It is emanating a slight light, and for a second, I just stare at it. Is it working?

Never mind, it would work. With the weakened influence of the curse, the core would have a chance to add onto the soul, though very much hindered.

The light coming off the circle is barely perceptible. Considering that when the rune is fully powered, it gives off light equivalent to a phone flashlight, I’d say it’s probably about twenty percent powered.

And because these circles both use the same mana-gathering system, the curse is at twenty percent power too. Considering that, you'd expect me to be able to use some mana, but unfortunately, no. The curse is just too well-designed.

Well, no matter. Who cares if I can’t cast spells or manipulate my mana? The circle on my thigh doing its job proves that I can still do something.

I still remember the design of the escape tool that I have, just out of reach in that stupid ring. And while I’m sure just putting it on my skin wouldn’t do much, I have experience in changing runes to work on different materials, specifically fleshy ones, thanks to that useless blueprint I never got the chance to make into reality.

Though not now—the unknown number of diseases in my body are pounding my head to a very disorienting extent. Maybe I’ll redesign it tomorrow or the day after.

So I wait. I can actually feel myself getting a little better. Looks like the blessing is actually doing its job. How lovely.

I get a chance to listen to the guards talk now that I can actually understand them, thanks to the blessing turning back on. They don’t talk about much interesting, just some idle conversations to pass the time. Though, in hindsight, I don’t know what I expected common guards to talk about that would be very ground-shattering.

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In the end, I do have to wait for two more days. Though the wait was still worth it. If I’d tried to create a new magic circle design with a spoon, a horrible migraine, and a dream, I doubt I could have gotten anywhere even considering my great noggin.

But now that my mind is back on track, it’s time to begin.

It takes a while to figure out the design of the circle, mostly because of my lack of rune options and mana circulation. My memories of runes could only get me so far after all, and I forgot a bunch since I’d been stuck here for about a month. I was forced to engrave the unknown or misremembered runes inside the magic circle on my thigh to figure out what they did. Now, in addition to glowing, the circle has new properties of being wavy and being directed upwards. I expected the waviness not to affect the light much because light is already a wave, but apparently making it wavier lets out different tints of colors, contrary to its prior static white.

Though as interesting as that is, it bears no impact on my current situation. Currently, the circle is almost complete. It just takes a little work, and it will be done.

And at the end of the day, when the guards give me my final meal for the day, I finally finish my lovely work of beauty.

I look down at the poor wooden spoon in my hand, which has served me well on my disease-ridden journey. Its hilt has lost half its size, ground away to get sharpened or to be used as more annoying and useless chalk. The brown of the wood and the gray of the dry walls do not contrast each other whatsoever.

I eat the food and lay down on the hard floor to sleep, resolving to carve the circle into my palm tomorrow.

Waking up, I feel an absolutely horrible sensation descend onto me. It’s awful. Damn it, how many times do I have to go through this garbage?

I idly check my mana core and realize I can’t feel it anymore, I can’t feel anything in fact. What? What the hell kind of shenanigans are these?

Checking on my thigh, I realize it’s stopped glowing too, and the curse circle is back to its horrible glory. Wonderful. What the hell went wrong?

After a while of wondering, I realize what happened. Judging by the fact that not only can I not feel my mana core but also my mana cipher, it means that my soul is back to its full mana capacity, which I think was caused by my blessing weakening the sicknesses enough that the soul went into a net positive with mana. This meant that the curse circle got so strong that it deactivated the blessing and any other circle that was active on my body, effectively putting me back to where I started. wonderful.

Though I still do have the same diseases, which means I can drain my soul again, and reactivate the blessing, which will then weaken the diseases enough for the curse to take over and so on. So I’m stuck in a damn loop.