Genius Mage in a Cultivation World

Irea didn't reply at all. It seemed that the pain from her injuries was finally reaching her brain through the barrier of shock, adrenaline, and the painkiller spell. Her lips only trembled, refusing to even pry open. 

But the answer was clear in her eyes. While Irea's face was torn by the torture of being burnt alive, her eyes were as calm as the surface of the ocean. As calm as human eyes could be.

"I will take that for yes, then," Layn said, approaching the girl and hugging her as if she didn't look like a monster with all her lacerating wounds. He hugged her tightly, seemingly ignoring the insane pain she had to go through when her burned-out wounds got squeezed and rubbed. 

"Now, go to sleep," Layn whispered into Irea's ear, infusing his voice with magic. This was the lowest level of hypnotic magic, something that most mages refused to acknowledge as magic art in the first place. Back in Layn's academy, hypnotic magic was considered to be right on the verge of the true suggestion magic and just tricks of hypnosis. 

But right now, with how weak Irea was, this was the perfect magic for the moment. 

Irea's eyes slowly died down, covered by her eyelids. In just a few moments, from being tensed from the pain all over, she relaxed in his arms, as if no pain in the world could affect her anymore. 

'Now it's all a game of time,' Layn thought, steeling himself for the round of one of the greatest magical shenanigans he could ever pull off. 

"First, decomposition," keeping the girl in her blissful sleep, Layn pushed his magic into the wounded parts of her body. Then, he ignited it without mercy, setting all her wounded flesh alight. 

Normally, a person would easily lose their might under such treatment. But with how Layn cut the connection between Irea's body and her psyche, he could save her all the pain of the treatment. 

And then, he basically did everything that would happen when using the primal recovery magic. 

The main reason why Layn wasn't going to just use the same primal magic on the girl was his own heart. He was simply unwilling to subject his lover to the world of pain that this kind of process would involve. 

Sadly, given how the primal magic worked at the lowest level of the magic, the patient that underwent its treatment couldn't be affected by other kinds of magic. 

That's why, instead of leaving everything to a more or less reliable spell, Layn ended up doing everything by hand. 

That, and there was a reason why he asked Irea if she was willing to die for him. 

Because to some degree, once Irea would wake up, she would no longer be the human she was born as. While her soul and her mind would remain the same, she was going to become a different being altogether, one that only had one more specimen in the entire world. 

Namely, Layn himself. 

"Burn away," Layn muttered, waving his hand lightly away. As if dust subjected to a strong wind, all the wounds of the girl cleared out. The burned flesh, infested tissues, all the parasites, and small traumas that Irea had in herself all turned into dust and withered away. 

"Now, condense," Layn's said softly. His eyes started to shine a bit when an overwhelming amount of mana started to flow both through the inner pathways he created by cultivating the local arts and through his aura. 

'Huh?' Layn twitched in surprise when he felt the two forces starting to react with each other. In the spot equally distant from both his inner and outer flow, some sort of void appeared. 

Just from a single look, Layn could tell that it was doing something insanely intricate and specific to the flow of his mana. 

'No, I cannot let myself be distracted,' Layn scolded himself, ignoring the strange occurrence and focusing his attention back at the girl in his arms.

According to his order, all the mana that could no longer be contained within his own flow would fill up the gaps in Irea's body. Slowly but steadily, more and more magic-infused itself into her injuries, as if replacing the very flash that Layn took away a moment ago. 

'Now for the hardest part,' Layn thought, feeling the girl up a bit. Not for the sake of cheap arousal, one that he would never get while trying to save the girl's life. All for the sake of reading her vitals because the amount of healing and reinforcement he could introduce into her system depended heavily on how much she could withstand. 

"Dear, I know you are sleeping right now, but you need to listen to me either way," Layn whispered into the girl's ear while slightly tightening his fingers on her delicate flesh. "What's going to happen next will be hard, even if you are sleeping. But you need to hold for as long as possible. This is the one and the only thing I will ever seriously request of you," Layn whispered before pulling his body away from the girl. 

Then, he looked at Irea's face and opened his lips.

"Transform," Layn spoke out without producing any voice. 

The mana inside Irea's body instantly turned into vortexes. Rather than turning into flesh itself, they created a powerful magnet for even more mana. 

At the same time, all the residual energy left after the two massive spells clashed converged all over Irea's body. Then, when there was no more mana to suck away from the air, Layn's own energy started to lose grip over his system, slowly getting sucked into the small whirlpools of magic. 

"More..." Layn whispered, feeling how the mana in his body continued to decrease. Bit by bit, a greater and greater percentage of his own power moved over to the girl's body. 

'Click.'

There was no sound. There was no flash of light. But for some reason, Layn could tell the vortexes reached their saturation point, beyond which any further intake of mana would simply go to waste. 

"NOW!" Layn shouted, using his own loud voice to ensure his magic would fire up. It wasn't something that he would need to do in his prime, but now, deprived of more than two-thirds of his mana, Layn could no longer guarantee the outcome of his spells. 

That's why using every little means of making them more likely to succeed was a given. 

This time though, it wasn't mana that moved. 

In a single second, the pouch by Layn's belt exploded, releasing all its coins from the inside. A small pile of coins of varying sizes and materials arranged themselves into an orderly array before flashing out. 

A small mist appeared all over the array, only for Layn to scoop it all up with another small spell of his. And then, as if he was flushing out the bucket he just filled with water, Layn threw all that tiny mist into the same vortexes he fed with a greater part of his magic a moment ago. 

"MEND!" Layn shouted from the bottom of his lungs, slowly losing his grip over the reality. With the scale of the spells he was using ever since a few moments ago, any ordinary mage would collapse many steps ago. 

Even though the latter part of the process didn't require any more mana to hold the spells up, it didn't mean Layn could keep those intricate structures going all without any effort.

What earlier cost Layn his mana to perform was now all burdening his mental state, chipping away at his consciousness with every moment. 

But as tiring and hard to hold as this spell was, Layn could see its effects with his naked eye. 

With the sufficient amount of mana in each of the vortexes, they quickly turned into a semi-fluid mass that filled the gaps left after the first stage of the treatment. But outside of the mana alone, this newly-made, artificial flesh had one additional element in it, one that no one else in this world had. 

The magic-stone dust. 

It was the same dust that Layn used to suck the thin mana out of the air. The same dust he used to make most of his artifacts. And exactly the same dust he used to make the magic coins previously. 

And right now, this dust was turning into an integral part of Irea's flesh, making her the very first human in this world to be able to use the world's mana directly. 

'As great as a bonus as it is, I can only hope she will be able to withstand the treatment,' Layn thought, as the visible part of the process came to an end. At this point, Irea no longer had any visible injures on herself. The only hint that proved that there was something wrong with her in the first place was the complete lack of hair. 

Given how it wasn't any important part of the body, Layn didn't dare to diverge his mana and mental resources into remaking her hair as well. 

But that was only the outside. Right now, Irea appeared to be completely healed. 

But the true battle was happening in her insides. 

'Come on, you can do it!' Layn encouraged the girl in his thoughts, using all his focus and remaining mana to keep the girl stable. 

Because what she was going through right now wasn't some kind of sickness or post-injury exhaustion. 

What her body was doing right now was trying to assimilate the parts of the flesh that Layn regenerated. 

And whether or not the additional element in her flesh and blood would make her body reject the transfer all depended on Irea's power of will alone.