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{3rd POV}
After their memorable date, the relationship between Reina and Subaru had taken a significant turn. The two grew much closer over time, so much so that their bond could easily be mistaken for that of a husband and wife—albeit unofficially.
They acted like one, lived like one, and indulged in the kind of intimacy that only married couples typically shared.
Their connection wasn't limited to emotional closeness alone; their physical intimacy had deepened as well, evolving into something intense and raw.
They explored each other without hesitation, trying out different postures and positions during sex, giving in to their shared lust for hours on end.
Their chemistry was such that they couldn't keep their hands off each other—even managing to sneak in quickies whenever an opportunity presented itself.
And so, just like that, eight months had passed.
Subaru, during this period, had been exceedingly busy—fully immersed in the task of expanding his growing business empire.
He was deeply involved in the development and construction of factories and had committed himself to a long-term vision.
With Beatrice's magical support and mechanical genius, the two had collaborated to design and assemble several highly functional machines.
Their efforts bore fruit when they finally completed a semi-automatic factory solely dedicated to the mass production of pens—an invention that held immense commercial potential in a world unfamiliar with such industrialized precision.
Capitalizing on this momentum, Subaru began publishing well-known fairy tales from his past life—stories like Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, The Little Matchstick Girl, and others.
These books, rooted in fantasy and moral lessons, were initially targeted at the noblewomen.
Much to his satisfaction, they became an overnight sensation.
His tales captivated the hearts of both the elite and the rich common folk, ultimately earning him hundreds of Royal Golden Coins in profits.
Most of his products were currently distributed and sold across the three major nations: Lugunica, Kararagi, and Gusteko.
But Subaru wasn't just limited to literature and industrial goods.
He was also innovating in the culinary world.
With his knowledge of Earth's cuisine, he introduced food items such as mayonnaise, pasta, and pizza—dishes previously unheard of in this realm.
He opened several restaurants in the Capital and other prominent cities and was actively laying out plans for further expansion across the continent.
However, Subaru was also practical and understood the limitations of this world's technological framework.
While there were many modern innovations from his past life he could theoretically recreate, a lot of them were impractical due to the lack of infrastructure or relevant utilities in this world.
Attempting to replicate such things would only result in wasted resources.
Therefore, he focused on what was realistically achievable.
To that end, he had embarked on a new and ambitious project—something that could potentially revolutionize his business model.
He was planning to develop a factory-based system integrated with door crossing magic, which would link all of his shops in Kararagi, Lugunica, and Gusteko.
In essence, it would be a magical teleportation network that drastically reduced transportation costs and time.
If successful, this system would allow him to instantly transfer food items and raw materials from their points of origin directly to any of his shops.
This would not only streamline his supply chain but would also enable him to exploit regional price differences for consistent profit margins.
For instance, fish and pork were abundant and extremely cheap in Gusteko, largely due to the region's cold and arid climate that supported primitive fish farming and meat production.
He could purchase these items at low cost from Gusteko and sell them in markets where such goods were far more expensive—sometimes up to three times the original price.
By pricing his goods just below his competitors and offering them fresh (thanks to zero transport delay), Subaru could easily dominate the market.
Customers would naturally gravitate towards his shops due to better pricing and product quality.
The same strategy would apply to vegetables, fruits, spices, wheat, and rice. Moreover, this system would allow him to transport his own manufactured products—like pens and books—without incurring hefty transportation fees.
With Beatrice's assistance, Subaru had already managed to replicate her unique door crossing magic to a certain extent.
They had successfully connected a handful of his major outlets, allowing instantaneous travel of goods between them. However, completing the entire network would take at least six more months of work.
Then, something unexpected happened.
On this particular day, Subaru received a telepathic message from Echidna. She had been working in near-total isolation for several months on an advanced magical project that Natsuki Subaru had given her, and according to her message, the project was finally complete.
Without wasting time, Subaru called Gloria, who was stationed in Altenberg City, asking her to return immediately. Once she confirmed, Subaru gathered Beatrice—both of them retreated inside his spirit space—and made his way to Echidna's hidden workshop.
Upon entering the workshop, the sight that greeted him was jarring.
Echidna stood in the center of the room, her hair disheveled and wild, her eyes bloodshot and sleepless.
Her entire demeanor radiated a chaotic energy, one that resembled the unstable genius of a mad scientist.
The confident and composed ara-ara older sister figure he once knew was nowhere to be seen.
"Hehehe… I made it… hehehehe…" she giggled with an eerie tone, her laughter bordering on deranged.
'What the hell happened to her? How did she go from elegant enchantress to this creepy beauty?!' Subaru's eyebrows twitched as he observed the shocking transformation.
He hadn't seen her often over the past eight months—only visiting occasionally to monitor her progress. She had buried herself in research, working tirelessly to develop a magic that could break the boundaries of this world—to create a means of traveling across different worlds entirely.
As Gloria and Beatrice emerged from Subaru's spirit space, they too were taken aback. Gloria's curiosity was immediately piqued, her analytical mind already wondering about the nature and function of this new magic Echidna had discovered.
Beatrice, however, felt a jolt of distress.
Seeing her mother in such a deteriorated state—unkempt, exhausted, possibly having gone days or even weeks without bathing—stirred a deep worry within her.
For months, Beatrice had been cold and distant, refusing to speak with Echidna. Her anger was not without reason.
Echidna had admitted to abandoning her daughter with a false promise—nothing more than a calculated lie, crafted in the name of magical experimentation.
It was during a conversation with Geuse that Beatrice first heard that Echidna might have regretted those past actions.
She didn't believe it at the time. In a fit of rage, she had shouted at Geuse, accusing him of spinning lies to manipulate her feelings.
But Geuse hadn't backed down.
He explained in detail that while Echidna had undoubtedly committed many wrongs in her lifetime, she had come to deeply regret her choices as she approached death.
In fact, when her life finally ended, she felt like an absolute failure—haunted by her mistakes. Subaru, listening to this at the time, found it eerily familiar.
'She felt just like I used to feel in Japan… completely worthless… a failure who achieved nothing,' he thought silently.
Echidna had failed to stop Satella from plunging the world into chaos. She couldn't prevent the tragic deaths of the other Witches.
She never found the courage to confess her love to Flugel. In the end, she left behind no grand legacy—no mark on the world that could redeem her sins.
It was this desperation, this crushing guilt and disappointment in herself, that led her to recklessly secure her soul inside the Sanctuary.
In doing so, she made a critical mistake, one that cost her a portion of her Od.
Now, seeing her in this broken, almost manic state, Beatrice was torn. Her heart ached with compassion, but her mind was still reeling from the betrayal of her mother's earlier choices.
Thankfully, due to the incomplete portion of her Od that had been assimilated by Od Laguna, it wasn't able to reincarnate her completely.
As a result, when Subaru resurrected her, she was able to regain her original Od in its entirety.
When Beatrice came to understand the full extent of her mother's regret—true, soul-wrenching remorse for the things she had done in the past—it made her question everything.
It made her wonder if perhaps, just perhaps, she should consider forgiving her mother, even if just a little. But that internal debate was far from simple.
If someone were to walk up to her and ask her to choose—between Subaru and Echidna, between the man she had pledged herself to and the woman who gave her life—there would be no hesitation in her answer.
It would always be Subaru. Without question. Without compromise.
That was how profoundly Beatrice had been traumatized—scarred by abandonment, shaped by centuries of isolation—and it was also how deeply she had become emotionally attached to Subaru. Her obsession wasn't fleeting or shallow; it was carved into her very existence, into the core of her being.
Subaru wasn't just important to her—he was her reason for existing, her anchor in a world that had long since lost meaning.
And if not for one crucial detail—that she wasn't a natural-born spirit—Subaru would have had one more relentless spirit trying to worm her way into his heart… or perhaps more accurately, into his pants ahem.
She looked at her mother—disheveled, unhinged, and yet glowing with a twisted kind of accomplishment.
Just then, Gloria stepped forward, her expression a mixture of amusement and curiosity, her eyes narrowing slightly as she surveyed the runes and symbols drawn on the ground.
With an arched brow, she spoke in a voice that dripped with noble arrogance, "Oh, tell me, mongrel… what exactly have you made?"
Echidna let out a giggle, her voice light and teasing, though it teetered on the edge of madness. "You know, it's funny. You look like such a cute little village girl—innocent and pure. But then you open your mouth, and it stuns people!" she cackled, clearly amused by Gloria's haughty tone.
Then, her expression suddenly twisted into one of manic pride as she pointed to the large, complex magic circle etched into the floor. "Anyway! Look at this, Zero! I did it! It's still a prototype, sure, but I made it! I've even tested it, and guess what—it actually worked!"
Without warning, she launched herself at Subaru, wrapping her arms tightly around him in an excited embrace. Her entire body trembled, not from fatigue, but from sheer exhilaration. Her voice was breathy and excited as she clung to him like a child eager for praise.
"I deserve a reward, don't I? Right? Tell me I do, come on," she asked, her voice half-sultry, half-manic, her cheek nuzzling against his chest.
Subaru blinked and stared down at her, his brows furrowing with concern. "Hold on… when was the last time you actually slept?"
Echidna paused, staring up at him with wide, blinking eyes, as if trying to calculate the answer. "Hmm… last week, maybe? Or was it the week before that?" she replied nonchalantly, giggling again. "Hehehe… I don't remember!"
'Gods above… she's completely burned out,' Subaru thought with a grimace. 'She's going to collapse if I don't force her to rest. I'll listen to her explanation first, then I'll knock her out if I have to and make sure she gets some actual sleep.'
As he debated internally whether a tranquilizer or a pillow would be the better choice, Echidna snuggled closer, pressing herself against him as if trying to soak in his warmth. "Now come on, give me a reward already! I deserve it, don't I?! I've worked so hard for this!"
Just before Subaru could respond, Gloria's voice sliced through the moment like a knife. She had been watching the display with increasing irritation, her eyes narrowing as her temper flared.
"Hey! Witch," she snapped, stepping forward with clenched fists. "Before you even think about earning my father's affection, maybe try proving you're actually worthy of it first. Why don't you start by explaining the damn magic you've created instead of acting like a spoiled child in heat?"
Echidna didn't even blink. Instead, she grinned wide and turned her attention to the massive array of glowing lines, symbols, and runic inscriptions covering the workshop floor.
"Then listen closely!" she declared, her voice reverberating with excitement.
With the fervor of someone who had been waiting months—no, years—for this moment, Echidna began explaining the theory behind the magic circle.
Her hands moved as she spoke, gesturing animatedly at various components of the circle while her voice became increasingly animated.
She talked about spatial anchoring, frequency modulation between dimensional ley lines, Od-conversion thresholds, and several more technical terms that Subaru only understood.
But despite the complexity, one thing was clear: she wasn't just casting a spell.
She had created something entirely new.
A wholly original magical system—one that didn't rely on existing principles, theories, or conventional magical categories. It was a standalone system, built from the ground up, specifically for the singular purpose of manipulating interdimensional space.
By the time she finished, Subaru stood frozen in place, his mouth slightly agape. He didn't speak for several seconds, too stunned to process it all at once.
The magic had a name: Yggdrassil.
Echidna declared it with a manic pride that made the air in the workshop feel thin.
According to her, Yggdrassil allowed travel to any point in space-time. It was an audacious claim—one that would have sounded impossible even to mages who had devoted their lives to probing the fabric of reality.
There was, however, a crucial limitation.
The system's dimensional coordinates were conspicuously absent.
In practical terms, that meant Yggdrassil could not—at least not yet—reach across different worlds or alternate realities.
It functioned only within the same continuum: it could move you through space and time of the current world, but it could not transpose you to an outside dimension.
That caveat tempered some of the astonishment, yet the core achievement remained staggering.
To build a usable system that manipulated both space and time from scratch was nothing short of revolutionary.
Even Subaru, who had come to expect the extraordinary from Echidna, found himself genuinely shocked.
Gloria scoffed dismissively, folding her arms and looking the way nobles always did when they believed they'd been entertained by something half-baked. "Hmm. It's still only a prototype then… not worth any rewards," she sniffed.
Echidna simply giggled in response, the sound oddly childlike and edged with that same danger that made her unpredictable.
"But I discovered something else," she crowed, strolling over to a statue of polished obsidian that sat like a black moon in the center of the workshop. "Let me show you the experiment I conducted."
While Echidna fussed over her contraption, Subaru took a different approach.
He reached for the thick tome that documented every arcane detail of the magic—its theoretical foundations, schematics, annotated diagrams—and, using his psychic faculties, skimmed it at a speed that would have made a scribe dizzy.
The book's pages unfolded in his mind in a rapid chain of comprehension; within seconds he had absorbed the recorded principles.
Stepping into the magic circle, Subaru knelt and examined the runes and sigils with the meticulousness of a man who had spent months integrating old-world technology and new-world magic.
The circle was dense with annotations: spatial anchors, temporal placeholders, nodes for Od flow. By the time Echidna returned carrying the black statue, Subaru had already committed most of the theory to memory.
He had not yet practiced it, but he understood how it should function completely.
Echidna explained the technicalities with feverish enthusiasm. "The designations are simple," she said.
"The current spatial coordinate is marked as '0'. Temporal coordinates… are more complex. I denoted the present as 'L'—the existing local time-period. The circle is constructed so that if you travel forward in time by one hour and then return, one hour will likewise have passed here. Time is conserved relative to the system's frame."
She let the explanation trail for a breath, then added with a grin that betrayed both curiosity and a hint of mischief, "By adding or subtracting values from the time coordinate, you can move forward or backward in time. But—what if the value is imaginary?"
Her smile widened as if she had just offered the world a riddle.
At that very moment, someone wrapped both arms around Subaru from behind. Warmth, familiar and immediate.
"I missed you, Subaru!" Reina's voice carried a bright, breathless energy.
She had been in the Capital earlier, dealing with petty thieves who had dared steal from one of Subaru's shops.
Now she stood before them, flushed from exertion and smiling like someone who had returned from a successful errand.
Subaru answered with the kind of mild exasperation that usually followed their reunions. "It's only been an hour since we parted," he said, though his mouth curved in a real smile.
Reina giggled, pressing closer. "But I want to stay by your side forever!"
No sooner had her words left her lips than the magic circle beneath their feet flared. Lines of light raced along the runes; the air hummed. Echidna's face drained of color.
"Quickly—get out!" she shouted, but the warning came too late. The circle had already erected a translucent barrier that snapped into existence like an invisible pane of glass.
"What's happening?!" Beatrice yelled, eyes wide and voice tight with alarm as she felt the rush of the circle's energy.
Echidna's earlier hubris flashed at them now as recklessness. She had not fully accounted for spontaneous activations.
The system required a massive, deliberate influx of mana—someone guiding their Od into the circle to set coordinates and anchor the jump.
Subaru, Beatrice, and Gloria all understood that basic principle.
However Reina's abrupt arrival had created spatial ripples that stirred the magic system, but the real trigger was more subtle and far more dangerous.
Reina carried a mana vacuum.
She absorbed large amounts of ambient Od almost continuously, a side effect of whatever divine protection and unique nature she possessed.
That constant siphoning produced a localized mana deficit—a kind of mana black hole—around her.
The circle, designed to pull Od from the surroundings to energize its anchor points, fed greedily upon that vacuum.
Large volumes of mana streamed into the runes, enough to bring the prototype to life in a way Echidna had never intended.
Subaru surged toward the barrier and strained at it, but it wouldn't yield. Reina attempted to teleport them away in a blind reflex, but her divine protections and usual techniques were blunted.
Even her connection to the great OD Laguna—her tether to that powerful well of spirits—felt somehow attenuated, as if something in the room was swallowing her lifeline.
Subaru's mind raced. 'Do I smash the circle? Or do I let it stabilize? Destroying it could rip the space-time here apart…' he thought.
"Do not destroy the magic circle!" Echidna shrieked with raw panic. "It may cause spatial or temporal destabilization!"
"Can we change the coordinates? Can someone alter them—now?!" Subaru demanded, voice sharpened by pressure.
"Damn it! It's a prototype—coordinates have to be set before activation!" Echidna wailed, tearing at her hair. She paced erratically; her earlier triumph collapsed into frantic regret. "I forgot the safety checks. I forgot to lock the input. I—"
Her face paled further as she realized the most damning detail: in her obsessive quest to push the boundaries of her research, she had experimented with nonstandard values.
'That isn't the only thing… I kept the temporal coordinates imaginary…' the thought hit her like cold water, and she went white.
Before anyone could come up with a plan, the workshop's atmosphere changed.
The space-time between them snapped like a taut string being cut; sound and motion became dulled, as if they'd been encased in thick glass.
"Gloria! Beatrice—get into my spirit space!" Subaru barked. Without hesitation, both women dove into his spirit sanctuary, the safe pocket of reality he kept for emergencies.
The world outside the pocket blurred like ink in water.
Subaru stayed. He pulled Reina close, feeling the guilty tension in her body, the flush of responsibility on her face. 'It's my fault, isn't it?' she thought, eyes rimmed with worry.
He cupped her chin gently, then pressed his lips against hers; the kiss was both an anchor and an affirmation. It snapped her out of the spiraling guilt.
"Listen, Reina," he said calmly, though every nerve in him hummed with adrenaline. "Don't panic. I've already memorized the entire spell. We'll find our way back. I promise." His voice held the quiet confidence of someone who had prepared for more than one contingency.
She searched his eyes, drew in a breath, and nodded. "Okay," she whispered, then hugged him tightly.
Before anyone could add another word, the barrier dissolved, and the two of them vanished from the workshop—torn away by a prototype's unintended leap through space-time.
To be continued...
(A/N: Now the volume 1 of this fic officially ends!
So what should I do now? Wait for a week to upload chaps, or continue uploading chaps?
Considering I have got some patreons I am hinging on second option.
Well if we get 450 Powerstones by trmw, I will continue updating.
If not, then well... forget it.
I have increased the chaps for 5 dollars officially to 12 chaps, and for now 10 dollars will get 17 chaps, and soon it will be 20. While people with 15 dollars will get 25 chaps, and as for 20 dollars one will get all the chaps(Any number upto 35 if possible ahead of everyone)
If you want to sign up! Then it's the best time! Just for 5 dollars you will get 12 chaps ahead of everyone! I hope you enjoy the chaps!
If you have signed up for 2 dollar, the seven day time hasn't ended, you can easily upgrade it without suffering any loss, if not then tell me you want a refund, check if your free trial has ended or not, if not then cancel the membership and buy one of your choices, to save money!)
_________________________________________________________________________________________________VOLUME 1- STARTING LIFE IN ANOTHER WORLD FROM ZERO.