Similar to last time, I try to make the man slip and cut my spinal cord. Unfortunately, he stays vigilant, and I ultimately fail once more.

After the session, just like last time, a noushes filling slowly overwhelms me. Though I resist a little more than before, I ultimately still fall asleep.

The next day, the man wakes me up relatively early. Considering the fact that my soul constantly gives me a drowsy feeling, I find it difficult to resist falling asleep.

I am quickly knocked out of my drowsy state when the man shows his dagger, carefully yet swiftly, under my left pinky finger's nail and forcefully pulls up. I let out a pained howl and a couple of tears. He states, “Stay still whilst I am operating on you,” and rips out another nail from my thumb, “or the next time, the same will be done to your right hand.”

He continues ripping out nail after nail until he runs out on my left hand. Then he pulls out bandages from nowhere and starts wrapping my fingers. After which he leaves, leaving me to go to his classes.

Another month passes. My fingernails are beginning to heal, and I realize that I’ve greatly underestimated how hard doing the second stage manually would be.

Like last time, the man begins cutting into my soul. I do not acknowledge his previous threat and once again start to shake and jitter. Finally, while he is in the middle of cutting the length of the square-shaped hole he seems to want to create, I suddenly wrench my head back and cause him to slip up. His knife cuts through my spinal cord and goes a little past it. The man, apparently a bit maddened, delivers a warning punch to my back.

I inverdly fight my soul from healing the newly delivered breach, whilst continuing to jitter so the man doesn’t get suspicious. Whilst suppressing my soul's healing mana, the man finishes his operation and goes back to his table.

While he’s working on whatever he needs my soul for, I suppress both the approaching tired and drained feeling, which could spell ruin for my shot of breaking through. I also resist my soul's natural instinct to heal itself while strengthening the mana breach.

Eventually, while the grasp of unconsciousness is slowly tearing my focus down, my soul finally gives in, and the mana breach stays open. Before I can even congratulate myself, an unstoppable headache hits me. My already drained mind suffers another shock and finally goes into slumber.

I wake up next noon, later than usual. My groggy gaze swims across the dorm I am confined to The man seems to be out doing whatever he does with identity.

While having grumpy thoughts about the man, I suddenly remember what I did before falling unconscious. I try to feel my soul, and a smile of pure joy appears on my face.

I feel it with a clarity I’ve never even considered possible while using the ring. The soul is beautiful and complicated, mana veins flowing mana into the outside of my soul. My core seems to be focused on the hole in my back, constantly pumping out mana to fill it in.

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I idly play with the ring in my mouth while pondering what I should do with it. I feel the runes on its surface have slowly corroded away thanks to my spit. I don’t think I can just put it back on the table and pretend like it’s always been there. I sigh to myself; whatever, I’ll just keep it in my mouth. It’s not really doing much harm to me.

Hmm, so the next step is to open permanent mana breaches on my fingers. I feel the top of my right thumb tied behind me. I quickly create a mana breach. It’s swift and fast, four times faster than what I could do with the ring in fact.

Unexpectedly, the breach stays open on my first try, which I find quite odd. I remember reading that practice with the new mana sense is needed before trying to create the permanent mana breaches on the fingers. Hmm, I suppose those three months of practice actually meant something. It turned out to help in the third stage. How unexpected.

I spend the rest of the day opening mana breaches, and by the end, all ten breaches are open.

This means that I am now a beginner mage. How wondrous! I truly didn’t think I would make it this far in the captivity of the man.

Now with the spells in my pockets and the ability to use them, all I need is a chance to end this man’s horrible life, and I will be rewarded for my hard work by the gods.

One day, as I am patiently waiting for him to slip up, the man starts approaching me, my heart starts to speed up. Maybe this time he’ll free my hands, and I can finally get out of here. Instead, he puts his finger up my nose. Before I could question the situation, I feel a breach open through my nose into my brain.

A horrible feeling goes through me, akin to the time I made my first permanent mana breach on my spinal cord. It starts a tearing pain which I can’t resist, and I fall unconscious.

I wake up what feels like one to two hours later. The man seems to be sleeping on my bed, and for some reason, I spot wooden boards leaning on the back of my chair in the pitch dark.

Confused about the situation yet still quite drowsy, especially because the man just removed another chunk only a couple of days ago, I go to sleep once more.

The next day I wake up, I am force-fed food as always, and the man goes off to the academy.

Though weirdly, after what must have been an hour or two, the man comes back into the dorm in a rush, much earlier than he usually does.

He quickly walks up to me and puts his fingers into my nose. I once more feel a mana breach and again feel my consciousness slip.

I awaken in a dark and cramped space, barely able to move my chest up and down. I initially begin to panic, scared of whatever the man confined me to.

I start flailing my arms and legs around in the limited space I have. Unfortunately, with my hands and legs being bound by rope, not much is accomplished. Though in the chaos, I realize something: my hands aren’t tied behind my back; they are tied to my front.

In my front pocket lie a couple of magic circles confined to paper. It took great finagling and effort to shove the paper in there without using my hands, yet I still accomplished it.

I reach my tied-together hands down to my left pocket and slowly take out a spell, a fireball spell.

I unfold the paper, originally folded by harshly flattening my mouth, which was gripping the paper, onto the wall.

I place it next to me. Finally, I inject some mana into it using my right hand, and a fireball forms, floating in the air. Light starts to fill the cramped space I am confined to.

I hover over the rope binding my hands together. It begins to burn and release faint popping and hissing sounds. The small space fills with fumes, which clog up my eyes. Yet I do not waver. Once my hands are free, I move the paper down to my legs, and the fireball floating in the air follows along. I begin to also burn the rope tying my legs together.

After a smidge of time, that rope also burns away. Now I truly have my limbs free after such a long time, except my mouth which has a gag in it, but I am not going to risk burning my head off for the ability to speak.

Having the ability to see what has been blocking me, I realize that I was pushing against a wall all this time, and surrounding my other three sides I recognize the wood that was leaning against my chair.

Slowly pushing against one of the wooden pieces, I find that it isn’t really stable.

I push harder against it, and it falls over, revealing the sight of my dorm. Looking around, it looks like the man shoved me under the closet provided by the academy. Why did he expect those wooden pieces to keep me here? I’m sure even without knowing magic, I could have escaped from here.

The only possible explanation that comes to mind is that the man didn’t expect me to wake up. Yet that’s not important anymore. I slowly crawl out of the bottom of the closet and take out another fireball spell.

I stand up and look around. I find a woman looking at me with a half-confused, half-shocked expression.