In the blink of an eye, months passed by and it reached the end of the first year.

Within the illusionary realm, the people of humanity had been struggling to deal with the sudden changes in their environment. The political mechanisms were difficult to deal with when a portion of the population had extraordinary abilities that could be used to oppress others… but slowly, as the number of people with weapons of power decreased and several cities were killed by monsters, reforms had to be put in place.

Despite their efforts for reforms, it was only trading for other human lives for temporary safety. It could be said that the only reason for humanity’s continued existence in the illusionary realm was because monsters remained separated and fought amongst themselves.

Tobias remained ignorant of the problem that he’d caused within the illusionary realm... Traveling about the realm creating various dungeons at differing places.

Even if he were aware of the problems of humanity, Tobias wouldn’t change anything.

What does their internal political problems have to do with him? Tobias had experienced many deaths by the humans in the illusionary realm and experienced the pain of those deaths multiple times. People in this realm were greedy, evil, and lacked the basic compassion of human beings.

Far as Tobias would be concerned, they should die together if their own political mechanisms caused their downfall. This was a sink or swim situation, they need to passed this test for humanity would continue.

It was already polite of him to not blatantly utilize the administrative menu to kill them all. Wanting him to help out when their facing a crisis of extinction is impossible.

Since it reached the end of the first year, Tobias traveled to the teleportation beacon to remove the barrier and teleportation array.

However, Tobias arrived to find the place in shambles. Various weapon lines marked the stone floor and the illusionary array had been recently destroyed by pure physical power. The barrier array had also been dissipated by whoever caused the damage.

Staring at the recent damage and the cleared stairway to the teleportation beacon, Tobias could only shake his head and sigh. Clearly he’d underestimated the chance of someone finding the abnormality of this place.

Regardless, Tobias checked on the teleportation beacon and confirming it was still fully operational. In other words, whoever had arrived early and destroyed his protection mechanisms hadn’t accidentally overused and destroyed the teleportation formation.

That could be considered lucky, in a manner of speaking.

It would’ve been problematic if the teleportation beacon had been accidental destroyed by careless actions.

Otherwise, even if Rin succeed in saving her sister and returned, she wouldn’t have been able to leave.

There was a slightly possibility that Tobias could recreate the teleportation array… but that would’ve been extremely time consuming and require various materials. Then there’s the problem of finding the coordinates for the residential zone.

Anyway, there was a possibility of recreating the teleportation beacon, the entire situation would’ve been made annoying complicated had the teleportation array been ruined.

Tobias quickly created an array that would create a pillar of light into the sky that would continue for an entire day.

Well, to be precise… Tobias created an illusionary array that projected the appearance of a pillar of light into the sky.

He actually had no idea how to create an actual pillar of light, so Tobias cheated and used an illusionary array.

There was no helping it.

The task wasn’t as simple as creating a mana light. It wasn’t like there was fog in the air or anything to make light appear.

Even if Tobias shone an insanely powerful light into the sky, nobody would be able to see it. That simply isn’t how light works… That would only cause a bright light to appear on the clouds above or disappear into space.

If you shine a normal flashlight into the night sky, the light simply disappears. You only see the appearance of light when it is reflected off an object. A normal flashlight isn’t powerful enough to shine on the cloud and there is nothing closer to reflect that light back into your eyes, so it simply disappears.

Even if it’s an extremely powerful flashlight, it wouldn’t cause a pillar of light.

Due to the fact the original pillar of light reflected in water, Tobias knew that the original pillar of light was made of real light… but there was no helping it. With no idea how the principles worked, he could only settle and make a similar pillar using an illusionary array.

Regardless of his half-cheating behavior to create the effect of a pillar of light, Tobias quickly got over it and returned back to the valley.

The basilisk had grown significantly in the past (approximately) nine months. It reached the size of six-meters and had grown plump with a sedentary lifestyle.

Constant feeding with lack of exercise had resulted in a domesticated, but relatively useless snake.

…but Tobias didn’t really mind the chubby snake. It wasn’t like he was going to send it into battle.

Taking care of it only meant hunting for a bit everyday. If Tobias didn’t do at least that much, he felt like he’d go crazy. A day in the real world and a day in the illusionary realm. He kept that schedule to prevent himself from losing his grip on the real world… but even so the real world was rather boring without Rin around.

In the years that Tobias had been in this universe, he’d gotten used to not having entertainment facilities… but during the last few months, Tobias wished there was a smartphone or something to waste away his time.

At least in the illusionary realm, there was a goal to complete.

Although creating dungeon was boring by itself, there were ways to make it interesting. For example, Tobias had made a game out of finding the right location to squirrel the dungeon away so that couldn’t be easily found.

Hidden dungeons behind waterfalls or inside random ravines that hadn’t been touched in centuries.

For the particularly well-hidden dungeons, Tobias made the spawn rate of monsters extremely low and the number of floors extremely limited. A potential fortuitous adventure for a lucky and keen person. Although there would still be dangers in those dungeons, they were far lower than other dungeons with high spawn-rates.

…But in the real world, there was nothing to do. Leaving the zone was out of the question. Traveling on his own to explore the zone seems a bit boring.

The only thing that Tobias could really do to waste time was forge various artifacts…

Yet, while Tobias had managed to recreate most of his basic supplies for forging artifacts… he has never forge anything in this timeframe.

It seemed rather pointless to forge artifacts without someone who appreciates them or to give the finished artifacts.

Whenever Tobias thought about forging something a particular artifact, he ended up hesitating and giving up.

In the end, he remained unsure whether that was the best place to use his limited materials. Before creating the artifact, the materials could be made into anything. It is difficult to reforge the materials once crafted into an artifact.

There is unending optimism and infinite possibilities in a blank canvas… but once you add a single stroke, the optimism and countless possibilities disappear leaving only the harsh and limited reality.

When Tobias had customers, it didn’t bother him that much. There would be new materials freely given by various customers.

But… without a way to easily replenish these materials, Tobias didn’t want to waste them on artifacts that he wouldn’t use. If Tobias needed to practice, the forge in the virtual hub was a good enough.

The only problem was that using the virtual forge wouldn’t fulfill the main purpose behind forging, which was to wasting time.

The chubby snake and himself weren’t all that different in terms of lifestyle. They both sat around doing nothing all day.

While Tobias used the excuse of cultivating his ability to control life-force from the nearby plants, the reality of the situation was that he daydreamed for a good portion of the time.

Day dreaming by imagining what was going on with Rin and the others in Hell Difficulty. Imagining other worlds and different situations. Imagining combat scenarios and how he would fight against specific abilities with his current power.

It wasn’t exactly a waste of time.

If an imagined scenario occurred in reality, there were benefits of increased reaction time and premade plan.

…But, realistically, it was mainly done for entertainment to pass the time.

Regardless of his desire for entertainment, time continued to pass without anything exciting occurring in the real world.

The situation in the illusionary realm was anything but stable, though.

A batch of explorers discovered a relatively well-hidden dungeon and took the opportunity to report its appearance back to the authorities.

Soon, the government took notice of the structure and sent people to explore it.

This was clearly a man-made building, thus they wanted to clarify its purpose and find out who build it.

Even if the situation is desperate and the defensive line is failing, the building might have clues as to the criminal organization that has stolen all the weapons of power recently. The cities and towns had been searched thoroughly for those criminals and nothing has been found, so the most appropriate place to for them to be hiding is the wilderness.

Before they had no hope of finding them… but with the sudden appearance of a well-hidden man-made structure in the wilderness, various people couldn’t help but wander whether it was the criminal’s hideout.

Thus, regardless of how desperate their situation was they needed to send people to investigate the dungeon.

If they managed to retrieve the stolen weapons of power, the situation could be reversed to an extent and those who organized the mission would be heroes… and it would be simple to arrange scapegoats to take the blame should the mission failed.

Additionally, success would provide the politicians against any reforms with ammunition and convince any undecided neutral parties to support their position.

Whether it was for political or other heroic reasons, the government and army decided to send people to investigate the well-hidden structure within the wilderness.