Ch 8

In his room, Areth was

having a heart to heart conversation with the ring. The soul that resides in it introduced herself as Leyfin Rovefolia, and according to her, she was a royal in her previous world.

She then recounted her life from childhood. She was a princess trained in the use spells. At the age of three, she had began reading and learning all the books about magic in their vast library. When she was five, she experienced war first hand in the back line, decimating foes with her magic. Her voice (thought) sounded smug as she was telling this.

Areth listened patiently, although he wasn't sure why she was telling him all of this, but he figured that he had too much free time anyway.

When she was seven years old, she entered the Magic Academy and was hailed as the most promising Mage in history. The students were not her match and the teachers had nothing to teach her, she was able to graduate in merely a year.

All was good and fine at her 18, she was already one of the strongest wizards, and also the youngest to have reached that level. However, rifts suddenly begin appearing across the lands. At first there were monsters, but soon even demons began coming from those rifts.

There were other humans coming from the rifts as well, and they helped their world fend of the demons. Yet despite all their wisdom and technology combined, the demons have overwhelming numbers and they too have wizards like them.

At this point, her voice sounds sad.

Their civilization begun to crumble, and the demon's reached their country, the princess and other wizards gave their all in one final stand of defiance. At the end of it, the princess was able to nuke down 637,009 demons before perishing.

But it seems like heaven did not want such beautiful and talented individual as her to die, and she was able to bind her soul to her ring, a gift from her mother, which she then guides to escape into a tiny rift that led to this world.

The voice then remained silent after recounting all those sad stories. Silence remained and Areth stared at the ring dumbly.

'Aren't...aren't you going to say something?' The voice said.

"Good job?" Areth wasn't sure either.

'I-I took out 637,009 demons. You're still a kid so you probably don't know how much that number means!'

The voice continued.

'Don't you know demons? Demons are bad and very powerful you know? One punch and can flatten this house! Your warriors would not even stand a chance! As for your dad who was a so called B-rank, which I heard was quite strong in your standards, it still would not suffice!'

Areth was immediately enlightened.

"Woah! So strong, so badass. Teacher, teach me! I want to become powerful like you!"

'Hmmph! So you finally realized the gravity of the situation. According to what I know, your world is in a similar situation to mine. It's wouldn't be long before the demons begin invading.'

"Then I need to inform dad and rest!"

'Yes, do so. It would be better if the rulers of this world know so that they can prepare in advance. But don't just reveal my existence to them. Got it?'

"Yes!"

Areth did not know why but he felt like the evil in his heart was stirring, deciding to humor this poor soul by acting like an earnest student.

"Please teach me magic!"

'Shush, don't be too loud. It would be weird if your parents see you talking to your ring. But alright, seeing that time is tight, I'll teach you magic so listen properly.'

And this he begun learning the basic principles of spell casting. He felt like a Ph.D reviewing his elementary lessons.

This brought back memories, as he remembered the days where the only magic he could use was telekinesis, the basic of basics. His talent in magic was poor, but due to serendipity, he discovered the some patterns in the law of nature. After uniting them together, he came upon the Absolute Rule, and thus begun his rise to power.

'Okay, so to cast fireball you- what the fuf?!'

Immersed in his memories, Areth had already conjured a ball of flame in his palm subconsciously.

'I-I did not even finished explaining! How in the world did you conjure it?! Chantless at that!'

Areth cancelled the fireball, unsure what to reply. "I just did?"

'You just did?' The voice asked shaking.

'Bitc- I mean boy, you really surprise me! it looks like you are destined to become a wizard! I think you have 1/4 of my talent. Don't underestimate it though, 1/4 of my talent is enough for you to conquer the world!

"Amazing..." Areth praised with dead eyes.

'Let's see, go ahead and try fireball again. Try to maintain it for 2 seconds. First you imagine this, pwoosh~ then and gather some mana in the air, mold them perfectly into a ball, add some heat and then viola, fireball!'

"Oh, I get it now teacher!"

'Hahaha, of course, I'm your teacher after all!' The voice proudly declared.

Areth tried to cast fireball like a noob would.

First he chanted for a while, acting like he was struggling to release something.

'Go you can do it!' The voice cheered at the sideline. 'Remember the feeling the first time you were able to cast it.'

In the end, Areth was no longer so motivated to pretend, but he held in anyway.

At last, a small flame was ignited in his palm. They compressed and formed into a ball.

'Hmm. Not bad at all. Very good. I must have explained you the concepts very well right?'

"..."

'Right?'

"Yes teacher."

Areth was suddenly reminded of his troublesome grandchildren. They would destroy his collections, some precious art books, then they would act smug about it, their faces saying, 'How about it? I did well right? Praise me!'

'Now, shall I teach you more about about magic diagrams?'

Areth nodded. His head probably full of imaginary dark lines by now.

'So many troublesome matters, I really shot myself to the foot this time. Should head to the gate of separation again?'

---

After a few days interacting with Leyfin, Areth finally noticed something peculiar.

'Now you know how to cast fireball.'

'Let me teach how how to cast fireball v2'

'This is spell is an upgraded version, giant fireball!'

'You need to master your foundation before you could cast colored fireball!'

'...look this black flamed ball!'

'...rainbow fireball.'

'...ultimate blazing fireball...'

Areth could no longer take it and confronted Leyfin about it.

"Master."

'Hmm? Is something wrong?'

"Master, do you know other spells other than fireball?"

'R-ridiculous! Don't think of other spells when you don't even know fireball! Fireball has thousands of variations that I have discovered, by the time you mastered all of them, I can assure you that you would no longer need any other spells!'

"Uh, so master, do you know any non- fireball spells?"

'Listen brat, fireball is a very strong spell. It has a low mana cost and fast cast time. It means that you could summon thousands of them in an instant. It is very practical in real battle. This was the reason why I rose so fast in ranks.'

"Sure."

Areth was certain that this little lady only knew how to cast fireball. It's wasn't that bad though as she had researched thousands of variations of it. Different fireballs for different enemies.

After talking with Leyfin, Areth secretly imbued mana to the ring before heading out to meet with his neighbors, aka playmates.

Areth had nothing to do during weekends, so he decided to be more productive.

He called his workers over, a group of children about his age.

"Hey, what are we playing this time?"

"Areth, lend me some toys, maybe your holowatch?"

"Not now, I need you to gather these materials, we are going to make something today." Areth responded, handing them a paper drawn with illustrations such as a certain kind of twigs or grasses. Those things were commonly found around.

"Wow, your drawings look good!"

"Are we going to cook?" A girl asked.

"Yes."

Before long, the children returned with all kinds of plants, weird lump of dirt and even earthworms.

'Who told you to bring earthworms?'

"Bring them here." Areth start to assemble the materials, unbeknownst to the children, a maelstrom of mana had already begun to form around them. As they were not benders, they could not sense anything.

Then a named Rachel and a shy boy called Lian both exclaimed. "Oh, I suddenly feel so light! It feels like I'm flying!"

"H-huh? Me too."

'Looks like these kids have potential.

"What are you saying? I don't feel anything?"

The other kids joined and it became an argument. Areth mixed the ingredients in a makeshift pot with water. Meanwhile he was also extracting their mana, combining them and imbuing them into an opaque stone which he personally obtained from a cheap jewelry. In the eyes of the children, Areth was simply stirring the ingredients in the water.

Areth filtered the water and removed the residue which at some point turned dimmer in color, while the water was sparkling clear.

The children were watching attentively.

Areth dropped the opaque stone into the mana filled water. There was rumbling sound and the mana in the surrounding became violent.

Before the product could explode, Areth skillfully suppressed it with his own mana, enclosing the stone and the water into a palm sized cube.

A flash came out of the enclosure, but the explosion harmed nothing outside.

"What was that light Areth? How did you do that?"

"Whoah, looks there's something! Is that food Areth?"

What remained in the pot was a perfectly shaped, translucent cube. It was solid and looked like a glass with lights dancing within.

'Perfect.' Areth smiled. He let the children play with the cube.

Suddenly, light burst out from the cube, engulfing the children and Areth. The surrounding immediately receded and formed a new scenery. An endless green plain.

Areth looked around, he knelt down and felt the grasses on the ground, he scooped some earth and felt the gritty texture of each granules. He was satisfied at his work.

This cube has a very simple name, Virtual Cube. It resulted from his countless experiments to mimic the Absolute Rule and create his own world with its own set of Absolute Rule.

Unfortunately, his understanding of the Absolute Rule was still lacking, and instead of forming a real physical world, he could only make do with a realistic illusion which only the soul or astral projection could sense.

Despite being an illusion, it was still formed from a fragment of Absolute Rule, the physics were almost the same as reality.

Areth of course had the idea of making a virtual reality game, but it requires a deep understanding of the Absolute Rule. If he could use it as a programming language, he might as well create a real world.