Tearing my eyes away from the irritated beauty, I glance at the schadenfreude elf, only to find him scowling and glaring at her.

He definitely recognizes her, probably one of the people who caught him.

“She kicked your ass, didn’t she?” I ask with a smirk.

He turns his head in my direction and glares at me for a few seconds before getting up and heading for the door. Not wanting to be left behind, I follow suit. Seeing as everyone starts shuffling their feet, our captor leaves for seconds and comes back with a torch in hand and a whip in the other.

That was all the motivation it took for everyone to pick up the pace, and soon enough, we were walking in a straight line through a stone hallway lit by a few torches and a few guards keeping everything in order.

After a few escape attempts were violently extinguished, we were ordered to strip and wait; any protests were dealt with similarly to the escape attempts. Finished stripping down to my birthday suit, slightly shivering, I started looking around for any distraction.

All the guards were cat-people? Beastkin? I’m not sure what the correct term is, but they all had the same unique features with varying patterns and colors.

A shove from behind broke me from my musing, the line was moving, and by the glares I got, the guards were not amused by neither the staring nor delay. A group of five would enter a small room at the end of the hallway, and I figure, leave through the other side.

Minutes of nervous shuffling and shivering go by; It was my turn to enter. The first thing I noticed was the distinct difference between the hallway’s dirt-like floor and the room. The room was furnished with stone tiles. A cold shiver ran down my body, eliciting a chuckle from someone. Tracking the laughter, I find the first catgirl I’ve seen staring at me in amusement.

I was about to say something when I heard a hiss followed by cold water, and holy shit was it cold. The five of us were hosed with ice-cold water. My whole body shivering and my teeth clacking, I glared at the sadistic cat-eared bitch with pure unadulterated anger. No, anger wouldn’t be the right word; fury or rage would be more accurate. It was a promise, an oath. One day I’m going to make her suffer.

She caught me looking at her and stared right into my eyes. Amusement visible in her eyes, she looked down and smirked.

Did this bitch just…

Yeah, you know what, I don’t care anymore. I’m gonna fuck this bitch up.

The last thing I saw before I was out cold was her smirking at me.

I woke up in a small stone-walled room wearing a dusty rag, a collar around my neck, and my head pounding. A few hours later, someone came by with a very thick book on earth magic and a food tray, if you would call brick-hard bread and cold unidentified soup food, and a message that basically said, “Get gud, or your ass is fucked.” Literally.

They know I’m a mage, and they are fattening me up. I wasn’t very subtle while using magic back there, so someone must have snitched. It’s elfy isn’t it; probably not, but, you know what, I’m putting him on the list with the cat bitch anyway.

Oh, and they also used a slave seal. I can feel it in the back of my head. It’s like a hand that’s gently pushing my thoughts in a certain direction. I can isolate it somehow and understand when it’s starting to act up. I think it’s trying to target my subconscious, but the skill I bought is putting in work.

Thank god something turned out right.

After trying to eat the bread and failing, and begrudgingly eating the soup, I immersed myself in the book and skimmed through the first quarter. It explained a few basic concepts that I already knew about and started getting into theorycrafting, not that I can actually test anything with my pitiful manapool and a collar on my neck.

Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

Shooing off the depressing thought, I opened up the shop looking for a manapool fix again. Scanning the list more closely, I started classifying the items. Most of them fit in an organic category, herbs, animal/monster body parts, or products. What's left was a couple of artifacts and a very small number of enchantment formulas. I didn’t even bother trying to buy any of them, figuring they would be insanely expensive, instead, I checked anything related to mana regeneration. The result was somewhat the same, so my best bet for my mana dilemma right now was enchantment, which I know absolutely nothing about.

I decided to gamble and ask my jailers for a book on enchanting. Figuring they would come by tomorrow to check on me, I tidied up the desk and got onto my bed. Yes, I know, a disk and a bed they’re really spoiling me. There was also a small bathroom and an old fireplace, but since I had no use for neither, I haven’t checked them out yet.

I was pleasantly surprised when the same person that fed me earlier came in with a food tray, though this time it was only a soup bowl. That was fine anyway; I still had the bread from before.

Two meals a day, they really are spoiling me.

A look of surprise flashed on his face when he didn’t find the bread, but it was quickly replaced with the same blank look. He picked up the tray and was about to leave when I asked him.

“Can you bring me some books from other fields of magic? Fire, water, mana manipulation, enchanting really anything would work.” His brows went up when I said enchanting, so I hastily added. “Do you really think a newly awakened mage break out of this after reading a book explaining the basics?” Tugging my collar and mirroring his raised brow,s I continue. “You want me as knowledgeable as possible, don’t you?” Getting no reaction, I slump my shoulders and sigh in defeat. I conclude. “I really don’t want with a dick up my ass.”

With that, he leaves, and I sink into the bed, close my eyes and wait for the cold embrace of sleep to take over.

Morning came by, not that I would really know, the room had no windows and no light but the shimmering candles on the desk, I woke up startled by the sound of the door getting knocked open. Three people, wearing collars, came in, each carrying a heavy looking book and dropping it on the desk with a thump. As soon as they left, an exuberant grin found itself on my face.

It took me almost a week to go through the enchanting book, three days to read it, and another three to pick out the useful from the bullshit, an incredulous experience. It’s like those three hundred plus pages technical books in college, you can compress it to like fifteen, and you’d lose nothing of the actual content of the book.

The light at the dark tunnel was engraving, a sub-branch of enchanting. Engraving is exactly what it sounds like; you engrave a symbol on a hard object, said symbol acts as a set of commands with the object as a medium. There were some ‘modern’ symbols provided as examples in the book, but they had nothing to do with my specific problem, so I went oldschool.

It wasn’t actually that hard, there are a few fixed words other than that you’re free to use whatever words you want, as long as you understand it of course.

For example, I gave the word “absorb” a unique symbol of my own and added the symbol for “mana” afterwards, engraved them both down on a small rock, and waited; oh, and for the engraving, I used the bread. I used the bread to break the fireplace, took the piece of stone that broke off, and sharpened it; with the bread. It’s still intact, save for a few scars from the sharpening and bread crumbs on the floor. Used it again to get my engraved object, and voila I have both necessary tools.

Now, activating an engraved requires mana, and while trying to achieve that and keep my head attached to my neck, I accidentally used my mana.

…

Nothing happened, though. The only logical theory I can come up with is that the amount I used was so minute that the collar didn’t bother activating.

Moving on, I’ve spent the last two and a half hours staring at an unmoving, unchanging rock. Another hour in the piece of stone started cracking, and another half an hour in, it completely broke and turned into ash.

The same result occurred with every object I’ve tried so far, though in a varying time frame. Wood from the bed and the disk, paper from the books, cloth from the bed and my rag; nothing worked so far. The only two materials I haven’t tried yet were the old dried wood and the charcoal from the fireplace.

The dried wood gave the same result, but the charcoal did nothing. It’s been about six hours, and it’s still the same way as before. I left it overnight and was pleasantly surprised when I found that the dark grey charcoal was now snow white. Testing it the same way a sensible man would test a completely foreign and unknown substance, I dabbed my finger in the charcoal and put it in my mouth.

Immediately, a tingling sensation assaulted my tongue, followed by a strange feeling coming from my manapool. It’s distinctly different from the feeling of emptiness when my manapool isn’t full; this was fucking orgasmic. So for the second time in a row, I did what anyone with a functioning frontal lobe would do. I drew a line of charcoal and snorted.