1 A hot summer is better than a cold winter, or not...

He had 5 minutes to live, or so he thought. Jack was sweating like a pig.

He had to disarm a bomb. A magical bomb. An array, to be precise. A carefully laid one.

There were chosen ones in the world. Those, who were blessed or cursed, depending on the viewpoint, with abilities to manipulate reality. Were they real powers or was just reality bendable, a game? Nobody knew. But as far as they were concerned, nobody gave a shit. Cause it felt real.

Jack was one of them. He could lay arrays, craft items, which common people called magical, like teleport coins. It was nothing extraordinary for him. It was normality. He wished he could show everybody, what he could do. He was still young, seventeen. He wished that there was not a wedge between those who could code reality and those couldn't.

Because they interfered and changed space, time and although they couldn't change fate, they were almost almighty. So they thought.

Jacks' job was to decrypt reality really. He was, by any means, a cryptographer. Although his methods were a bit orthodox, like assembling golems, painting with blood, sacrificing chickens. Just kidding, chickens are nice. Racing with time, then crafting spells, concentrating that he did not fuck up, otherwise he would blow himself up. So his life was a bit packed, one could say.

The problem arose, when some chosen ones thought, it was fun to blow up things. Or when dimension-jumpers or space-jumpers came over to Maneila(planet home), just to play around. Which meant trouble. Big trouble for the populace.

So he had to make sure, that everything was going smoothly, at least on the surface. Which meant a lot of work for him. He had shit to cover up. A lot of shit. Disturbances occurred everywhere.

The so- called mana-users could override reality, by creating keys or spells to access certain energies really fast and in big amounts. To bend them to their will. After that, it was only a question how they wanted to use it.

But, of course finding and crafting a method to access these hidden bubbles were hard. Really hard. That is why you had to have brains to be able to manipulate mana. And patience. A lot of patience. So...

He had 5 minutes to live, or so he thought. Jack was sweating like a pig.

He had to disarm a bomb. A magical bomb. An array, to be precise. A carefully laid one.

Tick-tock. Tick-tock.

Clock was ticking, although that didn't mean anything to him.