-Excuse me!?

-Yeah! I can even see myself inside that! But you are definitely not turning into me!

-Right… We are the same - agreed Kon. - I can tell that there are some parts of you inside For. And she probably can see the same with me. I think…

I didn’t really pay attention any more, because suddenly I felt… sick?

Yeah, that was a new feeling to me.

One, I have never felt like that since I had gotten the crystal body. I did lose it, though, so I guess it was possible… I was occupying a fleshy body again.

And whose body it was! My own daughter!

The obvious problems aside, I was happy that at least I was not ILMA… I mean, the artificial one.

While I didn’t have anything in particular against her as a creature… or whatever she was at this point, there was no denying that she was unstable.

Especially the version Il was in contact with recently.

So you can’t blame me when the sudden sickness turned into a very invasive presence, I was alarmed.

Sure, I already had discussed that I was going to give up this body as soon as possible with… er, with myself, but I was not going to just leave without being sure that we are dealing with the original owner, not something attacking.

And there were some… red flags, that was for sure.

You know, the original owner trying to take over his body is not something that I would associate with nausea.

I would expect a loss of consciousness, or maybe something like when you feel during a thought discussion with someone that had a hard time controlling their emotions.

I was pretty intimate with that one.

But that was nothing like this. I suddenly felt myself wanting to puke, unable to say the word, just frozen on the spot.

-You good?

I heard the other me ask.

Of course. He noticed.

It was hard not to when I was looking like this.

But, I was not able to answer. I wasn’t even able to open my mouth.

I was standing there, stiff as a board, trying to not lose balance and fall on my face.

-What’s going on?

The other me was not giving up, he was trying to contact me in any way he could.

I heard him loud and clear, but that didn’t mean giving an answer was easy.

-I… don’t…

I managed to squeeze out a little bit, but that was the last thing I could do, because finally, something actually started taking over.

Luckily, it at least felt familiar, so there was that…

What the hell had happened to me!?

What was the last thing I remembered… Right, I was talking with that guy who was trying to convince me of the weirdest things imaginable… There was a full group there… then… I fainted?

Did they attack me?

I don’t think so…

They were powerful, that’s for sure. At least as strong as mom… If not more. Probably more.

If they were trying to actually get rid of me, I would’ve been gone in a blink of an eye. I wouldn’t even be able to realize what happened.

But those people approached me openly…

Right. People…

Were those really humans?

I heard about those different races, and that stupid excuse of a father was definitely trying to do something to his own body, so I guess having someone else do that wasn’t really that far-fetched.

But to actually try and attempt that?

They were insane.

Bah, scratch that! Focus on what’s in front of you!

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Or rather what was.

There’s only darkness in my mind now… or at least for now.

I still can think. And that means I am not dead.

At least I sincerely hope so.

Think. What happened next?

I remember… some flashes of mana… I was being covered in magic… In someone’s mana…

My own?

Weird.

But it was helping. I could feel myself being energized.

At least up till a certain point, because the next thing I fully blacked out for.

I do have some strange flashes of blood and myself being inside of some crimson bubble of magic…

Next thing was just darkness.

No sound, no senses. Just darkness.

I had to assure myself that I wasn’t dead. But it did feel eerily similar to what I expected being a ghost in a dark room would feel like.

Nothing to hear, nothing to feel. I only could see tiny bits of mana around me, peering from behind the black veil.

Of course, since that was the only thing I noticed, I focused on it as hard as I could…

It didn’t help much.

I might have seen a bit brighter contour of the shapes I noticed before, but it was so dim I had hard time keeping track of it, even though it was barely moving.

I soon realized that there was more than just one “shape”.

It took me a good while to realize that what I was seeing was just mana of someone that was nearby.

It definitely made it easier to focus, when you actually know what you’re looking at instead of having some vague speculation in your mind.

I recognized them.

Those were definitely the same people that had talked to me before I collapsed.

They tried saving me?

I say “tried”, because who knows what state I exactly was in…

Definitely not the best, since I was just there, lifeless, unable to move.

If I even was there. For all I knew that could’ve just been a dream or something along those lines.

The idea of that all being a dream soon was put into question, when I slowly started feeling out my body.

It took time, but I managed to at least regain that much of my senses that I was sure that I was still alive.

Speaking of body, though.

I still had it. And it felt like it was in great shape.

I couldn’t move, but I was able to feel at least.

Something definitely happened. All the damage I took before was gone and I was more than just refreshed. I felt better than ever before.

For sure something like that had to be costly, right? I had to pay some kind of price for it…

Of course I was right.

It was made clear for me when suddenly I started moving.

Or rather not me, just my body.

I was still certain that I personally was unable to move, yet I could tell that my body had stood up and was moving around, doing something.

I had to focus. To retake control, sure. If that was even possible.

But small steps first. I had to understand what was going on and at least regain my sight.

It was easier said than done.

At first I tried just focusing, but for naught. I had to turn to a more magical approach.

I already knew that it was possible to see your surroundings with mana, but to do that competently enough for my purposes… it was going to be problematic.

Or so I thought.

It didn’t take me even an hour to start seeing more clear contours of things next to me, and after the end of the second one I was already able to recognize items and people.

Right. People.

I was surrounded by a bunch of powerful people.

I suspected that those were the ones that found me before.

I never realized that they were that powerful, though. Sure, the pair that approached me was strong, but the other two I thought were just some pushovers right now had mana amounts at least comparable to the pair.

Have they grown in power since I last saw them? Or maybe they were hiding their abilities so well before…? And only now they dropped the act and went to their original capacity, thinking they were safe?

Can someone even do that?

Or maybe the answer was more mundane…

Was it just a different pair?

No, while that would be the easiest explanation, I could tell by the colors of the mana that those were the same people. Or they had some very similar siblings that were replacing them.

Those were definitely the same people.

But that was not the main problem.

The issue was the fact that my body was moving by itself…

Or I want to say that it was by itself.

After a while of observing mana, I started noticing something different.

I was not just moving via some magic, somehow being turned into a puppet or something.

How? Beats me.

What I knew for sure though was that the guy… that Mor was involved.

Yeah, he was still there. His mana was hard to mistake… so vivid and strange.

Not only that, but every now and again I saw him… I want to say liquidate himself.

To my eyes, or rather my mind, it looked like he was stretching his own consciousness and pouring into other people.

And that also included my own body.

At first, I thought it was him that was making me move, but it couldn’t be. Even when he was not in that “fluid” state, my body was up and moving.

It was clear that I was not going to get enough information to understand what’s going on from just mana.

I had to regain more of my senses.

But how?

It was not like I was just going to think about it and it’s going to happen?

And that’s exactly how it happened.

Yeah. It was that easy. I just thought, wondering how nice it could’ve been if I was able to eavesdrop them…

And then I heard them.