In the middle of a massive plane of grass, there stood a large, crystal clear lake that stretched out far beyond what the human eye could see. On the corners of it, animals drank it’s sweet nectar, while fish swam in its darkest depths. In the middle of the lake, there stood a single small boy. All that he wore was a small, red robe made out of cotton. His short, neat royal blue hair stayed in place, despite the breeze coming in from the lake. His eyes were currently closed, but if they were open they would show a pair of small, crimson eyes. He had a look on his face that said nothing about his thoughts, not whether he was bored, excited, joyful, sad, absolutely nothing. Despite having been sitting there for an hour, he had not taken a single breath in that time. Suddenly his eyes opened, and he muttered to himself in a deep monotone, “9 out of 10”. 

This boy’s name was Xerith-Bedault-Halical-Joacku-Neack-Villitoos, or as he preferred to be called, Cookie. Despite his small stature, he was actually an Immortal that has lived for 999,997 and a half years. Currently, he was on a quest to find the best way to drink water. He had spent the last 5 years doing this, trying evey position, way of swallowing, time in mouth, quality of water, type of container, and many more qualifiers. This drink involved him using his hands to gather .384 cups of the purest known water in existence, while standing with a straight posture for exactly an hour. This way of drinking ranked as the 712, out of 87,928 different methods so far. 

After Cookie had said those words, he slowly walked onto the lake. Instead of falling into the water, he walked just as if he was on land. On his feet, there was a very light purple glow, seemingly repulsing the water away from him, allowing him to treat the water as land to walk on. 

Each step that he took was exactly the same distance as the one before, and his arms were completely still. The few fish he walked past stayed in place, as if they didn’t even notice Cookie walking right over them. It was a quiet, tranquil scene, of a man seemingly in tune with nature. The light by his feet remained consistent, no changes in thickness or brightness, just a barely noticeable light purple. Any self-respecting mage would recognize this as a type of mana, and would be awed at Cookie’s extremely precise control. That is, until Cookie messed up and fell into the water with a large splash.

On his right foot, he had added a bit too much energy, making it so that his balance was completely off. As he fell into the water, his face remained as expressionless as it was before, despite the fact that he was about to get a face full of the cold liquid. As his face hit the water and went under, he got his arms and legs in position for an elegant breaststroke. Despite the commotion he had made, none of the fish next to him seemed to have noticed, instead just going about their days as if a man hadn’t 

just fallen into their lake. As he swam to the shore, Cookie thought about what he had done wrong with his control.

‘My Immortal Energy was a little too thick on my right foot, leading to the weight distribution of my body being unbalanced. I could have caught my mistake in normal circumstances, but due to the amount of water mana in the lake, I was too busy trying to maintain my energy coating against its interference. Given the quality of water mana here, this would be a great training spot for Water Mages, too bad that none will probably ever come here’.

The reason that Cookie thought this was that it would be nearly impossible, was that  to get to this place you need to travel through many extremely dangerous places. Even an Immortal like Cookie who had lived for many years and had observed many dimensions had seen very few places more dangerous than the path to this world. Cookie was an expert in all types of stealth, so it was fairly easy for him to make it here, but even some of the most powerful people in all the dimensions wouldn’t be able to fight so many extremely dangerous monsters, and endure the calamitous climates of those worlds.

After 5 minutes of swimming, Cookie had reached the shore of the lake, and walked back onto the land. Cookie then used a bit of water magic to dry himself off, putting the water that his clothes were soaked with back into the lake. After that, Cookie thought that it would be a nice time to go on a little walk through the nearby forest, as he had gotten a bit tired of the water tasting, so he wanted to clear his head and decide on the next thing he’ll devote a few years to. 

As he got off of the shore of the lake, he stepped onto the expansive grassy plane that seemed to stretch out far beyond the horizon. Cookie took a second to concentrate his energy around his legs, then used his right foot to propel himself like a rocket across that grass, creating a sonic boom where he had stood previously. In only a few seconds, he had sped straight across the field, arriving at the large forest next to it. As he slowed down, he used his left foot to shoot himself upwards, reaching the top of a tree on the outskirts of the forest in a moment. As he used a bit of air magic to keep himself stable on the top of the tree, he took a second to enjoy the view.

The massive trees, with their thick trunks and dense leaves, the big and small birds, elegantly flying above those trees, rejoicing in their existence, their ability to soar high through the sky, safe from the ground. A bird landed to rest on a tree, as it had gotten tired from its flying. Before it landed, it did a quick check for predators, so it could rest safely. The problem was that the tree itself was the predator, with its leaves and branches quickly forming a net to trap it. The bird quickly tried to fly away, but was too slowly, leaving its fate in the hands of the tree imposter. While Cookie was enjoying the view, 3 days passed

While he was planning to sit there for another two days, he noticed that his [Intuition] had started to act up. Cookie’s [Intuition] was more than just something like a sixth sense, instead it was a very limited type of future reading. Using his many years of experience, and a bit of Immortal Energy, Cookie is able to tell where an interesting story might take place in the future. [Intuition] often wasn’t very accurate, but it had an extremely large range, along with the ability to be used passively, which made it more useful than a lot of other types of future readings.

Upon the notice from his [Intuition], Cookie immediately stopped watching the scenery, and tried to pinpoint where it was telling him to go. After pinpointing the general location, Cookie walked off of the tree, and gravity took effect, making him start to fall, straight down to the ground below. Around his body, a dark purple glow quickly surrounded his entire being, being much thicker than the coatings he had applied previously. Instead of getting caught on the branches and leaves, he passed right through them as if he was intangible. The same happened when he fell to the ground, with him passing right through the thick floor of plants. Instead of seeing stone when he fell under, he seemed to fall into a pitch black void, where only he could be seen. Despite the area being an inky black, there seemed to be some areas where that lightless space seemed even darker.

When he fell, he was using his special technique, [Cookie’s Void Traveler™], where he used his Immortal Energy to escape from the dimension he was currently in, and travel to the Void. To travel to a different dimension normally, one normally needed extremely powerful and specialized equipment to survive the turbulence from crossing the space between dimensions. This was because between all the dimensions, was the Void, an extremely dangerous area that automatically tried to destroy anything that came into contact with it. Using his extremely powerful stealth techniques, Cookie was able to hide his existence from the Void, making it so he didn’t need to use any specialized equipment. 

While Cookie was traveling through the Void, his thoughts were racing.

‘Intuition, I hope this isn’t another dud. If this is another false alarm, this will be the tenth time in a row. I didn’t spend 1000 years making you just so you could fail so much. But, I can feel it this time, this is going to be the place that reignites that spark, I can just feel it, 10 will be my lucky number! I know I thought the same about the third, and the fifth, and the seventh, but that doesn’t matter! I just know it will work this time’!

While this was going on in his head, Cookie’s face continued to stay exactly the same as before, along with his hair and clothes. After a few more days of travel, he had gotten much closer to the dimension his Intuition was showing him. After traveling for a few more minutes he saw a sight that shook him to his core, a dimension in the Void. If this was another Immortal, he wouldn’t be surprised. After all, there must have been other Immortals who had figured out how to traverse the Void, even though he had never personally seen one. What shocked him was that this was a type of dimension that contradicted everything Cookie knew about dimensions.

In his many years of life, Cookie had been to many different dimensions, and he had seen many different types. All dimensions had certain rules that they all followed, and what he was looking at broke many of them. The main one was that it was able to even exist in the Void at all.

Normally, a dimension has a protective coat around them that hides them from the Void. This dimension didn’t have any coat around it, but the Void wasn’t trying to attack it at all. Another oddity about it was the size, although it was a dimension, it was absolutely tiny in comparison to even the smallest dimensions Cookie had seen.

To test if the Void was just weird in the close area, Cookie conjured up some water far away from him using magic, and the Void immediately disintegrated it, completely erasing it from existence. After this, Cookie took a moment to collect his thoughts.

‘Why the hell isn’t that dimension being destroyed? Wait a second’!

Since the Void can’t perceive the things that hide in it, it acts completely normal around them, as if they were also part of the Void. But with this dimension, the Void seemed to know it was there, but instead of trying to destroy it, it was actively avoiding it. Given his many years watching animals, he knew when an animal was acting afraid, and even though the Void was a being of incomprehensible strength, it still acted like a wild animal, and the beast that was the Void seemed to be deathly scared of this small dimension.

‘Why would the Void be afraid of such a small dimension? The fight it could put up against the Void would be pitiful. Something must be really special about that dimension’.

Cookie took a second to check, and confirmed that Intuition was telling him that this was the place. He wouldn’t normally enter a place like this, where there were likely many extremely dangerous encounters waiting for him. He would leave it there, and be content to simply live out his existence, enjoying a nice and slow eternity. That had certainly been the way he had lived for the last 997,000 years, just having a quiet and peaceful life, observing the many wonders in the safe parts of the Infinite Expanse.

But there was something different about this place, something that seemed to spark to life the once blazing love for adventure he once had, which he thought had long since died. It was as if the person he was from his first two millennia was yelling at him to go, enjoy the thrill of adventure like he once did!

‘Fuck it, if I’m going to live for all of eternity, I better enjoy that eternity as much as I can’!

After he thought those words, he went full speed ahead into that small dimension, that tiny little world that he hoped would be able to change him more than almost all the others combined.

He then entered into that dimension, the dimension where his life would be forever changed.