Scroll 65: A World of His Own

Less than a kilometer from the northern entrance of Toel, the pace of the march changed drastically. Alaster felt the weight of the silence behind him before he heard a sound. Turning around, the harsh midday light fully illuminated the group of women following him, exposing a heavy, fractured scene.

The peasant woman had stopped dead in her tracks, clutching her small daughter to her chest with desperate strength. The little girl sobbed with her face buried in the worn fabric of her mother’s dress. A few paces away, the other young farm girl wrapped her arms around herself, bundling tightly into the long leather coat Alaster had lent her. Her shoulders trembled compulsively as she tried to catch her breath.

To the side of the road, the warrior’s posture was different. Encased in her metal armor, she ground her teeth and kept her eyes locked on the roadside foliage, refusing to look at the city gates. It was not just fear tightening her body—it was a corrosive frustration.

«Me... how did I end up in this state?» Histar repeated in her mind, clenching her fists until her knuckles turned white. «I am a level 15 adventurer. The strongest in my party. I have active mastery skills and top-tier equipment... How did I end up without my main weapon, helpless, and relying on a stranger?» She furrowed her brow in suppressed rage as a couple of rebellious tears welled in her brown eyes and slid down her cheek.

Alaster glanced sideways at the three women and the little girl. The muffled crying was beginning to break the isolation of the journey.

«Looks like the adrenaline finally wore off,» he analyzed silently. «Now that they see the walls nearby and realize they are safe, their emotions are overflowing. Good thing I decided to get them out of there right away. If they collapsed psychologically while hidden in that cave, the situation would have gotten much worse. Besides, without being able to deploy my spatial spells freely, fighting a prolonged battle surrounded by hostages would have been extremely dangerous.»

As they closed the final meters toward the outer palisade, the firm voice of one of the town guards interrupted them:

"Your Excellency! You came back quickly..." the man began, but his words cut off abruptly when he noticed the procession following in the elf’s footsteps.

Alaster instantly caught the guard’s questioning look. He recognized him immediately as one of the soldiers serving directly under Norde’s command.

"I ran into them on the way back," Alaster said before the man could speculate. "I decided to escort them directly to ensure they didn’t run into trouble on the final stretch."

The defender scanned the group, pausing for a second on the farm girl wearing the elf’s oversized leather jacket, before fixing his eyes back on Alaster. He stepped forward, closing the distance between them, and lowered his voice to a cautious whisper:

"Hey... they had a really rough time. It’s better if Norde handles this directly. From what they told me, they got separated from a convoy heading toward the port."

The guard nodded slowly to himself, stepped away from Alaster, and raised his hand to catch the attention of a nearby group of soldiers.

"You two," he ordered, pointing to a pair of women wearing armor with sheathed swords at their waists. "Escort..." He stopped dead, turning back to the newcomers to inspect them more closely. "Wait a second... weren't you part of Lord Sisnerus’s convoy?"

At the mention of the name, Histar immediately stepped forward, shedding any trace of hesitation.

"Yes, yes!" she replied, her voice shaky with emotion. "How do you know? Is there any news about the caravan?"

The guard let out a long, loud sigh of relief.

"Phew, that’s great news. Just a few minutes ago, a section of the caravan managed to enter. They reported having to make an emergency detour because they were attacked on the road. They said that during the initial chaos, several women scattered and were left behind." The man scanned the three women and the girl, counting under his breath before nodding. "Looks like none are missing. You were incredibly lucky."

Behind Histar, the two peasant women burst into tears again, but this time with an indescribable tone of relief.

"To the east, there’s a wide open plaza near the center of town," the defender continued, pointing the way. "That’s where they’re parking the surviving wagons. Your companions must be desperately looking for you."

The women seemed to regain their composure instantly, straightening up with a renewed spark of energy.

«Well, at least they aren't alone in completely unfamiliar territory,» Alaster thought. «It's fortunate that the rest of the group made it to Toel alive.»

"I have matters to attend to, so I must take my leave," the elf announced aloud.

Before taking a single step, Alaster tipped his head toward the guard captain and leaned into his ear once more, discreetly whispering the exact location of the goblin lair.

«For a woman, ending up in the clutches of those creatures is the worst imaginable scenario,» the elf reflected as he shared the geographic coordinates. «The disgrace, social stigma, and psychological trauma would be unbearable for the rest of their lives. Even having rescued them before things escalated, the wisest course of action is to prevent town gossip from starting.» That caution was the exact reason why neither he nor the guard mentioned the monster type or the rescue location in front of the others.

Just as Alaster turned to depart, the young woman wearing his long coat stepped forward. She timidly reached out and gently took the elf’s fingers.

"Your Excellency... thank you for saving us. I... I owe you everything."

Alaster gently pulled his hand back, maintaining a respectful distance.

"You owe me nothing. I couldn't simply walk past and turn a blind eye. Live well."

Hearing those simple words, the young woman could no longer contain herself. She burst into uncontrollable tears and lunged forward to hug him tightly. Beside her, caught up in the heartbreaking atmosphere, the little girl in the other mother's arms broke into tears once more, hiding her face in her mother's neck.

Several minutes passed as both the guards and Alaster worked to calm the situation until the women recovered a measure of serenity.

"I truly must be going," the elf said. He stepped up to the little girl for a second and affectionately ruffled her hair, leaving her head a messy mop of reddish curls. Then he looked at the girl still wearing his leather coat. "You can return it to me later, or if you prefer, leave it at my house. Pina will be there if I happen to be out."

The guard standing nearby, listening to every word, raised his eyebrows high and shot him a look dripping with sarcasm. The soldier’s expression said it all: Well, well... this elf lives completely surrounded by women. What a playboy he turned out to be!

Alaster, utterly exhausted from constantly being mistaken for some kind of charmer or smooth talker everywhere he went, could only manage a nervous smile. He turned around without attempting to explain himself and set off in a random direction to clear the guard gate's line of sight.

Histar stood frozen, watching the elf’s figure fade into the distance.

"And that elf... who exactly is he?" she asked the guard.

The defender puffed out his chest with pride, grinned broadly, and declared, "He is our great resident mage."

The warrior raised her eyebrows with a touch of irony.

"Great mage?" she retorted, smiling. "He seemed more like a rather kind and helpful guy."

The guard’s brow furrowed immediately. He let out a heavy huff and declared, "That's only because you've never seen him fight in the middle of combat."

An hour later, the scene was completely different. Alaster had dropped by his residence in town briefly, where Pina was waiting for him with a freshly prepared lunch. After eating a bite and recovering his energy, he decided to head out without delay to the most secluded place possible, far from civilization.

«Pina mentioned that to the west, past the area where we fought earlier but venturing much deeper into the thicket, the terrain becomes completely wild with no traveled paths,» he thought as he pushed through the trees. «This is, without a doubt, the best spot to test my magic without drawing anyone's attention.»

In his mind, one particular spell kept spinning round and round: a branch of magic he had relegated to near-total oblivion because he hadn't found an immediate, practical use for it, but which in theoretical terms constituted one of the most imposing feats in his entire repertoire.

It was the second spell recorded in the book Dimensional Space: Theory and Practice. That grimoire actually contained only two structured spells, surrounded by a vast amount of theory on sub-spaces and dimensional veil manipulations.

The first was conventional dimensional space—which Alaster simply called inventory—a timeless environment designed exclusively for storing inanimate objects. However, the second spell harbored a radically different potential. From the moment LessFeruz handed him the grimoire, Alaster had continuously analyzed it alongside his other study tomes; the difference was that he had never had a real opportunity to experiment with the second set of formulas.

The spell in question was called [Alternate World]. As its name suggested, it generated a spatial structure similar to the inventory, but with a monumental difference: upon opening the corresponding tear, a living being could cross the threshold and physically enter. The sub-space possessed a breathable atmosphere, constant oxygenation, and the necessary conditions to remain inside indefinitely without suffering suffocation.

There were plenty of reasons not to have attempted it earlier, the most glaring being that the spell demanded an initial requirement for its first activation: a massive collateral phenomenon, extremely difficult to hide and highly problematic if executed near populated areas.

Alaster continued his march, followed at a short distance by his armored Sil-spider. He was already more than five kilometers from Toel, deep within the dense forest. After pushing past a dense wall of foliage, the elf stopped dead in his tracks as he came upon a wide clearing completely carpeted in wildflowers. It was a truly idyllic corner, where dozens of butterflies fluttered among colorful petals beneath the shade of tall pines.

"This spot surrounded by pines would be perfect for building a country house," Alaster commented with a slight smile.

Without a second thought, he dropped onto his back against the lush grass while issuing a mental command to his archnid creature to patrol the perimeter and keep watch. The soft turf served as a perfect natural mattress. Above him, the blue sky was clear, save for a single white cloud that softened the direct glare of the sun. He spread his arms to his sides, feeling the texture of grass blades slipping between his fingers.

Listening to the whisper of the wind and the distant song of birds, he let out a long sigh of satisfaction.

"This place is simply perfect."

He pushed himself up into a sitting position, keeping his legs extended across the short grass. Extending his right hand into the air, he opened the slit to his dimensional space with a sharp, dry snapping sound—like a guitar string snapping.

From his inventory, he pulled the spatial magic grimoire, a stack of rough paper, a feather quill, a belt dagger, an inkwell, and an opaque glass goblet. He arranged each item on the grass beside him.

Taking the dagger, he made a firm cut across his palm, holding his fist over the glass goblet to allow the drops of blood to fall steadily into the bottom. Once he collected the required amount, he hastily closed the wound with a tight bandage.

He added commercial ink to the container of blood and picked up a small twig from the ground, patiently stirring the mixture until it reached a smooth, uniform consistency.

«Ink mixed with the blood of a magical being... How fortunate that the main ingredient to craft this kind of magical ink is my own blood,» he thought with a flash of irony, inspecting the dark hue of the liquid.

Holding the white quill, he dipped the tip into the dark red preparation and began tracing the first symbols onto the paper. With rapid, precise strokes, he drew one magic circle after another across the yellowish sheets, his eyes constantly darting to the open pages of the grimoire to verify the symmetry of the runes.

He flipped through several pages of the telemetric manual as he worked. After three long hours of uninterrupted concentration, he successfully drafted all 32 magic circles required for the array.

Around him, the armored spider continued its circular patrol, alert to any crackle among the trees. Alaster stood up, holding the grimoire in one hand and the stack of papers in the other, and walked to the exact center of the clearing.

He distributed the papers across the ground in a specific geometry. Holding the open grimoire in his left hand, he raised his right—where his channeling ring was equipped—and began channeling his mana into the diagrams.

«I hope this actually works on the first try, because I don't have any paper left in my inventory,» he thought as energy began to circulate.

As he channeled his mana over the symbols, he mentally reviewed every dimensional concept described in the grimoire: the visualization of the runes, the theory of spatial compression, and the fundamental doctrine held by this world's mages regarding the fabric of reality. They conceived space not as a vacuum, but as a physical veil that could be cut and severed from its original structure—exactly like taking a pair of scissors, cutting a fragment out of a giant curtain, and using that piece to tailor a cloak of your own.

Alaster opened his eyes wide. His deep purple mana began sprouting from his fingers, spreading across the papers like the tentacles of a phantom octopus. The energy seeped into the strokes of blood and ink, causing the circles to emit an unholy glow.

After a minute of a blinding light display, the sheets of paper instantly consumed themselves in magical fire, turning to ash. Yet, the drawn circles did not vanish: they remained suspended, floating in mid-air. At first, the symbols drifted chaotically like scattered runes, until they began to interlock. Within seconds, they formed a three-dimensional lattice of runic symbols structured into a massive sphere that emitted a brilliant, steady purple light.

Alaster looked down at the text in the book and muttered softly:

"Once the fragmentation array is established..."

The elf didn't finish reading. He slammed the book shut, spun on his heels at top speed, and ran like a bat out of hell toward the tree line.

"Shiiiit!" he bellowed at the top of his lungs.

At the precise instant his boots hit the forest boundary outside the clearing, the runic sphere expanded spasmodically, reaching a massive radius that nearly brushed his back. Alaster snapped his head back just in time to see the entire landscape behind him stretch and contract violently, warping the perspective of the trees and earth.

A second later, a blot of absolute darkness blurred his vision for an instant. When light returned, the idyllic wildflower clearing was completely gone.

In its place remained only a cluster of pine trees squeezed up against his back and, in the center, an abyssal earth formation. It looked like an ice cream cone molded into the ground, but with the cone buried deep into the earth—meaning the structure of the terrain converged toward the center in a whirlpool of solid, compressed soil.

Breathing heavily, his pulse racing, Alaster stared into the void left on the surface. Where that blooming landscape had stood moments ago, there was now absolutely nothing, as if it had never existed in the real world. Yet, in that very moment, the ground around the sinkhole began to crack and tear outward.

His eyes wide at the sight, the elf hastily flipped through the grimoire near the back pages. Heart hammering against his ribs, he read the relevant passage:

"After severing a fragment of space from the material world as a donor domain, reality seeks to repair itself, though it is incapable of restoring the lost matter. If you observe the terrain slowly beginning to form a highly unusual crater, rest assured that this is a completely normal part of the process."

Alaster slowly lowered the book. Before him, the ground continued to pull apart into a bizarre hollow, exactly as detailed in the text. The oddest part was that despite the crater expanding at a visibly slow pace, the fissure wasn't moving toward his position to swallow him; instead, all the surrounding terrain—including himself and the trees he stood on—was sliding uniformly away from the center of impact.

The elf swallowed hard.

"This magic... is downright terrifying. And way too broken. No wonder spatial mages are such a sought-after, rare breed in this world."

He turned on his heel and walked away from the anomaly with firm steps. According to the grimoire, the terrain distortion would cease entirely once the crater reached the exact volume of space he had torn from the world's original fabric.

The elf let out a long sigh of relief.

"Well... at least this crater isn't going to end up swallowing the entire world. It was only about 100 cubic meters."

Alaster walked among the dense pines to put more distance between himself and the origin point. As he moved, he felt a new mental interface expand directly within his consciousness. It bore no resemblance to the simplified window of his standard inventory; this one was infinitely more detailed and comprehensive.

The status screen meticulously listed the contents captured within the sub-space: it logged a total of 46 trees, a landmass equivalent to 112 cubic meters of soil and grass, 135,872 wildflowers, a detailed mineral breakdown of the earth, the registration of Armored Sil-spider x1, and at the bottom, an energy gauge that read Mana: 0 / 1,000,000.

«This mana bar...» he recalled, analyzing the data. «I read about this in the grimoire. It means I can accumulate magical energy inside the sub-space to use later as a power source for spells or environmental modifications.»

The elf cut off his review of the mental interface. Right now, he had a much higher priority: it was time to open the dimensional rift and see with his own eyes what the interior looked like.

He couldn't deny that the mere thought of owning a personal world was electrifying. This had nothing to do with a dreamscape; it was a real, physical domain. It would prove invaluable for transporting his summons without drawing attention. The sky was the limit—he could think of dozens of applications for the space, from housing his armored spiders to growing his own crops. Though, to be entirely honest with himself, he didn't have much desire to pick up a hoe and start tilling dirt.

Taking a deep breath, he paused in a section of the forest where the trees left an adequate gap. He extended his right hand forward, charging his ring's stone to its maximum capacity: he concentrated 450 MP in a matter of seconds.

Fixing his gaze on the open air, he released the spell to open the entrance to his personal domain:

"[Alternate World]!" he uttered, consuming 300 MP on the spot.

Reality itself vibrated violently before his eyes. The air distorted much like ripples on the surface of crystal-clear water, warping the image of the distant pines into subtle concentric waves. Right after, with a dissonant, high-pitched screech of hundreds of strings snapping at once, space tore from top to bottom like fabric pulled past its breaking point.

The maneuver exposed a spatial rift 10 meters tall by 4 meters wide, with jagged, irregular edges. It was a tear of absolute pitch-blackness.

For a moment, Alaster thought the darkness inside would be identical to the void of his inventory space, but as he looked down at the base of the cut, he caught a crucial detail.

"What's that...? Is that grass in there?"

He noticed the ambient daylight filtering timidly into the pitch-black opening. The forest soil at his feet, covered in decaying leaves, cut off abruptly at the edge of the tear; on the other side of the threshold, the short, green grass of the meadow he had selected hours ago began immediately.

"Ugh... that thing looks a little terrifying from the outside," he muttered to himself.

Then a quick test came to mind. Extending his will, he summoned the creature registered in his interface. A few seconds later, the armored Sil-spider stepped through the spatial tear from the inside, walking out into the forest as if nothing had happened.

The elf looked around, picked up a dry log from the ground, and ignited a small flame with his hand to light it. He walked up to the opening with the improvised torch held high, stopping right at the threshold. He tossed the burning wood deep into the sub-space.

The firelight illuminated the same wildflower clearing, but plunged in complete darkness. His elven eyes picked up limited detail in the gloom: there were only two light sources—the orange glow filtering through the entrance, and the flickering light of the log on the grass, casting long shadows behind the pines. The place exuded a mysterious atmosphere, identical to a deep night without a moon, stars, or clouds. In fact, the sky simply didn't exist; above, there was only an endless black void.

"It's exactly as the grimoire described, but seeing it in person is infinitely more impressive than just reading text," he admitted under his breath.

The next step was clear: he needed to create an artificial moon using one of the environmental modification spells integrated into the sub-space structure.

Alaster sighed as he reviewed the energy costs. It required 5,000 mana points just to structure a night sky and a false moon, and a full 25,000 points to deploy a sun. Of course, these were not massive astronomical bodies, but magical substitutes billions of times more modest—yet they fulfilled their function, illuminating and regulating the environment perfectly.

He crossed the threshold, stepping carefully onto the grass. Inhaling the atmosphere of the place, he began actively releasing his mana into the environment. On his mental interface, he watched as the ambient mana gauge inside the sub-space steadily climbed from 0 to 1,400 points.

He emptied most of his available pool into the domain, always leaving a safety margin to avoid the severe fatigue caused by total mana depletion. He waited patiently for about 20 minutes for his 1,800 MP capacity to regenerate naturally, then dumped it into the surroundings once more.

It took him just under an hour of continuous cycles to accumulate the 5,000 mana points released into the environment to execute the night sky modification. The spell itself didn't need to be chanted from scratch; it merely needed to be activated via the interface, as that environmental modification matrix had been woven into the space during the initial ritual with the 32 paper circles.

Alaster raised both hands toward the blackness above. The pitch-black dark was shattered in an instant by a blinding flash. Immediately after, a radiant white moon established itself in the sky, framed by a blanket of stars set just behind a veil of thin clouds. It was the most perfect night he had witnessed in either of his two lives.

Encouraged by the result, he pressed on. He dedicated himself to accumulating the massive sum of 25,000 mana points to manifest the sun, plus an additional 2,000 points to generate ambient wind currents. By the time he finished the transfer, he was thoroughly exhausted.

He took a 10-minute break to recover from the constant draining and regenerating of his magical reserves. His regeneration rate restored 1,800 MP every 20 minutes, but he always kept roughly 60 points untouched as a precaution against defenselessness and the physical agony of total mana exhaustion.

He lay flat on his back in the grass under the artificial night he had created. Looking back toward the entrance tear, he noticed the light of the outside world was already turning a deep orange.

Alaster sat up slowly.

"Looks like I spent the entire afternoon in here dumping mana," he thought aloud. "I'll run this final activation and head straight back to town."

He raised his right hand. Utilizing the mental interface and focusing his concentration, he selected the sun matrix and triggered the environment transition.

The night dissolved in an instant. A radiant sun emerged overhead, transforming the space into a pristine morning of crisp light. The brilliance unveiled the lush green tones of the terrain, the vibrant sea of flowers, and dozens of butterflies fluttering around, completely confused by the drastic shifts in lighting. He felt the texture of the turf beneath his boots and the warm breeze against his face, carrying the fresh scent of pine needles.

«Magic really is the absolute best,» he thought with a faint smile as he walked toward the edges of his domain.

Upon reaching the boundary of the 100-meter area, he gazed over the edge of what appeared to be a floating island suspended in mid-air. Looking down into the precipice, more than 40 meters beneath the earthen cliff, lay an ocean that seemed to stretch into infinity. Alaster knew from the grimoire's theory that this sea was a boundary illusion: if someone jumped into the void, spatial geometry would transport them back to the center of the clearing completely unharmed.

"It's a breathtaking spell... Surprising that it's classified merely as mid-tier, B-rank magic," he mused while listening to the wind whisper through the pine needles.

As he looked around, the environmental fidelity was so high that it was impossible to distinguish this sub-space from the real world.

He turned his eyes toward the exit. The tear displayed the outer forest bathed in the orange shadows of dusk. The image looked almost unnatural, like a live video projection overlaid onto reality, framed by the jagged edges of a tear in fabric.

Reluctantly, the elf stepped through the rift to exit his sub-space. No sooner had his feet touched the forest floor than he saw his armored spider finishing off a goblin a short distance away. A second goblin was furiously hammering the spider’s flank with a rusty sword, but the worn metal produced only a dull clank as it bounced uselessly off the monster’s carapace.

The Sil-spider hissed loudly and spun on its legs at top speed. The goblin leaped backward to create distance, but the effort was futile: it collapsed onto its back, clutching its neck in agony as the spider fired two metal stingers deep into its throat.

Both goblins lay motionless on the dry leaves. It wasn't that the spider possessed overwhelming strength, but rather that the goblins' crude weapons lacked the power to pierce its metallic shell, while the meter-tall creature's strikes proved lethal to them.

Alaster gave the spider a mental command to return to the sub-space. The creature obeyed immediately, stepping back through the slit.

Hand extended into the air, Alaster released the command to close the gateway. Threads of purple reality stretched from the edges like fabric regenerating at high speed, sealing the tear completely in a matter of seconds. The maneuver cost him a direct drain of 150 MP.

The elf glanced at the corpses of the two goblins slain by his summon, but looking up, he noticed four more goblins armed with clubs and swords emerging from the thick brush, advancing in his direction.

"These things are a total plague... Now I fully understand why Arya curses them so much, and why Mila finds them equally revolting," he muttered under his breath.

He unsheathed his sword in a fluid motion and broke into a sprint straight toward the group of goblins. Sensing the superhuman speed at which the elf moved, the monsters panicked and scrambled to turn back into the underbrush.

Alaster saw the scene almost in slow motion: the desperation on the creatures' green faces as they turned clumsily, the whistle of the wind rushing past his ears, and the crunch of his boots on the dry leaves below.

He activated the skill [Multi-Cut].

His speed accelerated drastically. He instantly blew past all four goblins in a blink, accompanied by the ringing metallic sound of a flurry of slashes delivered so quickly they seemed to hit in the exact same millisecond.

The echo of vibrating steel was still ringing in the air as Alaster skidded to a halt on the damp earth. He steadied his posture, turned around, and watched all four green bodies collapse simultaneously in opposite directions, spilling bursts of greenish blood onto the grass.

He looked at the blade of his sword, coated in the viscous fluid of the creatures. He flicked it through the air with a sharp, violent motion that snapped like a metallic whip. The blood flew off entirely, leaving the steel spotless.

He sheathed his sword firmly and resumed his march back.