The dungeon floor smelled of grass and sweets. I searched for an isolated corner, where none walked. The subtle religious imagery didn’t even enter my mind as I dropped on the grass. Then I flared my starpower and lay like that.

  With care, I shaped a solidification form and watched the flow with increasing attention. In the illusion of death, I realized I didn’t have to solidify starpower completely. From between my fingers, a string of starpower stretched. I didn’t think about practicing or pushing my limits; I just spent time creating.

  I weaved the string into a little spider, hardening whenever necessary and sculpting the creature with subtle application of the form. It turned out so lifelike… I haven’t seen spiders here.

  Figure after figure I created, all those things I imagined, all those that I placed within my mind palace, I brought them into reality.

  My breath was taken away. I lost myself to the act.

  When I couldn’t flare my starpower anymore, an hour had passed. I was surrounded by twenty figurines of various things. From buildings, to monsters, to animals, and even a miniature dragon.

  But something was not right. Between them, there was a flow, a barely visible line of starpower. Through the exhaustion, I made a detection form, and a world of color exploded. Through the figurines, an invisible stream of starpower flowed.

  Longing Statues

  Type: Initiate Artifact

  Description: Starpower figurines created from pure imagination. They are tightly connected to the spiritual, and their existence is supported in perpetuity. Looking at them will bring insights into Sadness Form.

  I smiled. This was magic. It was in every moment, in every action. And now I left a piece of myself in the world… Even if they were probably going to get removed.

  Your SE has increased by 1. From 50 to 51

  Your mastery of Solidification has reached Knight

  This type of growth was much more preferable. I wasn’t even trying to do anything. Magic was awesome. I breathed a sigh of relief and stared forward.

  Soon there would be that stressful duel, but I couldn’t care less. I wasn’t going to leave even if I lost.

  I stretched my back and gazed at the sky. “Let’s do this.” I slapped my cheeks and took a deep breath of the rosy air. Starpower surged through me, and I forced it to rise higher. “I will become a supreme wizard.” All doubts were gone, and the flow condensed.

  I sent the flows through my hands and legs, condensing as much as possible, with my focus the strands entwined and grew. “The third law of motion states that to every action, there is always opposed an equal reaction; and that means I will fly!”

  The force forms snapped together with my desire, starpower curled inwards, and their target was one, the ground. I pushed, and the gravity disagreed. The pressure rose on my shoulders, my brow tensed.

  “Fly!” Then my feet left the ground. I ascended. Higher and higher.

  Elation, the same feeling of leaving Death. The majestic ground grew farther; the trees of dragons became smaller. The wind blew in my face as I levitated.

  And I kept going higher, as high as the force form could grasp the ground. Only twenty meters, and then I couldn’t keep up. My whole body tensed, and my muscles cried out in pain.

  I laughed, and I laughed like a madman. “This is it!” I didn’t need to ask about the garden. The way was already within my VITA. With a tilt of my wrists, I started accelerating.

  The wind howled in my ears, the sweat dropped from my face, and my eyes shone like beacons. I looked at those dragons below, gathering, talking, having a picnic. I was above them – literally. I chuckled.

  I was here in prison, yet the only true freedom existed in my mind.

  Your SE has increased by 1. From 51 to 52

  Faster now, my heart fluttered, and my stomach curled from weightlessness. The force form flickered from sheer emotion; it grew stronger together with the drumming in my ears.

  The surroundings turned into a blur. I lost control of my direction. I flipped in the air and plummeted down. Fear didn’t even cross my mind. I laughed.

  Strengthening turned my skin to iron and my bones to steel. And then I fell. “Shit… this hurts.” I reached into my pocket to grab a healing panacea. I crawled out of the small crater in the ground.

  My snapped wide open. The garden unveiled itself in front of me. It was a field of orderly rows of bushes. Green mist rose from the ground, and it spread like a veil, feeding into the plants. An endless stream of bundled together fruits wormed its way through the air, floating to somewhere. The soil glowed and glistened; it had tiny grains of crystals.

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  The garden was in fast-forward. Every second, tens of fat berries, drupes, and nuts sprouted from the bushes, grew in mere seconds, and were plucked by magic into the air. It made sense how they could feed so many ravenous dragons. The harvest was constant.

  I scouted the fruit, recognizing them as ingredients for the sandwiches, the nuts had marshmallows in them, the drupes were processed into the bread and meat, and the fat berries were used to make the sweet sauce.

  With technology like this, no one was going to be hungry. No one was hungry…

  Elementum Soil

  Description: Soil infused with crushed elementum dust and imbued with the ability to generate nutrients.

  I burst out laughing. “So, they’re putting money into the dirt, money that they make from killing monsters… This is stupid.” A harvest that’s dependent on killing. No wonder everyone was so obsessed with strength. How else would you get elementum to grow your crazy genetically engineered crops?

  My stomach rumbled… Hunger made itself apparent again. I pulled a few berries from the air right into my hand. Conjuring a mortar and pestle, I crushed the things into jam.

  Once that was done, I created a glass and dropped the jam inside. It was messy and not that drinkable. Not without water, or maybe…

  Liquid starpower dripped into the cup, filling it up halfway. I couldn’t stop chuckling. I conjured a lid and shook the juice until it turned into something more drinkable.

  What remained was glowing blue liquid that I wasn’t sure was safe to drink. But something was missing – a spice of magic. With happiness form in my hand, I imbibed the liquid starpower.

  Happy Juice

  Description: A refreshing drink made with Marangi berries mixed with liquid starpower and imbued with happiness. Raises the mood, reduces mental strain. Slightly addictive.

  “Yeah, whatever.” I chugged my little experiment. It tasted just like soda… “That’s the stuff…” Why did it taste like that? Maybe the happiness form dug into repressed neural connections, or maybe the berries were just like that.

  This was my little healing vacation; I could do whatever I wanted. My stomach was full of happy juice. It was time to say my last goodbyes before going back to the training frenzy.

  Languidly, I walked through the bushes, trying to reach deeper. The fog and the fruit obscured directions, but I managed. Perfect memory was a cheat.

  When the sea of floating fruit was traversed, I saw a giant tree, one that reminded me of my long-lost home. Rhythmical snipping resounded through the garden, and occasionally a branch would fall to the ground. Between the branches, someone intruded into my moment of intimacy.

  I cleared my throat. “Greetings.”

  Silence. The snipping stopped.

  “Hello. Stop hiding in the leaves.” Detection form confirmed that someone was there. I smirked. “I’ll blow up the tree if you don’t reveal yourself!”

  “N-no, please. Don’t!” I gasped, suddenly breathless.

  “Mitzi?!” She dropped to the ground. Her fists were clenched, and her gaze was full of fear. “Take me, don’t touch the tree…”

  I blinked. Then I blinked again. The howling of the wind weighed on me. The decision crystallized quickly. No more regrets.

  I dropped to my knees. “I’m sorry!”

  “What?!” Mitzi clenched her fists.

  “I’m sorry for beating you up and torturing you. I should never have done that. There is no excuse for that, but I ask you, please, forgive me.” Unpleasant heat pulsed in my head.

  No words were spoken. Then a quiet voice broke through the silence. “You were right…”

  I raised my eyes. Mitzi stood there with hitching breath, her chin trembling. “You were right. I was never going to be a true dragon.”

  It made the heaviness even worse. “So I ruined your life… I-i… I’m sorry. I am really sorry.” The words didn’t help. They didn’t make regrets disappear.

  “The life of a dragon was not meant for me.” She turned slowly. Her eyes focused on the plum tree. “There was nothing there. Nothing but pain – kill or be killed.” She gulped. “I can never forgive you. I can never forgive myself. So I won’t. I will become just another servant.”

  I stood up. “How can you say that?” I flinched at the force in my voice. “Didn’t you have friends? Didn’t you have anyone? Illiaz was willing to kill for what I did to you.”

  “I never liked them. I never liked any of them.” No fear, no hiding. It was the face of the girl who decided to haughtily spar with me. “Why did you think I was eating on the first-year floor?”

  Starpower rose through my soul. “Aren’t you lonely?” The pressure grew, the fear of being nowhere again. I couldn’t handle an eternity like that.

  Mitzi chuckled. “All dragons are – you are onyx too; you should know that. It’s the way things always are. It’s better to be alone.”

  The venom in her tone. The rancidness of that stare. I couldn’t stand it, that hatred towards life. “Do you know what happens when you die?”

  “I don’t care anymore. J-just don’t torture me.”

  “There is nothing but your own mind. With each moment, you will come closer to giving up, and then, and then you will truly die. Is that what you’d like? Is that what anyone would like? To rot in the prison of mind until the cursed Source takes you?” I couldn’t help but spit out the words. “It’s far worse than any torture I can put you through. Worse than anything, and you just give up?”

  She stared silently. Her eyes lowered, and she turned away. “If you aren’t here to kill me, then go away.”

  I sighed. Some mistakes couldn’t be fixed. Of course, they couldn’t be. And yet, something so weak broke her already. She wasn’t raging against the machine; she wasn’t crying out in hatred. I didn’t understand.

  With measured steps, I approached the plum tree. “I came here for the tree, not for you.”

  Mitzi yelped. “You can’t! Y-you won’t!”

  “Won’t do what?” I touched the bark. The tiniest piece of Earth. I felt like crying, but I couldn’t.

  “Don’t touch the tree. It’s mine. Mine.” Her claws were showing.

  “It’s Simona’s. She said I could find it here.”

  She growled. “I hate you, human, I really, really hate you.” It seems I was wrong about her.

  “It’s called a plum tree. They originated in the Caucasus Mountains. I saw many of their flowers through the springs. The plums themselves were tasty too. Compared to your genetically modified fruits, they are nothing, but to me, they are important. I ate a total of 112 plums throughout my past life. And now I see a tree here…” With a flick of my wrist, I plucked three plums. I will grow my own tree on Lacrimony someday.

  “You know, Mitzi, there are some things in life that are worth fighting for, worth killing for. Don’t forget that hatred, don’t forget that passion.” She didn’t say anything.

  I marched towards my duel. To play a little game.

  My passion was in creation, but destruction was a different kind of creation.

  Ude will be crushed.