The wind in the expansive, heavily warded backyard of the university training grounds suddenly felt entirely too still. We stood in a loose semi-circle, the soft green grass crunching beneath our boots, completely unaware of the cosmic absurdity we were about to witness. Sir Vael stood before us, his posture as casual as a man deciding what to have for lunch, despite the fact that he was about to demonstrate a magical theory that defied the very laws of physics. He clapped his hands together, the sound echoing unnaturally in the quiet air, and gave us a bright, entirely too enthusiastic smile.
"Alright, everyone," Sir Vael said, his voice carrying easily over the open field. "I'll do the base spell first, entirely without a single fold, just so you can see the foundation of the raw output before we start multiplying the variables."
He raised his right arm, his sleeve sliding back to reveal the intricate, glowing veins of pure mana that pulsed just beneath his skin. He didn't aim at the heavily reinforced training dummies. He didn't aim at the reinforced stone walls at the edge of the academy grounds. Instead, he simply tilted his head back, narrowed his eyes against the glaring midday light, and started pointing directly up at the sun.
"This is a standard base spell, a foundational piece of attack magic," Sir Vael announced, his tone utterly conversational. "Scorching Fire ball!"
He didn't scream the incantation or channel his energy with dramatic flair. He merely spoke the words, and the universe instantly obeyed. A sphere of pure, hyper-condensed plasma erupted from his outstretched palm. It didn't just fly; it violently tore through the atmosphere, leaving a vacuum of displaced air that popped our ears and sent a shockwave of blistering heat washing over our faces. The fireball shot upward so fast it was nothing more than a blinding streak of crimson and gold, breaking the sound barrier a dozen times over in a fraction of a second. We all instinctively threw our hands up to shield our eyes, looking toward the heavens in absolute disbelief.
When we finally managed to squint through the harsh glare, our collective breath hitched in our throats. There, etched perfectly into the center of the massive, blazing star that warmed our entire planet of Dhenshin, was a hole. A massive, perfectly circular hole punched straight through the sun. The light cascading down on the university grounds suddenly shifted, casting strange, unnatural shadows across the grass, as if the sky itself had been broken by a careless child playing with a needle.
"See? That's the baseline," Sir Vael said cheerily, completely ignoring our terrified, slack-jawed expressions. He casually snapped his fingers—a sharp, crisp sound that seemed to rewrite reality itself. Instantly, the massive, impossible hole in the sun sealed shut, the brilliant, blinding light returning to normal as if the celestial damage had never occurred.
"Now," Sir Vael continued, lowering his hand and shaking out his wrist as if he had just tossed a pebble. "Let's introduce a single fold to the exact same spell."
He pointed up at the sky once again. The air around him began to visibly warp and distort, the space itself groaning under the immense, unnatural pressure of the mana being geometrically folded back in on itself inside his magical core. "Scor—you know what, I'll just do a silent cast," he muttered to himself, waving his left hand dismissively.
He didn't say a single word of enchanting. There was no warning. He simply blasted the spell.
The resulting projectile wasn't a fireball; it was a localized apocalypse. A blast of energy so incomprehensibly massive and dense erupted from his hand that the very fabric of the sky seemed to scream. We watched, entirely paralyzed by a primal, existential terror, as the blast collided with the sun. And then, the sun was just gone. The blast was so catastrophically huge that the star that gave life to our world looked like a single, microscopic speck of dust compared to the consuming inferno of Sir Vael's magic.
And then, there was nothing but darkness.
An absolute, suffocating pitch-black fell over the entire world. The temperature plummeted instantly, the warm summer air turning into a biting, freezing void that chilled the marrow in our bones. "Yeah, a single fold for me is definitely overkill," Sir Vael's voice echoed in the terrifying, freezing darkness, sounding mildly apologetic but mostly just amused.
We stood there shivering, blind and terrified, waiting for the end of the world, until the sharp, crisp sound of his fingers snapping echoed across the void once more.
In a fraction of a millisecond, the sun was back. The blinding light returned, the freezing temperature vanished, and the world of Dhenshin was whole again. We all gasped for air, our knees shaking as the reality of what we had just witnessed set in.
"There," Sir Vael said, dusting off his hands with a satisfied nod. "That's exactly how folding mana looks and feels. Now, I want all of you to try it. Just a basic spell, one single fold. Focus on the internal geometry."
He made it sound as easy as tying a bootlace. But the reality of mana folding was a psychological and physical nightmare. When Vela closed her eyes and tried to force her mana to fold, the delicate mental construct shattered, and her eyes rolled back into her head as she collapsed into the grass. Zane shakes for a few seconds, before his knees buckled and he fell face-first into the dirt. Lucian, despite him being a demon, let out a pained gasp and slumped over backward, completely unconscious. The elven twins, Elfhine and Elfrich, tried to synchronize their attempts, holding hands to share the mental burden, but the sheer complexity of the fold short-circuited their elven synergy, and they both passed out simultaneously, falling into an elegant, unconscious heap. Elphyete, my sweet, shy Elphyete, didn't even last three seconds before the magical feedback overwhelmed her delicate senses, and she quietly fainted into a patch of soft clovers.
Surprisingly, even Euphyne stepped up to the challenge. The massive, boulder-shattering noble stood his ground, his muscles bulging as he tried to simply brute-force the delicate, microscopic folding of internal mana. But pure physical confidence and unyielding durability meant nothing to the intricate, fragile architecture of spellcraft. With a loud, frustrated grunt, the mighty Euphyne swayed like a felled oak tree and crashed heavily into the turf, out cold.
Within minutes, the grassy training field looked like a battlefield of sleeping bodies. I stood there, looking at my unconscious friends, realizing just how impossibly high the ceiling of magical power truly was.
Celdrich, however, remained standing. The usually quiet, intense student let out a long, heavy sigh that ruffled his dark hair. He stepped carefully over the unconscious bodies of his classmates and walked directly into the middle of the university's massive backyard field. He cracked his neck, his eyes fixed on the distant, towering mountain range that bordered the academy grounds.
"Since I saw Sir Vael's scorching Fire ball," Celdrich said, his voice remarkably calm despite the absolute carnage of failed attempts around him, "I'll do it. Let me establish the base spell first."
He raised his hand, his fingers slightly curled as he gathered his internal energy. "Scorching Fire ball..." he chanted, his voice low and steady. He aimed directly at the nearest, tallest mountain in the distance. A blast of roaring, orange-red flame erupted from his palm. It wasn't anywhere near the cosmic scale of Sir Vael's magic, but it was still terrifying. The fireball crossed the miles in a heartbeat and slammed into the granite peak. The explosion deafened us, a massive shockwave rattling our bones as the entire top half of the towering mountain was instantly vaporized, leaving a jagged, smoking crater where thousands of tons of ancient stone used to be.
Sir Vael gave a low whistle of appreciation. With a lazy flick of his wrist, the mountain repaired itself, the missing stone and snow seamlessly knitting back together as if time had been reversed.
Celdrich didn't blink. He simply took a deep breath, his entire body tensing as he prepared for the real challenge. "Now... a single fold," he muttered, the strain already evident in his tight jaw.
We could feel the air around Celdrich grow heavy and oppressive. He was successfully performing the mental geometry, folding the raw mana back in on itself, doubling, then squaring its volatile density. His veins glowed a furious, burning orange through his skin.
"Scorching Fire ball," he roared, the effort tearing at his vocal cords.
He pointed to the restored mountain again. The blast that tore from his hands was entirely different. It wasn't just fire; it was a continuous, howling beam of superheated destruction. The blast was so impossibly huge that it didn't just hit the mountain he was aiming at; it violently expanded, swallowing the two massive mountains standing on either side of it. The earth shook so violently that I lost my footing and fell to the grass. When the blinding light finally faded and the deafening roar subsided, I looked out at the horizon. Three entire mountains had been completely erased, reduced to nothing more than a vast, smoking plain of scorched earth and swirling ash.
Celdrich gasped for air, his arms dropping to his sides as he stumbled backward, completely drained by the immense physical and magical toll of the fold.
Sir Vael stood there, his eyes wide with genuine surprise. He clapped his hands slowly, a proud smile breaking across his face. "Celdrich... your potential is absolutely incredible," Sir Vael praised, clearly impressed that a mortal student had managed to grasp the impossible concept on the very first day.
With another casual, reality-bending snap of his fingers, the terrible, smoking damage on the horizon was instantly fixed. The three towering mountains reappeared in the distance, their snow-capped peaks gleaming in the sunlight as if they had never been touched by the fires of destruction.
Sir Vael looked down at the field of unconscious students groaning in the grass. He raised his hand, and the world blurred again. He teleported us all directly back to the classroom, dropping the unconscious students gently into their wooden wooden seats.
"Well, it seems most of y'all can't even do a single fold," Sir Vael said, leaning against his desk and crossing his arms. He didn't sound angry, just deeply amused. "Well, I don't expect anything from y'all anyways, given your current ranks. But Celdrich, you're awesome. Truly exceptional work today."
I sat at my desk, my mind still reeling from the scale of the world and the magic within it. I raised my hand slightly. "Sir Vael?"
"Yes, Sogha?" he replied, looking over at me.
"I was thinking about what you said earlier this morning... how many dungeons actually exist on this planet?" I asked, trying to wrap my head around a world that expanded solely based on subterranean exploration.
Sir Vael tapped his chin thoughtfully, his eyes staring off into the middle distance as if casually counting the stars. "Mmmm... about one million or more," he said casually. "And those are just the ones we know about. There are likely countless others waiting to be triggered in the uncharted waters and deep wilderness."
"Ahh, I see..." I murmured, the sheer, unfathomable scale of Dhenshin making me feel incredibly small.
The rest of the class passed in a blur of theoretical lectures, with Sir Vael occasionally poking the unconscious students with a piece of chalk until they woke up, groggy and nursing massive magical migraines. After a few hours, the massive iron bell in the courtyard tolled, signaling the end of the day. All of us were exhausted, packing our bags and preparing to go home. But a heavy, nagging thought had been eating away at my mind ever since Sir Vael had mentioned his own locked stats and his past as an Otherworlder.
I needed answers.
I turned to Euphyne, who was rubbing his temples with his massive hands, and Elphyete, who still looked a bit pale from her fainting spell. "Hey, you two go on home first," I said softly, giving them a reassuring smile. "I have something I need to ask Sir Vael."
Before they could even protest or ask questions, Sir Vael, who had clearly overheard me, snapped his fingers. With a soft pop of displaced air, Euphyne and Elphyete vanished from the classroom, teleported directly back to our shared estate.
The classroom was suddenly very quiet, empty except for the two of us. The late afternoon sun cast long, golden shadows across the wooden floorboards. Sir Vael sat down on the edge of his desk, his playful demeanor fading into something much more ancient and serious.
"So... what do you want to ask, Sogha?" he asked softly, the glowing light in his eyes dimming slightly.
I gripped the strap of my satchel, my knuckles turning white. "I want to ask you about my error," I began, my voice tight. "When you looked at my status and said that I got my stats locked by someone... And earlier today, you mentioned that you locked your own power to ten percent. You did it to yourself, so you must know how the mechanism works. You must know how to remove it."
Sir Vael let out a long, heavy sigh. He ran a hand through his hair, looking at me with a mixture of pity and frustration. "Yeah, I know how the mechanism works, Sogha," he said quietly. "But the thing is..... you can only lock abilities, stats, and fundamental system functions if you're an Otherworlder. It requires administrator-level access to the very fabric of reality. And if someone else—even me—tries to forcibly remove a lock that another Otherworlder placed on you..." He paused, his gaze locking onto mine with absolute, terrifying certainty. "No matter how incredibly powerful the person trying to break it is... you'll die. The internal paradox will shatter your soul before the lock even registers the breach."
The words hit me like a physical blow. The hope I had been nurturing all day crumbled into dust. "Oh....." I whispered, the sound barely escaping my lips.
Sir Vael stood up, walking over and placing a heavy, comforting hand on my shoulder. "Yeah. I can't do a single thing about it until I personally see and confront the exact person who did that to you, Sogha. The magical signature has to be unraveled by the one who tied the knot, or by killing them to break the tether. I'm sorry."
A strange, hollow numbness washed over me. I had been dragged into this massive, terrifying world, told I was near by someone of a race of god-like beings, only to find out I was trapped in a cage I couldn't even see, and the only key held the threat of instant death. I just felt nothing. I stared at the wooden floorboards, the golden light of the afternoon suddenly feeling very cold.
"Ok," I said, my voice completely devoid of emotion. "I'm going home."
Sir Vael gave my shoulder a gentle squeeze. He didn't offer any empty platitudes or false hope. He simply raised his hand and snapped his fingers.
The world blurred, and the scent of chalk and old wood was instantly replaced by the rich, savory aroma of simmering broth and roasted garlic. I found myself sitting directly on the plush velvet couch in the warmly lit living room of our mini-mansion.
The contrast was jarring. Just seconds ago, I was facing the reality of my own magical mortality, and now I was surrounded by domestic peace. In the adjacent kitchen, Elphyete was standing over the stove, a wooden spoon in her hand and an apron tied around her waist. Her delicate elven features were flushed from the heat of the hearth, and she looked over her shoulder with a bright, welcoming smile.
"Perfect timing," Elphyete said, her voice a soothing melody. "I'm just about to finish cooking."
I looked toward the dining room. Euphyne was sitting at the massive oak table, his broad shoulders taking up half the space. Perched precariously on the very top of his muscular back, right between his shoulder blades, was Snowball, our tiny white kitten, fast asleep and purring loudly. The massive warrior looked up from the table, a booming, genuine laugh escaping his chest.
"You're back, my best friend! Ahahaha!" Euphyne cheered, careful not to move his shoulders too much and disturb the sleeping kitten.
The sheer absurdity of the scene—the giant boulder-smasher acting as a bed for a kitten, the shy elven princess commanding the kitchen, the warmth of the home we had built in such a short time—finally broke through the numb, hollow feeling in my chest. I couldn't help it. I smiled, a genuine, tired smile that reached my eyes.
"Yeah," I said softly, leaning back into the cushions of the couch. "I am back home."
We spent the evening eating Elphyete's incredible cooking, laughing at Euphyne's attempts to eat without waking the kitten on his back, and deliberately avoiding any talk of Sir Vael's terrifying magic class. For a few hours, I was allowed to just be a normal student eating dinner with his friends.
Eventually, the exhaustion of the day caught up with all of us. After cleaning the dishes and wishing Euphyne a good night, Elphyete and I retired to our shared room. The moonlight spilled across the floorboards, much like it had the night before, wrapping the room in a quiet, peaceful glow. We climbed into bed, pulling the heavy, warm quilts up to our chins.
The room was silent for a long time, save for the soft sound of our breathing. But the question had clearly been burning in her mind all evening.
Elphyete shifted on her pillows, turning her head to look at me in the dim light. Her large, expressive eyes were filled with quiet concern. "Sogha," she whispered softly. "What did you ask Sir Vael about? After class?"
I looked up at the wooden canopy of the bed, the shadows dancing in the corners of the room. I didn't want to worry her, but I also didn't want to lie. "I asked Sir Vael if he could do anything about my locked stats," I said, my voice quiet but steady in the dark room. "He said no. He told me that we can't do anything about it... not until we know exactly who locked my status in the first place."
I turned my head to look at her, offering a sad, resigned smile. "He said I'll die if he tried to force it out. The paradox would kill me."
I watched as the moonlight caught her face. Her breath hitched, a look of profound sorrow crossing her delicate features. I watched closely as the tips of her long, elegant elven ears began to turn a deep, vibrant shade of purple—a physical manifestation of her intense emotion and protective affection.
Without a word of hesitation, she closed the distance between us. She wrapped her arms tightly around my torso, pulling herself against my side, burying her face into my chest. The warmth of her embrace was sudden and completely overwhelming, anchoring me firmly to the present moment.
"It's alright," Elphyete whispered fiercely against my shirt, her grip tightening as if she could physically shield me from the unknown Otherworlder who had cursed me. "I'm always here for you, Sogha. Always."
I wrapped my arm around her shoulders, resting my chin gently on the top of her head. The smell of the forest and the faint scent of the spices she used for cooking drifted from her hair. The fear, the existential dread of the universe-sized dungeons, the locked stats, the terrifying power of Sir Vael—it all melted away in the warmth of her hug.
"It's fine," I murmured softly, stroking her back. "I'm not bothered by it." And in that specific moment, holding her in the quiet dark of our room, I realized it was entirely true. I didn't need god-like power right now. I just needed this.
"Good," she breathed out, her voice growing heavy with sleep. She didn't let go. Her breathing slowed, matching the steady rhythm of my own heart, and within minutes, she fell completely asleep while still hugging me tight.
I lay there for a long time, watching the moonlight slowly shift across the wooden floor, feeling the comforting weight of her presence against my side. Slowly, the exhaustion washed over me one final time, and I closed my eyes, letting the darkness take me not into the void of folded mana, but into a quiet, peaceful sleep.