Frederick sat on the side of the creaky old bed staring down at his hands. They were shaking subtly despite his fervent desire for them not to. To an outside observer, it might've looked like he'd just received some awful medical news. Like a doctor had walked in and gently said, "So your neurons? Yeah, they're starting to unionize." But that would've been a relief compared to the truth.
The man was scared, terrified even, of himself. But not because of a disease. Or at least he didn't think it was a disease. The man had been hit with a huge dose of "the consequences of your own actions."
He had, in one glorious moment of impulse, sacrificed his common sense on the altar of "fuck around" and summoned the eldritch consequences from the forbidden realm of FindOutville. Population: Frederick "dumfuck" Alomar.
His mind had gone full Transformers. His fear had turned into Optimus Regret. And he had just been truck-kun'd across space and time into a magical alternate dimension known only as "Reality."
'Ok.'
'I need to calm the fuck down.'
'...'
'No, but like what kind of dumbass idea was that? Just walk up to the man and get myself killed or kidnapped?'
'I feel like I just made my chances of getting out of this alive much lower.'
'...'
'Maybe he didn't understand me.' He thought, optimistically.
'From what I have seen so far with magic, I wouldn't be surprised if there was some kind of translation magic. But there's always the possibility he didn't understand me despite that.'
'Wait... How would translation magic even work?'
The shaking in my hands began to slow, like I'd just mainlined a gallon of industrial-strength distraction straight into my frontal lobe.
'From what I have seen so far, magic operates mostly on the basis of understanding the principals behind certain phenomenon. Though I would be remiss if I didn't consider the classic magical engineering principle: "when in doubt, overclock the mana until something explodes."
'hmm.'
I was clinging to any mental tangent I could find, desperate to dodge the part where I thought about what my little stunt said about my current sanity. Maybe reincarnation had scrambled my wiring more than I wanted to admit. Not touching that one.
'!!!'
'Wait just a second.' A smile tugged at the corners of my mouth.
'Did I seriously never try the most basic isekai protagonist shit?'
I sat up straighter, practically buzzing.
"Status."
Silence.
"System."
More silence.
"Quests. Quest board. Level."
Still nothing.
'Okay, maybe it's a mental thing.'
I narrowed my eyes at the air in front of me like I was trying to burn a hole in it.
Nothing. Not even a polite error message.
"Yep. Checks out," I muttered.
Still, the gears in my head were spinning again. The implications of this world sent a jolt through me. Lightning struck the shores of "holy shit," and the thunder rolled straight through my skull.
And then, all at once, it clicked.
This was not your average isekai where magic amounted to a grab bag of made-up words and limits that existed for no reason other than to stop you from having fun. This world felt different. Magic here was woven into reality itself, as much a part of the natural order as gravity or heat.
I had felt it earlier when I cast fireball for the first time. My intent and my understanding shaped the outcome, and the result actually followed a kind of logic. Every facet of my spellcasting was accounted for in the result, and causality was upheld. There was no lazy "because magic" excuse, no ability to pull a random "I cast fuck off into the nether realm" out of thin air because some spooky dungeon said so.
If I wanted a new spell, I would need to understand the principles behind it, either by figuring them out myself or learning from someone who already had.
This was a thrilling discovery to me. My mind was already scrambling in response, thinking of ways I could utilize my knowledge and experience as a mechanical engineer. I could, via advanced chemical and physical knowledge, create the bullshit nonsensical spells myself, abusing the facets of magical whimsy to their fullest extent.
I immediately turned back to my research.
'Fuck the threat of elves coming to kill me. I wanna cast bitch slap into oblivion.'
Many ideas were swirling in my head. Many were absolutely diabolical, others viable methods of exploiting my knowledge, and others were a mix of both. I could already imagine a giant magical particle accelerator creating magically enhanced orichalcum out of just dirt.
"ooh, thats an idea!" I said remembering something crucial.
"I am gonna use an invisibility spell." I said confidently
I was most definitely going to turn something invisible, but not myself. That would be way too costly to my mana. I already surmised it would be possible to cast invisibility spells on myself, but unless I knew exactly how it would effect my body, I wasn't willing to pour all my mana into it.
And how praytell would I manage to turn myself invisible. Simple. I would just change the refractive index of the material I needed invisible.
Except that wasn't simple. Not even remotely. My grasp of light–matter interaction was, at best, "college lecture I half-slept through" level. The best bet I had was to visualize mana dynamically tuning the effective polarizability of electron clouds, this would, in theory, control the material's permittivity and thus its refractive index. Though I'd need the average polarizability to be tuned so the refractive index equals that of air, not zero. Zero would mean a vacuum-like behavior, which would cause severe distortion. I would need to match it precisely to the refractive index of air (≈1.0003).
"May as well try." I said
I walked over to the cabinets above the counter and grabbed a handle-less ceramic-like mug. I set it on the counter and prepared to cast.
Images swirled in my mind, seemingly random Greek letters representing the kajillion and a half different constants and variables I knew represented light's integrated formulas appeared one after another. I put as much detail as I could into my imagination, attempting to alter the mug on a fundamental level.
I set the spell with my mana organ and released.
"Woah." I exclaimed
The spell was cast properly and to my extreme delight, the mug turned invisible.
Almost.
The mug had indeed turned invisible, however only a portion of the mug.
"wOaH." The room tilted sideways. I stumbled back into the chair, clutching the counter as my head spun.
I slowly calmed myself, realizing the cause of the sudden queasiness. I had used an enormous amount of mana just to turn the top tenth of this tiny mug invisible for about 3 seconds.
Still, I couldn't help but grin. That tiny, mana-draining disaster was progress.
I beamed at the now normal mug.
This was not a failure. Far from it. Failure would entail a lack of meaningful results. Thus, this was a resounding success. Not only did it show that invisibility was indeed possible, but it also proved that the spell was reversible. An absolute necessity for any spell I would want to apply to myself.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
Saav Vahlensight steadied his breath, forcing his heartbeat to slow.
The sight before him was infuriating, yes, but not enough to make him abandon discipline. The fool below might be trespassing in one of the most sacred zones in all of Vahlenguard, yet Saav knew better than to act on impulse. His orders were clear: observe, report, and await reinforcements. Once support arrived, he could vent his frustrations however he pleased, preferably with questions and shackles involved.
From his perch upon one of the World Tree's roots, he watched the man pacing across the courtyard. The human's face was drawn tight with confusion and anxiety, movements restless and erratic.
'Why?' Saav wondered.
It wasn't fear of pursuit. The man clearly wasn't trying to hide. And it couldn't have been frustration at being ignored; anyone capable of infiltrating this deep into the forest should have celebrated the lack of attention, not despaired over it.
The logic refused to add up. The intruder had entered the most secure territory in the world, beneath the very roots of the Tree itself, without triggering so much as a whisper of detection. That feat should have been impossible. Yet the human seemed utterly oblivious, as if his presence here were a mistake.
That thought chilled him.
'No… that would mean it wasn't deliberate.'
If the man hadn't intended to enter, then some outside force had deposited him here. A teleportation of that magnitude, performed without alerting any node in the Vahlenguard detection network, implied either godlike precision or catastrophic vulnerability.
Neither option was comforting.
Saav's fingers tightened around the hilt of his dagger. His mind raced through possibilities: divine interference, spatial distortion, mana overload. None fit perfectly. Every theory demanded power far beyond the man's feeble aura.
And so he waited, watching, suspicion gnawing at his thoughts like frost through bark.
He watched as the man cycled through what could only be described as sixty-five stages of existential breakdown before his face finally turned thoughtful. The human walked over to a cabinet, retrieved a small mug, and placed it on the counter. Then, without hesitation, he closed his eyes and began to gather mana.
Saav leaned forward, eyes narrowing.
"He's casting?"
The mana pulse spiked and vanished, the entire flow collapsing inward. For an instant, part of the mug simply ceased to exist. No shimmer, no flash; one moment it was visible, the next it wasn't.
Saav's breath caught in his throat. His body went rigid.
A flicker of disbelief ran through him. He blinked twice, thinking his eyes had failed him, but no. The mug had actually vanished from sight.
"That... was mind magic," he realized, a cold dread sinking into his chest.
There was no other explanation. Altering perception itself without changing form required manipulation of thought, not matter. Mind magic that subtle and that efficient was reserved for those who spent lifetimes mastering it. Tenth tier at minimum.
Saav immediately raised his mental barriers, layering sixfold protection, each spell designed to detect, alert, and defend from the most heinous of mind manipulation. The spell settled around him like invisible armor. But there was no feedback. No trace of psychic interference. No ripple of intrusion pressing against his consciousness.
Nothing.
And that was far worse.
"If I wasn't the target, then his sphere of influence is that massive."
His throat tightened.
Either he had just witnessed a mind spell so powerful it casually extended across hundreds of feet, or he himself was already compromised and his mind was too controlled to notice.
Both thoughts sent a chill down his spine.
"No human should be capable of this," he thought. "No one should."
He reached for his Granight and activated the communication spell, keeping his voice steady.
[Commander Grenfall, this is Saav Vahlensight of the Thirteenth Division. I have visual confirmation of the anomaly.]
[Report, sightman.]
[Sir, the subject just performed what I believe to be a mind spell. Partial sensory erasure localized to a nearby object. Six-fold Psychmend elicited no reaction. Either his influence radius is abnormally large, or I have been compromised.]
A silence hung heavy on the other end, punctuated only by the faint static hum of the Granight's link.
[…Continue observation. Reinforcements are en route. If you experience any mental distortion, sever the link and activate your failsafe.]
[Understood, sir.]
Saav exhaled slowly and ended the connection. His pulse was uneven now. He could feel his hands trembling, though whether from fear or paranoia he wasn't sure.
He looked down again. The human was smiling faintly at the mug, at his work, with the calm satisfaction of a craftsman finishing a small project.
Saav's jaw tightened.
"What in Vahl's name is his goal here?"