The first time I used the mental realm to solve a real-world problem, it happened without conscious planning. I was sitting in the middle of an exam hall, staring down at a complex physics question I had no idea how to answer. The numbers mocked me. Time ticked, loud and sharp, and anxiety clawed at the edge of my focus.
I closed my eyes—not in defeat, but out of habit. And just like that, I was gone.
The cold gray walls of the classroom dissolved, and in their place rose the great white dome of my mind. The mental realm formed around me instantly now—responsive, automatic, almost eager. I stood in a clean, brightly lit room lined with floating bookshelves. A chalkboard materialized, and my subconscious arranged equations across it. I paced like a seasoned physicist, plucking notes from the air, visualizing vector fields and kinetic pathways. I even summoned a worn-out college textbook, one I'd never seen in reality but somehow "recalled" from the depth of the collective unconscious.
Within minutes—seconds in the real world—I had it. The answer, clear and precise.
I opened my eyes. My hand moved before my thoughts did. I wrote the equation on the test paper with a strange calmness, like the answer had always been there and I'd only needed to remember.
The invigilator watched me warily. I realized then I'd been sitting with my eyes closed, motionless, for what must have seemed like five or six seconds. Nothing too strange, but enough to draw attention. I lowered my gaze and kept writing, careful now.
From that moment forward, I stopped thinking of the mental realm as just a refuge or a playground. It became a tool—a powerful, almost unfair advantage. If I needed to make a decision, I entered the realm. If I was overwhelmed by emotion, I meditated there. I could slow everything down. I could breathe, reflect, simulate. I began to rely on it.
Yet the changes weren't only in my mind.
I noticed them in my body. On some days, I would skip sleep entirely, spending hours in the mental realm instead. But I never felt tired. Quite the opposite—I felt light, sharp, recharged. My posture straightened. My skin cleared. Old injuries faded as though time itself reversed them. Friends began commenting on how I looked… different. Not in a drastic way. Just more alive, more alert. They called it "zen" or said I had a glow. I just nodded and laughed it off.
I conducted experiments. I cut my palm lightly one day, left it untreated, and entered the mental realm for what felt like an entire afternoon. When I returned, the wound was halfway closed. I repeated the process. The next time, it healed even faster.
This place was not just a construct of the mind—it affected matter.
At first, I kept things simple. My mental realm became a study space, a personal dojo of thought. I trained memory techniques. I ran logic puzzles against holograms of myself. I summoned encyclopedias and played music composed only in dreams.
But with comfort came curiosity.
I began pushing the limits.
One evening, in the middle of an argument with my teacher over a literature essay, I found myself frustrated and overwhelmed. I excused myself to the restroom, entered a stall, closed my eyes—and fell into the realm. This time, I summoned a copy of the teacher himself. Not a real person, but a mental puppet made from memory. I argued with him in my space, calmly, effectively, dissecting his feedback line by line until I understood what I had missed.
When I returned to class, my frustration was gone. I rewrote the essay that night, and it was one of the best I'd ever submitted. The teacher gave me a rare nod of approval.
I realized something important: my mind wasn't just escaping. It was evolving. Growing. I was refining myself at a pace that felt… unnatural. As if human potential had been shackled for centuries by sleep, by distraction, by limitation. I had broken free of those.
And yet—there were rules I couldn't quite explain.
I still couldn't bring people into the realm. Not real ones, not yet. My mental projections—avatars of friends or teachers—were limited, flat. They had no true consciousness. No resistance. I tried to create people who could argue, surprise me, behave unpredictably. But they always felt... hollow. Like shadows playing at humanity.
At night, I would lie in bed wondering what would happen if I found a way to connect to someone else's mind. What if I could pull them in—not as figments, but as themselves? Could we talk? Would they remember? Could I influence them?
Those thoughts lingered in the back of my mind like embers waiting for flame.
One day, I stood in front of a mirror and looked at myself. Not just my face, but deeper—into my eyes, trying to see what had changed. I didn't see power. I didn't see a god. I saw someone on the edge of something vast, staring down into it, uncertain if they should take the next step.
But I knew I would.
The mental realm had become more than an extension of me.
It had become my second world.
And I was only beginning to understand how far its echoes reached.