As they moved further from camp, the forest thinned, its branches casting long shadows that broke apart with every step. Birds had stopped calling. Even the insects seemed to hold their breath.
Jozay walked a few paces ahead, his posture precise and sharp, every movement weighed and measured. Lucia's face flickered in his memory—wide-eyed, trusting. Useless. A distraction. Vale's compassion for her was another variable he couldn't control. He crushed the thought like an ember.
Jozay and Vale were meant to walk out of the forest, yet he decides for a split second that they should go back for a few days, Vale trailed behind, silently tracking him. They hadn't spoken much since they'd broken camp. She assumed it was about Lucia—about what happened after that last argument. But Jozay hadn't spoken Lucia's name once. So Vale broke the silence
"Weren't you irritated with this place seconds ago? why do you want to go back?"
"I figured I haven't learnt anything," Jozay says.
"You haven't learnt anything?, sigh." It's like taking care of a miserable baby.
Elias stirred, his voice quiet and probing inside Jozay's mind.
"Just now you just lied, didn't you?"
"Why can you tell?"
Because I can tell about your increased heart rate, stress hormones (cortisol), or subtle muscle tension when you're lying.
"Wow, just what I needed, a lying detector in my head."
"Why bring Vale out here, if you don't plan to learn anything?"
Jozay didn't break stride. "Because I'm watching."
"You're watching her?"
"She's strong. A solid B rank. To learn to walk, first watch the footsteps of those who have gone before you."
Elias paused. "You say that like you're not human."
Jozay didn't answer.
They pushed through a dense wall of underbrush, where dew-beaded ferns brushed against their legs and the scent of wet bark lingered in the air. The forest dimmed around them, canopy thick with age, sunlight filtering in slivers through the leaves like sacred fire through stained glass.
After a final stretch of thorny thickets, they stepped into a clearing. Ancient stones rose in uneven intervals around the perimeter, draped in shaggy cloaks of moss. A blackwood tree, gnarled and towering, anchored the center of the glade. Its roots cracked the soil in every direction, like a spider's web of veins.
Not far ahead, another path beckoned, narrower and darker, swallowed by curling vines and hanging mist.
Jozay stepped forward and raised a hand—a flicker of Pyro Mana snapped to life, wild and sharp.
"Fuel. Heat. Will," he muttered.
"Still wrong," Elias said. "Will comes first."
"Will is a variable. Fire is consistent."
"You're mixing concepts. Fire requires an emotional spark."
Jozay's hand twitched. "No. I'm filtering the flame."
"You filtered Lucia, too. Until you decided she wasn't useful."
Secrets were currency, and his was a vault. Let Elias whisper, Jozay thought. Let Vale suspect. No one would believe the truth—that his borrowed body came with a soul still clinging to its bones.
He smirked, watching the wind spiral in his palm. Talent? A lie. But lies were safer than ghosts.
Jozay wants Vale all to himself; an outside constant like Lucia is bound to be removed. Left for him, he had thoughts of purging Lucia himself if he got the chance, but he didn't, considering how she might be difficult to kill at his current level, and the fact that Vale wouldn't just stand there and watch it happen. Vale is definitely going to apprehend him in combat. In Jozay's former life, he could easily kill any human or animal that wasn't armed with a gun or bomb, but that's not possible in this world.
They reached a clearing surrounded by moss-choked stones, half-swallowed by the dark forest's roots. The ground was uneven, but Jozay didn't hesitate. He stepped into the center and lifted one hand.
Elias: "Let me explain for you."
"All mages have a Transmutational Reserve Core — the TRC, to use mana, one must go through these 3 stages. Namely, Input mana, transcription, output mana, and arcwell." It's the metaphysical engine that defines your relationship with mana.
Elias's Breakdown:
Input Mana — Vital Flow
"First, you grab mana. Raw stuff. Chaotic, primal — whether it's from your body or the world around you. Think of it like… binary code. Zeroes and ones. Untouched."
Transcription — Soul Filtering / Processing
"That raw junk flows through your soul. That's the most personal part. It's where things get messy — and meaningful."
"Your filter? Cold reason. Purpose. Hunger. The flame bends, sure, but your soul's stripping the heat. What's left is the oxygen. The wind."
"Other people need chants, gestures, rituals to make sense of it. You? You just think, I handle everything else. That's your transcription."
Output Mana — Bound Power
"What comes out is refined. Structured. Safe. That's what you use to cast. It's no longer chaotic — it's information now. Controlled. Bound."
Jozay narrowed his eyes. "And the Arcwell?"
"Your battery. The Arcwell holds the final product — Output Mana. It also keeps a smaller chamber for Input Mana. You don't want raw stuff leaking everywhere, trust me."
"Yours is storing more than it should, by the way. The numbers are way off for a D-ranked human. No wonder Vale had to scout for you."
There was no incantation. No stance. No chant or sigil. Just a boy standing in a clearing, one hand open, like he was letting something go.
From his palm, wind coiled, crisp, focused, born of nothing.
Except it wasn't anything.
It had been fire just moments ago.
Vale leaned forward from her perch on a boulder, arms resting on her knees. She watched Jozay, frowning, as the invisible spiral of Aero Mana danced around his fingers, compressed into a spinning vortex that hissed faintly like boiling water.
"That's… not normal," she muttered.
Jozay tilted his head slightly. The wind curled, changed angle. The pressure adjusted.
Inside him, Elias, the ghost in the shell — the original soul of this body — exhaled with a trace of dry amusement.
Elias: "Nice touch with the spiral. You're improving."
Jozay didn't respond aloud. His eyes stayed on the wind.
Elias: "And for the record? You didn't do that alone. I transcribed the Pyro Input Mana for you while you were distracted playing scientist."
Jozay gave the faintest shrug.
Elias: "You're welcome, by the way."
He knew it was true. While he'd been focusing on breaking down the fire — recognizing its thermal decay, oxygen release, and combustion mechanics — Elias had quietly handled the actual transcription of mana inside their shared Transmutational Reserve Core.
He provided the soul filter.
Jozay handled the breakdown logic.
It was a two-man operation… in one body.
Vale stood up slowly. Her boots crunched the dry grass. She took cautious steps toward him, the wind around his hand flickering but not dying.
"That's Aero Mana," she said flatly. "You used Pyro Mana a second ago. That shouldn't be possible without full elemental attunement or advanced TRC mutation."
Jozay lowered his hand, let the wind drift upward like smoke.
He didn't answer right away.
Vale's gaze sharpened. "How could you do that?"
He turned to her, face unreadable.
Then he smiled — just a little. Not smug. Not proud. More like someone telling a lie they wanted to believe.
"Talent… I guess?"
There was a long pause.
Even Elias couldn't help but snort in the back of Jozay's mind.
Elias: "You lying bastard."
Vale didn't look convinced. "That's not talent," she muttered. "That's a violation of magical law. You didn't just cast wind — you transcribed it mid-cast. That means your TRC isn't normal. That means you're not normal."
"Who taught you that?"
Jozay gave a small shrug. "No one," he said. "But I know fire gives off oxygen when broken properly. You take the heat, discard the fuel, redirect the pressure…"
He motioned vaguely with his fingers. "Boom. Air."
Vale stared at him like he'd grown a second head.
"You're either a prodigy," she said, "or a problem."
Jozay just smiled again — wider this time, but still not true.
Elias: "Let her guess. The fewer people who understand what you are, the longer you'll survive."
JOZAY (narrating):
I know what you're thinking.
If I have some dead guy whispering in my soul, transcribing mana like some ancient grimoire, why not tell anyone?
Simple.
Because people don't react well to ghosts.
Especially ones who aren't just ghosts — ones who used to own your body.
(He smirks slightly, glancing to the side, as if addressing an unseen audience.)
Let's just say it's complicated.
Not everyone's ready to hear: "Oh, hey. The reason I can cast like a Third-Class Transcriptor is because my soul roommate used to live in this body before I hijacked it during reincarnation. Cool, right?"
Yeah… no thanks.
Besides, I owe him some peace.
It's the least I can do after stealing his life.
(Cut back to real-time. Jozay and Vale move through overgrown brush. The trees are sparse, but charred stumps and scorched grass suggest a previous fire — maybe even his fault.)
They walked in silence until something snorted ahead — low and wet, like anger trying to breathe.
From behind a rock, a massive boar emerged. Veins glowed faintly beneath its bristled hide. Its tusks looked like they'd been dipped in molten iron. Its eyes locked on them instantly.
Vale froze mid-step.
"Mana-touched," she muttered. "Great."
Her hand moved to her sword, but her eyes stayed on the creature.
"They like pain," she added. "And they're faster than they look."
Jozay raised a hand gently.
"Let me try."
She shot him a sharp look. "Try? You ever fought one of these before?"
"No. But I've been practicing."
Vale's gaze flicked from him to the boar, then back. She didn't sheath her blade.
"This isn't a practice dummy. You mess up, it turns you into soup."
Jozay didn't respond. He stepped forward.
Vale didn't stop him — but she didn't back off either. She shifted slightly to flank the beast if things went wrong.
(Elias stirred in Jozay's mind, low and cautious.)
ELIAS:
"I can help you stabilize the airflow if you try a smoke tactic. Just say the word."
JOZAY:
"No. Not this time."
The boar lunged.
Jozay moved fast — no flair, no wasted motion. He thrust one hand toward a patch of brittle grass.
Snap.
A flare of Pyro Mana ignited dry earth. Smoke rose thick and choking, curling upward in choking waves.
Jozay raised his other hand.
Aero Mana answered. Jittery. Rough. Like wind from a cracked vent.
Still, it moved.
The smoke bent — pushed sideways — coiling into a wide arc that smothered the boar's vision. The creature grunted, confused, stumbling left.
Jozay stepped right.
Another flick of heat — fire licked up near the beast's hooves. It staggered.
Then —
One final burst. A sharp flare of flame directly to the eyes.
Crack.
The boar reared up, squealing. Then collapsed.
Dead.
("You will hate me if you ever learn the truth. That I built this world around your suffering."
"But I had no other choice.")
Jozay could swear he heard someone alter that in a soft reflexive tone. "Hey, did you hear that?"
"Hear what? Let me guess, your sound of victory?". Elias said in a mocking tone
Maybe I'm hearing things, so I brushed it off as just a wind passing by
Smoke hung low in the air. The grass smoldered quietly.
Jozay exhaled.
Not because he was tired. But because he was… satisfied.
Vale approached slowly. Her sword was still sheathed.
She stopped beside the corpse, nudged it with her boot.
"You're not good at wind," she said bluntly.
"Well, not yet," he replied.
"But that was smart," she admitted, glancing sideways at him. "Crude. Unrefined. But smart."
(She lifted one hand — a flicker of cold light danced in her palm. A playful threat. Nothing more.)
"I could've frozen its brain through the eye socket and been done in two seconds."
"I believe you," Jozay said with a half-smile.
She stared at him a moment longer, squinting.
"You're more talented than you look."
He chuckled. "Thanks… I think?"
Vale didn't laugh. She studied the grass, the burnt patches, the still-rising smoke.
"That wasn't beginner's luck," she said at last. "You knew exactly what you were doing. You bent two elements like they were cousins at a dinner party."
Jozay's smile faltered slightly.
"Who taught you that?"
He shrugged. "Sylvaine."
Vale's brow furrowed.
"The master?" Vale inwardly asked.
"Well, I knew you were talented, but to this extent comes as a surprise to me. But it is no surprise if the master (恩師) taught you"
Jozay said nothing.
She glanced at him, then turned and walked back toward their packs.
"Next time," she said over her shoulder, "don't wait for me to save you. I won't."
(Later, they sit by the fire. The boar's meat chars quietly on sticks over the flames.)
Jozay stares into the blaze.
(Elias finally speaks again.)
"So, are you satisfied?"
"Not yet. But it's something." Replied Jozay inwardly, it was night, and Jozay had cooked a meal off the boar. It wasn't an easy match, which makes it all the worth eating
"Damn, this taste good, want some?" Jozay is chewing and asking mockingly
"Sorry, but I am not hungry, least not yet, need to get some rest."
Crazy. She hasn't eaten in two days, and she still isn't hungry. How come of that?
"She's a B rank, pretty sure energy transmutation is like a natural thing for her." Elias answers
"Hmm, what's up with that?, Energy transmutation, I mean, sounds like a broad concept"
"Not in the traditional sense. Her core — her internal system — must be advanced. She's likely converted ambient mana directly into biofunctional energy."
"Heat for bloodflow. Charge for nerves. Nutrient structures are shaped from elemental templates. It's complex, but possible."
"Mana shaped into food?"
"No — into the idea of food. She doesn't digest it. She simulates it."
"The TRC — or whatever construct she uses — transforms raw mana into mimetic energy: sugar-analogues, oxygen proxies, even the subtle chemicals that keep the mind stable."
"Well, I would've loved to learn that, but I am too hungry to try," he chuckled
The more I pull mana through this body…
…the less of a stranger it feels.
Not because I'm adapting to it.
But because it's adapting to me.
And the truth is — that should scare me.
Because whatever Elias was before me…
…he wasn't just a mage.
He was something else.
Elias was silent, he didn't have a clue in the world about what he was.
Night settles over the forest, blanketing the trees in shadow. A fire crackles between Jozay and Vale, casting gold-orange flickers across their faces. The scent of roasted boar mingles with pine sap and damp earth. They sit close to the flames, their meal simple—meat skewered on sharpened sticks, forest greens wrapped in leaves and steamed over hot stones.
Jozay eats quietly, gaze distant, his body relaxed but his mind clearly somewhere far off.
Vale watches him with subtle intent, saying little. As he chews, she subtly brushes her fingers across her thigh, channeling a detection spell into the air. The mana spreads out in a thread-thin pulse, invisible to the eye—designed to pick up residual traces radiating from Jozay's body.
The results are near-instant.
The TRC pattern doesn't match anything she's ever recorded in a human.
It's too smooth—too layered, even. Like something is echoing beneath his mana signature. Not foreign, not divine. But… unstable? Suppressed?
Vale doesn't let the surprise show on her face. Instead, she reaches casually toward the fire pit and pulls out a charred boar tusk, one end blackened and still warm. Mana-conductive, just porous enough to absorb traces of ambient residue.
She tucks it into a small leather pouch at her side.
Jozay doesn't seem to notice. Or maybe he does, and he's letting her pretend he doesn't.
The fire pops. A breeze stirs the trees. And Vale leans back, eyes on the stars now, mind racing beneath her composed exterior.
"Interesting, his mana isn't too abnormal, but he has unbelievably high potential."
He knew.
The moment her fingers twitched, just a flicker too deliberate—he felt the mana thread sweep through the air. Soft, precise. Wrapped in silence like a needle dipped in oil.
Detection spell.
Subtle, refined. Elven.
Elias spoke from the hollow corner of his mind, voice like the whisper of wind inside a cave.
"She's scanning you."
I know.
He kept chewing. The meat was dry.
He didn't mind that she was doing it—Vale wasn't the first. Wouldn't be the last. People liked to pretend they weren't suspicious. They'd ask questions with their eyes, send spells like fingers tracing the outline of a locked box.
Still, part of him wanted to smirk.
You'll not find anything, Vale.
But you won't say it yet.
You'll store it. Like the tusk you just pocketed.
So he let her.
Let her believe he didn't notice. Let her think she was in control. It made her comfortable—and a comfortable person always told more of the truth.
But the truth?
Even I don't know what I am.
And I'm too tired to lie about it.
The fire crackled louder now. Vale finally broke the silence.
"You don't feel like a normal human," she said, her voice light but probing. "TRC pattern's off."
Jozay shrugged, met her eyes with just enough laziness to seem disinterested.
"I don't know," he said, tone flat but not unfriendly. He stabbed another piece of meat with his stick.
"Just a normal person?"
He offered a half-smile. The kind that revealed nothing, but invited her to keep guessing.
The meat sizzled softly over the crackling flame, spitting fat and ash as Jozay sat cross-legged, chewing on a charred strip of boar flesh. Smoke drifted lazily into the evening air.
"Well, whatever. I want to go to sleep. Don't do anything too careless." Said Vale
"Okay"
He looked satisfied and proud. Jozay now, feels this would be a good time to talk about his achievement during the boar fight.
"Hey, Elias?"
"Yeah?"
"Did you see that?" he said, through a mouthful. "I moved like air itself. That was definitely Aero Mana, right?"
The silence in his head was unusual. Then, finally—
[Elias]: "No. That wasn't Aero."
Jozay blinked.
"Huh?"
Elias's voice rang clear inside his mind, more teacher than passenger now.
"Tell me, Jozay. Did you ever feel the signature pull of the wind? The hum of flow? The permission of pressure?"
"...No?" Jozay muttered, chewing slower now.
"Exactly."
"Because you never used Aero. You extracted the motion from Pyro. You dissected it."
Jozay looked into the fire. The same fire he had used moments ago to hurl himself at the beast faster than thought—spinning, cutting, igniting. It had moved more like wind than flame. That part had felt odd.
Like fire had folded, reshaped itself unnaturally.
"What do you mean dissected?" Jozay asked, more cautious now.
"Every elemental mana is a complex of intertwined laws, right? Pyro isn't just heat—it's combustion, expansion, entropy, reaction. Aero is pressure differentials and motion threads. You didn't learn Aero, Jozay… you ripped the motion thread out of Pyro. That's not fusion. That's dissection."
[System Brief – Mana Dissection Theory]
Pyro Mana: [Combustion Thread] + [Entropy Thread] + [Motion Thread]
Normally used as a whole. Dissection requires forcibly extracting one thread from the composite.
Warning: Dissection is unstable. Not recognized by the standard Sigil architecture.
Jozay's hand froze midway to his mouth. The boar meat hung loosely between his fingers.
"...Wait. If it's not Aero, then what did I cast?"
Elias: "You didn't cast anything. You repurposed a law.
You didn't awaken a new Sigil—you operated outside the Mana System altogether."
Jozay's eyes narrowed.
"But that's impossible. The whole world uses mana. If it doesn't show up on the back of my hand, it shouldn't even be real."
"That's the lie." Elias's voice was quieter now, heavier.
"The truth is, there's a class of users who don't bind new elements through Sigils… They find a single element and undo its bindings. They reach inside a spell and take out the thread that isn't supposed to be used alone."
Attempted Element Registration: [Aero Thread] via Pyro Source – Invalid
Status: [Thread Path – Uncodified]
Classification: Non-mana Manipulation Detected
Jozay exhaled slowly.
"So I didn't learn Aero... I forced Pyro to behave like it."
"No wonder it felt like I was being dragged instead of flying."
Elias spoke again, but this time it sounded less like an explanation and more like a revelation.
"You didn't learn a new form. You committed conceptual heresy. You cracked open a defined law and used its insides without earning it. Well I assisted but whatever."
The flames flickered oddly for a moment, reacting to Jozay's shifting pulse.
The mana on the back of his hand—his one true mark—remained unchanged.
Yet something had clearly changed inside him.
He looked at the fire again, but this time… he understood it. Not as an element. But as a structure. A system of parts.
Like an engine waiting to be pulled apart.
"Elias."
"Am I a mage?"
"No."
"You're a threadcutter. The kind of being that the mana System was designed to suppress."
"Which means…"
Jozay was slowly pulling another strip of boar meat from the fire.
He chews quietly. Thoughtfully. The taste is smoky.
But tonight, for the first time…
The flame feels more like a dissected beast than a companion.
Vale didn't speak. She only let the silence stretch, the kind that hides knives between breaths. Only pretending to be asleep.
Jozay didn't look at her, but he smiled—just slightly. The kind that doesn't reach the eyes.
Elias stirred again.
"She's onto you."
Jozay reached for another skewer, tearing off a strip of meat with his teeth.
He chewed slowly.
"I know."
"Hey Elias, let's explore this world together alright?"
"Yeah, sure."