The transition from the ethereal, silent void of the Soul Space back into the unforgiving reality of the physical world was like being thrown from a moving carriage.
Lencar's eyes snapped open. He didn't execute a smooth, calculated return to his senses; he gasped, a violent, desperate inhalation that dragged the sub-zero, ozone-rich mountain air down into his burning lungs. He choked on a mouthful of freezing rain, his chest heaving as he rolled onto his side on the slick obsidian rock.
His heart, which had slowed to a near-standstill during his spiritual detachment, suddenly hammered against his ribs in a frantic, panicked rhythm. It felt like a trapped bird trying to batter its way out of his chest, desperate to circulate oxygen back into blood that had momentarily stagnated. He didn't scream, but a violent, uncontrollable shiver wracked his entire frame as the biting chill of the Thunder-Crag Peaks registered against his skin once more. The storm, which he had entirely bypassed in the silent grey mist of the soul realm, returned with a vengeance, howling in his ears and pelting his back.
But Lencar couldn't afford the luxury of lying in the mud to recover from the metaphysical whiplash. Time was slipping through his fingers like dry sand.
The impossibly complex image of the deteriorating Chimera Rune—Morris's twisted, brilliant masterpiece of magical engineering—was currently burned into his short-term memory. But it was fading. He could already feel the edges of the geometric lattice fraying in his mind, the intricate connections blurring like a dream slipping away upon waking. The human brain, even one reinforced by Stage 3 mana, was simply not designed to hold onto non-native, multi-dimensional magical architecture for long. It was like trying to carry water in a sieve; the vital data was leaking out with every passing heartbeat. If he didn't hard-code this information into the physical world immediately, the greatest magical secret of the Diamond Kingdom would be lost forever.
He didn't waste a single second. He pushed himself up onto his knees, fighting the intense vertigo that threatened to send him toppling over the cliff.
"[Spatial Magic]: [Void Vault] - Access."
His voice was hoarse, rough from the cold and the screaming wind, but the intent behind the incantation was razor-sharp. He thrust his right hand forward, tearing a localized, jagged rift in the fabric of space mere inches from his face. He plunged his arm into the sterile, white vacuum of his pocket dimension. He bypassed the racks of stolen weapons, ignored the crates of gold and potions, his fingers blindly, desperately seeking out his research supplies.
His hand closed around the familiar texture of a heavy, leather-bound notebook—filled with expensive, waterproof vellum pages he had purchased in Nairn—and a thick stick of dense charcoal.
He yanked them out and dismissed the spatial rift with a thought. He dropped into a low, stable crouch, hunching his broad shoulders over the notebook to shield the pages from the torrential downpour with his own body.
He ignored the freezing rain that splashed against his neck and dripped from the edges of his wooden mask. He ignored the erratic, blinding lightning strikes that threatened to deafen him and ruin his night vision. He blocked out the howling wind and the agonizing ache in his bruised knuckles. He funneled every ounce of his formidable focus, every shred of his past life's experience as a meticulous, detail-oriented data analyst, into his right hand.
He began to draw.
His hand moved in a frantic, desperate blur, the charcoal scratching harshly and loudly against the thick vellum. He wasn't trying to render a pretty picture or a work of art. He was drafting a pure, mathematical schematic. He was translating the horrifying language of a mutilated soul into 2D geometry.
Forty-seven point five degrees at the primary vertex, his mind raced, forcing his hand to sketch the exact, sharp angle of the silver lattice. The mana flow valve... it intersects the secondary structure right here. Yes. And the anchor point...
He paused for a microsecond, the charcoal hovering. He remembered the way the rune had dug into Mars's natural crystal affinity.
It's a six-point barbed hook structure, Lencar realized, his stomach churning with a mix of awe and disgust as he drew it. It's designed to brutally bypass the soul's natural immune response. It hooks in and refuses to let go, feeding off the host's natural mana to sustain the foreign element. God, it's vicious. Morris is a butcher, but he's a genius.
His wrist snapped back and forth with frantic precision, trying to outrace his own fading memory. He drew the rune exactly as he had observed it in Mars's chest—fractured, decaying, and structurally imperfect. He didn't try to fix the broken lines or guess at the missing pieces; he documented the failure points exactly as they were. He mapped the precise locations where the silver geometric threads had snapped under the pressure of his anti-magic shockwaves. Understanding exactly how and why the masterpiece failed was just as critical as understanding how it was supposed to function.
The curvature of the containment sphere holding the fire magic is roughly a twelve-degree arc. The degradation is heavily concentrated at the southern pole of the construct... it needs a consistently higher density of ambient mana to maintain the artificial bond. Without it, the thermal volatility of the fire magic causes spontaneous spiritual combustion.
He scribbled furiously, filling the margins with frantic notes, messy flow charts, and tightly written numerical hypotheses regarding mana density requirements and soul-stress tolerances. His handwriting, usually neat and blocky, was a jagged scrawl.
He drew for ten grueling minutes. His hand cramped terribly, the muscles in his forearm screaming in protest. His fingers were completely black with wet charcoal dust, but he didn't stop until the image in his mind finally degraded into a blurry, unreadable smudge of grey light.
His hand fell still. The charcoal stick snapped in his grip, the pieces tumbling onto the wet rock.
He let out a long, ragged breath, a thick plume of white mist escaping the slits of his mask.
He looked down at the schematic spread across three open pages. It was chaotic. It was incredibly messy, covered in smudged fingerprints and crossed-out equations. It was undeniably incomplete. Morris's horrifying intellect was far too complex to perfectly reverse-engineer from a single, decaying observation.
But as Lencar stared at the geometric nightmare he had just committed to paper, a profound, heavy sense of relief washed over him. It was the core framework. It was the blueprint of the "semi-finished" rune. It was the foundation he needed.
"I have it," Lencar breathed, clutching the heavy notebook to his chest, uncaring as the wet leather stained his fresh wool tunic. "The Chimera Rune. Or at least, the wreckage of it. I actually have it."
He carefully tucked the notebook away into the Void Vault, sealing it safe from the elements.
As the frantic adrenaline of the drafting process finally began to recede, allowing him to feel his body again, a new, entirely different sensation took its place.
His blood felt hot.
The execution of Absolute Replication on a target of such immense, unnatural magical density had triggered a massive, systemic response within his own spiritual architecture. The sheer volume of raw, high-tier magical data he had absorbed—tearing two distinct, powerful soul gems from a Diamond General—had violently stretched his internal meridians far beyond their previous limits.
Lencar closed his eyes, ignoring the storm, turning his focus entirely inward to quantify the change.
The invisible barrier he had been pushing against for more than a week now—the hard, stubborn ceiling of a Stage 3 mage—had completely and utterly shattered. The density of his mana had increased exponentially. It no longer flowed through him like a steady river; it rushed through him like a highly pressurized geyser, carrying a heavy, refined, and incredibly potent kinetic charge. It felt like he had swallowed a star.
"Stage 3 Peak," Lencar whispered, genuine awe bleeding into his voice.
He flexed his bruised, charcoal-stained hands, feeling the terrifying, intoxicating thrum of absolute power vibrating in his bones. He was operating directly on the statistical border of Stage 2. He possessed the raw output capacity of a Magic Knight Captain. He was no longer just a skilled trickster hiding in the shadows with stolen utility spells; he was a genuine, undeniable powerhouse.
Furthermore, he could feel the distinct, heavy presence of his two new, highly volatile prizes safely housed within his internal spiritual repository.
The High-Level Crystal Magic Soul Gem.
The High-Level Fire Magic Soul Gem.
He had carefully, meticulously quarantined both gems within separate, isolated sectors of his soul space. He kept them far away from his primary Wind and Earth circulations to prevent any accidental cross-contamination or internal systemic conflict. They lay dormant, glowing softly in the dark expanse of his soul, awaiting the day he decided to process, refine, and integrate them into his active arsenal.
Lencar stood up, his heavy boots finding secure purchase on the slick obsidian. He pivoted, the wind catching his black cloak, and looked down at the Diamond Kingdom General.
Mars remained unconscious on the wet rock, sprawled on his back. Without his towering, terrifying crystal armor, and stripped of the chaotic mana that usually surrounded him, he looked incredibly pale, fragile, and young.
Lencar observed him, the euphoria of his power-up fading as his analytical mind quickly assessed the boy's state.
Mars was breathing steadily. His chest rose and fell in a normal rhythm. His heart rate, though likely elevated from the severe physical trauma Lencar had inflicted on him, appeared stable. He was a resilient survivor of horrific experiments; he would survive the physical beating easily.
But magically? Mars was now on a catastrophically low capacity.
Lencar had almost stripped him bare. Mars's patchwork, stitched-together grimoire had completely dissolved into carbon dust the moment the soul connection was severed. His grafted Fire Magic—the stolen essence of Fana—was gone, safely locked away inside Lencar's soul. And his natural, immense Crystal Magic seed had been surgically extracted from its core.
While the human body possessed miraculous regenerative properties—Mars would eventually, over the course of several years, generate a new, faint magical seed tied to his fundamental genetics—his current combat utility was absolute zero. He was, for all intents and purposes, a standard, magic-less civilian. He was weaker than a peasant in Hage.
Lencar frowned beneath his mask, a cold knot of dread forming in his stomach.
If Mars regained consciousness in this state, stranded in a Grand Magic Zone or even if he somehow managed to return to the Diamond Kingdom, the military hierarchy would immediately realize their ultimate weapon was broken. They wouldn't rehabilitate him. They wouldn't give him time to recover. They would classify him as a defective asset. He would be executed, or worse, sent back to Morris's laboratory to be vivisected to figure out what went wrong.
And if Mars died, or was permanently imprisoned...