Sweat stung Kai’s eyes as he plunged his knife into the floor. He carved runes and Freyac syllables around him, wood splintering as his knife traced the erratic patterns.

He had, maybe, five minutes.

The cold floor of the Sorcerer’s Tower thrummed through him as the ritual circle released magical energy. This had to be the most complicated and convoluted ritual he’d ever attempted.

The symbols were crude and unrecognisable, making him wonder if they were even going to work, but there was no choice. He needed to make it work, to escape this place and turn things around.

He jumped in his seat as throaty and menacing shouts from outside echoed through the corridors.

They had found him.

His head snapped around in fear, taking note of the shaky walls of the library. The wide room, once neatly organised, was now cluttered and disorganised with books scattered everywhere on the floor. Dust and cobwebs only added to the mess.

His breath came out in ragged puffs and he looked down at his scarred hands.

He drew the symbols faster. He needed to finish—now! But panic clawed at his chest, making him clumsy.

Footsteps echoed through the halls of the Sorcerer's Tower and he flinched.

The mana fiends were just outside.

The creaky, wooden door burst open behind him with a loud thud. Kai was fast on his feet, turning around to face the shadowy figure.

With the face of a bull and bulging muscles, the minotaur-like creature stood at seven feet, crowned by a pair of misshapen curved horns. Black lines ran through its arms and neck, and endless rows of fangs and protrusions stuck out from its back.

Its sharp claws seemed like they'd cut up the floor faster than Kai could with his knife.

It was covered in grey fur, interspersed with patches of dead skin from overexposure to the decayed mana.

Kai's heart thumped in his ears as he weaved his hand to the left, casting a [Gust] spell while visualising a strong force of wind knocking the corrupted monster down.

It hit its chest, making it screech and stumble back a few steps.

Kai tightened his fingers around the hilt of the knife.

The mana fiend got its feet under it again and lunged forward.

He felt his breath leaving his lungs at the sight. Before it could reach him, he rolled on the floor, dodging the charge while hacking its leg with the knife.

The fiend snarled threateningly as it slashed its claws at him in a swift motion. Kai prepared another spell and slid back, but he was too slow.

The spell structure broke apart and his vision wavered as he was thrown into a bookshelf, his knife skidding away.

Terrible pain hit him as he screamed in pain and touched his face.

Blood dripped on the floor as he stared at his palm. His left eye was bleeding. Was it even there?

“It gouged out… my eye,” he muttered, trying to fight through the pain.

He had severely underestimated the power of the mana fiend. Or maybe it was due to him being in this near-crippled state that his spells weren't as powerful.

Either way, I need to get up.

Kai shook his head and tried to stand.

Even if he couldn't see, he needed to go through the ritual. That was the only way to survive, but he had to fight off the mana fiend first.

The creature’s dark magic covered its claws, sending out blasts of corrupted energy that rippled and cut through the bookshelves as it got closer to him.

Kai grasped his left eye with one hand and, using his other hand, he cast [Mana Discharge], sending a blast of mana at the creature. It tried to block but was knocked back into a bookshelf, falling and crying out in pain.

Under normal circumstances, he wouldn't have used such a spell with high mana requirements, but he had no time.

He cast the spell [Blinding], making the monster see white.

Making his way through the fallen bookshelves, he searched for his knife and found it right next to a puddle of blood.

He picked it up and looked towards the mana fiend.

As soon as the Blinding spell died down, it picked itself up, flailing its arm around and lunging at Kai, who was anticipating such a move.

Before it could get close to him, Kai yelled, “[Astrum Vosem!]”

The knife glistened with mana, fire crackling within the blade as he surged forward, aiming at the monster’s neck. The mana fiend slashed at him again, but he ducked, barely avoiding the hit.

Casting another [Blinding] spell, he sent the monster stumbling back before plunging the blade into its neck. Flames crackled out as he twisted the blade, aiming for the black lines.

The mana fiend fell to the ground immediately, black liquid spewing everywhere.

It cried out in pain, trying to grab Kai, but he didn't give it the chance and kept digging deep into its neck until it stopped whimpering.

Blood oozed from Kai’s eye and he suddenly noticed a deep cut on his arm. Pain numbed all his senses, but there was no time to focus on it.

“The ritual,” Kai coughed blood, realizing that crashing into the bookshelf had given him internal injuries. He dragged himself until he was in front of his preparation and felt like cursing.

A part of the ritual circle was smeared due to the blood splatter from the fight.

It was ruined.

Quickly deciding on his new move, he started scribbling frantically, drawing up a new ritual circle.

His fingers were cramping and slippery as he tried his best to draw the symbols in his mind. With one eye gone, it was much harder, and every mistake made him swear softly.

He heard more floor-shattering movements through the door. There was more than one mana fiend and the fight had attracted them to his hideout.

He needed to hurry. He only had a minute until they got here if he was lucky.

“Shit!”

He made a mistake and felt like banging his head against the floor. While keeping his remaining eye on the open door, he alternated between the ritual circle that was smeared with blood and one that was barely half complete.

He could never finish it in time.

Having no choice, Kai abandoned it and decided to take a gamble with a ruined ritual circle. A few of the lines were messed up, but he ignored it and focused on completing it.

Just one more line!

He frantically carved out the patterns, joining them with each other and let out a sigh of relief as he saw a completed ritual of intersecting circles. A part of it was barely recognizable due to the blood.

A [Cleansing] spell might have helped, but he was out of mana. The fight with the fiend had drained his reserves.

He heard a shrill voice and, as expected, soon several more creatures came inside, filling the room. They were all beasts filled with corrupted mana, but it didn't matter now.

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He gave them a look and dropped the blood on his hands on the ritual circle.

In his heart, he only wished that the ritual circle would work as expected. That it would send him back to an era where he might still have a chance to stop the apocalypse from happening.

The symbols ignited, and an intense flash of white light enveloped the room. Threads of mana passed through his soul, drawing power to keep the ritual running as his body slumped on the floor. The fleeting moment came to an end when the world surrounding Kai went completely white.

The last thing he heard, before he lost consciousness, were the yells of the ugly monsters.

***

Kai flinched as a sharp pain assaulted his chest. His whole body was numb as he panted on the floor.

It felt like he had just stepped out of a prolonged period of floating in the cosmos. He didn't know how long it had been, but it definitely felt like years. Probably centuries.

A few seconds went by as he calmed down before the numbness disappeared and his eyes adjusted. Wait! His eyes!

He touched his left eye and found it intact.

It's healed completely!!

He didn't know how he had gotten his left eye back. The ritual wasn't supposed to heal him at all. It was only supposed to take him back in time.

Where am I? Am I really alive?

He was surprised that the ritual had worked, though he didn't know to what degree. With how crude it had been, there was a greater chance of it failing.

If death wasn't in front of him, Kai would have never gone for it.

At least it hadn't shredded his soul into pieces to be eaten by whatever lay beyond the afterlife, so that was a positive.

He looked around.

Kai was lying on a hardwood floor as he stared at the ceiling. Different carvings on the ceiling made him frown. He didn't recognise any of them.

He was supposed to have woken up in a cave or a forest, not in a room.

Something bubbled up in his heart and he felt unusual. His eyes immediately went to his hands and he quickly realised that the scars were gone. He gasped in horror and sat up straight.

The sudden movement caused a rush of blood to his head that made him dizzy.

“What in the Mersal's name is happening?”

He looked down on his physique.

His eyes grew wide as he noticed the tunic he was wearing was covered in blood. He opened the tunic button by button to reveal…

“Is that… a knife wound?” Kai said aloud in shock.

As he said the words, the wound slowly closed as if someone had used a healing spell on him. But that was impossible.

Something had gone terribly wrong with the ritual and one more look at himself was enough for him to realize that this wasn't his body. He had taken someone else's identity.

That realisation struck him like a mana bolt in the head as he gasped.

He breathed to calm himself down and noticed something he had been missing.

“There's mana in the air! Pure uncontaminated mana!”

All his thoughts and questions halted when a rush of fresh air hit his nostrils. He inhaled deeply and closed his eyes, feeling the warmth of being alive once and for all. His instincts made him get to his feet.

The air had a quality about it that brought tears to his eyes— Mana. Goosebumps covered his entire body.

He breathed in once again.

The mana in the air was so powerful it crackled with every breath Kai took. The sheer amount of mana left him wordless. This surpassed anything he had ever felt before.

Kai raised his hands, feeling all the energy that filled the air. It filled the entire room, and in his 40 years of life, he had never felt so much.

His ritual had worked, albeit differently than what he had hoped.

What is this place? Kai looked around from where he stood.

The room was bathed in an eerie light that emanated from what looked like another ritual circle beneath him.

His eyes widened at another peculiar thing as he took in the situation that he was in the middle of.

Arcane symbols were drawn all around him. The symbols were alien to him; not being one of the languages he knew and had learned. Some of them seemed similar to Hales Tongue, but he couldn't be sure since blood had spilt over them.

It was a completely different ritual circle than the kinds he knew of.

Questions became hurricanes in his mind after seeing the symbols. He tried to focus and understand his situation better.

Although the ritual had worked, he knew there would be complications since a part of it was ruined. Half-completed ritual circles were always volatile. As a result of it, he had even changed bodies.

If his assumption was correct, the ritual had only sent his soul back in time which had found a compatible body for him to control. It didn't make a lot of sense to him, but then again, the soul was a part of magical theory that had barely progressed in years.

It was too mysterious.

He decided to gather information first and took a look around the room.

There was a four-poster bed draped with heavy velvet right behind him. The bed was extremely lavish apart from the poor draping skills. The rest of the bedside decorations were canopy hangings and ornate wood furniture, including storage chests and cabinets for personal belongings.

Whoever used to own this body was rich. Maybe a lord or a wealthy merchant, Kai contemplated, looking over the room.

He walked towards the bed and touched it. It had gone stone cold. Nobody had used the bed for hours.

The fireplace caught his attention. It was the main focus of the room, with the hearth having heraldic symbols carved above it. This time, he recognised the language as Manakrit.

His fingertips followed them as he contemplated the meaning of it. It was a common tongue that had spanned centuries, so it was hard to say which era he was in. His ritual was supposed to bring him to the past, but he hadn't gotten time to specify a date.

His wish was simply to go back as far as possible. However, he assumed 500 years was the limit for the ritual, so he must be around that period.

In the first place, it had been a suicidal attempt with a variable chance of success. Yet things had somehow worked out.

Looking around, he saw a picture frame stuck on the wall from the corner of his eye.

Kai turned and walked towards the picture. It was an old man. His bald head and his stern gaze were pointed to his left, as he sat in a seat comfortably. It was weird that the picture was just sitting there, in the corner of a room like this.

He guessed that it was either some important individual Kai didn't recognise or the owner of the place.

With the ritual, everything seemed odd.

The former body owner had wounds that were fresh in two or three places, including his hands and feet. The clothes were covered with slightly dried-up blood.

“What was the guy even doing? He wasn't trying a similar ritual to go back in time, right?”

His voice was strange. Hoarse, and deeper than he remembered.

Closing his eyes, he remembered his last few minutes in the tower. It was infested with bloodthirsty creatures. Every moment was tense, but in this room, there was a weird sense of serenity that he hadn't felt in a long time.

He was alive, at least.

He sighed in content and opened his eyes. breathing mana with a wide smile.

The mana in the air tempted him to extend his hand. He needed more light to see around the symbols.

His index finger swirled a little into a circle while he envisioned lighting up the central fireplace. Normally, this spell would’ve ignited a small fireball, but nothing came.

Immediately, Kai took a few steps forward. He inhaled the air, feeling the energy in his bones, and tried the spell again, his hand moving attempting a simple spell even a 1st circle mage could’ve done in a blink.

He even muttered an incantation for added effect, normally reserved for harder spells.

“[Astrum Octavia].”

Once again, he successfully failed.

He’d normally cast something so simple with just intent, but it wasn't working.

Something clouded his mind. He looked down on his new body and concentrated internally. He could sense mana and could feel his Mana Veins, even his Mana Heart seemed intact, but focusing on it, he realised that the body he was in was a Non-Mage.

He hadn't even started his magical journey and couldn't cast a single spell.

All the mana organs were intact, but he hadn't awakened as a mage. The realisation of it made him wince. Not only had he lost his body, he had also lost his strength. He used to be a 5th Circle Magus. Now, he was a mere mortal. Ordinary.

If he had really awakened in a cave or a forest, he might have been killed by wild beasts.

“This… can’t be true.” Kai's refusal to believe the reality of his situation overwhelmed his thoughts for a few more seconds as he closed his eyes to feel his insides. Seconds stretch to minutes as he contemplated his new reality.

He slowly took in the fact that he was no longer Kai. He was in someone else's body and had taken over him. He didn't know who that person was, but he had been killed by whatever ritual he had been attempting.

That was the best summarisation.

A few possibilities of what could have happened flashed by him. Some were worth contemplating. Others were too bizarre.

He decided to investigate first.

“What’s that?”

His eyes followed the trail of the bloody ritual on the floor to find a piece of parchment.

Kai bent down to swiftly pick it up. The torn page lay between his fingertips, the words written on it were with blood.

Whoever had written it had poor penmanship, to say the least. He slowly read out the words.

“I will die and be reborn. Everyone will fear my might and the dawn of blood will arrive again.”

He dropped the parchment on the floor, wondering if he had come back in the past and inside the body of a cultist. But even if it was a cultist, the surroundings including the room didn’t sum up, and if he was somehow in the body of a noble who was a ritualistic devotee, things would only get worse from here.

He didn't want to deal with a cult. At least not when he was basically powerless.

Kai let the weight of the situation settle in, but the door sprung open.

He immediately looked to the side and saw a woman with widened eyes. Her eyes were on the floor seeing the symbols, syllables, lines, and curves; all of it. Then they fell on the owner of the room, bloodied and in the middle of this encounter, with his hands at his side.

That was him and he noticed the woman looked like a maid.

“I-” The maid opened her mouth, but nothing came out.

Kai stared at her, again feeling like he was simply going from one problem to another.

Ah shit! How do I get out of this one?