With that exchange done, I approached his body. I still was not able to see, so I started feeling around me to confirm that it was indeed him and not just stick him in blindly into something weird. Making sure that I was still not touching him directly with either my crystal or his own, I kneeled down.

And started chanting.

-Zyza, svury gy xye oryqa nom quxe kyr ur gy xye zoda. Nar, vuzury op zy quq, ur po raqa hu Qav, qy avharow op zy xyomr.

And, at the same time, trying to divide my attention, I repeated a slightly altered incantation in my mind.

-Svury, svury gy xye oryqa nom quxe kyr ur gy xye zoda. Nar, vuzury op zy quq, ur po raqa hu Qav, qy avharow op zy xyomr.

And then, again, from the beginning.

-Zyza, svury…

Both of them were almost identical, which made it easier - I only had to pay attention to one word to not accidentally mix them up.

At the same time, I had to focus on the mana in the environment. For the spell to work correctly, I had to have a lot of mana in me and pour it into the spell, which was exhausting. Already after the first time I spoke the words, I felt mana drain from me at an unbelievable speed. Good thing I was already on my knees, because otherwise I would’ve surely fallen down, most likely breaking my concentration.

At first, I intended to absorb the mana from the ground to keep the spell going, but that appeared unnecessary. While true, I felt a lot weaker than before, almost immediately a flow of new, fresh mana went through me.

Just like before with the crystal Kon was trapped in, when it felt the difference between the magic levels, it immediately tried equalizing it, sucking the mana from the environment. Most likely it was the same when I found myself lying in a manaless environment after I got turned to crystal.

But, the mana did not only come from the plants and overall air nearby. I somewhat expected it, but I never knew how far the radius would be. Nevertheless, unwillingly, Jack and Vendi also started contributing to the overall mana for the ritual. At first I didn’t pay much attention to that, since the streams were small in comparison to everything else, but soon the flow started getting stronger and stronger. I wanted to yell at them to get the fuck away from this place or they would be turned into the fuel, but I couldn’t, preoccupied with chanting.

For a second, I felt bad. Sure, I didn’t really care about either of them but after all, they were somewhat of a family to Kon. But hell, I couldn’t do a thing anyway, right?

Just as that brief thought entered my mind, I purged it, focusing back on the spell. I couldn’t get myself distracted. The repeating incantation couldn’t be interrupted, or the effects would be… well, who knows what would’ve happened. But, between the repeats, I intended to maybe try and toss something at them, I still had my hands free…

But, before I was able to do that, both of them suddenly jumped up, looking around, alarmed. Then, jumped again and looked at me with confusion.

Seeing as I was eyeing them with annoyance, I think they finally snapped out of this strange trance and instead bolted away from me and the ritual.

I have no clue what got into them, but it worked out in our favor, so I could focus solely on the incantation.

Speaking of. The spell I made up, the whole incantation, was not actually that complicated, considering what I was trying to accomplish.

The reality of the situation was that it was almost identical to the one Jack and Vendi had given me, besides one detail: the target.

The first part of the spell consisted of me addressing the life magic, ordering it to move the soul to the presented vessel, if I was to roughly translate it. At the same time, I had to do the same with the light magic, since, as they said before, souls apparently had the same properties as light.

In the second sentence was the part where the changes actually were. And most likely the cause of their mistakes before.

Every time I talked about magic with people that seemed to know their stuff, at least here, they referred to the way the spells were cast as “language”. It was not exactly correct, or to be precise, it was not the whole truth.

Sure, the magic incantations were ruled by a language. I assume once it had its name, but even during my time in the MIRE it was already forgotten, and we just plainly referred to it as magic script, or anything that came to mind, really. It didn’t have any official name.

Our ritual here, or rather mine now, needed an incantation in that language, but to successfully cast it, without relying on randomness of course, I had to precisely state the target of it, in this case Kon and me, since I was the catalyst for the whole magic.

You probably are going to ask, what’s the problem then, right? You just use the name and you’re good to go? Well, it’s not that simple.

Since the spells are using that language, shouldn’t I use ONLY that language? What would be the consequences of mixing up different things? But how, though? Is one’s name considered a word in another language? Would it disrupt the spell?

Well, the short answer is most likely. That was also my suspicion as to why their previous attempts had failed. But of course, you cannot translate a name to another language, right?

Actually, you can.

And I am not talking about the obvious. Sure, a person called, let’s say for example, Rose, can be easily converted to any language without any issue, but it’s just an edge case, a rarity.

No. In the case of the magical language… it more closely resembles a mathematical formula, with some additional steps. I am not going to bother with quoting the full one. Besides, there are also some other variations and rules governing the power of the translated word, let’s call them magnitudes, or levels.

The fact that matters though is that any word can be converted to an equivalent of the one in the magical language.

That is what I did to our names while using them in this spell: I converted them to words of a magical magnitude of three.

I know, that’s just a number that doesn’t really tell you much but, just as a comparison, here, till this day I practically never had used a word of magnitude higher than two, and even then it was rare.

So, instead of Kon, his name was Nar, and instead of Mor it was Qav. I was hoping that this change would stabilize the spell and ensure our relative safety.

Sure it seemed that way, at least for now.

Since Vendi and Jack had gotten the hell out of dodge, the spell was going smoothly, the only thing that was bothering me was the amounts of mana that were flowing through me, even though I have not actually connected the soul with the body of Kon.

I mean, sure, it was a good sign: it meant that my tactic of using the converted names as a part of the spell has succeeded, but then, the mana was only flowing through me and the body and not the actual rock I’ve been holding on.

After what probably was a tenth repeat of the spell, I realized I was just stalling for time. Especially after I realized that I slowly started seeing again, albeit barely.

I mean, can you even call that being able to see? Before, everything else was so bright I couldn’t see a damn thing, now, while I somewhat could recognize the shapes of some ruins around me, the body of Kon was the brightest point.

And so, I decided that I should get to the more risky part.

I slowly lowered the shard with Kon inside towards the body and the mass of mana swelling in front of me.

Up till now, he was silent, just as instructed before. Be it from fear or pain, or anything else, it doesn’t matter, but as soon as the rock came in contact with the body, in my head I heard a scream.

The scream sounded very familiar. I mean, sure, it was obviously Kon, but that’s not the point. It was almost identical to the one I heard the first time I touched the tree back at the “graveyard”.

From the analytical standpoint it was somewhat good news. It meant that whatever was happening to him right now was similar to what had transpired back then, meaning we were on the right track.

I couldn’t really reassure him or anything, having my hands and head full of magic and incantations, so I hoped that he’d bear with it… but that’s where the problem arose.

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See, when you are focused on something, especially when you are alone, when someone screams right in your ear you can’t help but be startled. It’s just a reflex.

But, if you add the fact that it was not just a scream into my ear, but directly into my head, you can excuse me for actually, physically jumping up.

I barely was able to hold my balance kneeling next to him and almost dropped the crystal, but managed to hold on.

Too bad that I did not manage to do the same with my concentration.

The sudden noise made me interrupt my incantation, both in my head and the one aloud.

During that short second of break, I felt the mana swell around me even more and this time, instead of flowing towards the Kon, it stayed inside me.

I immediately returned to chanting the spell, but it was too late: the large amount of mana was still buzzing inside me, distracting me.

Back when I was under Kalkano, when I absorbed too much mana I only was barely feeling the effects, being inconvenienced by my glow and slight buzz in my head.

This time, the amount of mana that I absorbed was incomparable. Yeah, I started glowing, sure, I could instantly see that even while blinded by everything else: my hands were now the same shade as the body of Kon in front of me, but that was not the problem.

The main distraction was that I was drunk.

It was actually the first time I’ve been drunk since I got here. That’s why it caught me by more of a surprise than it should.

Sure, that much mana was enough to make anyone smashed. Normally, it wouldn’t be much of a problem, being dizzy and all is an inconvenience, but that’s it. Not in the case when you had to perform a very mundane incantation over and over again, though.

At first, it was not that bad. Yeah, I had to concentrate a lot more, but I was able to not make any mistakes and the spell continued as before, the shard with his soul glowing more and more, along with his body. At the same time, my hands started getting slightly dimmer, meaning the overflow mana that I had, and the source of the dizziness was going to soon go away.

But it was not gone yet. And my concentration had its limits.

From the moment I started chanting it’s been already more than ten minutes, with maybe two or three being after I got startled by Kon’s scream and in the process got drunk. So you can’t blame me when I finally bit my tongue and made a mistake.

It was not the worst one to make, if I am honest. I just misspoke Kon’s name, or rather didn’t say it at all. I immediately corrected myself even.

Not that bad right? I already made a similar mistake before and it didn’t really affect the spell that much. I just ended up with some excess mana.

Well… that was the problem. This time, I didn’t just get slightly dizzy, my head straight up started spinning. Good thing that I already had my hand placed on Kon’s body because if not I’d for sure just collapse right onto him.

But, my problems with balance were not the problem. I started slurring.

It was especially bad news for the idea of simultaneous thinking and speaking two different things at once: it was straight up impossible for me right now.

I learned that a bit too late. When I went to repeat the formula once more, I realized that I was speaking the same thing both in my mind and with my mouth. And have done that the past two or three times already.

If I am to be honest, I started panicking.

But what was the problem though? The spell was going fine, there was no signs of anything going different, so why even be worried?

That was the problem: I had no clue. But changing the formula mid cast was never a good idea, even if the change was so miniscule as one small word.

I seriously started thinking of ending the spell, finishing the ritual preemptively to maybe limit the damage that would inevitably appear…

No.

A voice snapped me out of my panic. Which is in itself strange, because hearing it was even more surprising than Kon’s scream not too long ago.

Continue with life. I will continue with light.

It was not a voice. It was similar to the feeling I encountered once before… but more. The words just were appearing inside my head.

I probably should’ve gotten even more startled, considering the fact that I was also drunk, but… actually, I was no longer drunk.

Hell, I was not even glowing any more. So preoccupied with my sudden mistake, I never even realized that my hands were back to the normal, bland color, dim and see-through.

I was calmer than usual.

There was no time to think about what just happened, because I still had to chant. And so I did, continuing as instructed. But this time, my spell was accompanied with another one…

-Zyza, svury gy xye oryqa nom quxe kyr ur gy xye zoda. Nar, vuzury op zy quq, ur po raqa hu Qav, qy avharow op zy xyomr.

-Svury, svury gy xye oryqa nom quxe kyr ur gy xye zoda. Nar, vuzury op zy quq, ur po raqa hu Ypqo, qy avharow op zy xyomr.

It was not exactly the same as earlier.

Sure, I still was “seeing” the words in my mind, but it was not only it. In the back of my mind, there was this silent voice… too quiet to recognize or even understand, but I was sure that it was the one belonging to the entity that just contacted me.

Entity… presence… or however you want to call it…

Yeah. It was back.

And in the best moment you could even imagine.

I have no idea what awakened it, but if I was to guess it was most likely thanks to the massive amounts of mana flowing through me… or rather us.

But there was no time to think about that, because there was still the main problem and issue we were dealing with: Kon and the ritual.

The fact was that the ritual was already coming to an end. How did I know that?

When I was preparing for this whole event, I was thinking about it. How much mana was it enough for the soul to be able to move? The answer was pretty simple. And no, it was not just a plain number or something that I just had to keep track of. If that was the case, I’d already failed at that since I fumbled at least twice.

No. I just had to keep track of the mana that was inside the crystal and inside the body itself.

Up till now, the amounts were somewhat similar: the moment the crystal got in contact with the body, the amounts were equalizing, somewhat like when I tried using him as my “overflow”. But now, after a long time of chanting, a difference started being more and more visible: the body itself had more than the crystal, meaning it was ready.

The presence also noticed that. I am not sure how I even knew that, because it didn’t say a word, besides the continuous chanting that is, but somehow we both knew.

There was only one step remaining: to stab the body.

I knew that I had to do it sooner or later, but I still hesitated for a split second. Sure, it was just a corpse… well, mostly a corpse, but it still looked like a young kid. Young kid that I have known. I talked to.

I probably would hesitate a lot longer if not for the nudge from the voice in my head.

-Let’s finish this.

That snapped me out of the trance and we finished chanting together.

-Ry avharow op zy xyomr, ur po raqa hu Qaw nom Ypqo, zuny!

And I stabbed the body with the crystal, right in the middle of the chest.

I tried being somewhat gentle though… I mean as much as I was able to muster at the moment. My hand was heavy and a bit stiff, the crystal sharp, yet still I barely was able to pierce his skin. Maybe because he was still mostly frozen?

Hell, maybe it was for the better? Who knows what would’ve happened if I was to damage him too much…

Speaking of happening… At first, I thought we failed, because nothing happened. But as I was about to say something, a sudden rush went through me and this time it was not directed towards the body, instead rushing into the crystal that I still had my hands on.

Even though all this time I’ve been under a constant barrage of mana from each direction, it was still nothing in comparison to what I just felt.

If before I felt like I’ve been standing in the middle of a moderate storm, the winds of mana buffeting me constantly, right now I got hit by a literal hurricane.

It was such an immediate and unexpected change that I couldn’t help but scream, closing my eyes, the echo howling through the empty forest.

Wait. Not only through the forest. At the same time, a similar scream started echoing twice in my head, and I was certain that neither of those voices belonged to me.

I wanted to let go of the crystal, hoping that it was the source of the sudden change, but I couldn’t. If I still had muscles I’d say I got a cramp, but… well, it was probably still the case even with my body,

To be honest, it probably was for the best, because even though the sudden surge of mana was very painful and straining, at the same time I noticed a change.

To the cacophony of screams in my head, another one joined… or rather one in my head got doubled, extending itself to my regular ears. I could now hear it both with my mind and aloud… and it sounded familiar.

Then, suddenly, everything ended.

My hand finally managed to let go of the crystal, and I fell down right at the body in front of me.

I wanted to push myself away to not fall on him and crush the body, but I only managed to turn myself to the side. Even then, I thought I managed to dodge it, because when I fell down, I crashed into something hard and stonelike, not cold and fleshy.

Lying on the side, I started coming back to my senses. The voices and screams were gone, the forest silent, green canopy stretching above my head.

Wait a second. Canopy. I could see.

I blinked a few times, to make sure if it was not just my mind playing tricks on me, but nope. I was able to see, the blinding glow of the overwhelming mana was gone.

I quickly raised my own hand in front of my eyes to make sure if I was not just me being exhausted and I just lost my magic sight again, but nope. My hands were still glowing, pulsing slowly, and I was able to see the small flames of mana in the immediate flora nearby.

Did we succeed?

I sat up on the grass and took a gaze around me.

The things I’ve seen were… surprising to say the least.

First of all, I instantly recognized where I was. And hell no, it was not just some random forest in the middle of nowhere… I’ve been here.

I was sitting at the base of the MIRE. Right next to the building where I found myself first when I arrived in this strange world.