On my way to my cell, surrounded by guards, I notice others in unfortunate situations as well. In their respective quarters, they look dehydrated and starved, likely given insufficient rations. And the smell—by golly, the smell—if the slums were a six out of ten, this would be a solid eight.

Eventually, I run out of time to observe other prisoners as my ensemble of guards and I make it to an empty cell.

They promptly open the door, shove me in, and say something in their unintelligible language before leaving.

Now I stand here, slightly confused and very much annoyed.

My escape plan relies on using a spatial ring, but now I can't use magic.

I would switch my escape plan—maybe swindle some guard with my superior twenty-first-century brain—but I can't speak their language. I doubt I can find a way to escape using any fiscal means, considering that while being brought here, I found many more intimidating people who haven't found a way out. So, I find myself once again returning to magic.

I need a way to break this magic circle; there is no other way of escape.

Yet the magic circle itself is complex. It’s triple-layered; I didn’t even know double-layered ones existed. I suppose we would have learned about them later.

Though that doesn't help here. The only knowledge I can use is my knowledge of runes, which helps a little. Looking down at my chest, though the perspective is weird, I recognize a bunch of runes, but unfortunately, I don’t recognize plenty more.

While looking down at my chest, I hear footsteps approaching my cell.

Looking up, I see two guards, one holding a bucket of water and a bowl, the other holding a chamber pot.

The fellow with the chamber pot, having one hand free, opens my cell door and pulls out his sword to keep me from escaping.

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While pointing the sword at me, he puts down the chamber pot and lets the bucket guy advance into my cell as well. He places the bucket down and also what I find to be some sort of food.

After leaving some probably half-assed words, they leave my cell, and I am once again left alone.

I look at the bowl I was given which bearly smelled like food, though I suppose my standards have been raised by the noble foods I was eating for a whole year.

Whatever, before I eat, I need to get rid of the ring in my digestive tract before my stomach asides remove some important mana-infused ink on its surface, and I find my insides get filled with bandages.

So I go near the chamber pot, which has started to give off a smell.

I open the thing, and the stains on its interior reinforce my assumptions of its prior use. They couldn’t spare me a new one, the damned bastards.

Anyhow, I bend over the pot and attempt to activate my gag reflex the classic way, wea using two figures, it takes a little time but I finally force myself to vomit, the chamberpot's smell helping quite a bit.

I vomit out the ring along with some lunch I had in the academy cafeteria in the morning and some tea mixed with some stomach acids.

After that, I wash my hands and the ring with the bucket of water and walk over to the food.

I look down at what I was given and find that it is gruel. "Well, it could have been worse," I think to myself and start eating.

After consuming the extremely plain meal, I go to take a leak in the chamber pot, which has started to give off an even worse smell, which is always lovely.

I finish my business and use the bucket of water to wash my hands.

With all that settled, I get back to thinking about magic.

I try to move my mana to activate the spatial ring but as expected nothing works.

So with no other option left, I look at the magic circle again and try to figure out what it does. The first layer has the most runes I can recognize, and because of that, I figure out what it does relatively quickly, in about an hour or two. It gathers my imprinted mana for the inner two layers to use, which would seem relatively easy to figure out if not for the chaos it creates, making gathering any imprinted mana very difficult, which means a lot more runes need to be added.

The second layer contains fewer runes that I understand, and it takes me much longer to decipher. I stare at the damned thing for an entire day. In fact, I am forced to write it on the wall of my cell because my neck starts to hurt from all the looking down I am doing. I grind the hilt of the wooden spoon I was given to eat my gruel onto the wall, which lets me look at a somewhat foggy image of the magic circle, which is a bit of an improvement.

The next day, while eating my morning gruel—because that's apparently all they serve here—I finally realize what the damned circle is for, well, what it’s probably for.

It is for removing imprinted elements from my mana, well, probably somewhere around thirty percent of it, and this thirty percent is used by the magic circle to keep itself active. The leftover imprinted mana goes to the third layer. This remaining imprinted element is naturally done by the soul, but it seems it can be forced by runes too, which is nice to know. I could have used it when I created that mana signature faker, but I suppose it’s too late now.

With the first two layers done, the third one remains, and this one is the most complicated. I only recognize one rune here—it's the last one that means "emanate."