You know for my new prison it's quite the empty place in here, makes me wonder if this is what most non-mages bodies feel like.

But at least for me, there's something new and shiny for me to explore and learn about; well maybe not so shiny and more dimly lit surrounded by bone, organs, flesh and skin. Though there does seem to be some sort of light source around the abdomen area, should be an interesting first stop.

However, upon arrival instead of seeing a normal abdomen, I'm instead met with a swirling vortex of mana that I'm guessing is the guy's power source. I take it mana shards don't exist in this world for all the non-mages then. Still, it's not very large it only just hits the twenty-meter roof and if I stretch I could almost hug the swirling vortex.

Other than the magical lamplight there's not much else in this cavern(?). The only other things of mysterious interest are the various doors dotted around the base of the man's cavern like abdomen. Unfortunately, every single one of the doors is closed, and I would try to open them, but I've got more pressing matters to take care of first before I go door busting.

Same thing applies to the closed off holes on the walls, plus I almost defiantly know what they are already since I meet the same structures in the Swallows from early today. Plus, given the apparent strangeness of this world, I wouldn't be too surprised if those tunnels were what allowed the inhabitants of this world to access and control mana, though in a more crude and unwieldy manner compared to me.

Nevertheless, same as the doors before I haven't got the liberty to go excavating right this second.

Now then, next on the list to visit is the brain, might as well take a gander and make sure that it's still intact and properly functioning. I'll have a quick check on the other organs as I go by as well, who knows? I might find a secret.

Moving on up and I can see that all the normal organs; except the appendage, are present and accounted for. Except that there's nothing special about them which kind of ruins the mood since the appendage was so unique. One solace for my trouble was that they were a lot more of these tunnelled structures around the place, and they all had one thing in common, and that was they all lead back to the appendage, so it's most likely that the closed holes in the wall belong to them.

Further up the body, I discover my first anomaly with those tunnel-like structures near the lungs, and from my observations, I observed that the vessels often split off into new tributary like tunnels which would become either thinner or thicker depending on if they went further from the heart, as the latter suggested, or closer to it, as the former seemed to do.

Though to my surprise I discovered that the vessel was, in fact, an immaterial object when I viewed them with my mana vision. I'm beginning to find some strange things on my little tour.

Never the less, with my checklist growing and things becoming stranger I decided to pick up the pace towards the brain in the hope that I would find something interesting up there as well. However, the answer was disappointing since there was absolutely nothing there.

Well expect for the brain of course, and thankfully it was still intact and functioning as I had hoped, so my original mission was accomplished. Yeah.

Alright, so I may be a tad disappointed over there being no new secrets embedded within this guys skull. But can't give up. I'll most likely have to come back later for a better and more extensive look around, and if I'm lucky I might even find myself some secrets.

So let's make a hypothesis on this guy's strange body and how all of this works in conjunction with the mana supply in his body.

Now from viewing the tunnel-like vessel, I can almost undoubtedly predict that they are used in some form or another to take mana from one point like his abdomen to any point that they are connected to. Other than that I'm certain in my view that comparing my manapool to his 'manapool' shows some significant differences, the main one being that although both are in an immaterial form my manapool is stretched across my body allowing me to gather mana outside my body much easier, whereas his 'manapool' most likely uses those tunnel-like structures to bring mana to specific points across his body: hands, feet, fingers for example.

But why is there neither no mana shard present or any other method to allow oneself to start on their path to magehood? Hmm, maybe those two girls could...

...Wait a second. I've completely forgotten about the two sleeping beauties. How long have I been in here for? This could be bad if those two are up and about and potentially planning something nefarious against me and my new charge.

Projecting my consciousness, I'm greeted by the very sight I didn't want to see right now...

...Man...

...Or to be more precise, the Oriental dressed girl I knocked out is now wandering around the clearing we're in, most likely inspecting it for the intruder who had in her mind most shamelessly put her to sleep in a sneak attack.

On the other hand, the male warrior(?) not the weirdest thing I've seen today, though the view from his back is very misleading though that might explain why his butt looked so flat. Moving on, the warrior had also managed to stumble his way on up, though compared to the Oriental dressed girl he was a bit more wobbly, though he too was most likely wondering which dastardly person took advantage of him.

But neither of them are being overtly aggressive towards my new host, so I think I'll leave them alone for now and hope that they thank their lucky stars and leave. Or better yet have the Oriental dressed girl take this boy with her since I know jack-shit about this place and I'd rather not invade this guy's mind.

Or so had hoped, since almost as soon as I had finished my thought the next thing I know is that the Oriental dressed girl is giving off a significant amount of mana radiation that I never detected on her previously, how bad can my luck today. Spinning myself in her general direction, I notice that trying to move more than a few feet is almost impossible due to the tightness of the soul anchor and I have to exert a considerable amount of pressure just to stretch the bonds another inch.

While lamenting the new restrictions I was discovering in my new prison, the mana output from the Oriental dressed girl begun to hit its peak and I got front row seat to observe this world magic techniques. However, even that's ruined since all I see is their equivalent of messaging. I could attempt to bring it down, but since it's most likely some sort of SOS signal racing through the sky, I'm much better off saving my mana.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

Speaking of my mana, I should check to see how that's doing and how long it'll take to refuel. Taking a moment to see how the mana intake is doing I discover, to my horror, that my mana replenishment has been significantly slowed down. Why? Who knows, but I'm defiantly blaming the slime for this since it was the thing that most likely damaged my self-absorbing runes when it forcibly tethered me to the guy's soul.

Thinking about it carefully, since my mana supply is damaged like this, then it would be better to run away and repair it instead. Since no amount of kicking and screaming will save this guy from mind torture if enough people show up to overwhelm us. So all I've got to do is stay quiet until I've replenished enough for a long range teleportation formation.

Or that was supposed to be the plan, but like everything else that's happened today my plans are inevitably ruined by things out of my control, and since I've lived a long life in these kinds of dangerous environment, I've managed to cultivate one of the best sixth senses that people have seen. And like many times in the past, all of its flags were being tripped.

Immediately my gaze turns towards the Oriental dressed girl since my first thought of danger would be her, but no, she was just staring into the distance where that communication SOS had disappeared off into. Seeing my error, I immediately spun around to see the effeminate man staggering towards my unconscious charge with a longsword in his hand.

Taking into consideration that the Oriental dressed girl was busy I deemed it ok for me to frighten this armoured trap away, even then, it'll have to be one of my weakest formation since I'd rather not waste too much of my limited supply of mana on him, and in case he can't take the pressure off me using higher tier formations.

Thus I settled on one of my old favourite formations, a simple one time cast lightning formation, and for this situation, I opted for the single bolt formation as I'm only here to scare away the annoyance and not potentially kill it.

Casting the small formation underneath the man I honestly began to wonder how I had gotten into this kind of situation where I was being forced to use a level one formation to scare away the peasantry. My professor would undoubtedly be shocked at the situation that I'm in right now.

Continuing the cycle of regret I had caught myself in, I almost missed the rapid mana fluctuation coming from behind me. As I turned to stare at the now possible hostile Oriental dressed girl, this time I got a proper look at this world magic.

And I must say it is spectacular.

Back home each Mage would pick and chose how they could cast their spells. Most would pick a side and only use that type of casting, and they would either opt for chanted incantations; or wordlessly if they were really good, which would shape the surrounding mana into the spell they wanted by using their own mana as a holding force to gather more.

Others opted for the use of magical formations which had the spell already etched into it which helped to bypass the somewhat long chants. Though inexperienced formation users would face a greater drain in their mana reserve as they had to build the formation from scratch within themselves which mean that they couldn't supplement some of the cost with 'wild mana'.

There was also those who could directly mould the mana with the essence of the magic they use. Void and Space magicians get the most out of this than anyone else.

That aside, at a glance the Oriental dressed girl seemed to belong to the chanting branch of magic due to her outstretched arm, mana gathering around the arms and also because of what she said, in a soft but monotone voice. “Lament of the Pale Dragon.”

The Pale Blue Dragon, which resembled an ancient Chinese dragon, that flew forth from her fingertips was strange, especially its inner workings which were revolutionary. The Dragon itself was simple, and a quick glance revealed various micro formations working together in unison to keep the beast's shape going. But what was interesting was not the operation itself but the fact that I couldn't separate the formations from each other, because each one was working in tangent with multiple others and they easily swapped places with each other as the beast drew near.

Still, I needed to remove the spell, and since the formations were all working together in tangent, I thought that placing a controlling formation at its head in an attempt to control the subordinate formations would undo the creature. As the Pale Blue Dragon raced by and coming near the boy, I worked up a take-over formation and threw it at the Pale Blue Dragon.

Which then proceeded to simple bounce of the damn thing.

My expectation wasn't that high. I had little mana and a hegemony of formations working together was nothing new to me and would they usual had tougher resistance towards this kind of thing. But the sheer fact that I neither put a temporary halt to the inner working or even managed to take over a tiny portion of it astonished me.

But gawking at the new dangerous toy would have to wait. Because as soon as the control formation had bounced off of it, the construct had arrived at, erm, did it just fly straight past us? Blinking for a second at the luck that I had now gained I finally realised that the constructs intended destination was the trapped trap.

The trap at this moment had heard the sound of lightning descending and was suitable looking up in awe while having his knees fold out from under him. Thankfully for him, The Pale Blue Dragon had arrived by the time the lightning was a few feet above him, so with lightning dropping, the Dragon stopping and the trap also dropping, all seemed to add up to the expected 'shooing off the nuisance' being aborted.

Thankfully, it appeared that the pale Dragon wasn't a high-level spell since both forces were quickly breaking under each others pressure. The lightning's hit had the Pale Dragon's micro formation working to dissipate the lightning effect. However, the formations themselves were cracking every millisecond from the pressure that they were taking. Both the lightning and Dragon construct began looking weaker by the second.

And after a few seconds, in which the trap happily took as a way to escape into the forest. But more importantly the lightning had fizzled out at this point, and the Dragon was visible scared and burnt from the engagement, plus its own mana essence was beginning to run out as it started collapsing since many of its principal formation had been destroyed during the confrontation.

However, and quite hauntingly, the Dragon began to roar a roar that could put the best town criers out of business as it started to dissolve out of existence. Me thinks that there something else going on behind the spells that have being used here since construct should not be capable of doing that.

Ignoring the weird construct thing for now, I took another quick peek at the Oriental dressed girl, and to my surprise, she's still there, though looking a bit more anxious now. Seems whoever she called for is running late, which is better for me. Yeah.

Now then what else needs doing. Well, this guy hasn't woken up yet so better see why the man hasn't woken up yet. I can't keep waiting around here to teleport away if even more dangerous people show up in my weakened state.

Delving back into the man I quickly check around for any visible signs of damage, but there was simply nothing. He could potentially be passed out from shock and exhaustion, but I doubt he wouldn't have been woken up by that Dragon's torturous song.

So thinking a bit more on the magical side I checked up on the boy's soul and if exhaustion and shock were a problem before this could be the deciding factor, a damaged soul. Cracks were all over the damn thing with pure and wild mana entering through those cracks which undoubtedly were causing a lot of devastating damage to it.

But I neither have the time or mana to do a full heal of his soul, hopefully by coating his soul in my own mana that should eliminate any wild mana from getting inside and causing more trouble. But that solution won't last forever since the wild mana already inside will eventually cause more cracks to appear, and once there too many a soul breakage occurs, and when that happens you bet I can kiss my ass goodbye.

Checking my reserves, I estimate that after coating the guy's soul, it should take about an hour or so before I can teleport us somewhere else where I can then focus on healing this brat. I could do it quicker here but sucking up most of this area's mana supply in some doomsday orb, then having the rest of my mana sucked out by an intelligent gluttonous slime, has left myself ever so slightly parched.

Checking on the girl again I see that she's gathered more mana in her arm and is probably prepared to cast another spell at any given moment, but it seems as if the lightning formation has caused a temporary truce of some description, and with the trap bravely running away I should be safe.

For now at least.