11 World Generation
The first thing that came to mind when Hans saw the distant explosion of light...was how absurd whatever just happened was...
Veef also stood there, staring at the distant false star with her mouth agape. True surprise ran through their soul-bond.
'WAIT! I wasn't even trying to make that! I was just imagining how It'd look. Then it just appeared!!!'
The pixie face-palmed, "That's what I meant when I said 'envisionment'! O-Okay! At least it isn't the most unfavorable of outcomes! You could've imagined it with a conscience... or worse: a personality! If you'd have done that... all of your mana might have been drained!"
'?!'
'...' The concept; that he could even spawn something like that fascinated him. But the fact that it could be done unintentionally... left him horrified.
Veef noticed his odd silence and immediately became worried.
"Hey! You! You aren't thinking about it, are you?! Stop! Stop right now!"
She yelled out loud, hoping to draw Hans away from his vision, which he had already dispersed.
'No... I'm not!'
Hans watched as she became visibly relieved by his response, and sighed.
"Good! I thought we were going to screw things up in the first five minutes!"
____________________________
"Now that we're back on track...what do you want to put in here?" She gestured all around them.
"An infinite labyrinth filled to the brim with monsters and traps? A vast puzzle - adventurers won't be able to solve before being swallowed by the maw of death? There are almost too many things you can make inside here, with this much space and mana...."
Hans became unnerved all of a sudden - not at the complexity of everything Veef just said, but rather the mundane appeal of having such things in his dungeon. Those were the things he found unappealing about those fantasy games he used to play. They just didn't suit his tastes.
Hans knew just by thinking such thoughts, he was probably the worst dungeon in all of history.
He didn't know what made himself so excited for this room to begin with; what he expected out of it, but he knew those things weren't it.
That was when he heard Veef continue.
"But what am I saying?! That stuff all depends on what type of dungeon you plan on being..."
Veef, paused, "Although whatever you 'really' do start with... will be the foundation for whatever you try and do here later... "
She didn't turn to face him, though it felt like she did, mystically, and she spoke the next words that drew Hans into a short trance.
"So..."
"What's your goal for this place? It could really be anything!..."
"O' Great Dungeon, what do you want?" She remarked sarcastically.
It wasn't the words spoken that brought upon this trance. It was the implication... the realization that was birthed in Hans that very moment.
After living one life restricted, he was thrust into this one anew, and along with this life came newer restrictions, new pain, and new rules. For the past day of consciousness here, he subconsciously fell into the line of thinking he had those days in the hospital bed; where the very body he dominated was the restriction.
Until this moment, he believed it would be the same again; he would be bound to a place he didn't want to be, unable.... incapable of changing the fact of his destiny.
He'd been living this way for so long, each and every day in that hospital, for ten years... It didn't cross his mind.... This opportunity.
Until...
*What do you want?*
Those few words resounded in his head.
And something popped.
'What I want...'
"What I want?"
He couldn't help but recall the times he'd been asked that same question. Of course, he'd been asked too many times to count. But the only times that resounded with him, were when he was asked by his family... The people who mattered before they stopped visiting him.
When they asked... he would reply:
"I want to go home...."
But they put it off as the simple ramblings of a nine-year-old child. They threw a portable game console into his lap and wished him well.
But as his conditioned worsened, and his family (with the exception of his mother), stopped visiting (likely from the guilt of putting off visits before), Hans began to wonder what he could have done, moreover, what he would have liked to have done with his life.
And when he was asked by his mother the last time he saw her:
"Can I get you anything? What do you want?"
He couldn't tell her weak heart, 'I want to go outside', much less, 'I want to go home'.
So he told her instead:
"I... want to see the world... from here, of course" he laughed.
She frowned for a bit, then smiled mysteriously.
And next he woke, there were two books on the bed beside him.
Both were filled to the brim with illustrations... One was a collection of landmarks and landscape paintings, and photographs by famous artists...
The other, hilariously, was an illustration/concept art book from that fantasy game he liked to play. He wondered how she knew.
And from then on, his answer to that question was permanently changed, incredibly.
Those two books became his infatuation, only short-lived to match his lifespan.
The images of lands both real and fictitious, never, but at the same time always more profoundly enticing than one another. Fantasy and reality.
'He wanted' to be "there"- to see them both, yet couldn't.
Now before him, this black endless expanse of over trillions of mana, and...
the opportunity.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hans could feel his emotions flow through his connection with Veef, so he could tell that she knew of his turbulent thoughts.
"Hey! What are you thinking? You'd better not do anything stupi-"
...
..
..
.
Suddenly, Veef felt a harsh pull. And without preparation or knowledge of what had happened, collided heavily with a hard surface. The world seemed to spin, forces like gravity enacting themselves on her and driving her against the new and unseen.
Her head buzzed and ached, so much that she thought she heard noises. The pixie almost didn't realize the fact she had stuck to the object she collided with, and the vague but vast force that had stuck her with it, still "oppressed" her. And that force.... Felt all too familiar.
The noises in her head became clearer, they sounded soft, unlike the hectic pounds of head injury, confusing her. They rustled and collided softly with one another like solid waves.
Like leaves.
Her eyes burst open almost instantly. Her hands gripped the solid mass beneath her, pure earth. Not one bit falsified.
She opened her mouth, but there were no words.
.
.
.
