Chapter 5: The Explanations And The Apology.

A few minutes passed since Elara and Alex last spoke. But, finally, Elara decided to stop the silence and transported Alex's consciousness into the green void and gave him his teenager body from his past life again. And, just like a few minutes ago, Elara appeared before Alex again.

"First of all, apologize for what I've seen. Second of all, I can explain some things if you want." Elara said before snapping her fingers which caused a room to appear. Alex looked around and realized that it was his room. His messy bed with clothes on it, his desk with notebooks and pens scattered around, his carpet, everything down to the smallest detail was there in the exact same places as he remembered.

"Recreated from my memory?" Alex asked as he sat down on a chair. Elara nodded and sat down on the bed opposite of the desk.

"Exactly, now, ask whatever question you want explained." Elara replied. Alex thought for a second before asking,

"So, what exactly are you?" Elara sighed at the question. She already explained it, how did he not understand her the first time?

"As I said, I don't know. I just appeared in your head one moment and now I'm here." Elara responded, paraphrasing herself from minutes prior. Alex leaned back in his chair and thought for a moment.

"Then, you said something about 'Incomplete Complex... Dimension'? What's that about?" Alex asked as he looked out the window, seeing only a green void.

"It's 'Incomplete Complex World' first of all. And I gave it this name because of the nature of this place." Elara answered, thinking how stupid Alex is, forgetting such an easy to remember name of this void.

"Ah, yeah, 'Incomplete Complex World', that's it. But, what do you mean by 'nature of this place'?" Alex asked, wondering why this name specifically.

"Let me explain." Elara said and suddenly the room disappeared. Strangely, Alex stayed still and didn't fall like he expected. He looked down and realized that he was levitating, so he straightened out his legs and didn't feel any ground beneath himself. He looked up at Elara who flew up to him, grabbed him by his collar and pulled him upwards.

"Stop being stupid, gravity doesn't exist here so you can just fly." Elara said, as if stating the obvious.

"Eh? Then why did I fall last time?" Alex asked as he moved himself in a circle with only his mind.

"Oh, that. Sorry, I just used the nature of this place to mess with you." Elara replied and then grabbed Alex by his arm to stop him from moving around.

"Alright, alright, can you explain the nature of this place already?" Alex asked, feeling impatient. Elara shook her head.

"This is basically an infinitely-sized dimension governed by both real as well as imaginary numbers. In here, the owner of this dimension, that is, you and by extension me, can manipulate numbers. You can for example make '1000=3' be true, or manipulate vectors, which is how I made you fall earlier, or much more. As long as you believe that something has a number attached to it, you can manipulate it." Elara explained and Alex listened intently. To think such a dimension existed, who knew?

"Right... so, for example, if I wanted to create something in here, like a planet or even a universe, could I?" Alex asked, curious as to where the 'anything' had a limit.

"Yeah, you would have to manipulate this place to create space and time first, then you would need to manipulate the number of atoms and lastly their arrangement. Oh, and also create the laws of physics and so on so everything could actually work. And the vectors too, so everything would move." Elara replied, suspecting what Alex's next question would be.

"So I could create my old universe here with everyone, friends and family, and live there?" Alex asked and Elara sighed and shook her head.

"I knew you were going to ask that. Yes, yes you could, but do you really want to? They would just be fakes, you would basically create almost 14 billion years of history of the universe just to feel better. Not like I can stop you, but really?" Elara asked. Alex knew that she was right. He knew that it would be fakes, copies of everything he knew. On one hand, he could be back with everyone he knew, on the other hand, it would be copies. He dropped his head and thought about something before saying,

"Alright, I guess I won't be doing that..." Elara shrugged. She wouldn't have cared what Alex's decision was, all she cared about was if her life was going to be boring. To her, watching a 16 year old kid discover a world completely different from his old one would be more entertaining than watching him live a quiet life in the middle of nowhere, so she was a tiny bit excited.

"Good choice, anything else you want to know?" Elara asked, already wanting to teleport Alex back to the new world so she could have fun watching him.

"You said that if I wanted to create a universe then I would have to create space and time and laws of physics, don't these things exist here already?" Alex asked, confused slightly at having to create these things from scratch.

"Did I not tell you? Seems like I forgot. But no, they don't exist here, this dimension is infinite in size, but 'space' doesn't exist." Elara explained as shortly as she could.

"Alright? So... how are we moving if time and space don't exist?" Alex asked as he looked around. Elara looked around as well before her eyes stopped on Alex.

"You're the owner of this dimension, why would you not be able to move?" Elara asked, looking at him like he was stupid for not figuring it out already even though he had no idea up until a few seconds prior.

"Right... yes, of course. Anything else you want to inform me about? You know, something... serious?" Asked Alex, wanting as much useful information out of Elara as possible. Elara just closed her eyes as if she was remembering things and then opened her eyes and shook her head.

"Nope. That's all the useful information. See ya!" Elara exclaimed as she teleported Alex out of the 'Incomplete Complex World' to his royal body. As Alex opened his eyes he realized that he was being taken somewhere.

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"Where do you think his Identification Crest will be?" A feminine voice of the person carrying Alex asked the man beside her. Alex recognized the woman as his mother, and guessed that the man was his father. He wasn't present in the room when Alex was born, but Alex was a prince, and the man walked like he owned the place. All the maids and butlers bowed down as the man went forward, so Alex was sure he was right.

"Who knows? As long as it isn't in an inconvenient place then all is good." The man responded. Alex was confused what was happening so he asked Elara in his mind,

"Elara, what's happening? That woman, didn't she give birth to me like 10 minutes ago? Why does she look like normal? And that Identification Crest, what's that?"

"Oh, I forgot to tell you. Remember when we were in the 'Incomplete Complex World' and how time doesn't exist there? Well, I created time for a moment and since the time in that dimension and this universe wasn't synced about 15 hours have passed in this universe during our talk. Also, magic exists, so they used healing magic on her." Elara answered and Alex decided not to press Elara about not telling him that when he asked.

"Right, and that Identification Crest? What's that?" Alex asked, still confused about what that was and what counted as an 'inconvenient place' for that crest to be.

"After I took a look at your parents' bodies I saw a super thin layer of magical energy, Xen as they call it here, on their skin. I also found a crest on their bodies. Your dad has his Identification Crest on his right forearm while your mom has it on her stomach just beneath the surface of the skin." Elara explained after a moment of silence.

"So, what exactly does it do? There is a crest on their bodies and there is Xen on their skin, what purpose does it serve?" Alex asked, trying to remember all the things that Elara was explaining to him.

"It has 'identification' in the name, what do you think? Obviously it serves as an identification method. When you touch something some of the Xen moves onto that object. Basically, the 'Identification Crest' is this world's equivalent of your world's fingerprint, just harder to conceal as it requires manipulating Xen which not many people can do." Elara answered.

"After looking through your dad's memories it looks like it was originally used by slave traders to mark slaves and make sure it's possible to locate them. Then the government got mad and made it illegal. Since that day everyone has an 'Identification Crest' which has made assassinations and murders and similar things less common and easier to track down. Also, only wizards have permission to perform these curses on people." She added.

"Why is it a curse? Isn't it good that murders and assassinations are lower than before?" Alex asked, curious as to why a seemingly good thing is a curse.

"The name 'Identification Crest' is just that, a name. The spell itself is a curse-type spell, that's why I said that." Elara explained. That was a fact. In fact, placing an 'Identification Crest' on people is the only curse legal to perform.

"Alright, and what is an inconvenient place then? The man said something about that, what is it?" Alex asked.

"Well, the 'Identification Crest' is a crest carved into both your physical body as well as the Soul. That crest can be carved anywhere on your physical body, which means that there is a chance that it could get created in such a way that it pierces one of your veins, or arteries, or organs, or anything else. That's why young, inexperienced wizards who take relatively small change for these crests are most likely to accidentally kill some newborn. They don't have enough control over Xen to control where the crest is created and end up leaving it to chance, which, with the amount of important bits and pieces in the human body, sometimes is not the best result." Elara explained and Alex got scared.

"So you're telling me that there is a chance that I'll die? Again!?" Alex panicked a little at which Elara sighed.

"I know that your brain shrank to the size of a newborn's, but use it a bit. You're a prince, you're from the royal family, obviously your parents will hire the best wizard around to ensure your safety." Elara explained, speaking in a tone that clearly indicated that she thought that Alex was stupid.

"Ah... yeah... that makes sense. But! I died not too long ago, you think that I'm going to accept that all of a sudden?" Alex justified himself.

"Didn't they teach you to use critical thinking in emergency situations? I think that this counts as such, so use some thinking." Elara said to Alex coldly, not caring that he died what to him was about forty minutes.

"Also, you still haven't apologized to me for what I've seen in your memories!" Elara added, speaking with sudden (but fake) disgust in her voice.

"It's your fault! Sorry, there, happy?" Alex responded, wanting to be swallowed by the ground as Elara reminded him that she knew his memories.

"Very." Elara replied and went quiet.