Sometimes, after a powerhouse passes away, they leave behind what is called a secret realm, or a secluded realm, depending on the source. The secret realm is the deceased’s realm made real or quasi real, no definite consensus has ever been reached on the subject.

  What is important is that these secret realms are sources of unimaginable riches, as well as unimaginable danger. The brave venture into them, the capable leave them rich.

  — Excerpt from Guide to Secret Realms And Their Riches

  Day 130, 1:30 AM

  Who knew having a food fight with a bunch of naked women could be as enjoyable as it was therapeutic? Two loops of various relaxing activities helped me unwind, and with my batteries recharged, it was time to get back to work.

  That masseuse is a heaven-sent, I thought as I appeared in my realm and recalled what it was I planned to do with it. I had already tested various seals’ effects, and it was time to order them in the most optimal constellation.

  Most awakened used the first realm to draw mana into their core, then the following realms to strengthen themselves or certain abilities they used. I had decided to deviate from that standard, not because I was greedy for mana, which I was, but because I needed those mana sources to make the seals.

  Seals targeting my wood abilities needed to be drawn in wood, otherwise they would impact everything, same for water and lava. With the constant influx of mana, I could have made seals scribed in ever-burning mana-fueled flames, but lava seemed strictly better.

  Naturally, there was no need for new sources in places where lava or water were close. But as my realm expanded, the locations where I planned to position the seals drifted further and further away from the main flows of lava and water, and new sources grew necessary.

  For metal, I didn’t need to create a new source to forge the seals. Not because I didn’t want to, but because the sources of metal produced a coarse powder, which couldn’t flow. So, for metal seals, I decided on giant, vertical formations, to save space.

  Air, lightning, and thunder, despite me spending a good long while contemplating the solution, remained seal-less. I found two half-solutions for lightning, one was to trap it in glass, insulating it from the rest of the world and letting it course through the pattern, the other was to trap it in metal. For the moment, I had no need nor desire to advance my lightning techniques.

  In fact, I wished to focus on the basics, air being the only problem. Another problem was mana failure, which happened fairly frequently in my tests. When the delicate balance of my realm’s mana shifted in one direction, my spells swiftly fell apart.

  So, while I really wanted to empower my spells and abilities, I first had to be able to use them. And that’s where my mind broke, because the rules of mana and its elements made no sense. Fire burned, leaving ash which would become earth, water welled up from earth, but why did it give birth to air? I could find no scientific reason, and the authors I read all just started with an axiomatic approach - things being the way they are and moved on to their chosen topics.

  Meanwhile, I knew that great power came from understanding the underlying principles. I had scoured the imperial library for an explanation, even before meeting Newstar, but found no leads. Axioms and maxims rubbed me the wrong way. They always had. Just saying it is so, let us move on, sounded like admitting you were clueless.

  And yet, I was clueless. It obviously worked. I knew three different spell seals which converted water mana to air mana, but just following the ancient wisdom seemed wrong. Still, I wasn’t willing to waste even more time searching for clues when even Initial Reference Checker failed to find anything relevant.

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  So, the four basic elements formed a circle. Then there was lightning, which, again, rubbed me the wrong way. You made lightning mana from a lot of air, some fire, and some water. Two of those were antithetical, and they almost always annihilated each other. Except when in this case, with air as a medium, they formed lightning. And by using the inverted seal, you created air from lightning with a twenty percent loss, because fire and water just disappeared.

  I drew the line there and started testing that spell formation. It took six loops, but I confirmed that fire and water did not in fact destroy each other or vanish. They escaped the runic formation because it was designed to keep lightning in, and due to its similarity with air, the inverse spell formation could gather air, but water and fire slipped away through the cracks.

  The discovery was mostly useless, the gathered mana would end up in my realm, the mana which escaped, escaped into my realm, so no real loss for me, regardless of whether I knew the mechanics of it, but it was a matter of principle. I needed to know what was happening in a semi-physical, fully magical representation of my soul.

  Next came metal. Metal came from earth and was of earth, but it could be used to spawn water or earth. No conversion loss, mana just changed into one state or the other, depending on how you nudged it. I could live with that. Metal was of earth, earth was of metal, earth spawned water, so metal of earth could do it too. Besides, faucets were a thing.

  In the interest of saving space, I decided on a two-way earth-metal spell seal, since converting metal to water would have taken another one.

  Next piece of work was wood. Wood came from earth, or from water, or from both, and birthed either fire or air. All the options were absolutely logical, which only made matters worse. It meant I was missing something for the combinations I couldn’t understand.

  Since I had two sources of earth, namely, fire and metal, I decided to spawn wood from earth, and to spawn air from wood. Fire was only one step away from air, while lightning and water spawned air for me.

  Meanwhile, earth spawned water, metal, and wood. That theoretically seemed like a problem, a chokepoint, but I lacked practical experience, and making fixes in the future realms would be relatively simple once I gathered the necessary experience.

  Still, air was for flight and movement. Having three sources of something I would desperately need when I needed it to run from danger sounded perfect.

  And finally, there was thunder. Child of lightning and air, but childless itself. I found no spell seals using thunder to create something. It was such a situational element, and only used by a single royal family and their retainers, that it was shrouded in mystery with next to no publicly available data.

  Those were the useful seals I found, but there were tons of crazy things out there. Some were logical and serious, such as mixing earth and water to make wood. But there were crazy things which made sense if you considered them, but were just plain redundant. Electricity and water converted into fire and air, which needed to be carefully separated, otherwise the whole thing would just turn into fire, or worse, explode.

  With great care, I sculpted the seals, incorporating them into the landscape as best as I could, both because it saved space and because my tests revealed they seemed to be marginally more efficient when scribed perfectly.

  I was sculpting my realm for three years, enjoying it, building it a dozen times, thinking it was done, the final, perfect version, when I spotted something which could be done better, tearing it all down and starting over. And when I achieved perfection, I had only sculpted the first four layers, and a portion of the fifth, because that was all I could fit in two weeks.

  But it was perfect. I couldn’t find a single flaw about it, so I decided to stick with it. I had a new loop. It was the one hundred and forty-fourth day since I incarnated. The autumn was ending and the winter, or season of water, would start in three days, my interview with the citylord scheduled in twenty days.

  Redo would need to be active for that conversation. I didn’t know which realm the citylord had achieved, but it was at least the fifth, probably even higher, and they could squash me like a bug.

  Well, Redo was active now, and it was time to take risks, like gathering information on the citylord and other local powers which may have paid the rumor house to notify them if anyone sought their information. Then, assuming nobody assassinated me for my indiscretions, I could visit the adventurers’ guild and check out some missions, pick the ones which might lead me to easy money once I reach the third realm, because manarium was something I would desperately need at that point.

  In the second realm, I was thriving on the crumbs of a third realm bandit turned politician. But I still had fines to pay, and by the time I reached the third realm, I would be all but a beggar.

  “Bye, Newstar, go home, thank you for your service,” I said as I left the cave, stunning the youth, who still had weeks before his contract expired.

  “What…” He stuttered something behind me, but I ignored him. After spending three years in the cave, it was time to experience some thrill and danger.