《Domains and Daggers》


 Prologue鈥擳emul

    Reoi died. She made a mistake.


    ¡°There was a deer,¡± she wheezed, leaning against the doorway. The rest of our bunkmates stared. The dying sun framed parts of her in crimson and others in shade. She looked twisted, wrong. Another step forward and the effect vanished.


    ¡°I chased it. Then I heard the ¡­ the crunch.¡±


    I padded over to the corner and dabbed a cloth into the water pail, then held it out to Reoi. She stared at it with a bemused look. I stepped back, holding the rag in front of me with trembling fingers. It was too late. It was just¡ªhabit.


    ¡°It was so close. If I¡¯d been farther away, just a few feet, I wouldn¡¯t have hesitated. But I did, and¡ªI dropped the spear.¡± Reoi looked at Senz as she said it, the oldest one in our bunk since Eschen had died, and thus the one in charge. ¡°Sorry.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s fine. Go, lie down. Rest,¡± Senz said, guiding her to her bed.


    Reoi babbled the rest of the day. Anything and everything seen under the sun passed her lips, and many things that weren¡¯t. It was as if she were trying to make up for her former tendency toward silence. I found the whole thing awkward and avoided her until the next morning. We found her curled up in her bed, perfectly still.


    We harvested tenebrium. It was black, brittle, and perfectly smooth. It absorbed vast amounts of mana and was the only reason a Hellmouth¡¯s corruption didn¡¯t endlessly spread across the world. It was also poisonous. When broken, it left tiny particles almost as light as air that spiraled to the ground. A single touch against bare skin, just one piece sucked in with a breath¡ªany contact was a death sentence.


    None of us were supposed to survive. Ten years¡ªthe very minimum sentence out here¡ªwas enough for even the most cautious to make a mistake. The Federation of Numbers ruled the area, and with their rule came rules. No one spoke of their pasts, so I only knew mine. I stole mana. A single solid pearl of it, just to know what it was like to have some measure of power.


    Our jailors gave us long robes and strips of cloth. They fell apart, eventually, and we had to buy more at vastly inflated costs. Reoi had been hunting. Thinking it wouldn¡¯t hurt to leave her protective clothing behind and avoiding wear and tear, she strayed too close to the Hellmouth.


    I¡¯d always held out hope. That I¡¯d survive, pay my debt to society, and leave. Reoi was gone, now. We¡¯d talked. Even called each other friends. I took this as the cue it was.Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.


    A low wind blew past my ankles, causing the cloth to flutter back and forth like a small swarm of demented butterflies. I stared at the huge stretch of unbroken blackness ahead of me. I was close, though, close enough to see the red haze of corrupted mana in the air.


    A set of heavy footsteps crunched up behind me. It was Senz, covered in an amount of fabric and leather even I considered excessive. She stopped and leaned on a carved stick, another sentinel observing the Hellmouth.


    ¡°It hurts,¡± she said.


    I turned toward her just a fraction, an unspoken question.


    ¡°The corruption. Righteous fury doesn¡¯t dull it. Not sadness, not emptiness. Every single being with a mine left in them that could be talked to, and not one started with anything else.¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t plan on living long enough to regret anything. Nothing comes back out of a Hellmouth.¡±


    ¡°Mmm.¡±


    I took a step forward.


    ¡°They say the Hellmouths lead to an eternal life of constant torment.¡±


    ¡°They say many things,¡± I said. I kept going.


    ¡°Do you believe it?¡± Senz said, voice strangely urgent.


    ¡°Doesn¡¯t matter. I won¡¯t be here.¡±


    ¡°Then help us escape.¡±


    I turned around at that and waited. The sun was directly overhead, its cold fire eating our shadows to nothing. The moment felt surreal, like a dream.


    ¡°A single soulstone and we have a Domain. Give us enough mana to Awaken. To train. When we escape, we can take you with us. Or we can smash your soulstone if you still want death. If you truly don¡¯t care where your soul goes, then let us use it.¡±


    That was unexpected. The topic of soulstone creation was taboo. Their creation was carefully regulated to decrease the chances of their killing everyone who neared the Domain and then requiring the creation of a new Hellmouth just to get rid of it. I knew more about their creation than most just because I had to know to procedures to avoid their accidental creation at all costs. Any dead near the Hellmouth needed to be cleared before sunset or everyone¡¯s wages would be reduced and the scapegoat put to death. There was probably some rare interaction between the dead and the corrupted mana. It wouldn¡¯t hurt to try.


    ¡°How will you hide my body? The overseers would find it.¡±


    Senz nodded and began walking back. ¡°They care about human corpses, not animals. With care, we can disguise you inside one. The tenebrium dust kicked up from the chase would, of course, render the corpse inedible.¡±


    In the end, I had to let Senz kill me. I put down my own dagger and nodded to her. She slit my throat without hesitation. The large hunting knife ripped through in one short, brutal moment. The blood came after. Finally, in a delayed rush, there was pain.

 Chapter 1鈥擡mber

    Another world. A fantasy where I could learn magic and put aside my responsibilities. Yes, please.


    The world was frozen around me, but I wasn¡¯t panicked. I¡¯d imagined this moment my entire life. Not exactly, but I had daydreamed. Some had called the time wasted, but happiness and productivity correlated, and it was just too fun to give it up, even if I knew it would never happen.


    But it had. Dismissing this chance as a dream or hallucination might be more accurate, but I took the tiny chance that it was all real and put myself in the moment. The faint buzz of the air conditioning had stopped. Jeb was stuck in the middle of reshuffling a stack of papers, while Aaron was busying himself in work during one of the rare times he wasn¡¯t coughing.


    My heartbeat was shockingly loud as I stared down at the small blue dragon.


    ¡°I have time, right? I can ask you some more questions before I decide?¡±


    He wobbled in midair and gave me an exasperated look. I didn¡¯t question my strange understanding of the alien dragon¡¯s facial expressions. No, I was more focused on how adorable he was. He had cute little fangs and twitchy ears and big round eyes. I immediately wanted to pet him.


    ¡°I ¡­ suppose. I¡¯m just an inhabitant of the world you¡¯d be put in, though, so I can¡¯t tell you too much. All I really know about the system is that you can¡¯t just tear through dimensions like I did. I need to send something back¡ªsomeone back. You¡¯ll get the local language just like I¡¯ll get the one here. Look, this needs to be done fast or the system will find me.¡±Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.


    ¡°What is the system? What¡¯s it do?¡±


    ¡°Well, from what I can tell, it¡¯s the controls to the multiverse.¡±


    I tried to tilt back in my chair, only to hit something that felt more like steel than stuffing. Right, that whole time stop thing. That was annoying. I made a decision and got up, approaching the tiny dragon.


    ¡°Well, you might be fine to be a fugitive, but I¡¯m not. Whatever this system is, it isn¡¯t something I can support. So help me break it.¡±


    He eyed me. ¡°You want to break the control system to the multiverse. That would be ¡­ completely catastrophic.¡±


    I shrugged. ¡°We could just beat up whatever¡¯s controlling it.¡±


    ¡°Hah. You¡¯re quite audacious. How about I make you a deal.¡±


    His eyes glowed. I backed away and got my chair between us just in case he was about to explode or something. The glow spread across his body until his small body was completely surrounded by the blue haze. His wings stilled then stopped. It almost looked like he had been time stopped like everything around me. Which, by the way, completely violated the laws of physics as I knew them unless the entire universe was a simulation the whole time.


    ¡°As it is, you are weak. I¡¯ll hold on to a piece of your soul and check on it every so often. Become powerful enough and I¡¯ll allow you to help me take over the multiverse.¡±


    That sounded like the kind of deal a supervillain makes. But whatever, supervillains were cool.


    ¡°Deal. So what kind of magic systems are we talking? Is it like Dungeons and Dragons, or what?¡±


    ¡°We don¡¯t have time. Do you fully understand and accept the agreement?¡±


    ¡°Fine, but can you tell me¡ª¡±


    ¡°The deal is verbally sealed. Do not worry, your soul grows back over time.¡±


    The dragon¡¯s eyes glowed even brighter and in a blink I was sucked into a space way too small for me. My last thoughts I had while in that plane adjacent to reality was an annoyance that I¡¯d forgotten to ask the dragon¡¯s name, and then panic that after I¡¯d learned I had a soul I hadn¡¯t actually acted like it.


    At least it would grow back.

 Chapter 2鈥擳emul

    I woke up, and that was confirmation enough of success. It was time to get to work. My entire purpose, now, was to make my friends and fellow captives powerful enough to escape. The first step to doing would be to make myself more powerful. I wished I still had knuckles to crack.


    Then I tried to see. It wasn¡¯t disorienting since I had no body to experience nausea, but the feeling of sensory overload was vaguely unpleasant. And that was just my soulstone; I couldn¡¯t actually see any place that I didn¡¯t have mana at, but where I did I could see everything. Each facet of my distasteful yellow gem, every ridge, whorl, every inner fracture. Mana¡ªmy whole life, it was a deadly fog that rained from the sky when you got too close to a Hellmouth. It corrupted and killed and it made tenebrium, and now¡ªnow it was mine. It pulsed throughout my crystal mind, my now-vulnerable soul, a small thread of it emerging out of nowhere at some point inside me.


    If I could, I would have cackled.


    I had demonfuel under my control. Not enough though. A small excess that I could grab on to and swirl around. I could even poke it out of the edge of my soulstone and get a peek at air, which was so much less empty than I¡¯d thought. Then it fell from my grip mental, caught in the inexorable force of gravity. If I tried to grab the mana that raced through my soulstone, I knew Bad Things would happen. I knew it more surely than I knew the twin moons would rise.


    Alright. I had some mana, but not enough to do anything useful. I needed more and had no idea how to do that. Senz might be able to help, but just as I couldn¡¯t see anything outside the mana I had under my control, I couldn¡¯t hear anything else either. It was a paradoxical situation: I couldn¡¯t learn how to get more mana without getting more mana.


    I tried experimenting. I didn¡¯t dare move the automatic flow of mana within my soulstone, but I examined it from every angle I could. Eventually, I found out that the mana wasn¡¯t simply created out of nothing. It came from somewhere. Where that was, I had no idea. But I had a tiny gate inside my soulstone that let it flow within, where it was immediately ¡­ purified. It was as if there were little tiny tags attached to each spark of mana saying EVIL in big letters. Something inside me took those tags off, and I got the feeling I could handle way more at a time. The gate was the block.


    At least I knew the problem. That was the first step to a solution. The next was more complicated. It took a lot of giving up and retrying over and over until I just got bored and started swirling mana around. That felt right, somehow, and by then I had enough to push the circling mana outside of my soulstone like an intangible shell. When that happened, I knew just how I was going to get more mana. I added to my mana shell until it thickened, solidified, and then ¡­ then, I sort of blacked out. Instincts I didn¡¯t know I had completely took over. My soulstone expanded, leaving more space for my mana gate. The rush of extra mana seemed like a flood compared to before. I felt almost giddy.A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.


    I recreated my shell much faster than before until it solidified, then did it again and again, quadrupling my flow of mana each time. Then I think I hit some sort of fundamental limit because while the mana still became solid, it no longer became part of my soulstone. Oh well, I still had plenty to play with. I packed a ton of mana into a loop and sent it outside of my crystalline surface, swirling in the air.


    I finally found out where I was. I could have figured it out from the small glimpses I¡¯d had earlier of the air, but with nothing to compare it to I hadn¡¯t known what to make of it. But now I did. Somehow, Senz had arranged for me to be put in a cave in the Nightetch Woods. How she managed that I had no idea. I was even on top of some naturally formed pedestal. Not that I thought my soulstone deserved it¡ªthe off yellow along with all the flaws made for quite an ugly sight. I appreciated the thought all the same. My questing loop of mana expanded to fill the entire cave, feeling out every bit of moss and lichen and all the bones and dirt. When I tried to see outside, though, I got quite a shock. Natural light pretty much killed my control over mana, even through the thick shield the corrupted forest made. It all fell to the ground, which reabsorbed every last spark.


    I needed to go deeper. I knew that with certainty, the source my new instincts. It was time to learn how to change the world. In small, controlled doses.


    The key, which I learned after countless hours of practice and stress, was to just not focus on it too much. I just needed to put a bunch of mana into the rock until it was almost overflowing, think about it vanishing, and I was done.


    As it turned out, putting that much mana into the rock allowed me to memorize its structure completely, and with an equivalent amount of mana, I could just as easily create more rock. I acquired a sample of every inorganic substance within reach, and then when I acquired a bit of moss I devoured each plant as well. Then I smoothed over my cave, creating a completely circular chamber with a tunnel toward the outside which went perpendicular to my chamber for a bit before leading in. It shielded me from the light outside, so anyone who came in could just deal with it. I didn¡¯t want to have to struggle with my instincts every second of the day when they were so easily quieted.


    ¡°This is new.¡±


    Senz! Finally, she was back. Now she could tell me how to improve my Domain. It was small and I was weak, but she definitely knew more than she was letting on. She¡¯d brought an unfamiliar face with her (I checked¡ªit turned out that privacy didn¡¯t really exist anymore within my Domain) but if she really didn¡¯t want to share her secrets with just anyone she could tell him to leave.


    I hesitated, then realized there was a small flaw with that idea.


    I didn¡¯t know how to speak.

 Chapter 3鈥擡mber

    I got plopped down right in the middle of a group of criminals. Well, fine. The system could hate me but I¡¯d just hate it right back. But while the system was responsible for all the problems in the universe, at the moment I had a much more tangible subject on which to focus my hate.


    He was old and bearded and carried a staff with an enormous crystal at its tip. He was some sort of wizard, though the criminals called him an Aelon and just gave me weird looks when I asked what that was, and when I persisted I got his attention.


    That was a very bad idea.


    Apparently, Aelon can zap you with magic bolts that send every nerve in your body into screaming agony. I felt extraordinarily lucky when I finally fell unconscious. Maybe it was my bad luck, or the system, but that seemed to be a demonstration. He never hit anyone else as hard as that, and everyone stayed roughly in line. We were caught, no matter that I hadn¡¯t even had a trial or anything, and that was that. Whispered voices while we were huddled together in an oily rain told me we were going to some place called a Hellmouth. We were going to be put to work harvesting some sort of rare material.


    That was all I got before I fell asleep. As it turned out, walking was hard. Especially when your shoes had worn down days ago and your antibiotics were on another planet. During the day, a sun much redder but also much bigger than Earth¡¯s beat down on us while the chains linking us all clinked and a few guards trooped alongside us.


    They weren¡¯t the real threat. The wizard was. Or Aelon. Whatever he was, I hated it.


    The night was freezing and the sky had two moons. One was blood red and looked like it had a bite taken out of it. It never changed phases, and I could see scattered chunks of it strewn next to the shattered part. The other moon was silvery blue and completely whole, but much dimmer. A bunch of the criminals seemed to worship that one, while they spit at the red one. How they managed to take the time to do so before falling to a dead sleep on the ground I didn¡¯t know.


    When we reached the work camp, I stayed awake through the haze of exhaustion and longing for sleep long enough to get an idea of how things were run around here. There were small buildings called bunks in various states of disrepair surrounding a central clearing of packed dirt. We were expected to get together in small groups and make more bunks together before we could have shelter if we didn¡¯t take an empty spot in one of the ones already there. I was one of the ones left outside, but the dirt felt like a mattress to me. In the center of the clearing was a large stone combination of a storehouse and sleeping area for the guards and overseers. We¡¯d bring in something called tenebrium from around the Hellmouth and they¡¯d give us credit that we could use to buy things. A bunch of the other newcomers were muttering unkind things about the prices. Then I flopped to the ground and slept deeply without dreams.


    I woke to a boot in my stomach.


    ¡°You¡¯ll wake at dawn or you won¡¯t wake at all,¡± a gruff guard said. I scrambled to my feet and eyed him, but he held a spear warningly. And that Aelon from before was in the guardhouse. I backed down.


    ¡°Fine. What am I supposed to do, then?¡±If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.


    ¡°Get someone else to tell you. My only job right now it to make sure you¡¯re not dead.¡±


    He stomped off. He had a pretty distinctive vest, and the helmet covered nearly all of his face. If I jumped him and stole his stuff, I might be able to just ¡­ walk out. I tabled that plan. For now I¡¯d play along.


    There was breakfast at the guardhouse. It was a disgusting gray mash and I had no desire to know what it was made of. I spent the trek out to the ominously-named Hellmouth trying to shoot fireballs out of my hands or do something magical. I had nothing of the sort. Damnit, this was supposed to be my fantasy world. I¡¯d never have agreed to leave behind a life in the modern world with a comfy office job if it meant this.


    Whatever. I was going to learn magic, I¡¯d just have to work a bit harder for it. First I¡¯d quiz the rest of the captives. They all seemed to know who that Aelon with the staff and painful magic was, maybe they had some magic instructions. I sure as hell wasn¡¯t going to be asking the Aelon any questions.


    It turned out we were gathering tenebrium. The poisonous material could only be gathered if we covered up completely. The guards allowed us to go into debt for some robes. How nice of them. I found out that tenebrium absorbed mana, so it was extremely useful for anyone who needed to fight Aelon or Awoken, which I gathered were this world¡¯s names for different types of mages. I still wasn¡¯t clear on what those differences actually were. When we got back from a grueling day of hauling the dull black rock back across the uneven landscape, three people had died. They¡¯d stepped on some without knowing and got tiny slivers in their lungs. It seemed like tenebrium was kind of like asbestos, but a lot deadlier. I hadn¡¯t even known the names of the dead. We had to cart their bodies back behind us. At least they let us have burials.


    After a short funeral which consisted of looting the corpses for everything they were worth (and reminded me that these people were hardened criminals) and then dumping the bodies in shallow graves, I cornered a short man with shifty eyes named Ahrem and made him tell me everything he knew about Aelon and Awoken for a small bribe of five credits. I claimed I¡¯d hit my head on a rock and didn¡¯t remember much, but I don¡¯t think he believed me. Not that it mattered. He told me what he knew.


    The former were basically wizards. They used mana to create spells which could do basically anything, except that inventing spells was such a chore that an Aelon usually only created a few in their entire lifetime. Instead, spells were traded, sold, or given in exchange for apprentice contracts. Awoken were versions of Aelon that used mana to create their own personal styles and spells that no one else could duplicate. They were superhuman warriors but needed to go through ¡®trials¡¯ to get more powerful instead of needing any sort of training.


    Then he got to the most important part. You needed mana to Awaken or become an Aelon, and then you could use magic. I could just go right to the Hellmouth we were harvesting tenebrium from, but the red mana it spouted out was the entire reason tenebrium was so deadly. I needed to find a soulstone with a Domain that would let me use its mana. And if it didn¡¯t create a mana crystal for me, I wouldn¡¯t even be able to use any magic once I left.


    The magic system here was terrible. To get any access at all I needed to make friends with a rock. I wasn¡¯t any good at even making regular friends. I suppose I could always kill the wizard and take his mana stone, but if I could do that I¡¯d be too powerful to even need to. Though I¡¯d probably kill him anyway. What he did was definitely cruel and unusual punishment, even if everyone else here had been fairly convicted, which I really doubted.


    My surest route to finding a soulstone was to get my freedom. Freedom was actually listed in the guardhouse too, for a price. A really large one. If I just brought in enough tenebrium, I¡¯d be free to go wherever I wanted and get my magic. My tentative plans at the moment were to just play along unless I saw an opportunity.


    So for the next few days, I got to work.

 Chapter 4鈥擳emul

    I gouged the floor in front of my visitors with meaningless chicken scratch. Hopefully it would get the key points across. I couldn¡¯t read or write, though I did know my numbers. I could respond to yes or no questions, using an O for yes and an X for no or something, but getting across anything complex would be really difficult.


    Senz sent the new guy¡ªnamed Chennai¡ªaway, and decided to teach me to read and write. I scribbled a bunch of Xs on the floor at that, but she just chuckled and said she wouldn¡¯t take no for an answer.


    I got stuck with three hours of tutoring a day with Senz. Tutoring, like I was an Aelon or noble or something. She wouldn¡¯t let me signal her any other way. I quickly learned to make paper out of wood she brought, though it was more like thin bark than the smooth sheets the Aelon shared their spells on. All I had to do then was slightly darken the area I wanted to write on with mana, or lighten it to erase. The mana drain that went into writing was reduced to a few mere sparks. I wanted to keep my mana.


    Still, it was only three hours. I still got bored, and I hadn¡¯t absorbed all that many samples to experiment with. With a frog that had hopped in my range I made a frog arena and watched them fight, which amused me. The survivors tended to grow bigger and tougher and leech more mana out of the air, and I was actually considering an animal arena a viable strategy for the Awakening trials. I also finally took Senz¡¯s advice to quantify the amount of mana I could use.


    A spark was the fundamental unit of mana. To the human eye it was invisible, but I could see each one. I knew I was pumping sixty-thousand sparks out of my mysterious mana gate each minute. A bit of testing revealed that it took roughly ten-thousand sparks clustered together to create a tiny marble of solid marble about as big as a grain of sand. Senz told me that it was a mana crystal and even a small one was extremely valuable. Which I already knew, seeing as how a stolen mana crystal was why I was here in the first place. Creating or destroying a chunk of stone the size of my soulstone (which, with all the expanding I¡¯d done, was now about the size of my head when I¡¯d been alive) took around four-hundred-thousand sparks. I could levitate nonliving things for a small amount of mana, which would make it incredibly easy to just make some spikes and shove them into someone if someone entered who I really didn¡¯t want here. Living organisms were a bit more complicated.


    Senz was nearly impossible to directly affect. I had to surround her with so much mana it nearly became solid, and I barely got her to hover an inch. But the frogs I made somehow counted as ¡®mine¡¯ and I could move, copy, and destroy them just like the stone. I had no idea how it worked, but it was worth taking note of.


    ¡°I¡¯ve found some trustworthy people. If you¡¯re up for it, I could bring some of them in tomorrow,¡± Senz said.


    That sounded good. Some of the frogs had mutated magical attacks and defenses. I could scatter them over the floor and call that the first trial. I carefully scrawled yes in big letters on the parchment. Senz had wanted some ink so she could write too, but I was not giving away my ability to understand what she said that easily.


    ¡°Sure, that sounds good,¡± I said.


    And then everything went straight to Hell.


    Something burst into my chamber and scattered the entire area with stone shards. One caught Senz in the shoulder and then went through to the other side. But I couldn¡¯t spare the time to deal with it¡ªI had a demon to fight.


    The giant worm was full to bursting with evil mana. It had stayed around a Hellmouth long enough to grow powerful, somehow without attracting the attention of the archers stationed just out of the zone where its mana reached. Maybe it had lurked around a Hellmouth that had just opened up.A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.


    It curled up then launched itself at Senz. It was so fast¡ªSenz hadn¡¯t even taken a full step back from the force of the fragment of stone that had rammed its way through her shoulder yet. But somehow, my reaction times were even faster. I contracted a segment of my mana circuit, forming a barrier of solid mana but halving my Domain¡¯s size. Thankfully the area of my Domain took more than double the amount of mana it took to make it twice the size, so my barrier was large enough to stop the worm¡¯s charge.


    It stopped and hissed. Worms weren¡¯t supposed to even have visible mouths, much less giant gaping skeletal maws. I tried to funnel its corrupted mana away to my own soulstone, but the mana didn¡¯t cooperate with me. It twisted itself into looping knots instead of letting me pull it away. It didn¡¯t even let me scan the worm.


    There wasn¡¯t enough mana in my Domain to completely cage the worm. I created a large rock and propelled it at the thing, but the demon was too fast. Tiny stone needles either broke against its steely surface or completely missed. I chased it around my Domain with a rain of projectiles, trying to find the balance between size and shape¡ªnot to big that it could easily avoid it, but not small enough to render it ineffectual. Making them act like those magic guided arrows worked up to a point, but when my mana got too close to the demon¡¯s, it would fight off my influence.


    Then it dodged around a larger rock I¡¯d thrown out of frustration and bit Senz¡¯s head clean off.


    That small action cost the demon worm its life. I brought a huge amount of rock down on it, crushing the thing into paste. The corrupted mana cannibalized the corpse, then fought my own mana in a mad struggle until it was all gone. There was no chance to scan it.


    Now I really knew why anything the Hellmouths corrupted was called a demon. I focused my attention on Senz and tried reattaching her head to her body. I reflected that I was strangely calm for this situation, but I¡¯d always been the most clearheaded in moments of stress, and being a rock changed how I thought.


    Still, something about how her body worked frustrated me. It was still nearly impossible to move, and I was really low on mana. I slowly, effortfully dragged her body into a hover while trying to stop the bleeding and reattach her head. There was something ¡­ if I could get her to stop fighting my influence, I might actually have had a chance of success.


    Then I realized, as I swept my mana through her body again and again and only got back a view changed by a weird sort of static. Her body had its own mana. One I couldn¡¯t sense directly, one I no longer possessed. It was her life force, and it ebbed away by the second. Organs and muscles and blood vessels were becoming clearer, though her brain was still a complete mystery. Maybe if I waited until she died and then brought her¡ª


    I froze as I felt her soul depart, turning entire sections of the brain into mush. I let the body fall to the floor. The head rolled away. I absorbed her body and all the spilled blood and stone fragments by quickly saturating it with mana and dissolving it. If I needed to make a human puppet, now I could. But Senz was gone.


    I had just gathered enough mana to repair my wall without returning to an uncomfortably low level when I felt it. A foot slipped near my entrance, the edge just within my Domain for a split second. I snapped my attention in that direction, manifesting an eye based on Senz¡¯s and seeing through it, and¡ª


    Woah. Human vision sucked. Sure, I saw a greater area, but everything was flat and shapeless and dull. I couldn¡¯t even see mana through it. I powered through anyway, suffering the terrible vision and just about making out the form of¡ªChennai? What was he doing here? He looked ¡­ gah, my ability to recognize facial expressions had absolutely plummeted. Still, I thought I caught fear.


    Oh. He¡¯d just seen me eat Senz¡¯s body, and probably hadn¡¯t seen what had actually killed her, and assumed the worse. And I couldn¡¯t talk. He ran away before I could create a bit of my special parchment and tell him what had really happened. Assuming he could even read, and assuming I could have remembered the right words.


    I waited and hoped for his return so I could explain.


    He didn¡¯t.


    No one did. Not for far too long.

 Chapter 5鈥擡mber

    I saw my first demon my second day there. It was from a distance and peppered with arrows. Those guys in the watchtowers had really good aim. It would not be a good idea to try an escape near the Hellmouths.


    The thing might have once been a horse. Now it looked like the sort of mutated, multilegged, carapaced thing that belonged in a bad horror film. It still only had hooves and weight as weapons, but if that thing had charged me I¡¯d be dead. The arrows stuck in it now were huge heavy broadheads and looked more like spears than proper arrows, but even so, most of them had snapped or glanced off.


    It had been driven to a mad rage. It was the fault of the corrupted mana, apparently. And I¡¯d been told humans had it far, far worse. That corrupted mana could even be used as an effective tool of torture. I¡¯d sort of been considering it, but using any of it was now definitely not an option.


    Soon enough I joined a bunk. We made the ugly thing ourselves out of wood from the forest and some sort of wax we¡¯d bought from the store. At first I¡¯d thought it an expensive indulgence, but after another oil rain I was glad Lios had talked me into it.


    Then my bunkmates and I joined a group. It was an organization of a bunch of us with a structure and a task for everyone. It maximized the amount of tenebrium hauled in each day and split the proceeds between everyone according to their job. I was kind of surprised a bunch of convicts could pull something like that together since the whole thing operated mostly on trust. Then I saw what our leader did with a hauler who tried to stuff his pockets with some extra tenebrium. The guy would live, but he couldn¡¯t join another group and pretty much everyone hated him. Now that I looked, there were a few more people like that, though not too many. Those guys died a lot more often than those in the groups.


    Speaking of our leader, he was kind of creepy. He had hard eyes and barely spoke. When he did it was mostly bitter tirades about the state of things, and how no matter how some people might tell you things could improve, it was a lie and they¡¯d always end up dead. His name was Chennai, and he¡¯d been here the longest out of anyone. I could see how that would lead to such a dark outlook, and resolved not to follow his example. I was going to learn magic, damnit, not die in some random work camp.


    I learned more about the roles in the group. It turned out that hunting and gathering was the most desired position, decided by random chance. You had to go into the Nightetch Woods and fight half-demonic monstrosities that were close enough to the Hellmouth to get twisted mutations, but not enough to start killing everything in sight. But at least you wouldn¡¯t die if you made a wrong step and then took a single breath. I was given the job for the first month.


    <hr>


    I thrust my glowing spear into the giant rabbit. It had wicked claws and sharp teeth. The ears caught me by surprise. They walloped me in the sides. I hissed in pain and finished shoving the razor edge through the animal before jumping away. Those ears packed bruising force, but they hadn¡¯t broken my ribs.


    The rabbit writhed on the ground as I backed away. Its vivid life pumping out and coating the forest floor. The green glow on my speartip slowly faded away until it was barely visible, sensing the closest animal life. I stuffed the corpse into my pack.


    It had put me in debt for pretty much forever, but enchantments could be bought. And this one put me solidly on hunting duty. I ripped up the meat and had no idea how to clean and skin what I hunted, but the spear warned me of anything that would be too big for me to kill and guided me straight to prey. The sheer amount of prey I brought back meant I often had excess that I could sell to the store.


    A bunch of people seemed to think I was hoping that would make up for the cost of the spear, and pitied me. I wasn¡¯t that naive, though. The disparity between purchase and selling prices made the intent of our captors quite clear. I could never make up for the cost of even recharging it with mana. We weren¡¯t supposed to earn our way out. Still, the small stream of credit flowing into my account made it seem like I was merely gullible, and not planning.Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.


    No one had any idea of how much I could bring back if I really tried. Aelon were just so useful if they could do this whenever they wanted. It made me wonder why guns didn¡¯t exist yet when a full-blown industrial revolution would be so easy to kickstart.


    I wandered around for a while, just aware enough to be aware of the pulsing glow of my spear and avoid the slow-moving roots and branches of the animated trees. Getting caught in one of those was unlikely, but it would mean a very slow, very painful death.


    I wanted magic. I had magic, but it wasn¡¯t mine. It was leashed to the hated Aelon who¡¯d zapped me just to make an example. He¡¯d probably made it, and he was definitely the one who recharged it. I hadn¡¯t given up trying to activate some sort of innate magic skill, but muttering nonsense in the woods and flexing my fingers in odd ways didn¡¯t do anything. Neither did meditating, though I had to be careful when I did that. There were a few clearings where I could sit still for half an hour before something nasty came along to eat the motionless prey.


    No results in that direction though. I wanted to strangle the dragon who¡¯d sent me here, but first I had to get powerful enough to find him. Like that would happen any time soon. Magic needed mana, and I only had a tiny chip in my spear. Trying to use the mana inside would shatter the chip. Without practice, humans had a very rough grasp on manipulating mana. Bigger mana crystals were better for use at practicing magic. This was all common knowledge, so it had taken me several weeks and many bribes to find out.


    My escape would be easier if I roped some other people into it, but there were no doubt plants among the prisoners, and I wasn¡¯t good enough at socializing to find out who those were. And even normal convicts would probably give me up for a bit of extra money. So many held out hope that they could buy their way out, but out of all of them I¡¯d probably get out first. Those who brought in tenebrium got more money, yeah, but my group made sure I had a portion of that and the death rate near the Hellmouth was way too high for anyone to survive long enough to buy their way out.


    Besides, one person sneaking out would be harder to catch than a dozen.


    I leaned against the mouth of a cave, careful to keep away from any potentially poisonous plant growths. I¡¯d better start heading back soon. The rabbit filled up my entire pack, and I still needed a few more kills before the day was over.


    I moved past the cave, but something about it caught my eye. I bent down and frowned at the smooth wall just inside. It was made out of the same boring gray stone as the surrounding area, but that was not natural. I crept inside and found myself inside a tunnel perpendicular to the entrance. It soon led me to the real entrance. I stopped and choked on the thick mess of power I felt now clinging to me. I pushed through it, but it was like pushing through soup. I struggled to breathe, but I cheered inside. This was what a magical place should feel like. This was where I¡¯d learn how to change worlds with will alone. I slowly focused inside the chamber, adjusting to the thick cloud of power, and stared.


    A giant yellow crystal sat glowing in the middle of a circular chamber. Giant ants marched around it like they were performing a ritual. They were as big as dogs and their shells were thick. I could maybe take one or two, but not dozens.


    ¡°Hello?¡±


    They moved out of their circle and skittered toward me. I backed away only to find solid stone at my back.


    I turned around and scrabbled at the smooth rock. The section I¡¯d come from was identical to every other part of the room. I wouldn¡¯t be getting through any time soon. I let out a sigh that turned into a cough and slowly turned to face the ants.


    They had moved to surround me, no longer doing their strange dance around the ¡­ glowing ¡­ stone.


    ¡°Is this a Domain?¡± I said.


    And then, quickly, ¡°I won¡¯t tell anyone you¡¯re here. Just let me learn magic, I¡¯ll do anything you want.¡±

 Chapter 6鈥擳emul

    I¡¯d waited patiently as long as I could, but he never came back. I grabbed a few worms and tried to remake that demon I¡¯d killed, but had no luck with that. I had no idea where the exoskeleton and mouth had come from. All I could do was make them bigger by feeding them mana. I also acquired a moth, bat, and some ants. Then the wildlife learned to avoid my cave.


    I devolved into listlessly expanding my Domain. I made looping corridors that led to huge jungles by acquiring the roots of trees and other plants. Then I tried unevenly distributing mana over several levels of my Domain as Senz had recommended, so I could train Awoken.


    It was hard to see the point by then. I fell into a state of torpor and just sort of ¡­ stopped. I collapsed the entrances to the rest of my Domain and brought all the mana in around my soulstone. The ants I¡¯d summoned were still fighting, but I couldn¡¯t bring myself to acquire the winner and erase the rest. Instead, I just looped my mana around and around and around for a long, long time. Things were happening within my vision, but I cared so little that none of it stayed in my memory.


    Then I saw a human. She¡¯d come alone, and was completely unfamiliar, not that I expected otherwise. It had been too long now to expect anyone I¡¯d known to have survived outside. Maybe that was what had happened to Chennai. Maybe he¡¯d just died.


    But wait, she was saying something.


    ¡°¡­let me learn magic, I¡¯ll do anything you want.¡±


    Well, that was the arrangement. Maybe I¡¯d do it. I just felt so tired though. I wanted to lose myself in the streams of mana again. I felt a strange sense of ¡­ panic, as I considered the idea. It wouldn¡¯t hurt to just set up some frogs or something like I¡¯d originally planned. I couldn¡¯t talk, but she¡¯d probably get the clue.


    ¡°Well, I didn¡¯t really think it would be that easy,¡± she muttered. She was circling away from the ants that were advancing toward her. The¡ª


    Ants?


    I had forgotten to dissolve them when I¡¯d first gone to sleep. They¡¯d grown bigger. The smallest was the size of a cat, and they all had thick exoskeletons and sharp mandibles. They spread out in a formation to catch the girl who¡¯d come in. She had a spear that channeled mana, but against the ant army, there was no way she¡¯d survive.


    Tendrils of mana stretched between each ant. I peeked at them and discovered crude thought enclosed in each one. The ants didn¡¯t just communicate, they communicated with telepathy. There was a big black and purple one who most of the tendrils stretched to and from, and I gathered that one was the leader. It was the most intelligent. The ants had changed a lot. They were about on par with dumb people.


    I was suddenly very averse to wiping them out of existence. Still, I had my purpose. I couldn¡¯t just let them kill her. Instead of killing all the ants, I dissolved a bunch of walls and swept my Domain through the old tunnels and cave systems. I had to clear away cave-ins and trim some of the forest growth so that my mana could freely circulate, but I soon had an enormous amount of space under my control, probably more than even the palace. A little searching around the area of my soulstone and I discovered the hidden tunnels and the hive where my ants now lived and duplicated them into one of the deepest forested caves. There wasn¡¯t any light down there since the only way I could create any was by flaring my mana, but they were ants. They¡¯d live. Then I sort of shoved the ants into my mana until the flow carried them where I wanted. Then I put them down and tried to do the same thing with my soulstone to put it at the very bottom of my Domain.


    My vision shattered into million identical versions of me, one inside the other in a stack that would be infinite if I didn¡¯t abandon¡ªDid you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.


    I yanked the external mana away from my soulstone.


    That wasn¡¯t going to work.


    ¡°Uh, thanks. So, what do I do to learn magic? Just sit near the stone?¡± the girl said.


    I really needed to learn how to talk. Just in case she could read, I formed a piece of paper in front of her with ¡®Name?¡¯ on it. She frowned and shook her head.


    ¡°I can¡¯t read this.¡±


    That figured. I knew the basic idea of how to Awaken someone, but I¡¯d never actually done it before. I¡¯d have to create a bunch of trials and hope my fumbling about didn¡¯t kill her. I had no idea when another person would find me. Well, the first requirement to Awaken was mana. But only a certain amount. I¡¯d adjusted an area around Senz and she¡¯d told me what felt right for each stage of Awakening, and I now had a good idea of how much was too much or too little. For someone who hadn¡¯t Awakened at all, what was in the chamber was way too much. I couldn¡¯t just lower the amount of mana here though, not without abandoning the lower parts of my Domain. There was a minimum amount of mana that needed to flow to my soulstone to maintain a certain area of my Domain. I now had a ton of mana because of my time spent dormant, so much it almost felt infinite.


    So, first step. I needed to move my soulstone. Maybe instead of doing what I¡¯d done with the ants, I could just slip my soulstone on top of the mana. The part where my mana sort of merged with the thing it was transporting wouldn¡¯t happen, though the process would be a lot slower¡ªlike, speed of sound instead of sight.


    No use dithering. I concentrated on what I wanted to happen, and then it was done. I was on a pedestal, but this one I¡¯d built myself. It was pretty fancy, with basalt branching through the marble chamber and the red marble that made up the pedestal itself.


    I hadn¡¯t lost any pieces in the transfer. That was good. And¡ªI could use that method to transport anything that I could just put mana around. I could make cells and stick any invading demons inside, and sort of teleport people around within my Domain. The best part of my new location was that it was far, far below the rest of my Domain, and there was no space for even a regular ant to squeeze through. I used extremely narrow and long gaps in the stone to push my mana through and quickly redistributed the amount of mana flowing through my Domain, with the least at the top and most where I was now.


    But I couldn¡¯t get distracted. The girl was now poking around the chamber with an expression that might have been confused or scared, or maybe both.


    I created two knights out of stone, which took a whole lot of time. The girl seemed fascinated with the process though, so I finished it and had two knights in full armor gripping spears while flanking the entrance. Maybe I could actually animate them if I took the time to experiment a little. I shelved that thought for later. The girl had noticed the spears.


    ¡°Hey there. I¡¯m Ember. What¡¯s your name?¡±


    Not being able to speak was really frustrating, especially when someone else had no idea that I couldn¡¯t do so. After all, Ember had just seen me make rock knights out of midair. I probably seemed like some kind of superpowered Aelon to her. The emotion pulsed through my mana, causing a wind to blow throughout the entirety of my Domain.


    That was unnerving, both for me and Ember. I hadn¡¯t meant to summon wind. Hm. I created a frog, one that had a minor shielding ability. Then I made an actual shield out of wood and some iron deposits I¡¯d found underground and let it clatter in front of Ember.


    She gingerly picked it up. ¡°Is it enchanted?¡±


    I sent a surge of aggression to the frog, which hissed and leaped at her. Her eyes widened and she stumbled back, abandoning the shield and bringing the point of her enchanted shield up in front of the frog¡¯s path. The frog was much bigger than a normal one, but she intercepted it with her spear. The spearhead glowed green, first brightly, then fading away as the blue sparks of the frog¡¯s shield flew and the frog hissed again and bounced away, wary. I couldn¡¯t tell how the spear worked, not with her own natural mana interfering with mine. If she¡¯d just put it down for a few moments and walk a few feet away I could acquire it.


    She didn¡¯t. After she stabbed her spear repeatedly through the frog¡¯s guts, she started talking again. It was mostly questions, and I couldn¡¯t answer even the simplest of them. Then there was a pause in her monologue and she said she had to go, so I opened a path outside.


    If she didn¡¯t come back, I¡¯d send the ants out to search for her. After I learned how to communicate with them.

 Chapter 7鈥擡mber

    The shaking started after I left the cave. All the adrenaline that had flooded my system had nowhere to go. I¡¯d walked blithely into a cave filled with stifling amounts of power, felt much of it drop away in a moment along with the crystal, and then fought a frog. My reactions had been so messed up by that processes that the frog could have actually killed me. I stumbled out of the Nightetch Woods, swerving out of the way of any nearby life my spear sensed.


    I¡¯d fought for my life many times before on this planet, but there had never been a time when I¡¯d been so helpless. Walls had sealed over and opened up while I watched, and all those ants had just vanished. Visiting a Domain was a big risk, I¡¯d gathered that much from everyone I¡¯d quizzed, but I hadn¡¯t really internalized how total its power over me was.


    If only it had talked. The soulstones that operated Domains had been people once. Maybe the one I¡¯d visited was old or from another country and spoke a different language. The latter option seemed likely since I hadn¡¯t been able to read the odd piece of paper it had made in front of me. Then again, I couldn¡¯t read the language I spoke either, for some reason. I still could only read and write English. Still, the silence was creepy, even if the soulstone¡¯s actions had been ultimately friendly. The mutated frog must have been one of the trials given to Awaken people. I¡¯d already decided that if I had a choice I¡¯d Awaken instead of becoming an Aelon, mostly because the only Aelon I¡¯d met in my time on this planet had straight-up tortured me. The soulstone had let me leave.


    What now?


    I would return tomorrow, of course. I¡¯d take a huge risk if it let me learn magic. I¡¯d need to prepare for the next trials though. Those apparently involved a huge amount of stress and a high chance of death, which I¡¯d just confirmed. I needed more information and better gear. My spear was already amazing for predicting ambushes, but it was no sharper than any normal spear. I¡¯d also need some armor. My robes already covered every inch of skin. There were people who fainted with heatstroke at their first days here, and combining them with armor was going to suck.


    Well, being covered with sweat was better than being dead.


    It turned out that even in my haste I hadn¡¯t been able to get back to my new bunk before sundown. My bunkmates thought I¡¯d been chased by some giant beast and I just went with it, describing a huge thing vaguely shaped like a rhinoceros I¡¯d once seen prowling about. I used my made-up experience as an excuse to go into ludicrous amounts of debt to the jailors. Far from being suspicious, the quartermaster was quite happy to mark down the debt I accrued in buying a thick leather vest, a hunting knife to go along with my spear, rope, pitch, and a few explosives. I couldn¡¯t see anything before I bought it¡ªeverything was read to me from a list the man held¡ªbut once the quartermaster marked down what I¡¯d purchased he unlocked a heavy door and stomped through to gather everything. If I could just steal the key¡­


    He came back and dumped the stuff on the wooden counter. A few splinters caught on my robes as I gathered it up an eyed everything to make sure it was there. The pitch arrived in a small glass container, the knife was plain iron with a leather-wrapped hilt, and the leather armor could be cut down to fit me. The most intriguing and expensive items were the explosives. There were three, each a small glass marble with a blue bead in the middle. They were chips of mana crystals, like the one in my spear, and all I had to do was throw them hard enough to break the glass and they¡¯d blow up.If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.


    That was about the extent of my preparations before I slunk back into my bunk and collapsed on the thin, coarse fabric we¡¯d bought to cover the floor. I ignored questions about the new bulges in my pack and the bundle in my arms and fell asleep. I¡¯d been a lot more active since I¡¯d arrived here, but I still ended every day dog-tired and ill-tempered.


    The next morning, I awoke to screams. My bunkmates looked as confused as I was. Whatever was happening couldn¡¯t be good.


    I tossed on my new vest and ignored the extra flaps of material I hadn¡¯t yet cut out to fit me, then rifled in my pack for the knife, which I shoved in my belt, and the three explosive marbles. Those went into a pouch on my waist, where I really hoped they wouldn¡¯t blow up. Glass was deceptively hard to break, but if I got tossed into a tree or something I¡¯d probably blow up.


    Best not to allow that to happen. I picked up my spear and heaved my pack onto my shoulders, then stepped outside.


    Everything was on fire. Not just the bunks, which might have made sense¡ªthey were actually made out of wood. But the storehouse, the dirt, and even exposed rock was burning with strange green flame. Captives and guards alike lurched around in confusion. Guards fired off arrows or brandished swords while the captives cowered, ran, or threw rocks. I looked in the direction of the projectiles and saw it.


    It was a demon, no question. Eight eyes and legs burned with the same green flame. Anything that neared the demonic spider vanished, only to reappear seconds later in the same place and momentum.


    But by then, the spider had moved. Mandibles clamped around a guard¡¯s head. She screamed for help in a loud shrill voice, then¡ªit bit. I had no idea the head had so much blood.


    That instant of distraction was enough for someone to move in close and thrust her sword into the thing¡¯s side. The green fire flared up around the spider, and I got to see what it did when it touched a human.


    It wasn¡¯t pretty. The guard began dissolving where the fire touched her like the arrows had, only slower. And, based on the screams, more painfully. Fire crawled up her legs and arms until she vanished. Then, seconds later, she reappeared¡ªstill screaming, still on fire, until the fire once more consumed her.


    After she vanished and reappeared for the fifth time, the sword sticking out of the spider started sliding out. Green blood that looked more like lava oozed out of the wound, which then flared up into more fire. The injury sealed behind it, and the sword landed on the dirt with a thump.


    The guard reappeared, screamed, and burned away again.


    I looked away, and once more saw everything on fire. There were a few people who before I¡¯d assumed had been fighting the fire, or were caught up in the blaze.


    But now I knew what to look for.


    All around me, people burned into nothing, only to reappear and do it again. And if I didn¡¯t move, the same would happen to me. With that thought, something inside me woke up. I¡¯d been content to observe before, been more confused than scared. Now, I was terrified.


    I sprinted away, letting my feet lead me as my mind fled in terror.

 Chapter 8鈥擳emul

    Everyone I¡¯d meant to help had died or left, but I still carried an annoying sense of obligation. I couldn¡¯t fall back into a trance, not when there was still someone I could help. Then I could relax.


    I still had no method of communication, which was a huge annoyance. The amount of power I had made that annoyance worse, not better. Thankfully, although I couldn¡¯t communicate, I had templates of creatures who could.


    My ants.


    How they¡¯d learned to project mana packets like that I had no idea. I might never have figured it out on my own. There was a twist to it, a sort of warping of space and mana that left a split second of time with which to cram in as much information as possible. The results were jumbled and confusing when my ants tried to have conversations, but quick orders and responses went through just fine.


    Learning how to twist mana like that would have made any Aelon¡¯s head implode, but I cheated. The entire technique took no time at all to memorize. The ants used my mana for it, and so I just stole it from them. And now I could talk too.


    So that was communication down. Now I needed ¡­ trials. Something to push a person to their limits. Something dangerous, because even a completely nonmagical person could sense enough to get vague intentions from the mana around them.


    Ember needed to feel complete apathy from me. Her life or death would be in her own hands. I couldn¡¯t slant the odds in either direction. That presented a unique challenge. I could painstakingly craft obstacles that could be adjusted on the fly to match her and slowly evolve them to match whatever powers she gained when Awakened.


    Or I could just make a bunch of animals and give each a slightly higher amount of mana than the last to gauge her power. And then I could polish up the contents of my Domain, send her into deeper and deeper areas as she advanced, making more and more powerful trinkets as rewards for each obstacle¡­


    If I were still human, I would¡¯ve been rubbing my hands together. This could actually be fun. I¡¯d been considering slapping together something that¡¯d cause her to Awaken and then just throwing whatever I felt like at her as she gained power, but now that attitude made me make the soulstone version of a wince, which translated to the flow of mana in my Domain halting for a moment before resuming.


    Making a bunch of trash for someone to clear away didn¡¯t appeal to me at all. I¡¯d been a thief in life, not an artist, but I definitely appreciated the aesthetics of what I took. I hadn¡¯t wanted to spend my life making something when I could just take it. But now I could rival a thousand artists, sculptors, glassblowers, miners, even Aelon. Everyone always talked about how powerful the Domains were, and now I got it in some intuitive way I hadn¡¯t before.


    Manually resetting everything that broke through the trials would bore me, so I had to figure out how to repair and regenerate everything automatically. I¡¯d allow nonobvious solutions, but blatant cheating had to be prevented. Keeping someone from burrowing through my Domain like a worm was something I¡¯d need to look in to. For now, I just assumed Ember wouldn¡¯t be bringing a pickaxe with her.


    Right, so I had a ton of goals and no solutions. Just what I wanted. What I most needed was some sort of instruction manual on how to be a soulstone. If it existed, Senz had probably read it. Right now, my abilities consisted of being able to create, destroy, replicate, move, and reshape anything my mana touched, and feeding living creatures mana until they mutated magical abilities. Any human would gladly take any of those powers.Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.


    But I gave up my body and soul for a rock. I wanted to do magic myself without relying on copying magic mutations. I tried shaping my mana into different constructs, but all I got was a bunch of unraveled mana and a few really inefficient explosions. There was a reason even the most powerful Aelons only created a few spells during their lifetimes.


    Alright then. For now, I¡¯d make do with what I had. Creatures spontaneously mutated in my mana? Why not make my top floor inhabitable for all sorts of creatures? I expanded my first floor drastically, changing it from a cavern to a yawning chasm. I added fertile soil, created a bunch of trees, grew them to the ceiling, and then scattered tiny mana crystals around the new forest floor to hopefully tempt some wildlife inside despite the feel of my Domain. After that, I added a ton of miscellaneous vegetation, the better to obscure vision and host critters.


    That was my first floor. The low level of mana there would keep powerful mutations from occurring, but I¡¯d have a lot of creatures to copy and experiment with on lower floors and sealed-off chambers. There was enough mana to keep all the life flourishing without sunlight, which would add an interesting challenge to anyone entering.


    As long as the mana crystals paid off and the floor populated, the floor was complete. It would weed out anyone who wasn¡¯t prepared to deal with the challenges further ahead, and it let me sit on my crystalline throne without lifting an invisible finger. I added a small gap in the stone at a random edge of the forest which would lead to the next trial. Then I focused on the entrance.


    I¡¯d had ideas for a transport system before. I made a small room somewhat reminiscent of the one I¡¯d had there before, with the same raised pedestal. Though this time it held a mana crystal that was more ¡­ alive, I guess, than the others. It was still connected to the cycling mana of my Domain and the moment anyone touched it I¡¯d scan them and plop them down in the trial they¡¯d left off at. If the person was new, I¡¯d randomly place them somewhere in my first floor forest. After a bit of thought, I flared the mana in that entrance chamber, making a sourceless blue glow.


    For the exit to my first floor, I decided to try bundling a pulse of information with a mana crystal, then embedded that in the floor of the exit chamber. I flooded that chamber with the same sourceless blue light as the entrance. It worked, sort of, but I could only slip in a single short concept before the crystal slipped from my control.


    It was good enough. I set one within a decorative archway within the exit chamber and pushed my will into it. I sent a tendril of questing mana next to it, making it mimic the feel of a human¡¯s.


    Continue?


    It worked. My mana vibrated in satisfaction. The stone would draw mana from what I had circling around my Domain, offsetting anything used up at a touch. I created another archway above the crack in stone that anyone would have to come from and set my second mana crystal above that. This one had a different concept.


    Leave?


    Simple and effective. All a human would have to do was focus on a mana crystal, and their mana would instinctively brush over it, activating the impression. Actually touching one of them would activate another trigger, one that I modeled after the teleportation method I used to move my own soulstone. It would surround the person in my mana and move them around to a predetermined point. The destination for the mana crystal that would lead further within my Domain I left empty for now. I wasn¡¯t about to show anyone a half-finished floor.


    After that, I was tentatively ready for Ember¡¯s return.


    So I contacted the ants. The big purple and black one seemed to be the leader, so I sent it a thought packet.


    Identity.


    My own sense of myself flashed by. The ant seemed stunned for a good while. When it moved, it seemed tentative and unsure of its own location.


    Oh. I should probably have toned down my senses. I¡¯d overwhelmed the poor thing.


    Soon after it regained its sense of self, the ant gathered itself and launched a probing thought packet at the air in front of it.


    Allegiance.


    So they¡¯d do what I said. Nice. I was contemplating what next to ¡®say¡¯ to it when I sensed Ember. Based on my sense of time, she shouldn¡¯t be here this early. She sprinted into my chamber, pack stuffed full of trinkets and sweating a river.


    ¡°Please,¡± she gasped. ¡°They¡¯re behind me.¡±

 Chapter 9鈥擡mber

    The spider had spawn. I hadn¡¯t noticed them at first. But when I ran, I heard skittering. They were tiny versions of their mother. They followed me, floating on tiny webs floating with green fire. If any of the fire touched me, I was dead.


    I dug my fingers into the pouch at my belt and clutched a sphere. A quick glimpse behind me and I saw a large cluster of hungry green flames. I stopped. The spiders advanced relentlessly. My legs trembled with adrenaline and I felt the need to move, but I took aim and pitched the explosive marble at a tree in the center of the swarm.


    Blue flames fought green, and the explosion turned into an implosion. A few green lights winked out, but there were more. I bolted. There was only one place that might hold safety now. I navigated by memory, orienting myself by the light on my spear and familiar hills and trees.


    I ran until I thought my limbs were about to fall off, but I found it. I scrambled into a tunnel in a rocky hill until I found myself back in a circular chamber.


    It was different now. The pedestal held a blue crystal and the room seemed smaller. I slumped to the ground. ¡°Please.¡±


    I could hear phantom skittering even now. Or was that real skittering? Were they coming in? I turned around, eyes fixed on the entrance. I saw nothing, but what if they were lurking right outside, waiting for me to blink? Or maybe a few had slipped inside already?


    ¡°They¡¯re coming,¡± I whispered.


    The mana around me was lighter than before, a mist instead of an ocean. There was another change too. Before it had felt almost curious. Now it was cold. Watching. Somehow, I knew there¡¯d be no help on that front. No help, but¡ª


    The crystal. I backed away until it was between me and the entrance. It was a mana crystal the size of my head. Incredibly valuable. If I returned it to the camp I might even be able to outright buy my freedom.


    If that camp still existed, anyway. The entire place had been burning when I¡¯d left. Maybe the green flames would run out and leave everyone intact. Maybe. I didn¡¯t really think it was likely. The spider demon felt like the air when I got too close to the Hellmouth, and that never did good things to you.


    But mana crystals weren¡¯t used as money. They were crystallized power. I just had to Awaken and then I could use it to do magic. The old dream swept over me again. I snatched at the mana crystal. But it felt like something seized me right before I could touch it and threw me away.


    I swayed dizzily. Then a chirp sounded next to my ear and my eyes flew open, giving me an excellent view of absolutely nothing. I looked down and saw only a tiny circle of light around my feet, enough to see that I was standing on some sort of leaf.


    Looked like the trials had begun. At least I¡¯d prepared. I¡¯d thought of the pitch as more of an emergency fuel source but now it was invaluable. I¡¯d have both a light and a way to torch this underground forest. I groped my way forward until I found a tree, then snapped off a branch. I¡¯d already had flint, steel, and tinder from before my trip to the camp store. I made a small fire, smeared my branch with pitch, and lit it up.


    I wasn¡¯t in a forest, I was in a jungle. The ceiling was so high I could almost mistake it for a really, really dark night. Moisture dripped from every leaf I saw, and I saw a lot of leaves. There was a thorny bush that would¡¯ve torn through my robes if I¡¯d gone just a few steps to the left. Roots slithered around the ground and the soil sucked at my boots with every step. Something rustled and I spun around. A bat dangled from a branch, starting at me with yellow eyes. It hissed.Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.


    An exit, I was looking for an exit. The Domain had probably handled the demon spiders already, so now all I had to do was survive in a forest. My torch flickered as water drizzled on it from above, and I yanked it out of the way.


    I had a time limit. My chances of finding the exit went down greatly when my torch ran down. I had enough pitch for one more, and then something would probably come up behind me and chomp off pieces.


    Accepting trans-universal travel between worlds from dragons was a bad idea. Next time I saw that dragon I was going to fling it into a giant pit full of teeth and see how he liked it.


    For now, though, all I could do was go forward. I tried burning a path through the forest at first, but the amount of moisture in the air made that impractical. Small fires were feasible, but anything too big seemed to attract water to it. I had a feeling the soulstone was quenching any fires that might spread too far.


    I decided my best bet was to just travel in a straight line. Domains weren¡¯t infinite, or else one would have already taken over the world based on how powerful they were, so if I hugged the walls I could travel around in a spiral until I found the exit.


    When I found the edge, I was mostly just confused at how I¡¯d missed the massive vertical stretch of jagged rock. Then I changed my plan. The rock looked natural, like it was part of a very large cliff. I could climb it and see everything.


    That plan was aborted when a giant jumping spider leaped down at me. I brought my spear up just in time when I noticed its glow and speared the thing on the end, then flung it away. Right, there would be no climbing for me. Not when spiders lived up there. At least it didn¡¯t seem to have any magic like the demon spider, only size.


    My spiral plan still had merit, but only if my torch lasted long enough for me to effectively search the area. Best to get a move on, then. I forced aching limbs into motion, trying for a steady jog but eventually falling into more of a lurching zombie. I bet I looked like a zombie. Blisters had formed all over my feet and the water everywhere was more muggy than moist. The sooner I got out of here the better.


    Things hissed and chittered in the jungle. It might have been my imagination, but it seemed like there were more animals here than before. And I met more of them too. Not a minute after I¡¯d started my spiral, some sort of monkey with a spiked tail wrenched my torch out of my grip and scurried away, hooting triumphantly. I looked after gloomily, then sighed and groped around for another branch.


    Hours of tired trudging interspersed with seconds of adrenaline-fueled combat later, I found the gap in the wall. I poked my spear in suspiciously, but nothing leaped out. Abandoning caution, I then eagerly squirmed into the crack until I reached the room beyond.


    A blue glow surrounded everything, allowing me to see without the torch. Which was good, because I was no longer surrounded by vegetation drenched in moisture and the smoke could actually be a problem in this small room. I stepped on my makeshift torch to extinguish it and slid it into my pack, then stepped fully into the chamber.


    There was an archway in front of me with another large mana crystal set above it. When I stared at the crystal, I felt something there, something¡ª


    Continue?


    Hell no. I turned on my heel and marched away. The way back was surrounded by another archway with another gem above it. I stared at that for a second.


    Leave?


    Along with the idea of leaving, I got the impression of a hand touching a gem attached to it. Yep, that¡¯s what I wanted. I reached for the gem, but hesitated.


    I¡¯d completed a trial. Was I Awakened now? The first stage was supposed to just make me stronger and faster and more durable than normal. Now that I thought about it, I probably would have just collapsed if I¡¯d gone through the jungle on Earth. But maybe the fact that I hadn¡¯t was just the result of exercise.


    Hm. I swung my fist into the wall, then screamed and clutched my hand. On second thought, that had been a terrible idea. I reached up to the gem with my good hand and left.

 Chapter 10鈥擳emul

    I had planned to deal with whatever was chasing Ember and then watch her progress through my jungle, making subtle adjustments as she progressed. The mana crystals had already attracted a bunch of wildlife that could tolerate being inside my Domain in exchange for power. Animals were more pragmatic than I¡¯d hoped. Their increased intelligence was probably the result of the large amounts of mana nearby. My own mana always purged a little bit of the corrupted red mana from the Hellmouth and replaced it with my own from any living thing that came in.


    Unfortunately, my plans were cut short. The tiny spiders that had chased Ember here were powerful. I had to quash the red mana in every flame they made to extinguish it and stop them from looping, and then I needed to directly oppose the mana inside their bodies. Even though the demon spiders were babies, they were still too powerful for me to just bring the full force of my own mana against theirs without abandoning my Domain. Still, a battle of attrition still favored me, and I chased them around inside my entrance chamber until there were only a few left.


    They were smart enough to sense that they were fighting a losing battle. Four baby spiders hopped into formation and burned their way out of the wall I¡¯d closed behind them, then scurried away. Ugh. That had taken forever.


    Right on cue, Ember pressed exit crystal and appeared in my entrance chamber in a wash of blue flame.


    I really should have disabled that teleport function. At least she hadn¡¯t gone through any quicker. Keeping her alive while fighting a small swarm of demon spiders would not have been easy.


    She wrinkled her nose. ¡°You couldn¡¯t get rid of the corpses?¡±


    Of course I could. I pressed down on the corpses with my own mana, causing the remaining red mana to bubble up and dissolve along with the bodies.


    ¡°That was incredibly gross. And it still smells awful. Are there air fresheners on this planet?¡±


    It had been a long time since I¡¯d smelled anything with a living nose. I could see the tiny charred bits of spider floating through the air though, and I guess they were kind of annoying. I consumed them with my mana, the same as if I were about to teleport them. But instead of then letting them go somewhere else, I just kept the spider bits inside my mana until they eroded into nothing.


    ¡°Huh. Am I Awakened?¡± Ember said.


    That was a good question. I probed her form with mana, looking for anything different from when I¡¯d first seen her. There was something there, a bit of mana buildup that kind of settled down in her bones and blood like silt. It moved sluggishly. It didn¡¯t seem to be affecting her though. For the first time, I contacted her directly. I slid the thought into a bit of mana and pushed it at her.


    Almost.


    She stumbled back and waved her spear a bit. ¡°Warn me next time,¡± she said.If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.


    No.


    ¡°Damnit, why.¡±


    Amusing as this conversation was, it was time for her to go. I needed to make the next trial, and then make myself some real defenses for the next time a hoard of demons invaded. Thick spikes I could release from the ceiling to impale anything I wanted, maybe a giant mana crystal I could shatter in the entrance chamber so that I could bring more of my mana to bear at once, and a way to make both the ceiling and floor collapse. Those were things I could do. Anything else was either too complicated to complete in a feasible amount of time before I got bored or had to do something else, or required knowledge of spells I didn¡¯t have. I could give myself more options, but that required more time spent experimenting.


    But before she left, I got a sample of what the mana she¡¯d gathered felt like. It was different from mine. My own mana reminded me of a clear stream that I could easily shape into whatever I felt like. Ember¡¯s was more of a sticky syrup, clinging to its position within her until something could force it out. I gathered that it was a lot stronger than my own, but would take more effort to actually use.


    On a whim, I tried to copy some of it. It ¡­ worked. Flawlessly, just like that. I had her mana. I put a little bit into the mana crystal in the middle of the room. It was big enough for thousands of samples of similar size, and the shape would keep it from decaying. I mixed a little bit of my own mana within, just a single spark. One spark would remind me to bring whoever touched the crystal to the trial just after my jungle. Two would bring them to the one after that, three the one after that, and so on. It was still a bit too manual for my taste, but it was a system that would hold up if other people unexpectedly found me. Ones that I was okay with Awakening, anyway.


    I was about to get right to designing my second trial, but Ember was still there.


    Go.


    She glared at the stone in the middle of the room. She wouldn¡¯t have much luck in breaking that, not with how sturdy I¡¯d made it. I¡¯d bet it was even stronger than the stone it was placed on.


    ¡°There¡¯s a huge spider wrecking everything back at the camp. It¡¯s like those little ones, but a lot faster and stronger. It also spit fire everywhere.¡±


    And what did she expect me to do about it?


    ¡°Let me stay here,¡± she said.


    I was pretty sure there were good reasons for people to not stay here, otherwise Senz would have stayed. Though maybe those reasons were gone now that the camp was destroyed. I¡¯d make her a room, and if that got her killed then that¡¯d be on her.


    I formed a small mana crystal and put it in front of Ember. If the mana inside moved while it was inside my Domain and not inside a trial, I¡¯d sense it, and I¡¯d teleport her to her room. I could create and burn some animals for food and create water, so she¡¯d survive in here. I took a few minutes to hollow out a chamber while Ember puzzled over the crystal. When she figured out how to move the mana inside, I placed her inside the room.


    She held perfectly still for a bit, then started feeling around at the walls.


    Ah, yes. Light. I stirred up some mana to illuminate the place, then created a basin on one side of the room and filled it with water.


    ¡°Thanks, I guess. But there¡¯s no way out.¡±


    Technically there was, or I couldn¡¯t have put any mana inside the room. The narrow slits that led inside were just too narrow for her to even see. Her way out would be through the mana crystal. I waited for her to figure it out as I started working on the second trial. It didn¡¯t take long, although she only tried to use the mana crystal after kicking the wall. I put her back in the entrance room.


    ¡°You couldn¡¯t have just told me what to do?¡±


    No.

 Chapter 11鈥擡mber

    If I sat down and considered it, dealing with an extremely irritating and ancient entity that might kill me might be worth gaining magic superpowers. Maybe. If I had a choice between that and going back home, I might have been uncertain about it. But when the choice was between learning magic or going back to being a slave who hauled poisonous rocks, there was no question. I¡¯d never had claustrophobia, but the room the soulstone gave me made me feel like I was developing it, the trials were deadly and difficult, I really wanted a bath, and I hated pretty much all of what little I¡¯d seen of this world.


    But magic. So I rested in my new creepy room that had no shadows thanks to the sourceless nature of the lighting, banged my shins into the side of the basin because depth perception is hard, drank nearly all of it, waited for the basin to refill, and had a weird sort of splashy bath in it.


    After that, I extended a sort of mental tendril into the mana crystal to leave the room and was back in the Domain¡¯s entrance. I took a deep breath, turned around, and left. Doing trials was all well and good, but I was hungry.


    I hauled a deer thing with tendrils on its face back with me, then cooked and ate parts of it. The rest I kind of ¡­ shoved to the side of the entrance chamber and left there. I¡¯d never stored any of what I hunted before, and I was used to bringing back a lot more than what I needed.


    It was time. I reached out to the stone in the middle of the chamber¡ª


    And was in another extremely similar room, except without the pedestal in the middle and with two arches, one behind and another in front. They were decorated now. The one leading back was bone-white and the mana crystal set at the top a pale blue.


    Leave?


    Nope. It was time to advance. I was almost Awakened if I trusted what the soulstone had told me when I¡¯d asked, and I¡¯d been sleeping in an area with enough mana that it could illuminate the entire room. That had to count for something.


    I turned around. This arch was now a dull copper shot through with streaks of gold. The crystal was a ruby red.


    Continue to the second trial?


    The message had changed there. Better for me, I guess. Easier to remember which trial I was actually on when it told me. I stepped toward it and a small circular section in the middle of the chamber began to glow.


    I threw myself back in case it was about to explode or something, but the golden pillar of light eventually resolved into a ¡­ chest. I laughed like a lunatic until I had to sit down. I smiled and wiped my eyes. Nothing about the situation was funny, but for a moment I was forcibly reminded of some games back on Earth. Roleplaying games, dungeon crawlers, stuff like that. I strode forward and tossed the lid open.


    I was kind of disappointed. I¡¯d been hoping for a magic sword, or gems, or armor. What I got were three copper coins and a heavy stone spike. I held it and jabbed it at the wall. The tip broke off.


    ¡°Really?¡±


    There was no response. I tossed the rock in the corner. Maybe it would have been useful if I didn¡¯t already have a weapon, but my spear was just all around better. I studied the coins next. At first I¡¯d thought them to be just plain copper, but now that I looked more closely they had a crystalline sheen to them. As for the design on them, one side had a cloaked figure looking forward but with nothing beneath the hood. The back showed a large eye.This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    Kind of weird, and I suspected they weren¡¯t the local currency, but I saw no harm in keeping them. I swept the three coins into my pack. The chest¡¯s lid swung closed with a snap and I jumped away. The same golden glow obscured it before it disappeared entirely.


    ¡°I see someone¡¯s made it here before me.¡±


    I whirled around, spear pointed at the voice.


    The robed figure raised his hands innocently. The effect was rather ruined by the bloody knife in one of them. ¡°I¡¯m Corin. You¡¯d be the hunter for Chennai¡¯s group, yeah? I was in Sesha¡¯s, until the attack. Glad there¡¯s someone else that spider didn¡¯t get.¡±


    I slowly lowered my spear. ¡°I¡¯m Ember. What happened? With the people the spider ¡­ got?¡±


    He sighed and absently rubbed his knife on the exit arch. Red streaked across the white stone. ¡°The good news is that the magic in that fire does run out. Eventually. The bad news is that anyone caught in it goes insane way before that happens. There are a bunch of lunatics eating each other out there.¡±


    ¡°And how¡¯d you find this place?¡±


    He shrugged. ¡°Just like you did, I presume. I stumbled about like a mule, nearly died to the wildlife, found the entrance, and thought it¡¯d make a good shelter. Then I made the mistake of touching the stone to the jungle and now I¡¯m here. It¡¯s a Domain, most likely one set up to Awaken people. But it¡¯s been abandoned, and I¡¯m guessing it was abandoned for a long time. The Braithen Hellmouth is old, and whatever civilization set up this Domain has long since crumbled to dust. If we¡¯re lucky the soulstone here is asleep. Otherwise, it¡¯s probably gone dangerously insane. They can survive without any socialization far longer than flesh and blood people, but after long enough it¡¯s not smart to get near their Domains.¡±


    After he finished speaking, the center of the chamber disappeared in the golden glow, leaving another chest behind.


    ¡°Huh. One second,¡± I said, and tried to flip it open.


    It didn¡¯t budge.


    ¡°It¡¯s probably locked to me,¡± Corin said. I tensed as he approached, but he only bent down and opened the chest. There were five copper coins for him along with an actual weapon. Sort of. He got a sword with a plain wooden hilt and blade made out of the same crystalline copper as the coins.


    ¡°Seriously? It only gave me three. And a rock.¡±


    He put the coins in his own pack, then drew the sword and felt its weight. He nodded. It seemed he liked it. I felt a flash of jealousy. That looked like a proper magic sword.


    ¡°I¡¯ve heard of Domains like these. Usually, they¡¯re set up to give rewards proportional to the challenge. I assume you had a light of some kind?¡±


    ¡°Yeah¡­¡±


    ¡°I didn¡¯t.¡±


    I winced. ¡°But you¡¯re not injured?¡±


    ¡°I was.¡± Then he grinned and punched the wall. It hit with a blue flare. There was no damage to the rock, but his hand didn¡¯t look hurt either. ¡°Got mobbed. I found my way to the edge of the jungle. Bunch of spiders ambushed me. Thought I was going to die there, and then I felt better than I ever had before. And I could see. Sort of. I admit I¡¯m a little tempted to risk going further before the Domain¡¯s soulstone fully wakes up. But being Awakened at all is rare enough for most people.¡±


    ¡°Yeah. Including me,¡± I said.


    I wasn¡¯t bitter. Just ¡­ disappointed. And maybe a little angry.


    ¡°Ah. Look, I get it. But staying here longer is not a good idea. The closer we get to the bottom, the greater the chance of awakening the soulstone. I¡¯ll give you my sword if that makes you feel better. It¡¯s just an alloy of copper and crystallized mana. Pretty common.¡±


    ¡°That doesn¡¯t make it any more attractive. Look, the soulstone talked to me a few times. It¡¯s not going to kill us.¡±


    ¡°You don¡¯t understand,¡± he said, stepping to the exit arch. ¡°They can set up automated operations to keep the trials running, like the chest. You didn¡¯t hear the real thing. We need to go.¡±


    Welcome. I¡¯m Temul, the soulstone in charge of this place. Now that we know each other ¡­ what was that about automation?

 Chapter 12鈥擳emul

    Strangely, when another survivor from the work camp found his way inside my Domain, I wasn¡¯t disappointed for the extra obligation. If anything, I felt pleased. It was probably because I¡¯d get to test my designs against two people. That opened up my options, let me make tests specifically for two or more people to complete.


    But the real options I wanted were still out of my reach. I needed a sample of whatever magic I wanted to make it myself, and I¡¯d need a lot of samples to figure out how magic itself worked. As to automation¡­


    Corin was coughing. I¡¯d startled him pretty badly. His reaction amused me.


    Well?


    ¡°Pardon, uh¡­¡±


    Temul.


    ¡°Temul. I don¡¯t know how other Domains are automated. I just know that they are. I¡¯m not an expert or anything.¡±


    That was disappointing. I turned the majority of my attention to the second trial. There were still a few pieces that could be touched up, and some sections that could be modified to account for two people. Though it was more like one and a half, I supposed, since Ember wasn¡¯t Awakened yet.


    ¡°So can you do anything with that magic sword?¡± Ember said.


    Corin blinked. ¡°That was really the soulstone?¡±


    ¡°Yep. So, the sword?¡±


    He shook his head and drew it. I was glad they seemed interested in it. When I¡¯d found a copper deposit I¡¯d spent way too much time trying to figure out if I could combine mana crystals and other materials. Mana crystals were basically rocks, and copper alloyed with some tin made bronze, so I¡¯d hoped it could also be alloyed with mana. I succeeded, and decided to make money and the sword out of the result, because why not. It was pretty.


    ¡°It¡¯s just metal combined with mana. A lot of nobles have stuff like this as status symbols. Awakened use them too but it¡¯s not really for the magical properties. Mana crystals are really delicate, but when they¡¯re alloyed with metal they take on the properties of that metal. Awakened can still use the mana inside it though, so they like to use weapons and armor made out of it just in case they¡¯re in an emergency. They can cannibalize their gear for a burst of power.¡±


    Well, I¡¯d made it because I thought it looked pretty. But now I knew. I needed to find iron so I could make steel and then combine that with mana. I bet it would be doubly useful. Or I could look for titanium¡ªyeah, I could replicate any rare metal now, couldn¡¯t I? Why not take advantage of it? I bet there were trace amounts of pretty much every metal inside the stone of my Domain. I peered at the molecular makeup of a patch of stone. There were a lot of trace metals and I had no way to tell them apart.The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.


    So I sampled every one and copied the pure form of the metal until I had large cubes of each metal. There was a shiny cube that I recognized as zinc, and another of iron. There was copper here too. I took a short break to continue working on the second floor, then went back to the metals. I drew out tin, nickel, lead, cobalt, magnesium, and tungsten before I finally found titanium. I wished I could also draw out the heavenly set, but those metals didn¡¯t leave trace amounts anywhere. They either had enough to stay intact or they dissolved into nothing.


    Well, that sorting was done more quickly and easily than I¡¯d ever done it when alive. I felt a bit of nostalgia before I suppressed it. Now was not the time. Ember and Corin were discussing whether or not to move on to the next trial. I hurriedly linked the mana crystal for the next trial to it with a teleport.


    This one would be effective no matter how prepared the Awakened was. I could actually pull Ember¡¯s spear away from her and store it somewhere else so that I could replicate it. Of course, that wasn¡¯t my only motivation. She had some intriguing magical spheres in a pouch. For fairness, I took everything from both Ember and Corin except their robes, then let the teleport put them in the two separate starting areas.


    Next I focused on my ants. I¡¯d ignored them for far too long, my indecision on how to treat them leading to me just leaving them alone. I sent a thought to the leader.


    Be ready for movement.


    The big black and purple ant froze in the tunnels, its antennae twitching. It sent thoughts out to the other ants, then sent a thought into the air.


    Acknowledgement.


    Without any more delay, I swept all of them into my mana and teleported them to the entrance chamber.


    Guard.


    They had magic, though I hadn¡¯t really paid much attention to it. I didn¡¯t want to rely on the random mutations of animals for magic, and I really didn¡¯t want to have to persuade one of them every time I wanted to cast a spell. But I¡¯d felt the forest shake and the most likely explanation for that was a demon. If I wanted to be pedantic about it, every animal in the Nightetch Woods was a demon, but they only had a little bit of the red Hellmouth mana in them. If a demon that powerful found me, I¡¯d need the ants to help me hold it off long enough for me to channel enough mana into the demon to kill it. Assuming that the quake was the result of an ability anyway, and not just massive size. In that case I was abandoning this entrance and moving everything I wanted to keep down near my soulstone and sealing off everything that might be near the surface.


    The ants swept through the entrance chamber like they¡¯d planned it, each taking a certain position and communicating small bits of information to the others. They were alert, more so even than I was. They were detecting movements from outside of my Domain. I eavesdropped on their thoughts to get a clearer picture of what was going on.


    Once I had that picture, I recoiled from it. A huge burrowing creature had just collapsed a mountain. I wasn¡¯t safe here, no from a demon of that size. With something that big it would find my Domain in time and crush it if it stayed here, and then it would find and crush me. I had no way to defend against it. If it headed toward me, my only chance of survival would be to take my soulstone out and flee.


    I checked the humans¡¯ progress. They were close to the end. Once they cleared the second trial, if the giant demon hadn¡¯t left I¡¯d tell them to come up and we¡¯d all run far away. The demon occurrences around Braithen were much too high. Something big was happening and I didn¡¯t want to be anywhere near here when it went down. That spider demon that had destroyed the work camp shouldn¡¯t have been able to even get close if they had even one powerful Awakened stationed near it.


    The demon was definitely headed in my direction. If only it wasn¡¯t a burrowing demon, then I could have gone with my original plan and just withdrawn deep underground. But this one would sense me.


    The humans had stumbled out of the second trial¡¯s exit, exhausted but satisfied. They¡¯d grabbed their stuff and the baubles I¡¯d put out for them and were busy congratulating themselves.


    Time to go.


    After that message, I pulled them back to the entrance to my Domain, then put my own soulstone there.


    Big demon coming. Who knows how to navigate?

 Chapter 13鈥擡mber

    The soulstone robbed me, and then it separated me from Corin. I was having second thoughts about its sanity. If it was as old as Corin suggested, then maybe it really was insane and was just trying to lure us into a false sense of security like a cat playing with a couple of mice.


    I sighed and glanced at my surroundings. I was on a small ledge of mossy stone. Water trickled down from somewhere above me and then fell from the ledge into the ravine below. The green moss was everywhere that I could see, which was good because it was the only source of light. I shuffled back from the edge. I saw more protruding sections of stone on either side, and I bet I could follow them to the exit. But I had to jump across gaps, and I couldn¡¯t see any hint of the bottom.


    ¡°Right. Thanks and all, but I¡¯m not doing this one.¡±


    I heard nothing but the trickle of water and my own panting breath.


    ¡°I¡¯ll take almost anything else. Send an ogre and I¡¯ll fight it.¡±


    I waited some more. I was getting thirsty, so I cupped my hands under the water to get a drink. Then my skin touched the water and I jerked my hand away, clutching it to my chest. That wasn¡¯t water. It was some kind of acid.


    ¡°Alright then. Fine. I¡¯ll just ¡­ wait right here.¡±


    The soulstone would have to get bored watching me just sit here indefinitely, right? I waited for a long time. I didn¡¯t have a watch and there was no way to tell the time. It must have been hours and hours by now. I tried to sleep, but doing it next to that drop did not sit well with me. I thought about many things, most of them inane and others boring. I wondered if there were other magic systems in this world that didn¡¯t involve Aelon, Awakened, or Domains. I reminded myself to ask Corin when I saw him. I thought about my old life, and found myself missing it. Based on how my new one was going, I¡¯d been a fool to leave it. Even alien blue dragons wanted to live there. Our technology was pretty good and we didn¡¯t have monsters coming out of every hole in the ground. It¡¯d been comfortable. Still, though, even if I missed it I couldn¡¯t bring myself to regret leaving. Not yet, not when I could learn magic. Besides, the blue dragon had all but said I could come back eventually if I got enough power.


    Eventually, the ravine got old. It went from scary to boring, and I even let myself scoot up the edge. Then parts of my ledge crumbled into the void below and I scurried back. It was no use. That seemed to be the trigger. Somehow, my ledge was no longer structurally stable.


    I heard the trickle of acid and slowly turned toward it. That was it, wasn¡¯t it? Acid dissolved rock. It had slowly undermined my safe ground, and now I had no choice. I moved to the edge with tiny steps and stopped right before the section that was crumbling off. There were more protrusions from the ravine on either side of me. I judged the left one to be closer, but hesitated. Maybe I could figure another way out.


    An ugly crack came from behind me. Nope, it was time to go. I leaped, and¡ª


    I¡¯d misjudged it. I missed. I missed. I was falling, falling, falling, hands extended and grasping, catching, pulling¡ª


    I was stuck hanging onto the side of the rock I¡¯d meant to land on. If I were stronger I could just haul myself up, but as it was my arms were going to give up eventually. My legs kicked beneath me as I scrambled for another hold and found nothing. My arms quickly tired. Too quickly.


    ¡°Get me out, please, just get me out, I don¡¯t want this,¡± I pleaded. No response.


    And I was slipping. Something wet trickled from above. It touched my hand. I screamed and recoiled on instinct. Then I realized what I¡¯d done. One hand now held me up, and it wasn¡¯t enough to anchor me. My burned fingers rejoined it in clawing at the rock, pain be damned.


    It didn¡¯t work. I was falling, I was going to die, the soulstone wasn¡¯t going to save me and I was going to die¡ª


    My descent grew faster and faster as I slipped inch by inch until something inside me uncoiled. It stretched out and filled me. I felt it moving around, circulating like blood. My hands caught on something as I dug in as hard as I could. I looked up and saw blue light playing around them as they sunk into the rock.


    I¡¯d done it. I was Awakened.


    Too early for celebration, though. I made my way up onto the ledge one handhold at a time. I collapsed to the stone as relief hit me, but still careful to avoid the acid. I expected to fall asleep right then and there, but I felt ¡­ good. I was still tired, but it felt more like the result of some light exercise than clinging to a sheer piece of rock for dear life. My hand was fine, the burn from where the acid had touched it entirely gone. I took a chunk of rock and crushed it between my hands. It took effort, but I turned it into powder. Right, so I could do that now. I eyed the next ledge. It was being deluged by a rain of liquid from a waterfall above. If that was all acid, my boots would only shield me for so long. Maybe I could shield myself now that I was Awakened?


    It was worth a try. There was a puddle of acid on my ledge. I thought about how much it would suck if it burned me, or my robes for that matter, clenched my teeth, and stuck my hand in it. My hand glowed blue. The acid acted like water until I picked my hand back up, and then it slid off, leaving not a trace of moisture. The glow faded. Cool.If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it.


    Now that I had protection, I crouched down and aimed at the ledge with the waterfall, and jumped.


    I underestimated how far I could go and flew straight toward the waterfall. I braced for impact, but flew straight through it and into a chamber behind it. Then there was a blue flash and the surroundings changed from mossy stone to a gilded hallway decorated and white and blue.


    ¡°Hey. I was wondering when you¡¯d show up.¡±


    I whirled around and saw Corin, covered in slime and goo and splattered blood.


    ¡°What happened to you?¡± I said.


    ¡°Misjudged a jump. Something slowed me before I hit the ground, but then I was stuck in complete darkness with sewer frogs all around me. I could still see, but only sort of. Some things are blue when it¡¯s dark, and other things I can¡¯t see at all, or they¡¯re so faint as to make no difference. I thought I was going to die there, but now I can do this.¡±


    At the last word, Corin threw his fist forward as if throwing a punch. His hand glowed blue. Then the glow left his hand and traveled at the same speed until it hit the wall. It made a dull thud and cracked the blue stone.


    ¡°I can only do it a few times in a row before it drains my mana,¡± he explained.


    ¡°That¡¯s so cool. Teach me!¡± I said.


    He frowned and flexed his hand. ¡°I don¡¯t really know how I¡¯d do that. I just sort of ¡­ will it to happen? I¡¯m pretty sure Awoken can¡¯t share abilities with each other anyway; only Aelons can. We all have strength, speed, healing, and a bit of shielding though.¡±


    Huh. So he¡¯d basically leveled up. And I¡¯d have to almost die to do the same. Apparently I hadn¡¯t been as close to death as I¡¯d thought, since Corin had fallen and been fine. Well, not fine exactly. He really needed a bath and he could¡¯ve collected any amount of injuries before he healed. I felt a twinge of uncertainty, a hint of regret that I hadn¡¯t tried to be an Aelon first. Their power was based on knowledge, not the amount of times you survived certain death.


    ¡°Anyway, I¡¯ve been thinking,¡± he continued. ¡°We¡¯re pretty strong now. We can probably reach the Azure Empire if we have enough mana to run the entire way. This part of the world is barbaric. If you want to come with me, I still have a position in the court and enough money stored away to live comfortably.¡±


    I paused. It was hard to put my thoughts into words at the moment. I settled for a simple question. ¡°Why?¡±


    ¡°Why not? I¡¯ll need allies to keep my old position. Someone else will be holding it ¡®in trust¡¯ while I¡¯m presumed dead, and they¡¯ll be reluctant to relinquish it. You¡¯re Awoken, and that represents power. I¡¯ll have an easier time of it.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ll think about it. For now, let¡¯s just get out of here.¡±


    He nodded. ¡°Fair enough.¡±


    We went cautiously down the hallway. Nothing jumped out at us, literally or figuratively, until we reached the end. Heavy wooden doors stood there with iron rings sticking out of them. I¡¯d just reached out to pull it when they swung open with a bang. I jumped away and stood face-to-face with the biggest frog I¡¯d ever seen. It was huge, green, slimey, and had red eyes. Its tongue shot out at me, probably because I was closest.


    I dodged and ran forward. I caught Corin punching the air out of the corner of my eye, and saw a flash of blue dart at the frog¡ªonly to swerve in midair and enter its mouth. I stopped my charge. Corin hadn¡¯t said anything about being able to aim his mana punch thing.


    The frog opened its mouth and the blue blur shot back out in the opposite direction. Corin tried to dodge, but his own punch hit him dead on. He flew into a wall with a crack and a flare of blue light, then collapsed to the floor with a groan. He¡¯d be alright, I just needed to keep the frog busy enough for him to gather enough mana out of the air to heal himself.


    Its tongue missed me again and I jumped on top of the frog, then started pummeling it. It screamed. The sound was shrill and piercing, and startled me. I froze just long enough for the frog to fling me into the ground. There was a blue flare around me, and for the first time I was conscious of my mana dropping. I didn¡¯t feel any weaker, but somehow I knew I only had about half my reserves left. I was slowly regaining them, but it would take a minute for me to get a noticeable amount back. And that was a minute I didn¡¯t have.


    Once again, step-step-dodge-jump-hold onto it, punch with the free hand, brace for the scream, keep punching. It was durable. The frog stood up to a half-dozen punches from hands that could crush stone into powder before something broke. Then I was up to my ankles in frog guts.


    Corin stood up and looked me over. ¡°At least I¡¯m not the only one covered in frog insides.¡±


    I let out a snort of laughter and waved him over. ¡°Come on, let¡¯s look at the loot.¡±


    The chamber we stepped into was remarkably similar to the one before it. A chest flashed into existence in the middle of the floor. This one was twice as big as the one before.


    ¡°I think we¡¯re supposed to share this one,¡± Corin said.


    ¡°Let¡¯s see what¡¯s inside, first.¡± I tossed it open.


    There was a scattering of those same copper and mana coins, but also a decent amount of ones alloyed with silver and a few with gold. Those would be good sources of mana in an emergency provided the soulstone didn¡¯t decide to take all our stuff again, but the real prizes were the shields. There were two, one for each of us. I picked one up and twirled it around. It was exceptionally light and had the crystallized sheen that meant it was part of a mana crystal, but darker than tin. Titanium? At the bottom of it all was our former stuff. I snatched it up and then Corin and I split the money.


    And that was when the soulstone finally deigned to talk to us.


    Time to go.


    After that we found ourselves at the entrance to the Domain. The original soulstone, the yellow crystal, appeared with us.


    Big demon coming. Who knows how to navigate?


    After I almost held back a screamat the sight of giant ants, I thought about the question. I certainly didn¡¯t know how to navigate this alien world, but Corin volunteered to lead us to the Azure Empire. I shrugged. Why not? I certainly didn¡¯t want to stay here.

 Chapter 14鈥擳emul

    I gathered all my mana to my soulstone. It whirled around me like an invisible hurricane, causing the humans to flinch and step back from me. Traveling would burn away all my mana if I let day or moonlight hit me. A large, inverted, stone boat took care of that. I could ¡®see¡¯ almost straight down with my mana because of the shadow I cast. I positioned myself and my upended boat above the humans. They stared at me.


    Lead on, Corin.


    ¡°Uh ¡­ alright.¡±


    Corin talked a lot. I encouraged it. I focused on Ember early on as well, but she was extremely cagey about what she knew. He navigated through the sun, moon, and stars for the most part, which was fair but also useless to me, since I couldn¡¯t extend my mana far enough to actually see the stars. On further consideration, I could use the ants to navigate for me. They had normal sight, though looking through their eyes always made me feel like the world was flat and dead.


    Then he touched on the major aspects of the Azure Empire. I already knew a fair amount, but much of what he said was new to me. The shimmering blue gemstone the Empire was named after actually contained trace amounts of mana inside. It was hoarded within the Empire¡¯s borders because anyone could use draw from it and instantly gain the powers of someone who¡¯d recently Awakened, like Ember. The Empire¡¯s troops were therefore less powerful but much more numerous than those of the surrounding nations. They also banned Domains within their lands completely. Corin didn¡¯t care, though, and I had idea of how I could circumvent the scanning spells. I asked, and he confirmed, that those spells worked by searching underground for high amounts of mana. They served the dual purpose of finding the azure mana gems, so their attention wasn¡¯t likely to have lapsed any.


    But what if I just stayed in the sky? Flying and keeping my stone boat in the air took a bit of attention, but it didn¡¯t scale too much with volume and I never slept. I could copy items that were worth a lot of money, give them to Ember and Corin to sell, and then get them to go buy different ones.


    Corin also talked about the court. Thousands of people from all the corners of the Empire got together every decade to decide what the next big project for the Empire should be. The Emperor selected a few he liked and they were put into place, with the groups who¡¯d been in favor of this barricade or that dam getting together to personally work on it. The faction with the best result, as decided by the Emperor, became the court and took care of running the parts of the Empire he didn¡¯t care to. They became very rich.


    We traveled for some time. Humans were slow and carrying them in my mana was infeasible: they were slippery little things. Short-term levitation or teleportation within my Domain was possible, but eventually their bodies rejected my mana. Boredom was good for generating idea, though, and eventually I just created railings on the top of my inverted boat and let them climb on. Since I wasn¡¯t touching them directly with my mana, I could hold them pretty much indefinitely. It was the kind of thing that seemed extremely obvious in hindsight.Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.


    With me flying at full speed, we made good time. I could move at a pretty much arbitrary speed as long as I spent the mana for it, so we arrived in the Azure Empire a day after they boarded me. I could tell the moment we entered.


    The mana hit me first. It was twisted and strange, almost sentient. Sort of like my mana, except I couldn¡¯t sense any guiding intelligence behind it. Just the result of one, as though a soulstone had crafted given its mana the desire to Awaken people and then just left it there. I guess that was how a soulstone automated things; we could just press sentience into a patch of mana. It also meant that their mana crystals didn¡¯t cause the temporary low-level Awakening here¡ªit was the location. Any mana crystal used in the Empire would allow anyone to use the powers of a fresh Awakened. That explained why they didn¡¯t sell even a tiny amount of their azure crystals outside their borders.


    I decided I quite liked this place. If floating in the sky protected me from being found, I could study the semi-intelligent mana around here and learn to make my own.


    It would be a great place to grow, and I found I rather enjoyed the thought of being a giant floating castle. I asked Corin to point to a place of the Empire that was perpetually covered in mist. Luckily, there was such a place. The swamplands weren¡¯t much of a fun place to live, but that¡¯s where I decided to set up. I let them off there. Corin wanted to reclaim his position and money and buy a bunch of things, while Ember just wanted to see the land. I sent a few ants to scout around; when they returned I¡¯d ask them for a few choice memories that summarized what they knew.


    My humans would be back, and Corin had promised to quiz a few people to see if they could be trusted to run my trials. I¡¯d strayed rather far from my original goal of helping people escape the prison camp, but making Awakened was good fun. I enjoyed designing the trials and watching them being completed. Quite a few Domains were like that, I heard.


    For now, I settled in. I extended a few tendrils of mana downward, just for seconds at a time, so I could replicate anything on the ground. I doubt the Empire¡¯s Aelons would detect sources of magic so close to the surface, but it was better to be cautious than dead.


    My new floating castle was a pristine white tower from the outside. The quartz and marble construction gave me a sense of unreality when I drew my view back out and gazed at the entire thing as a whole. It was a good start, but my humans would be gone for a month at the least. I had the time and mana to do much better than start.

 Chapter 15鈥擡mber

    I¡¯d learned some of the local culture already in my time working the prison camp, but such places weren¡¯t bastions of civility. When Corin and I finally neared a town, we were caked in mud and sweat, our mana was almost drained from an encounter with an alligator, and I still couldn¡¯t stop asking questions about everything I saw.


    Why the silvery script etched into the walls? Enchantments? Could I do those? Why not? What if I wanted to be Awakened and an Aelon? Well what if I just practiced really hard? Well, maybe they just didn¡¯t try hard enough.


    After that little discussion I felt kind of upset. Aelons were what I thought of as wizards. They shaped magic and made it do whatever they wanted, while Awakened were just magical muscle. Any training I managed to get as an Aelon would destroy my abilities as Awakened and retard growth as either one. So I sulked for a bit while Corin persuaded the guards to open the gates, and then I was once again flooded with questions.


    I pointed out the giant egg rippling with flames. It stood on a pillar in the center of town, covered in silver wire. The silver wire was for a spell, but what spell?


    ¡°Teleportation. Any village with a phoenix egg can teleport anyone to any other. I didn¡¯t know Acherage had one, but it will make our travel much easier.¡±


    ¡°But how does it work?¡±


    ¡°No idea. You¡¯d have to ask the Aelon who enchanted it. It uses the phoenix¡¯s ability, that¡¯s all I know. Anyone who touches the egg dissolves to ash and can feel every other enchanted egg. Then they can pick one to reform at.¡±


    We got a few curious glances as we walked through the town, but arrived at the egg without incident.


    ¡°We¡¯ll be going to Fornel,¡± Corin said. ¡°Hold on to my hand; I¡¯ll guide us there. After that you¡¯ll be able to take the route between here and Fornel on your own.¡±


    I stopped. ¡°Wait, hang on. It dissolves people to ash. I don¡¯t feel like dying and then being recreated somewhere else.¡±


    He seemed stumped at that. ¡°Are you Soulless?¡± he eventually asked.


    ¡°What¡¯s that supposed to mean?¡±


    ¡°You can tell me if you are. I¡¯m not the most law-abiding citizen out there.¡±


    ¡°Can you tell if I am?¡±


    ¡°Not without an Aelon. We can¡¯t travel through the egg if you are¡ªyour soul is required for navigation. Without one you¡¯ll just turn to ash and stay that way.¡±If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.


    Yikes. The blue dragon had said he¡¯d be able to tell how powerful I was through my soul, so I assumed I had one, but it was best not to take the chance that I didn¡¯t, or that mine was different enough from everyone else¡¯s here that I died anyway.


    ¡°Probably not, but let¡¯s check to make sure there isn¡¯t anything too strange about it,¡± I said.


    We went to a shop that apparently said ¡®Aera¡¯s Enchantments.¡¯ I had to get Corin to tell me because I couldn¡¯t read the language.


    The Aelon was interesting. She was nothing like that old guy who¡¯d zapped me. Her eyes were half-lidded and she had a diadem with mana crystals dangling from it. They were individually smaller than anything I could draw mana from.


    ¡°What ails you?¡± she said as she glided over to me.


    ¡°I might¡¯ve been cursed, but I¡¯m not sure,¡± I told her.


    We¡¯d discussed what I¡¯d say beforehand, and apparently curses and geasa were most often targeted at the soul, since the memory could be erased and inscriptions on the body were expensive, time-consuming, and easy enough to erase with surgery.


    ¡°I see, I see. What terrible creature could have done it?¡±


    Corin stepped forward. ¡°We think it might¡¯ve been a wraith. We were in a cave when we heard the whispers. We got out quickly, but we don¡¯t know if we were fast enough.¡±


    She nodded. ¡°I shall take a look, if I can, but mana is expensive. I shall settle for¡ª¡±


    Corin plunked one of the crystalline copper coins down in front of her. She raised an eyebrow, which made me jealous.


    ¡°This will do, for now.¡± The coin vanished. ¡°This will take some time. Do not move.¡±


    Aera slumped into a chair that was almost overflowing with stuffing and started mumbling.


    ¡°It¡¯s just for show,¡± Corin whispered, noticing my discomfort.


    Her eyes flew open, but all she said was, ¡°Interesting.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m sure,¡± Corin said.


    ¡°There is no curse, only a ¡­ connection. I regret that I cannot follow it. It warps through space as soon as it leaves the soul. A lesser Aelon would not even notice its presence.¡±


    I frowned. ¡°And is there anything else that seems unusual about my soul?¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s not that kind of connection. Whoever or whatever is on the other end can read everything about you, but cannot make any sort of change to your soul. It is safe.¡±


    That seemed clear enough. But just to make sure, I asked, ¡°And the phoenix egg, I can use that without problems?¡±


    She smiled. ¡°It is rare that one so young is wise enough to take proper caution. But yes, you may use the egg. If you wish to rid yourself of the connection, travel to the Lunate Isles. Their magic is strange, but there is no doubt that their Soulsmiths are the best at their craft.¡±


    We nodded and left, and I could barely contain my excitement. Soulsmith. I rolled that idea around in my head. I wondered what they could do. The soulstone knew how to float. Maybe it would be cool with the idea of going to those Lunate Isles. It could replicate their magic, and I could see if I could learn multiple abilities.


    For now, we¡¯d grow in power and resources in the Azure Empire. Corin wanted his place in the court back, the soulstone wanted ¡­ well, I wasn¡¯t sure about what it ultimately wanted, but right now it had told us to bring back unique and magical items so it could replicate them, and I wanted magic.


    Corin and I stepped up to the phoenix egg, hand in hand. He touched it, and everything changed.

 Chapter 16鈥擳emul

    I figured out how to give a bit of intelligence to parts of my mana. I could set a little cloud of it around a staircase or roof and have it collapse at the presence of a soul, and then reset a little later. I could even set up a bunch of magical effects, like a wall of fire.


    That was all great. I¡¯d wanted to make more functions automatic. The drawback was that for every bit of mana I gave a goal, I had to slow down my personal time to communicate what I wanted. More complex tasks took longer to communicate, so long in fact that an entire day passed before I stopped my experimentation and actually got to work rebuilding my Domain.


    At the moment all I had was a tower with a bunch of empty rooms. I didn¡¯t feel like replicating my old trials. That would be boring. Maybe I could have small rooms on the lower floors, leading into each other in random arrangements (I could probably communicate randomized teleportation to my mana) and leading up to a large room at the end of the trial. Something unique could go there.


    Table that. I went back to brainstorming what the random room of my first trial would hold. Firstly, I wanted different types of rooms. People had different skill sets, and those would diverge even further the more an Awakened progressed in power. I let my tower sink close to the ground. The lower floors would have the least amount of mana in them and the top floors the most. Sort of the reverse of my other Domain. I wondered what was going on over there. A demon that powerful should have been killed right as it emerged. Hopefully my humans were able to bring back news to me.


    Back to the maze of rooms. I decided on three main categories. The first was brute force, and would suit those who were focused on just killing whatever got in their way. Most of those tests would revolve around my own personal monsters made out of mutated animals. After that would be a category for those who prepared for everything. I¡¯d have a ton of situational challenges in those rooms, things like the darkness in my jungle or chasms that required rope to cross. Lastly, puzzles. Step in the wrong place and get fried, play a game of lichess against me (not that I was very good at it, but I could add another element of challenge¡ªdarts shoot out for every piece lost?), and other things that relied more on perception than power.


    I was missing something, though. There was another unofficial category that I¡¯d need to build into every other room. It included false walls leading to secret locations, turning elements of a room against each other, picking a lock instead of finding the key. Those who were always looking for an alternate solution would have one.


    The next few days were spent testing several room designs inside an isolated room a few floors below my soulstone, which I kept in a section of the tower no one could ever reach. Can¡¯t squeeze through gaps you can¡¯t see.Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.


    Half the month passed while I put in my new fancy teleporting puzzle mazes down to replace my first trial. It took a lot longer, but I was much more satisfied by the result. I¡¯d impressed upon the mana circulating there that each room should have no more than one person in it, and if all the rooms were full the entrance would lock itself. That entrance was still dangling a couple dozen feet off the ground, though. I hadn¡¯t want anything climbing up while I was working on my trial. Now that I¡¯d finished with that, I had an idea for the entrance. It took a few hours, but I got the mana at the entrance to recognize sapient souls with bodies that could fit inside my tower, and to then start generating a crystalline staircase that reached the ground. Any living thing that wasn¡¯t within a certain radius of the soul got teleported back to the ground. I made that radius fairly large in case anyone brought in a familiar. After a while with no sapient souls around or inside my tower, the staircase would crumble to nothingness.


    Almost immediately, the staircase began to assemble itself. I paused and checked the scanning area. It felt correct. That meant ¡­ someone was outside.


    I couldn¡¯t see anything the sun or moonlight touched directly, but my scanning function sort of went around that, pinging only souls before returning. I used a variant of that myself and felt it. A single soul waiting below my tower.


    Should I retract my staircase? I didn¡¯t expect whoever this was, and they could be coming to kill me. Then again, I¡¯d never heard of a soulstone being destroyed by anything less than an army. Maybe he was an Aelon scouting for strange mana? If that was the case, it would be better to let him in than allow him to report back to the rest of the Empire.


    The stair formed below the tower, away from direct sunlight, so I was able to see it. I quite liked its appearance. The crystal was so transparent that only the edges were visible. They glinted. It looked like it was made of solidified light.


    The lurker stepped forward and climbed up my staircase, finally allowing me to get a good look at him. He was fairly young, maybe in his twenties, and wore a green robe. He had a necklace, bracers, and a thin circlet on his head, all studded with tiny mana crystals. I could almost see something inside them, little twisted pieces of mana. Spells. They were too close to his body for me to properly examine them.


    My double doors slid sideways until they were flush with the wall. That effect had taken me quite a while to work out, but I was extremely happy with it. The Aelon paused for a second to tap at the walls and nodded. He stepped inside my entrance chamber and it closed behind him. Even being open for that long was allowing the light outside to shred the mana in there, and I didn¡¯t have a lot in my redone first trial in the first place.


    He didn¡¯t pick one of the doors that would lead to different trials, just leaned against a wall and spoke.


    ¡°Every so often we get a soulstone that thinks it¡¯s being so very clever. It flies in the Empire and sets up without competition or Hellmouths in sight, as if it¡¯s the only one with a levitating Domain.¡±


    I was getting a very bad feeling about this.

 Chapter 17鈥擡mber

    I still had my share of the mana coins. I shakily dug them out of my pouch and clenched them in a fist. Something had gone terribly wrong, and I couldn¡¯t remember what. The phoenix egg teleportation, I remembered that¡ªand then things got fuzzy and indistinct. Damnit, I¡¯d specifically had my soul checked. But what had happened after?


    Whenever I tried to remember, my head pounded and I felt sick. I gave up for the moment and took stock of my surroundings. I hadn¡¯t lost anything in transit other than memories. My spear glowed green. I looked around the alley. It was empty. I frowned and walked toward the end. The shadows were weird here. I could¡¯ve sworn they were moving out of the corner of my eyes, only to go back to normal when I turned to face them. I broke into a run, but the end of the alley seemed to stretch farther away.


    I siphoned some of the mana from my coins and leaped. I could see outside, but everything was strangely muted. Bustling streets and bubbling voices were dulled and warped. Everything out there had a sense of unreality to it. I stepped forward.


    A tendril of shadow slithered up around my legs, locking them in place. I froze in place, a prisoner in my own skin. It reached up to my face. ¡°Remember,¡± it sighed.


    Then it was gone, and I was stumbling forward into a crowd of unfamiliar faces. I had no idea where I was, and I didn¡¯t see a phoenix egg anywhere around me. I dodged people and confetti made of light and winced at horns and distant booms that seemed to come from cannons. The bursts of light from the celebration made it look like it was day, but the moons were high above. This time the broken moon was brighter, the red one looking dim and distant.


    I ducked under an archway leading into a less crowded garden and slumped down on a bench. A bunch of smoke had told me to remember something, and now that I thought about it I did. It was like remembering only the next step in a plan. I needed more mana, a lot more. Once I gathered enough, I needed to wait until the next time the broken moon was this bright and ¡­ and do something else. I was confident I¡¯d remember when the time came.


    Again I struggled to remember the experience, and I again I failed. It was as if I¡¯d read it in a document. Nothing except the facts remained.


    That worried me. A lot. I hated forgetting, enough that I even struggled to hold on to my dreams. Well, I had back on Earth. My journal was out of reach now, and I¡¯d had more important things to worry about. But now something had taken my memory and I wanted it back.


    Maybe a skilled Aelon would be able to help me. Though I guess if they could help me remember things they could also make me forget. The soulstone was incredibly powerful, it would likely be able undo whatever had happened, but it would also hold that out as a reward for completing another trial, which would take a while. I¡¯d talk to Corin about it to, when I found him, just in case he knew something.


    ¡°What are you searching for?¡±


    I jumped, and found someone sitting right next to me. She was old, and had a staff leaning on the side of the bench. Her hair was made of strands of silver light, floating about as if underwater. How she¡¯d gotten there without me noticing was a mystery.A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.


    I shrugged. ¡°Stuff.¡±


    ¡°Hmm. You will remember in time,¡± she said, looking me up and down as if studying an interesting bug.


    I leaned forward. ¡°You know something.¡±


    She stood up, and her staff flew into her hand. I frowned. She didn¡¯t have any more mana than a normal person inside her, and I didn¡¯t feel any mana crystals near her. The mana seemed to come through her, like she was a gate instead of the reservoir that an Awakened or Aelon was.


    ¡°How are you doing that?¡± I said.


    ¡°The barrier over this continent is failing. Things are already slipping through. You have forgotten of survival. When the storm comes, it will sweep the children that pretend to understand mana away in an instant.¡±


    I sprang to my feet and moved to follow her. ¡°You¡¯re not from here.¡±


    More mana streamed through her. Her form flickered as she walked away, rippling as if she were a reflection instead of a person.


    ¡°Wait,¡± I called. ¡°Tell me how to survive it. Please!¡±


    She turned, but glanced back. ¡°Take a look in a mirror,¡± she suggested. And with that, she was gone. All that remained was a cloud of silvery mist.


    No one else seemed to have noticed anything odd. I went up to an older women who was strolling through the garden. ¡°Hey, do you know the way to Fornel?¡±


    She nodded. ¡°Of course, Bright One. Follow me.¡±


    That gave me pause. ¡°It¡¯s just Ember, please.¡±


    ¡°Apt,¡± she said, smiling.


    I really needed to find a mirror. She led me through twisting roads and around celebrating groups of people until we got to another pedestal holding an enchanted phoenix egg. Well, that was a dilemma. Did I want to risk whatever had happened to me happening again? I had a strong feeling that it was a one-time thing, but it might just be a trap to lure me into thinking the phoenix transportation was safe.


    ¡°What is this place? This festival?¡± I asked, stalling for time while I deliberated.


    ¡°You do not know?¡± Her eyebrows rose.


    Uh. Right, time to make something up. ¡°I was isolated, growing up. I don¡¯t really know much about the outside world. A demon forced me away from my home, and now I¡¯m here.¡±


    ¡°During this time, Luna is strong enough to have some sway into this world. She forces her sister away and picks a champion who will carry out her will.¡±


    Luna ¡­ I was guessing she meant the bright moon, and that her sister was supposed to be the red one. There were religions on Earth that venerated the moon, so it wasn¡¯t all that odd. What was weird was the part about a champion.


    She continued. ¡°Her champion¡¯s hair glows silver on nights where Luna is powerful as a sign of her favor. When Luna is strong, her champion shares in her power. When her sister holds sway over night, her champion is hunted by evil.¡±


    Huh. That old woman, with the staff and the floaty silver hair¡ªshe was the entire reason for the festival. It looked like the moons actually did something on this planet. If the bright moon actually contacted people, then ¡­ that Aelon who¡¯d checked my soul had mentioned the Lunate Isles, a place where people extremely skilled in soul magic lived.


    ¡°The champion is given tasks that she must carry out before she can contact Luna. You are in this early stage, Bright Ember.¡±


    Oh. I rushed over to the phoenix egg, looking for a place where the cage of silver was particularly dense.


    It turned out that I didn¡¯t even need a mirror. I pulled a few strands of my hair before me to look at, and stared. They¡¯d turned from red to silver.