fter her ass sashayed out of the room, Boylan followed, closing the door behind him. This left me the lone occupant of the room. I expected someone to check on me or perhaps bring food or something, but after what felt like days, nothing.

  Mercy’s departure had started a new chapter in my life. For the first time since I arrived here, I was alone. I had alone time while I was in Mord’s dungeon, sure, but this was different. With Mord, everything was so new, and there were rules and systems to learn. Even after I figured a few things out, there were still mysteries to solve and powers to cultivate. And when that failed, I had the occasional chat with Mord and, of course, the training with his younger self.

  I had none of that here. I couldn’t even focus on the collar as all my resources were sapped and skills cut off. All I could do was sit and let my mind slowly unravel.

  At first, my brain went to typical idle thoughts. There were even a few new ones about a certain torturer in a white sundress. Such things, though, lose their luster quickly. Even dreams of Vex slowly drifted away. After the Erotic fantasies faded, came the revenge planning. That too faded as more boredom settled in.

  After that came the deafening silence. I knew this was a thing. Isolation. But humans had needs, things to break up the monotony. Food, or even going to the bathroom, fixed all that and provided a much-needed source of interaction and tempo, even if it was just through the slot of a door.

  I didn’t blame Mercy for the tactic. It was sound. I had not expected the magical side of it, and that was my failing. I could have exploited a guard, or guards, or especially Boylan. But I can’t exploit nothing.

  My sense of time was back to what it was early in the dungeon. The cell lacked light or anything to determine time. I knew my work rest cycle was never solid enough to use; that’s why I always had a watch.

  It was worse with my enhanced body. I know for a fact I went days without food or water in the dungeon. Even if the Room of Recovery supplied it magically, I still spent plenty of time out of there or fighting Mord. Enough to at least need a drink. Magic either eliminated the need or provided for it. I was not sure.

  It was on pondering on the debate of magic vs magically enhanced biology that I felt it. It was just a whisper of a tingle in the back of my neck. At first, I thought it was a figment of my imagination, something to maintain my sanity as I slowly lost it and succumbed to the isolation.

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  It took several days or weeks, I couldn’t tell anymore, but I finally isolated the tingle. It was a thread of mana, and it was coming through the collar.

  I fixated on the feeling, the slight thread, completely shutting out the outside world. It became my everything. I traced it from the collar as it entered my neck and started splitting off and weaving through my body. The further it got from my neck, the thinner the threads got. I could feel it providing just the trickle of energy I needed to live.

  I was so focused on the mana that I started to get a feel for it. I was shocked that I could see it like I could with potential when I was cultivating. It wasn’t pure like the stuff in the dungeon, nor even as colorful as what I encountered on the road. This was tainted by a singular concept. I couldn’t place it, but I bet that the collar filtered out the rest or mixed this in to limit what I could do.

  If I were a betting man, I would have bet that the concept was Life, or Healing, or food, or something to keep me alive, but barely. It took strength to break out of a prison, even more to resist breaking.

  The thread became my lifeline. Literally, I could feel my sanity coming back. I had a project—a mystery to solve.

  It took several days, but I finally traced every thread across every inch of my body. It wasn't like the mana fed every cell directly, but it was more like its own circulatory system, just without veins to return the mana. It collected and just diffused into my body. I watched as it reached equilibrium as my cells all reached the same dilute state of filled.

  The rope went slack.

  I was lost. My lifeline was cut. I was so focused on the thread and my cells’ mana levels that I didn’t notice that I started pacing.

  The cell mana levels were dropping too rapidly. I stopped pacing, and the rate slowed. I focused on breathing and began meditating. The rate dropped to a slow trickle. Still, it eventually went too low and I passed out.

  The tingle from the collar woke me. I could still feel my cells. They had filled significantly while I was out.

  I traced the thread again. This time, I tried to follow it in reverse, to trace it back to my neck and into the collar.

  My neck flexed a little and lost contact with the collar, yet the flow remained. I was just reaching out of the surface of my neck when it cut off again. I screamed internally, also worrying that I triggered a failsafe. An inspection showed that my cells were again full.

  It took days to drain down again. I entered a pattern of wake—try to follow—disconnect—wait to pass out. I still got stuck at my neck. Eventually, I got frustrated and started pacing around the cell. I needed to find a way out of this maddening cycle.

  I felt my mana begin to drop as I paced. I didn’t care. All it could do was make me pass out faster.

  Pacing was the key.