Chapter 81

I take a deep breath in and a deep breath out to calm myself, though I cough a little while breathing out.

All right, whatever, I can deal with a disease, though I probably can't cure it. Maybe I can minimize its effects by sleeping more and avoiding bodily harm and well, not much else—it's not like I indulge in many strenuous activities in this cell anyway and I can't ask the guards for any more rations, even if I knew the language. They'd probably just hit me for asking. I know because that's what I'd do in there place.

On a different note, the scar on my thigh has not been doing much, so the plan is a bust. It would be nice to know why. Following the rules of the mana core, imprinted mana should be sent out to extend the shell to prevent the scar tissue from elemental mana.

It seems the eco garbage the rotten wizard stuck on me is messing that up somehow. All right, no matter, the wizard would have probably considered this plan as well.

I need to think of something else. I dig for something else in my brain and consider every useless book I've read in the library which conveniently didn't have any knowledge of escaping from what I will temporarily call curses.

A couple of runes come to mind that could help my situation if inserted into the curse circle, but I doubt that hasn't been considered by the bastard too.

It needs to be something Henbrick wouldn't have considered, something I possess aside from my utter beauty, currently being suppressed by the lackluster food selection, something I have that the average Joe wizard doesn't. Well, that's clearly the blessing I have– which is being suppressed by the curse.

I stew and consider plans for days. I even think about just cutting off the entire circle from my body, but I don't doubt the circle has some measures for that plan too, and besides, while I'm confident in my skinning abilities thanks to Ustos, I doubt I can pull such a thing off with a wooden spoon.

As I pass time thinking, my disease gets worse, barely bothered by my lacking immune system. My sore throat has gotten worse and black spots have started to appear around my body. I don't quite know what they are or if I should cut them out with my trusty spoon or leave the spots be. For now, I'm just giving them time so I can figure out if they are bad.

Yesterday, an interesting occurrence happened: the scar on my thigh, which is not protected by the soul, got damaged by elemental mana. It was interesting to watch and also painful. I saw the scar tissue slowly dry out and solidify. After a little time, it fell off. That was earth element mana, which would be more prevalent in this dingy cell, which is probably located underground.

As I thought, the only part not affected by the atmospheric mana is where the scar tissue ended, which means the soul didn't even budge to fit the scars.

As the scar tissue just fell off my body, that means my thigh is injured once again.

I sigh to myself and continue trying to create a way to remove or bypass the stupid curse.

More days pass, and the disease gets worse. My attention span starts to wane and the black spots start to expand.

Also, something wonderfully interesting happens: I can feel a connection open near my gut, which reminds me of the old days of putting on that ring to connect to the mana cipher.

Unfortunately, I still only feel static, which isn't very surprising. If a mana breach opened on purpose to sense the soul can't tell what the hell is going on, I don't see how a dingy gateway to the mana cipher would do.

No, the important thing is the fact that the gateway exists in the first place. That means that my soul, for some reason, is losing imprinted mana and the cipher is trying to create new imprinted elements from my fat reserves, which unfortunately isn't much of a treasure trove at the moment.

Well, the only thing that could be doing this is the disease, unless someone enchanted my food or something to mess with me. If so, this could be the chance I need to get out of here. I don't know how though. Again, the library didn't say much about this topic. Maybe when I would have started to learn healing magic they would have taught me this. All right, whatever, I can just assume microbes need mana too, so they just take it from me.

I observe the mana cipher for several days, and I find after a certain amount of time, the circle apparently controlled its pulses to avoid the mana cipher, which allowed it to gain access to my fat and create element. I tried to do something through the opening I got, but with my meager control through the opening, nothing much could be achieved.