth.

The cartoon heart's material turned into clear, crystal, ice. It shaped itself and turned into an eye, observing its creator, processing how it came to be. It appears that it could shape itself however it wanted, and that it could take a variety of forms. This is proven by its meager attempts to cheer its creator by turning into things it thought would cheer up a child.

A duck. It huddled up towards the boy, nudging it to open up and look at it. It didn't like how his creator was sad… how could it even perceive sadness? How could it know the concept of emotions when it was just born? How did it know of the ways to cheer up a crying and mourning child?

It asked itself these questions. And it came to the conclusion that it knew because of the love his creator gave it, of the desires of happiness, and of the hopes of bringing back those that he lost. So it wanted to cheer its creator up, it wanted to speak but it couldn't make sounds, it could only make the sounds of shifting ice.

Clailip finally stopped crying, not because of his skill, but because he ran out of tears. He quietly took the duck into his arms and hugged it tight. He didn't care if it was hard or if the cold was biting at his skin and was very painful. He just knew that this shape-shifting heart thing was the product of his love and desperation to get his friends back, and it was also literally made up of his friends, so he wanted to cherish it.

The duck huddled closer into the warmth and turned into a crystalline butterfly, landing on Clailip's nose. And then it flew farther from Clailip and turned itself into a cube as big as Colin's head, the cube looked like it was divided into four sections and in the middle of the four sections, hidden inside it, is the heart from which it materializes from.

Clailip watched in awe, his eyes were puffy and his hands were mangled from the abuse it went through during his desperation in stitching together a vessel for his pets. The cube put on a show, it turned into a carabao, and then into a snake, and then into a heart.

Clailip almost started crying once again when the cube morphed itself into a mirror. It knew what the cube was trying to say, he understood it perfectly.

They may not be Nawa and Kabao, but their parts were used to make the cube. 'Maybe parts of their soul too…' Clailip thought as a bitter smile crawled onto his face.

Colin huffed and puffed as he walked toward Clailip, he watched with curious eyes. He had never seen the energetic boy this calm before. He was always jumping around and making all these odd comments that it was unsettling how calm he was right now. But Colin was glad that the worst was over. Now they could travel to Gaela.

Then he saw the cube.

"An Ice Construct…" He breathlessly said. Constructs were elemental beings made up of the desperate wishes of someone. They are born when someone uses the elements to cast a spell with a desperate wish in their hearts, this spell must be related to said wish. They were incredibly rare too, as even with their spawn conditions they only had a small chance of materialising. They came in all shapes and forms, and could shape-shift and be used in a variety of ways.

"Where… did it come from?" Colin asked Clailip, who stared back with a certain bitterness in his eyes. Colin felt bad, he knew how it felt to be robbed of something important, so he sympathised with the boy.

Clailip tried to speak but no words came out, he had fully lost his voice.

Colin noticed this and quickly concocted a weak healing draught. It was all he could make with the amount of mana he had left, the black rose used up a lot of his reserves, and in the end it was pretty much useless and just withered away after the corrupted mana in the area dissipated.

Colin made Clailip drink the liquid, it floated on top of his head so he just opened up his mouth and drank the bluish-green liquid. He mouthed a thanks, wanting to let his throat rest for a bit.

Clailip stood up, supported by the Ice Construct taking the shape of a cane.

"Sorry for melting down… I'm just gonna bury their remains and then let's go to that city you were talking about." Clailip quietly said, trying to make sure he was putting as least stress as possible on his poor throat.

That night, two graves marked with the most beautiful flowers were made for the little boy's lost companions.