The Ritual

"Everything is almost ready. I get the ingredients and the formation is almost complete. I just need to add the last touches."

I muttered to myself. I'm nervous about the ritual. It's too important, I'm going to use it to resurrect Mason. The formation I'm using is my own creation as I inspected and decoded many formations recorded in the library. Those were especially about the soul and death. It's dangerous but there is no other way to bring someone back from death. It's something unpracticed as I'm the one who created it a few days ago. Well, Mason is already dead and there is no other way so there is also nothing to lose.

"What are we really doing now?"

Izumi asked me with a clear curiosity on her face... That's right. I haven't told her about the plans I have. Kairi raised her brows and looked at me. Oh, I think I should tell her about the Mason and what we are going to do.

I told her about Mason and how he died in my arms. Just talking about his death made me clench my fists. I hate to admit that I failed to save one of my friends, again. I'm doing my best to fix that by bringing him back. But after this, I have to get stronger so that I can prevent something like this from happening ever again.

"It's admirable to see how far you are willing to go for your friend."

"I will do everything for my friends. I couldn't protect him so I will do anything to bring him back."

I draw the formation on the ground with ink infused with hex. Since this formation is based on the hex, mana will only work in case of some unexpected situation or emergency fuel. Since this will be mainly focused on hex it will put a heavy burden on me. I'll have to bear with it. If everything goes as planned after this my hex channels should improve because of the strain this ritual will cause. Unlike mana, hex is made of burning vitality so straining your hex organ or putting a burden on it won't improve it.

I draw the last runes of the formation. I used many old runes of the hex clan and some runes of the spirits. They shouldn't interfere with each other. Runes are like the coding language of reality. There can be more than one language but unlike our human languages, they can perfectly work well together. Of course, if you won't mess with using the wrong runes.

It might seem unbelievable and I also have trouble believing what I'm going to do. I will literally cheat death here. Well, the only reason this ritual might work is the fact that Kairi is still keeping Mason's body in a half-dead state. His soul unfortunately already left his body, if not everything would be easier. But since Kairi managed to intervene at the last second we somehow kept his body "warm" to his soul.

It is a theory I read in the clan library. It says that death is reversible until the body gets "cold" after death. What this means is after sometime soul left the body, the body will lose its ability to hold a soul inside, meaning going cold and complete death. It's just a theory but I'm betting everything on it.

"It's done. The formation is ready."

"Mason's body is also ready. I cast as many healing and buff spells I know on him."

"... Should I help with anything?"

Izumi asked from the side. She didn't have much to do with the ritual. There's also another person who has nothing to do with the ritual. Charlotte. I knocked her out and put her to the side but being extra careful won't hurt, right?

"Take care of that girl over there, please. If she wakes up... knock her out. We will deal with her later."

"I understand... Good luck, Oscar, Kairi."

"What should I do, nibi?"

Huh? When did Akane arrive? She is getting better and better at being sneaky and hiding her own presence. There isn't anything she can do to help the ritual. But maybe she can help me with the plans for the afterward of the ritual.

"Akane, can I ask you to watch over the Houll Family? I will deal with them after this ritual. I don't want to miss them in case some of them suddenly decide to run away from the city."

"Understood, nibi! I will make sure none of them will be able to escape, nibi!"

"Great... I guess."

After Akane left to observe the Houll Family, we began the ritual. I took the glowing jar and opened its lid. What was inside of the jar was pure life energy extracted from... someone who doesn't need it anymore. I will use it in the only way I can. It will be a kind of bridge between Mason's soul and body.

The formation's purpose is to call out to the soul. But just calling out to it won't make it come back. So, there should be a bridge that able the soul to reach the body. Because the amount of life energy is decreasing in Mason's body I couldn't use his. And using another person's life energy is causing a very fragile bridge to form. Because of all these reasons, I only have one shot.

After activating the formation I have to dump all of my hex to the formation so that it can temporarily blend with Mason's life energy to attract and draw the soul to his body. As insurance, I add a function that can forcefully grab the soul and stuff it into the body but this can hurt or even worse make the soul deform.

The first part of the ritual is connecting Mason's life energy with the formation. To do this I engraved little seals and formations on his body using a special ink I used to write the rest of the formation. This ink is apparently made of some supernatural creature's blood. What was it called? A wisp or something like that I think.

Anyway after dealing with the first stage comes the second and third stages. I have to do them really fast or it won't work. The second stage is activating the formation and calling out to the soul. When it's done I can locate the soul and get to the third stage which is building the bridge and keeping it intact until everything is over. The fourth and final stage is the patch up the body so that when I deactivate the formation soul won't just leave the body. This is the most delicate point.

At first, I couldn't think of any way how to patch the body so that soul won't leave. Then I started to think about what can keep energy inside of them without it leaking outside. At that point sealing arts come to my mind but I quickly eliminated them from the choices. Why do you ask? I have no clue about how to keep the soul functioning when I sealed it inside the body. It will just sit in there and that wouldn't be a true resurrection.

Sealing the or keeping the soul inside the body is achievable to me right now. But what I needed was to find a way to make it work like before Mason's death or closest to it. This is also just a hypothesis but I believe that soul has to work somehow to keep the body together and in one piece. I don't even want to experiment with this one. After a long brainstorming session, I found something that could work.

The idea itself sounds crazy when you hear it for the first time. But it's... I should mention the idea and you'll get it. I will sew the soul to the body. Yeah, sewing. Sounds crazy right? But it actually makes some sense, to me at least. Remember how my mana paths were engraved upon my body, oh, I didn't really mention how? Well, at that time it was more like engraving some paths that mana can use to travel and circulate inside my body. This time, unlike engraving mana paths deep into the flesh, we will use the flesh to create thin channels like fibers or threads. These thin fibers will work in the same way as my mana paths work, so that means, energy can travel through them and circulate through the body.

Since Kairi kept the body inside the magical lake for about a week and used its power to assist her to keep the body alive like a state and rebuild damaged parts, the body already adapted to the mana. There is also an aether organ that is still developing but it's still in its early stages. So with all of this information, creating the mana channels and using them to sew the soul to the body is my best option. I will also have to create a secondary system that mana will follow. I don't know what kind of consequences there would be if mana and soul get mixed inside his mana channels.

"Let's begin."

I flared my hex and circulated through the formation thus activating it. The formation is lightened up. Right at that moment, I felt chills on my spine. A wave of the dreadful shockwave is released from the formation. I felt that it touched my own soul.

"Oscar! Are you okay?!"

"I'm okay, Kairi. Just keep Mason's body safe until this is over."

One of the most important parts of this ritual is keeping Mason's body safe throughout the ritual. This also burdens his body because my own hex is the main fuel of the formation.

I gritted my teeth and continued to keep formation running. I didn't think something like this could happen. The part of the calling out to the soul turns out isn't limited to Mason's own soul. It also affected my own, I think. It just feels uncomfortable like something is trying to tear my body apart from the inside. Thankfully the shockwave was only kept inside the formation and didn't flow out. Izumi and Charlotte weren't affected by the same thing.

"Oscar, what's going on?! Are you okay?!"

"Everything is fine. You don't have to worry, Izumi."

I circulated my mana to keep this agonizing feeling away. This is going to be harder than I thought. My hex reserves are also under a lot of burdens. Not to mention controlling both mana and hex at the same time is more taxing than anything I thought.

Another wave of shockwave was released from the formation. This time the shockwave was a lot tamer compared to before. This signifies that the formation successfully located the soul. Time for stage three. I used the life energy stored inside the jar and activated the third circle of the formation. This caused the extracted life energy to form the bridge.

A green transparent structure appeared around Mason's body. It looked like a long elongated cylinder. Keeping the bridge active is also more taxing than I initially thought. It's obvious that I was unprepared for this ritual. But I will still manage it. I'm not giving up, I will bring back Mason!

I gritted my teeth and completely focused on the formation. I could feel the increasing difficulty of keeping the bridge active. I guess the soul has entered the bridge. After a half-hour of constant struggle to keep everything working, the soul finally reached Mason's body.

Now it's time for the final stage. This one will be easier to deal with because Kairi would be helping me. I have to only last for a little while more and everything will be done. The last stage took us two hours to complete. It was a delicate process so we had to be even more careful than the time when Kairi engraved mana paths on my body.

We created thirty soul channels and sew the soul to the body. The sewing part was a lot more difficult than anything I imagined. Sewing something energy-based is a lot different than sewing something solid. But turns out Kairi had an experience with something similar in nature. We also created another thirty energy channels to keep mana circulating inside his body.

"Finally... we are done."

After finishing and patching everything up we finally deactivate the formation. As soon as deactivate the formation I pass out.