Akari shot up from the ground, gasping for air.

  She quickly looked around, trying to figure out where she was and what happened to her.

  She was sweating and her body was covered with small cuts and bruises. They’re mainly concentrated on her fist, as if she were punching something she couldn't break over and over. Luckily for her, she couldn’t feel a thing.

  She sat on the ground as she began using her regenerative aura, having too many spread out wounds to use focused healing.

  As she herself, she noticed that she had cuffs on that were constantly trying to absorb the mana she emitted to heal herself.

  Sadly for it, her bottomless source wasn’t deterred by the cuffs mana draining attributes, as she just used more mana than it could absorb and healed herself completely. The strange energy rotating around her heart also wasn’t affected, likely because it wasn’t mana in the first pce.

  Either way, Akari knew that she had a limited amount of that energy, so she decided to just save it even though it regenerates on its own.

  Once her body was healed, she got up and looked around.

  She was in a cell with no windows and only one way out, a steel door. The walls were a dark grey and there was a ceiling light, her only light source.

  “Wait… these types of lights.”

  They were modern lights, lights one would see in modern homes from her world.

  “How!?”

  Akari didn’t know what to make from this.

  This world, which should’ve been much more primitive than her old world, was now showing her things from said world.

  There was something different about Slyvanna, and Akari had a theory on what it was.

  ‘The ruler must be from my world.’

  There was no other conclusion she could reach.

  The skyscrapers, the Japanese buildings, even the apartments that she saw in the outer city were all things she didn’t see in Algoa and the Cyan Kingdom.

  Nonetheless, Akari wanted out.

  She hated being confined to one pce.

  Hence, she let her mana envelop herself, strengthening her bones, muscles, fat, and skin.

  Her body tensed for a second before rexing, the honeycomb structured mana bringing her body beyond the limits of normal humans.

  She drew back her fist, her entire arm flexing, tensing, becoming even stronger.

  She twisted her body and unched her blow, smming her fist into the wall. This mighty blow shook the entire room, yet there was no sound. Akari found this strange, but would think about it after escaping.

  However, instead of the expected outcome, the wall simply glowed up.

  Slowly, it stopped glowing and Akari’s body was covered in cuts, her arm broken as well. Her vision blurred right when this happened, her head feeling like it was spinning. Though she didn’t feel it, she did feel disorientated, likely from the amount of damage she just took.

  ‘It reflects damage?!’

  Akari backed up, immediately using focused healing on her arm.

  Her arm, bckened by bruises, slowly regained its color. Her muscles reattached themselves and her bones glued themselves back together.

  She had used a bit of the strange spirit energy this time. Although the cuffs couldn’t stop her from using magic, they succeeded in making her spells unstable. The spirit energy helped stabilize it and still strengthened the magic.

  Once her arm is healed, she activates her regenerative aura to heal the rest of her body, pacing around the room, thinking about her situation.

  Her cuts and bruises from when she first woke up were extremely simir to the ones she was healing now. She must’ve woken up a few times before, being in the same loop of attacking the wall and passing out from the damage.

  But her question was, why did she stay conscious this time?

  Her only assumption to this was that her body simply grew stronger.

  With continuous trauma and healing right after, her muscles will come back stronger. She quite literally destroyed herself until she could withstand her own strength.

  As she reaches this conclusion, she sees the cell door open.

  It was a guard. It had an all bck outfit on and a cap covering its eyes and a cloak covering most of its body except its torso and a bit of its legs..

  Akari could tell it wasn’t human though. It didn’t have an ounce of mana coming from itself.

  Instead, it looked like it had an artificial core deep inside, producing electricity from inside of its body.

  Akari wanted to rip it apart and study it, it functioned in a way extremely simir to mana.

  It gestured for Akari to follow it, and she obliged.

  Akari’s footsteps filled the halls, the guard making not a single sound. Akari, even with her enhanced senses, couldn’t hear a sound from the guard, or the other cells at that.

  ‘So my blow really didn’t make any sound…’

  She looked around the hall as she walked.

  It wasn’t really extravagant, but it looked better than her idea of a prison

  There were ceiling lights all down the hall, and they weren’t dimmed. They were bright, likely to compensate for the ck of windows.

  All of the other cells down the hall had doors simir to Akari, made of steel. Even with this, Akari could still feel others in cells.

  They were all around her age, some having more mana than others.

  The halls were bnd, yet extremely clean. The grey walls gave a sense of dread and yet, everything was so neat that it didn’t let you fall into despair.

  They reached a door near the end of the hall, it being slightly bigger than the normal cell doors and being made of a simir, yet different material. It was the same color, but Akari could see that the door had mana flowing through it.

  The material the door was made of could conduct mana, making it even stronger than the walls in this entire prison.

  ‘This guy must be important…’

  The guard lifted its arm, knocking on the door.

  Just as Akari thought, this guard wasn’t human. The arm was made of a bck steel with a red liquid flowing through, making an intricate pattern down its arm. Akari could see that the electricity she could sense earlier was using this liquid as its path around the body.

  Akari wanted to know exactly what the red substance was, but she had already come to a conclusion to what it was.

  It was most likely blood.

  This guard was a humanoid that seemed to have been transformed into whatever he is now.

  Blood is conductive, and easy to obtain if you have a beating heart.

  Akari could sense its heart beating, yet its blood was both outside and inside its body.

  This is likely why it was so strong even though it doesn’t have access to mana.

  *Knock.*

  The guard made one knock, and stepped to the side.

  Switches in the door go off, making sharp sounds and changing the mana flow.

  The door split in half and began sinking into the walls on either side.

  ‘Woah.’

  Once the door finished opening, Akari stepped through.

  The first thing that caught her eye was the man sitting in the back, his head leaned back as if he were resting.

  The weird part wasn’t the fact that he didn’t acknowledge her yet, it was the snake around his neck. The snake's green eyes pierced Akari. It reminded her of the spirits she’d seen before reaching Slyvanna.

  It had purple scales and was pretty long. It could coil around the man's neck around 4 times.

  “Akari Ignius, daughter of the duke of Algoa.”

  The man began speaking to Akari, his head still tilted back.

  He began rubbing his temples, as if he had a headache.

  “Have you enjoyed your stay?”

  Akari didn’t know how to respond. Her only memories of this pce were waking up, punching the wall, and passing out.

  “Sure”

  Akari said after thinking for a moment.

  The man finally opened his eyes and fixed his posture. He had emerald green eyes with brown skin. His hair was pitch bck and he had a small bush on the top of his head.

  “So, where is it?”

  “Where is what?”

  The man stayed quiet for a moment before continuing.

  “Where is the core?”

  ‘So that was a core…’

  Akari immediately knew what he was talking about. It was the sphere that she took from the thief.

  “I’m not too sure, I’m not even wearing the clothes I came here with…”

  Akari said, her eyes slightly beginning to glow.

  She was analyzing the room.

  For a room in a prison, it was definitely extravagant.

  This was the first time she saw windows inside of here, there being 2 windows on the back wall, with the man sitting in between them. Everything in the room had mana flowing through it, even the papers that were on the desk having small streams of mana going through it.

  There were two paintings on the left and right walls, one side having a painting of a war and the other having a portrait. It was him and what Akari assumed to be his family.

  Akari wasn’t too interested in this, so she didn’t look further into the paintings.

  The ground had a bck and white zig zag pattern with a red and bck carpet in the middle of the room.

  The material looked beautiful.

  Right underneath the paintings id couches, red and gold. They looked extremely comfortable, yet Akari felt that she shouldn’t sit on them.

  Along the walls, there were many medals. There were so many of them that they filled all the space on the walls.

  “Ah, I see. So they were stored in your old clothes?”

  He inquired as he stood up.

  Akari could see that he was wearing the same suit as the guard, with one difference. He had a badge on his chest, right in front of his heart. On it read the words

  [Ken]

  [Warden]

  [Sylvanna Kids division]

  “Yeah, probably…”

  He began walking towards Akari with a relieved expression as he said,

  “I’ll tell you if I find it, if I do, since you’re the duke's daughter, I can probably let you out of here.”

  Akari nodded as he passed her, with him saying to the guard as he passed it,

  “Lead her back to her room, starting tomorrow, she can join the other kids.”

  The guard stood there for a moment before turning to Akari and gesturing for her to follow it.

  As he walked off, Akari could hear him say,

  “Finally, a vacation!”

  Akari followed the guard, taking her time as there wasn’t anything to do in the cell anyways.

  Using her soul weapon once more, her eyes began to glow. She was trying to look into the other cells.

  In one cell, she could see two boys, sitting from across each other, talking.

  ‘So people could have roommates here huh?’

  In another, she saw a girl watching… tv?!

  “How the actual hell did she get a tv???”

  The guard didn’t respond and kept walking.

  Akari, fbbergasted, decided to stop looking into other cells.

  She didn’t want to become envious of such lucky individuals.

  Once she reached her cell, the guard took off her cuffs. With this, her mana flow became much more stable.

  This didn’t st for long though.

  The guard repced it with a bracelet, which did the same thing as the bracelets but to an even greater extent.

  Akari genuinely couldn’t control her mana like this.

  Although the bracelet couldn’t ever drain her of all her mana, it did mess with her mana veins. Not physically, but it did cause her mana to not go the direction she wanted.

  Once the guard left, Akari sat on her bed, feeling agitated.

  She was stuck.

  Right after she finally left the Cyan Kingdom, she got stuck.

  If she knew that this would happen, she would’ve stayed at the Cyan Kingdom.

  “Ahhhhhh.”

  Akari let out an exasperated sigh, her feelings feeling even more votile due to her body.

  Just as she was about to start thrashing about, she spotted a dim light in the corner of her cell.

  It was a flower.

  A sunflower.

  One that emitted a dim blue light.

  It was Liebe.