The Dream World, an imaginary world that is created by the mind of anyone who practices Dream magic till the Saint-tier level. This place cannot be visited by anyone unless invited or dragged in by the creator with the exception of the Great Goddess of Dream, who has the authority to look into and come into the dreams of anyone.
The creator or owner of this place can create and change anything to his/her liking using nothing but pure imagination.
This place does have a standard rule and law template based on Mirkaz so if you have a Dream World you don't need to stress over the natural laws this world follows, and you can just change it to your liking anyway.
You can drag in your worst enemy and give them horrible nightmares or you can invite friends and allies for a meeting or just to have fun. You're basically the God in your own Dream World, nobody can do anything to you and yet you can inflict mental traumas on the people you detest.
Personally, I have tried it a few times and it was fun for the beginning, but it got uncomfortable watching someone get NTR'd; especially since I know it has happened to my predecessors before.
I did some horrible, horrible things with my Dream World when I first got it, only to equally horrible people of course but it was still terrible no matter how you spin it.
Anyway, time in the Dream World moves at a faster speed than the outside world but only up to twice as fast, meaning 2 hours here is 1 hour in the outside world.
However, that was when it was compared to the time in Mirkaz.
You catch my drift, right?
Time here moves four times faster compared to time on Earth, one day here isn't even equal a full night's worth of sleep back on Earth.
Oh, did I mention I can't go back until my body naturally wakes up on its own, gets forcefully woken up by someone, or I sensed someone trespassing in our house?
Yeah, that's the reason why I'm sitting under this giant Spirit Tree I summoned, waiting for someone to come and give the answers to my questions.
"Sasha!!"
"Sasha!! Wake the hell up, I got some questions!"
"…"
"She's not waking up, is she?"
I've been trying to call her for an hour now and yet I've gotten no response so far. I know she's a Great Goddess and is "busy" all the time but come on.
"Maybe I should just resign myself to waiting 27 more hours until I wake?" I talked to the tree behind me with a blank face.
'It seems like that is the only option, want to hear another one of my stories?' The Spirit Tree talked to me through telepathy and wanted to tell some more stories.
"Yeah, no thanks. No offense, but I didn't know talking to one of you would be this boring. I don't know what all those Druids were on when they said you guys have lots of interesting things to say" I got up on my feet and dusted myself off before turning to the tree.
'Hahaha, it must mean our personality does not fit one another' The Spirit Tree mused.
"Well, it was still nice to have someone accompanying me for the last hour. I'll send you back buddy, also stop giving out contracts all willy-nilly, you're gonna die one day from not having enough spirit power to defend yourself" I waved my hands around and purple light particles started to envelop the giant 50-meter tall tree.
'I shall keep that in mind, thank you for giving me this experience. Farewell, Lord Dream Walker…' The Spirit Tree slowly faded out of existent from the grass plane of this Dream World.
"Now, what am I gonna do to pass time?" I silently pondered while standing.
In the Dream World, you have nothing but your mind and soul; you can't train here since like I said, you only have your mind and soul here. Well, I could do a little mental and soul training here before but I'm not a Saint-tier right now, plus it's not effective what-so-ever once you're at my level; anyway, without a Saint-tier's level of mental capacity and soul manipulation, I can't detach my mind from the Dream World and focus only on myself.
If I don't detach my mind from the Dream World, I would just accidentally create something from just concentrating a bit. There's a reason why only Saint-tiers of Dream magic are supposed to have access to their own Dream World, if you can't detach your mind from this place, you can't leave willingly.
Hence why I'm trapped here for now.
"Oh! I just came up with a brilliant idea to pass time"
----------------------
In the middle of the Forest of Nightmares, where ferocious creatures of the dark roam, lay a humble campsite erected by a group of four.
A campfire burned with bright red crimson flames surrounded by Flare Rocks to keep the Hell Fire's heat in check.
Sat upon a stray log near the campfire was a young man in his early 20s wearing a black mage robe, a white dress shirt underneath, brown leather pants, and black boots; with a crimson red wooden magic staff with a pure white gem inlaid at the top in one hand and a magical tome in the other hand.
Yeah, this is me. I created everything here, my whole get-up was something just made a few minutes ago; the entire forest, the campsite, the sounds, the monsters' screech, and the monsters in the dark woods, all of them were designed by yours truly.
I based the forest on the real Forest of Nightmares on Mirkaz that I burned down a few years back in a fight. It's quite nostalgic to be sitting here, looking at the night sky full of stars, the cold wind of the night, the feeling of being stared at by monsters lurking around in the pitch-black woods surrounding the campsite.
Especially the last part, getting eyed down by hungry monsters in the dead of night while camping out is a massive part of the adventurer life.
Now, I wouldn't just go out of my way to recreate an entire forest from memory just to feel nostalgic. No, I recreated it as a set for my brilliant idea to pass time.
I turn to the back where two tents were set up, three presences were in those tents. One male and two females that I have dragged all the way from Earth after a bit of trial and error.
I, of course, also took the liberty of temporarily giving them some general information about Mirkaz, which I plan to replicate here in the Dream World.
This is basically real-life roleplaying, like an ultra-realistic VR RPG game with me being the GM in disguise.
Oh, and before I forget to mention it, I planted some temporary false memories in them too so they'll have an easier time following along with the storyline and events I've crafted up. They'll have near full freedom to do whatever that they want since they have free will; they can think for themselves and have their original personalities so it's not like they're different people, they're just gonna be going off the new general knowledge I've given them.
They're gonna have the common sense and thinking of people living in Mirkaz; of course, after they wake up, they'll only remember bits and pieces of it like you would a normal dream.
*Flutter*
The front of one of the tents was fluttered open, revealing a beautiful young woman with fair skin, blonde hair, and blue eyes. She wore a village girl dress that does not fit her noble lineage.
"Alicia, it is still 2 hours before sunrise, go back to sleep, please. We'll be traveling the entire day to get out of this forest so it is best you rest until breakfast is ready" I spoke in a neutral tone without turning back to look at Alice or Alicia Einzelfoth.
That's right; I brought Alice into my Dream World to play the daughter of a noble family.
"I…I…I couldn't sleep, sir. I-I kept having nightmares about…Leo" Alicia kept on stuttering and spoke in such a low voice that I could barely hear her.
Judging from the way she's acting, she's really affected by the false memories I planted. It's surprisingly more effective than I thought.
"Sigh, for the last time, it's not your fault. Don't blame yourself for what happened to him, instead pour all those feelings into living on, that's what he would've wanted" I stood up and turned to her with a serious expression.
"B-but, but-"
"No buts, do you think he died for you so you could blame his death on yourself? No, he exchanged his life for yours in order for you to live on. So, from now on continue live on, for his sake and for yourself" I tapped her forehead with my staff.
"But, for now, rest, you can think about how to make up to his family when we get back to the Einzelfoth territory. [Sleep]" I cast a [Sleep] spell as she started to shed tears, Alicia fall forward and I held her.
"You, boy, bring her to the tent" I turned to the other tent off to the side that is smaller than Alicia's tent.
"A-ah, a-ah, y-yes, sir" A young man with black hair and dark purplish eyes stumbled out of the tent with his head lowered.
"Sigh, just carry her to her tent" I handed Alicia over to him and went back to the log before continuing to read this magical tome on True Mage Style Spell Casting from Apprentice to King-tier. I'm just brushing up on everything because I might as well considering I have a lot of time left.
My avatar's power is based on my main body, so it isn't possible to retrain the avatar and ascend up the tiers. However, I can still refine my control on the avatar to bring out its full combat potential.
I've only had my avatar for a bit over two days so everything isn't really up there yet, it showed my inefficiency when I cast that King-tier spell; my control on that spell was way off by one to two hours, I would need a staff to help me control it correctly.
However, once I have completely gotten used to my avatar, I probably wouldn't need the staff just for casting King-tier spells, it might even be possible to cast a weak Saint-tier spell with the staff's help.
Anyway, all of those will take time to achieve so let's focus on this dream scenario I cooked up.
The young man from before, who have taken Alicia to her tent, sat down on a log situated to my right. He looked solemn and deep in thought; he hasn't realized he had just casually sat down next to a powerhouse, not like I would care about something so trivial anyway.
This is Hiro, just Hiro, no surname because in this dream he was born as a commoner. He met Alicia by chance one day as a child and was taken in as a servant of the Einzelfoth house. Hiro later on (about a week ago) went under the subordination of Leo, Alicia's personal knight who just died, as a trainee.
He followed wherever Leo went to learn from him on how to become a knight, hence why he's also here with Alicia, her friend, and the now-deceased Leo.
I merely glanced at him before turning back to the magical tome; in truth, I've already finished the entire thing a minute ago, but there isn't much to do until sunrise so I might as well reread it again.
10 minutes passed, and finally, Hiro noticed where he was sitting so he started to freak out before a look of realization surfaced.
Just to preface, I do not what is going through his mind right now and I'm not trying to actively figure it out; I just sowed some seeds so I don't know how it'll grow. I literally only made up their backstories, reasoning to explain why they ended up here, why I'm here, and I just dropped them here at this campsite.
I glanced at him in my peripheral and saw him going back into deep thoughts again with a serious face on.
'Yep, this is Akirou-kun alright'
I didn't bother him and went back to rereading the magical tome before I got bored and decided to do something else instead.
I closed the tome and made it disappear into thin air, I created a fairly thick block of silver-colored wood in front of me and an emerald green knife in my hand before I started chipping away at the block of wood, slowly transforming it into a ball that can fit in an adult human's palm.
I then started to use wind and earth magic to make a mini sand storm before using that mini sand storm to smooth out the surface of the ball to make it into a perfect sphere.
I canceled the mini sand storm before taking my knife to the perfect sphere and craving out outlines on the surface. Once the slit lines have been carved, I gripped it firmly in my hand and used alchemy to turn the area in the outline into fine sawdust, leaving only a hollowed-out ball with big slit holes going around the entire thing, the shell is only about 1 cm thick.
Using alchemy again, I craved out three tiny intertwining magic arrays outlines in the interiors while pouring in mana to fill the gaps created. 30 minutes passed and I finally finished inscribing in the magic arrays as the mana in the surrounding slowly moves towards the hollowed ball.
In another hand, I created a whitish-blue smooth round crystal half the size of the hollowed ball and started to directly inscribe a magic array on all sides of the crystal's surface. It took me about 10 minutes as the crystal was half the size of the hollowed ball.
Now that the two parts are finished, the only thing left to do is put them together. I only need to put the whitish-blue smooth round crystal into the hollow part of the ball and the first half of creating this magic item will start.
I simply teleported the crystal into the ball using space magic and the assembling process started the moment the magic arrays in the interior of the hollowed ball detected something with way higher mana conductivity than the spirit wood that the shell was made out of.
I let go of the ball as floated higher into the air and it started to devourer the mana in the surrounding like a black hole sucking in matter.
As it continued to suck in more mana, the magic arrays in the interior of the shell and surface of the whitish-blue crystal started lining up before connecting and releasing a dim whitish-blue glow.
This continued on for a few more seconds before the ball began to spin around, at first it was slow and calm but as time went on it picked up speed and its sucking speed also increase as everything around the ball grew violent; it started warping the very fabric space and time itself.
The space surrounding the ball was pulled and stretched, yet at the same time it also constricted in on itself. The time around it seemed to be jumbling all over the place, at some part time slowed to a crawl, at other places it sped up, and at another part it kept shifting from slowing down before switching to speeding up and vice versa.
Though, to the untrained eyes, it might look like a chaotic mess floating above them or a glitch within reality itself.
In my peripheral, I can see Hiro frozen in place on the ground, slack-jawed with eyes bulging out and fear of the unknown coloring his face as his stare locked onto the mana black hole in the sky above.
An appropriate reaction for someone who is barely considered an Apprentice-tier that hasn't stepped one foot into the world of magic.
I turned back to my prototype [Space-Time Accelerator] that is still in the process of stabilizing itself slowly, trying to contain the overflowing power of the Star Crystal within the confines of the shell; I'm just experimenting with it in this dream for the moment since making the real thing in the real world would be super dangerous.
Unlike on Mirkaz, where the world will naturally fix itself if space and time suddenly collapse somewhere, on Earth I would have to fix it manually because the Earth doesn't have that feature on since it's too costly.
I want to work out all the kinks first before trying it out for real and from the looks of it, I still have my work cut out for me.
Seeing the tiny cracks on the spirit wood shell, I controlled the space and time around it to calm down the violent warping caused by the Star Crystal for a moment before teleporting it way into the sky above the campsite.
I released control over the ball and let it continue to grow more violent as the warping turned chaotic; the cracks on the shell grew in size before….
*Boom! *Ripple*
The thing blew up; collapsing space and time in the sky above the campsite, showing a dark gaping hole with web-like cracks spreading out past the sky behind the tall trees of the forest.
However, it didn't just end there. Small wave-like ripples in space pulsed out from the gaping hole periodically, distorting the images around us like how your reflection on a lake's surface wavers from ripples in the water.
It would look as if you were in an illusion that is slowly breaking down, it's very beautiful and hypnotic I must say, but it gets annoying after a certain point so I raised my hand and forcefully patched the hole up with magic, stopping the ripple effect.
"Sigh, failure. I may need to revise the magic array and probably use better materials for the outer shell so it can contain the power of the Star Crystal" I muttered out loud with a hand on my chin.
"U-um, s-sir" A shaky voice came from down below so I put that thought to the back of my mind before looking down towards Hiro, who was on his knees.
"What is it?"
"M-may I make a bold request?" Hiro lowered his head and pressed it to the ground.
"Speak your mind, I'll at least hear you out. Also, raise your head, look someone in the face when you talk to them" I crossed my arms with an intrigued smile on my face; I wonder what he will request after seeing my display of power.
"T-then…" Hiro raised his head and looked at me before closing them and taking a deep breath.
"I-if it is of no trouble to y-you, s-sir. Can you please teach me magic!?" Hiro once again lowered his head to the ground and shouted out his request.
"Why?"
"Pardon me?" Hiro looked up at me with a puzzled look.
"Why do you want to learn magic? What is your reasoning? Depending on your answer, I will decide whether to accept your request or not" I stared straight into his eyes with a serious expression.
Why?
The answer to this question will lay his thoughts bare for me to see, whether this Hiro or the Akirou on Earth are the same or not.
Did being in the world where power reign above all else change his true self?
Did having the memory of his life as a lowly servant with no power change his desire?
Or will he be just like the Akirou back on Earth?
"I-"
