We did talk for a little while longer, but soon he left me to my own devices. I say “talked” but it was him asking questions while I just answered with a short sentence, not telling him much. I probably annoyed him quite a bit, but who cares.

In any case, I soon found myself back in my room, gazing at the mana fruit that not so long ago were a cause of all this bullshit and was considering eating some again… but this time I decided to go a different way about this.

Instead of biting into one, I took a knife - I still had the pair on me, the one that belonged to Melle - and attempted to cut it into small pieces, hoping that a little piece won’t have enough mana to do anything strange, so I could take it easy.

But, weirdly enough, when the blade touched the fruit, it almost instantly turned into the familiar gray ash. At the same time I felt a surge of power pouring into me.

I immediately dropped the knife and stepped back, thinking that I accidentally touched it with my finger or something along those lines, but nope. My bandages and clothes were still clinging tightly to my arms, there was no chance that it was the case.

Luckily, the fruit was not that large, and I was still quite exhausted and injured, so while I did start glowing for a second, I almost immediately went dim again.

Strangely enough though, I expected that my skin would turn green from the mana it contained, but my hands were still see-through as before.

I did not notice, since my clothes were hiding it, but the change in coloration did happen. I did not realize that immediately, because I got startled, but the mana did not flow to me from the fruit, instead it started spreading from the left side of my body, just at my waist.

Why, though? There was nothing touching me there, besides…

Besides the other dagger from the pair.

Right away I put both of them on the table and inspected them again. Still, there was no indication that they were any different from just a plain old pair of knives. I was not convinced.

I picked the smallest mana fruit I could find and put it in front of me on the table. Intently observing the dagger, I picked up the other one and stabbed the fruit.

Almost immediately, the other one lit up with a pale, green light and I felt a surge of power right in front of me. Meanwhile, the fruit with the knife embedded within it did not turn into ash, it just darkened a slight bit, and with my magic sight I was able to confirm - it was indeed the mana of the fruit that was now on the other blade.

Amused and interested with the pair of weapons, I touched the glowing blade and, just as expected, I felt power flow from the blade to me. At the same time, the other fruit instantly turned to ash and the dagger fell onto the desk. My arm turned green, further confirming the source of mana.

That was one hell of a weapon. Where the hell did she get it from?

I, again, looked at it from every possible angle, both of them, but nothing gave me even a slight hint of how and who made this thing.

Okay, pause.

I snapped out of this strange trance I realized that I was in. Why was I doing this? How the hell and why would I even know any magical blacksmith that would be responsible for creating such a weapon.

Pause again.

How the hell do I know what a “magical blacksmith” is? I mean, sure the name is self-explanatory, but why did I think of it that way in the first place?

Because IT knew. We knew. I knew.

I shook my head like a wet dog, trying to clear out my mind. The thoughts were coming to me and passing through without me even realizing that they were there, but it was undeniable.

The presence, that strange entity, was awake and definitely still with me.

I say like this was surprising and all, I already knew this. After all, both Jack and I were betting on it to somehow be able to help turn Kon back into a normal person. I already experienced the memories that definitely were not belonging to me. But, up till now, I had to somehow awaken them, be it by my own memory or something like that. And then, they were always in the shape of actual memories, flashbacks. Not something like this.

This time… it was like I had two trains of thought at once. One, that definitely belonged to me, that still was slightly confused by this whole situation, while the other one, that popped out like a secondary afterthought, somewhere deep inside my head, just to disappear after it said whatever it wanted to.

Holy shit, it was confusing. At least this time it left me without a headache. But why the hell was it happening? Why now?

Of course it was because I was using a lot of mana. It’s obvious that strong spells that need a lot of mana flow sometimes can provoke other things nearby to notice it. Like thunder. Even though it doesn’t need to hit you directly, a sound it makes is often enough to startle you and remind you that a storm is coming.

Fucking again with this. That was definitely not me. But thanks for the explanation, I guess?

That also cleared up a bunch of things. Recently, I have been having these random surges of creativity, or some afterthoughts that definitely did not fit me. I just now realized that it was not just because of all the weirdness that has been happening recently… Well, it was that as well, but most likely the majority of them was just the presence, slowly waking up deep within my head.

I could not say whether it was good or bad news for me…

The main worry I had was what was happening with my mind. It was clear that the entity was slowly waking up. I guess that whatever it did to us, definitely drained it completely. At first I was able to somewhat dig through its memories on my own, but now it looked more like it was answering me, not like I was looking through something that belonged to someone else. Or that could also point to the fact that we were slowly merging together. It was not exactly good news.

While I probably wouldn’t care much if I was asked about it, I couldn’t say the same for the entity. Whatever it was, it was still another being and it also seemed that it did not exactly do that out of its own will - the situation practically forced its hand to try and do whatever that is that happened to us. Which meant that I probably should start thinking of doing something to prevent this, or at least figure a way to contact it in a more controlled way than just via a mix of memories and thoughts.

It had its upsides too though. The sudden boost to my spellcraft and the bursts of knowledge were handy. Maybe that could help us both a little here.

But before all that there was something I had to do first. Or rather two things.

First of all, I had to recover. I already realized it was not just that my neck was destroyed that was preventing me from speaking. If that was the case, if I was to cover the hole, I’d be able to at least maybe whisper, or make noises that resembled human speech a bit more.

No. The sudden expansion of ice had to crush my vocal cords as well. I am not a doctor, so I couldn’t really tell, even while my body was still somewhat see-through.

That did not change the fact that I had to focus on healing the neck. It also brings us to the other thing I was worried about.

As far as I knew, to heal my wounds I needed a lot of mana. In general, it was not a problem. The environment was rich, there was plenty of loose mana around and in time I would’ve for sure healed even without doing much. But I was not going to wait so long. Last time, I sped up my healing by absorbing mana from the random plantlife and the mana fruit I found on my way. Right now I had access to both, but I was still hesitating anyway.

After all, it was those that were the source of the problem. And maybe me too a tiny bit, but that’s besides the point.

If I was to start absorbing more mana, who knows what would've been going to happen? If I was to judge by the previous events, most likely I would’ve started glowing sooner or later, meaning my magic would be again unreliable if anything was to happen here. If my hunch was right and Axelrod was indeed trying to spy on me, or, which was more likely, that the elves sent more of their people here, I would’ve needed to be on top of my game.

It probably would be fine, even helpful, if I was to be overcharged whenever the attack came, there still was the problem of collateral damage, and I hoped to fix that as soon as possible.

I had a certain idea. After resting for an hour or so and thinking of the repercussions of doing this, I decided that I should at least try.

First, I went back downstairs, where the large chunk of ice that broke through the ceiling still was, along with Vendi and Jack, trying to break it into pieces.

They had some success, although it was clear that they were not even halfway done. Both of them created a bunch of vines that were snaking their way inside the ball through the opening that I left through. By creating more and more, they were trying to enlarge the hole while at the same time cracking the ice from the inside.

As soon as I entered the room, both of them stopped and Jack quickly came to me.

-What’s going on? Something happened.

I shook my head with denial and pointed to the piece of paper that I took with me to ask him a couple of questions.

“I need a formula of the spell that you used during your barrier repairs.”

He looked at me with suspicion.

-Why do you need that…? You think one barrier is not enough?

“Not barrier. The one absorbing mana.”

-Absorbing mana…? - he scratched his head. - What are you talking about?

Now I was confused. I was sure that they did gather mana before trying to fix it…

“The stone that looked like salt. You used magic on it.”

His eyes opened wide.

-Ah, that one. But that… well I guess in some sort of way it was absorbing mana, huh?

“What was it supposed to do then?”

-Hm. Well, I don’t see why I couldn’t tell you. The thing is, that was not a spell that was absorbing mana. It was just a piece of rock.

Interesting.

-Yes. It was a piece of stone, we used to have a ton of it. It had an ability to absorb and store mana. Now, when I think about it it sort of was similar to the one that your body has…

He looked concerned for a second.

“Either way it works. Give me a piece.”

-That’s the problem. I can’t. It’s not like I don’t want to - he quickly added, seeing as I was starting to write again. - I just straight up don’t have it any more.

I furled my non-existing brow.

-Yeah. You probably heard about the ice crystals that I used to cool down my freezer and wanted to use to… preserve Kon? I mentioned then that I was running out of them, but the truth is that I straight up don’t have them any more. They all were already used - the last piece being the one we used up while repairing the barrier.

“Ice crystals?”

-Right, they were not just some regular ice crystals…

He took a look around, a bit pointless if you ask me, since there were only three of us in the room and all the kids were scattered about the mansion.

-The truth is… I was getting those from Bert. I don’t know where he was getting them, but he sold them to me as a way to preserve food and that’s all. I didn’t even want to buy them that much, since we never had a problem with keeping our food cold with the cellars below. But I did just buy a couple, out of curiosity.

For some reason I started having a bad feeling about this story.

-They worked just as advertised. It was clear that it was just pure ice magic, and since Bert was able to use it, I didn’t think much of it. I used them for a while, mostly to keep my wine cold.

Again, he with his wine.

-One day, I went down to get myself a new bottle, just to find out that one of the crystals has changed color. See, when he sold me, they were nice and blue, but what I found was one that was now completely see-through. At first I thought that it melted, not even noticing it. I didn't really think much about it, I just assumed that it ran out of power, so I took it with me and kept it on my desk, since it looked pretty. It was a nice paperweight.

He laughed.

-Anyway, after a while in my office, it changed color again. It looked more like salt, just like you said. It still was dormant though. One day, when I was still in my office, I was tired and half asleep. The crystal was laying next to the light crystal that I was brightening my office with. I wanted to light up the room, so I poured some mana into it… but in my tiredness I mistook the spent, old ice crystal for the light one. I quickly realized my mistake, but after the crystal already had sucked a considerable amount of mana from me, changing color and glowing.

That’s an interesting tidbit of information.

-By the method of trial and error I managed to figure out their properties… more or less. Since then we’ve been using them almost constantly.

It was looking like he finished his story so started writing again.

“I don’t need them full.”

-Yeah, the thing is…. you saw we use them for the barrier, right? If not, let me just tell you: the barrier spell uses up the whole crystal. Not only mana. It’s usually not a big deal since I just was getting more from Bert, but this time war happened and the transports were halted. If that was not enough, you then destroyed the piece of barrier and had me use the last one on the repairs.

“I thought you fueled the barrier with a leyline.”

-Nah. I mean, it is connected, but it does not work like that. The leyline is a closed network, connecting the pieces of the barrier, not giving it power.

I wanted to ask why he was using such a roundabout way, but, alas, I ran out of paper. He noticed my frustration.

-I wish I was a bit more helpful…

I waved him off. While maybe I heard not exactly what I wanted, I still learned a bunch of useful info.

Hm. So the first idea was out of the question. I did not want to consider it at first, but I still had a backup plan.

See, what I wanted to do, was to create something that would prevent me from overcharging myself. I thought the incantation that they used was the answer for this question, but apparently that was not the case, instead I needed that piece of rock…

But that’s where it gets interesting. It’s not the first time I’ve heard about a crystal that was able to absorb mana. I had plenty of those in fact. My whole body was made out of those.

I already was wondering that before… but what would happen if I was to use a loose piece of my body that got splintered off as a “battery pack”, so to speak?

First off, was that possible? I never even considered experimenting like that on myself, since it would mean literally mutilating myself. But, since that has already happened, it would be a shame to not use the accident as an excuse. I just had to find the missing pieces…

Easy enough. I was already in the room where all the bullshit went down, so a second of focus was enough to locate a bunch of them.

In the process I startled Jack a bit, because we never really finished our “discussion” and he was still looking at me with curiosity, just to flinch when my eyes suddenly flickered with light and I stepped away, gathering the pieces.

I put them on the remains of one of the tables and sat next to it, while he was still watching me intently. I could tell that Vendi was interested too, although he was still busy with the ice block, so he just was gazing in our direction every now and again.

-What are you trying to do? - asked Jack, but I had no way to reply to him, nor I really had an intention to, instead focusing on the shards in front of me.

I picked the smallest one and inspected it from every possible angle. It was maybe the size of a thumb, lacking any color, almost like a piece of glass.

As a first experiment, I gathered a small amount of mana, just like I was about to cast a spell, but instead of igniting the mana or something similar, I put the piece right next to it.

The effect was immediate. The mana disappeared, or rather got absorbed, and the piece brightened up, just like Jack described…

-What in the hells… how did it get here…?

He was still confused and not understanding, but I already was sure. That small experiment was all that I needed.

Bert, somehow, someway, was selling pieces of a creature like me, or rather, the pieces of Origin Crystal.