After the Ritual

"We made it!"

"No, Oscar. You made it yourself. You worked for it and finally manage to pull it off."

Ah, I really did it. My body hurts all over but it is worth it. The formation worked as intended and we successfully put Mason's soul back into his body. Kairi healed him again when we are done so he is really back to life.

I finally fixed my mistake of letting my friend die. It will take some time for him to wake up but he will. Ah... I woke up after passing out due to exhaustion earlier but it seems like I still need some time to rest my body.

***

When I woke up I was underwater. No, this is not water. It's liquid mana. Kairi must have put me here to let me recover quickly. I guess that worked. I feel like almost all of my earlier exhaustion is gone now. I swam out of the lake. When I reached the little shore of the lake I saw Kairi and Izumi sitting somewhere close and chatting with each other.

"Hey, girls. How long I was out?"

"A little more than five hours. I had to help your body recover for a whole hour while you were unconscious. Your mana paths and that hex channels seem to be damaged because of overuse."

"...I expected something similar to happen. What about Mason? How is he?"

"His vital statistics are good but he still is unconscious. Probably his body and soul are trying to sync again with the new changes we made."

"Sounds likely. Izumi, our little guest didn't cause any problem, right?"

"Nope. She is still sleeping and not even once she woke up."

I released a sigh. Finally, everything is completely fixed. Knowing and being sure of success is different. Hearing it from Kairi helped me to leave behind the tension I was feeling.

There is one concerning matter left though. Two if I count mine. The first is the Houll Family. I have enough evidence to prove that Mason's death is caused by Houll Family. I have his phone with me after all. And guess what, Charlotte was the one who called him to the place where he was shot by two men wearing suits. It's good enough evidence to me.

The second was the apparent damage done to my mana paths and hex channels. I thought I could handle the strain and the burden of the formation which I did. But it seems like I underestimated this one too. Even Kairi had a worried look when she mentioned them. This could very well affect my ability to manipulate mana and hex. I need to repair them as soon as possible. While repairing them I should also make them stronger and more durable.

Hmm... I think the engraving method is not the best option this time. Surely it's the easiest one to make but it also shows that it isn't really durable enough for me. Then perhaps I should also use the same method we used on Mason. The tiny energy channels. We can make about a hundred for both mana and hex, then place them all over my body in the way they will allow constant circulation. That sounds nice.

"Kairi, how are your mana reserves?"

"They are fine, for now. I can manage for a long time with this much mana if I don't fight against anyone. Also, the mana coming from our bond is increased, so I can recover more mana now."

"That's good. We should repair and create more and better energy channels for my body. With these new channels, I can keep my mana and hex in constant circulation, and in this way, I can increase the quality and the number of my energy reserves."

"... and this will also increase the amount of mana I get from our bond. It sounds good and all but you just wake up. There should be still some burden left on your body."

She is right. Even if I rest for a few hours, there should be still some fatigue left in my body. But, strangely my body feels just fine. It feels like a complete recovery. Is this the power of hex? It also helps me recover faster? If so that's amazing.

But pushing my body too much is bad. I should, let's see a day of rest or two? One day of rest would do. I don't want to lose much time with my energy channels being damaged. But there is also the problem of the energy my body is producing. With energy channels, mainly my mana paths are being damaged, my mana will leak from my body or worse case interfere with the biological workings of my body. I mean it can heal my wounds even without casting a healing spell, which means it affects the cell division. What happens if cells are starting to divide seemingly out of nowhere and won't stop. That's right. It became one of the worst health problems humanity ever faced.

"Give me about three more hours. It's better that we deal with this as soon as possible."

The amount of mana I have is a lot more compared to before so I don't want to mess it up or leave it to some possibility. The soonest we deal with this better it is.

Three hours later we did the operation. Well, Kairi did and I lie there and take it. Izumi also watched it intently. She was also watching the ritual with great interest before. Magic does interest her I guess. Anyway, the operation was successful. About half an hour later I circulated both of my energies and it felt amazing.

I never felt this full of life. It felt amazing. Compared to before this constant and wider circulation of mana was incredible. A had about alike ten paths of mana to circulate my mana. But now I have thirty mana channels and we reconstruct the old mana paths and made them like backup energy channels.

This amount of energy channels, a total of sixty, cost some flesh tissues of mine to be used. We made sure that we choose those who were able to regrow with a few healing spells. With the constant circulation and the mana sharing aspect of our bond, my mana won't be full for a long time but in this way, it will also quickly grow its full capacity since my aether organ will keep trying to fill my body with mana.

The growth of mana capacity is a bit tricky. It can be affected by many different variables. Life and death battles, maturity of the body, the strength of the soul, the capacity of the body which holds the mana. These are the variables I know of. These are of course the information spirits gathered over thousands of years. Since I'm the first human to ever use mana and I mean the real mana, not that thin shit inside of the mana stone, things might be different. I will have to observe and note.

So far my mana capacity grew with me spending it to the limit and circulating it inside my body. There are also the battles I had with that beast of the north and the strange flaming man. This new method is different than others. With this method growth of my mana capacity should be doubled, at least that's what I hope. How does this work?

It's simple actually. The aether organ is made of two different sections. One where mana is produced from the aether and the other where mana is stored. Since mana is compressible there aren't any issues with it being stored in tiny places. Now, I obviously don't know how mana is being produced from aether but I learned what happens next. The aether organ tries to fill up the storage section and when it's filled up it stops producing mana for a while, no matter how much you spend mana won't just start producing more.

I think it's some cooling period for the organ. I also observed that the longer it takes for the organ to fill the storage area the more mana it generates. Think it like this, under normal conditions aether organ produces one point of mana in one minute but the longer it takes to fill the storage area it became flustered and produces two points of mana per minute. Well, it sounds good and all but where is the part that it helps the growth of the capacity?

This one is a bit trickier. At first, I didn't notice it but as I kept observing I noticed that the density of the mana is higher when it's created by the flustered aether organ. I think it's because the aether organ is trying to create more mana in a little time and it just doesn't balance it well. I'm thinking it like this because this new and denser mana is similar to the aether. Just similar to the feeling it gives nothing else. And the denser the mana the more strain it causes on my reserves and capacity as a whole. As a response to this my capacity and mana reserves adapt to it and grew. That's all I figured out so far.

"Now there's only one thing left. Revenge."