"Aha! I've got it!"
Mognog exclaimed from his perch on Ritzy's shoulder, startling the latter awake.
Ritzy had spent the day walking to put Benin and their eventual pursuers far behind them. But when night fell, he decided to take a break. After all, he didn't feel as pressured to flee as he had done when he and Gerhart escaped Baron Michmond's troops' pursuit.
However, there was a certain someone who didn't get tired. Mognog could continue tinkering with the different mana training methods non-stop. It was challenging since he couldn't write down anything and had to do it all in his mind. But by now, Mognog had gotten used to the endless stamina of an undead and being constrained to the physical form of a single skull.
"Mmyeah? Good, that mosquito was really bothering me."
Ritzy answered groggily before leaning back against the tree to continue sleeping.
"What mosquito? Ah, never mind. That wasn't it, kiddo! I've finished the method!"
Mognog didn't allow himself to get caught in Ritzy's web and rediverted the topic back to the most important matter at hand, the mana method combination that would let Ritzy become strong enough to accomplish his goals.
That woke Ritzy right up.
"Mmyeah! Where is it?"
Ritzy looked around for a manual.
"Kiddo."
Mognog squinted at Ritzy and spoke with a deadpan voice. He would have gestured at his lack of body and means to write down the finished method if he could have done so.
"Ah, right. Hehe."
Ritzy giggled in embarrassment as he remembered that Mognog couldn't write anything down.
"So, do you just say it out loud, and I memorize it?"
"It would probably be best to write it down so you don't misremember anything, but it's not like you have anything to write on or with."
"Yeah. I mean, I have a knife, but etching it on my skin might be a bit much. I also might not have enough to write on since I can't reach my back."
Mognog looked at Ritzy in shock. But before he could say anything, Ritzy's eyes lit up in realization.
"Ah!"
One of the Deathbeds flew up out of the ground. It was the one with the ruffian from Benin.
Mognog realized what Ritzy had realized. It would be difficult to write on his own body, but he just had to write on someone else's.
Mognog briefly wondered how Ritzy had so quickly gone from having nothing to write on so he should memorize it to self-mutilation and finally corpse mutilation. But following Ritzy's train of thought had never been easy, so he dropped with a sigh and, on Ritzy's urging, recited the finished method.
Well, the method might not be completely finished, but it should be a working or useable first draft. Mognog wanted to perfect it further before handing it over to Ritzy, but doing so without first writing it down would be a mistake since he might change it so it doesn't work. It would also be easier to look at the method in its entirety if it were written down.
Ritzy was surprisingly fast at stripping the man and wiping away the still-wet blood on his body before he took his knife and began carving. Mognog ignored Ritzy's musing about how it would have been easier to do after rigor mortis set in or if the man had been more muscular and just focused on reciting the method.
Eventually, Mognog finished reciting, and Ritzy finished carving, leaving them with one blood and letter-covered back. Ritzy had managed to write small enough to fit it all on one side of the man's upper body. Mognog couldn't help but feel a weird sense of admiration.
Ritzy wiped the sweat off his brow before proceeding to wipe the blood off the corpse's back. He had dabbed it away as he wrote, but blood continued pearling on his method, making it hard to read.
"Should I just peel it off?"
"And risk tearing it? Don't. Focus on reading and learning the method. Don't break through at once. Just check if it's viable."
"Okes."
It didn't take long for Ritzy to skim and read the whole thing since he had written it down while listening to Mognog. He already knew it to a degree.
After some time, Ritzy nodded.
"Yeah, it works, but I have a couple of suggestions."
Mognog nodded almost as if he had expected it. No, he didn't nod.
He had started getting a better sense of Ritzy's talent when it came to mana. Even if Ritzy was a Novice and had never done anything like this before, he still managed to notice areas of improvement. He had also played a crucial part in deciding which methods to combine.
"This part here. Over here as well. These sentences seem off. That one, too. Oh, and this entire section, I think, could be better."
Mognog could almost feel a vein pop on his forehead. Was the method he had toiled away at for an entire night that bad?
"Oh, and I think changing these few things will make it more suitable for me especially."
Mognog sighed and started making the changes as Ritzy instructed. He almost wondered why Ritzy didn't just do it on his own when he noticed that was, in fact, what Ritzy was doing. He was looking at the written method with one eye while swimming around in his brain with the other, tinkering and modifying the method.
'Seriously, what kind of death mage has brought me back into the world?'
Mognog couldn't help but be astonished. Was this even within the realm of reason? It seemed Ritzy grew more and more incredible and impossible to see through with each passing moment.
Mognog didn't disturb Ritzy and just continued working on the method, still wondrous over his fate that had brought him to Ritzy.
Ritzy and Mognog both finished making their changes after a relatively short period of time. They compared notes, made more changes, and repeated until they had something they were both satisfied with. Unfortunately, they had run out of space on Ritzy's human notebook, so the final edition was trapped in their minds.
But both Ritzy and Mognog felt that it might be better that way to reduce the chances of someone learning the monster they had created. It was subtle, but they could feel the lurking potential and might in the method they had created.
Created, not combined.
The new method had vague hints of the ingredients mixed in, but it was something else entirely. Of that, there was no question. Someone experienced in both the Killgara and Mognog Empire systems' methods could tell that the new method was a mix of both. But it resembled neither. It was like the two mana systems' child.
The new method wasn't just the child of the Killgara and Mognog mana mastery systems. It was the good and capable child who would go on to do great things in the future.
"I'm getting kinda excited, Moggy."
"Me too, kiddo. Me too."
Ritzy and Mognog looked at each other, their eyes brimming with giddy light.
"So…?"
"'So' what?"
"We have to think of a name!"
"Now? Why not wait until you've at least broken through to become an Apprentice?"
"Name first!"
Mognog could tell that this was one thing Ritzy wouldn't budge on for some indiscernible reason, so he just sighed. Mognog belatedly felt that he had sighed more times after his death than he had when he was alive, but that couldn't be right, could it?
"Alright. Little Armored Shadow Petals."
Mognog just wanted to get it over with, so he threw together a combination of the names of the methods they had used as inspiration to concoct the new method.
"Moggy!"
Ritzy gave Mognog a stern glare.
"Take this seriously!"
"Fine, fine. You come with a suggestion, then. I'm sure you have a better naming sense than I do."
"Hmph."
Ritzy snorted before sinking into deep thought, but only for a moment.
"Since I'm going to use this to smack Storage of Darkness, a god, in the face, what about Punishment of Gods?"
Mognog instinctively shook his head and cringed. No, he didn't.
"Marginally better than mine, kiddo."
"It was way better than yours, but fine. We both need to agree to something good, I guess."
"I agree. It would be a shame to give something like this method a poor name."
"Urgh. Who made naming things so difficult anyway?"
Mognog just shrugged. Not really.
But Ritzy was right. Coming up with an appropriate name was difficult.
"Seed of Chaos?"
"I think that's already a plant."
Mognog rejected Ritzy's suggestion. But they were at least making some progress since he didn't cringe.
"Unholy Avatar?"
"Meh."
"Hmm, what about something like Divine Hall of Pitch Black Light?"
"It's too wordy, but I think we're getting close."
"What do you think of something chaos-related, Moggy."
Ritzy circled back to his other suggestion.
"I get where you are coming from since the combination of death, life, darkness, and light is a strange combination. But I wouldn't say chaos is the right word for it. If anything, it's the opposite. Our method is balanced. It would be closer to order than chaos, in my opinion."
"I see. That's true."
"Black and White Equilibrium?"
"Ooh, that's a good one, Moggy!"
"Good enough?"
"What about Unholy Equilibrium?"
Mognog wasn't upset at Ritzy making another suggestion instead of settling for his. Black and White Equilibrium didn't quite fit the method, after all.
"Could work, actually."
But Mognog was still reluctant to accept Ritzy's suggestions, which tended to mention divinity of some kind. However, he had to admit that Unholy Equilibrium was pretty good. It was a little fancy. A little edgy with the unholy, but overall, but not too bad.
"That does sound good. Of course, it depends on what you two are talking about."