Pain surged behind Alistair's eyes, sharp enough to stagger him again. The spatial-temporal magic inside the chest didn't just resist his vision—it actively struck back, unraveling focus and sense.
With a grimace, he snapped his fingers.
"Disengage," he muttered.
Both of his magic eyes—the Eye of the Fallen Dragon King and the Magic Eye of Seeing—dimmed instantly, reverting to normal sight.
He let out a long, slow breath.
The pain remained, thudding in the back of his skull like hammer blows. But something more profound lingered in his mind.
"The only thing that can interfere with those eyes…" he said softly, "is a tier of magic bordering the divine."
Primordial. Holy. Ancient beyond records.
Yet he wasn't afraid.
Even through the agony, his gaze shone with curiosity.
"…This unknown world never fails to amaze me."
The screen—no, the interface—still floated in front of him, semi-transparent. It hung in the air like a living projection, lined with glowing slots. He'd seen nothing like it in his world. Some form of visualized inventory management, bound directly to the space-folding properties of the chest.
Inside the screen were items.
Ores. Bones. Diamonds. Iron.
But Alistair's gaze locked on a single red-hot glyph pulsing near the center of the screen.
A Fire Aspect enchantment.
He leaned in.
"…Fire Aspect II?"
The enchantment wasn't a scroll, nor a glyph-stamped weapon. It was an actual encoded magical object, floating like it was alive inside the chest's reality-folding interface.
His fingers brushed the slot.
And at once—
Warmth exploded through his chest.
His mana surged back to life. Circuits snapped awake. His core ignited. Deep in his skull, where his Exoheavenly Skeleton housed a secondary mana reservoir, energy poured in.
"Haaah—finally," he breathed out.
A wave of relief washed over him, pure and sharp.
But it wasn't just that.
This enchantment—this object—was the same rune he'd seen burned into the crystal back in the mansion mine. The one that brought him here.
Alistair stared at the Fire Aspect II icon for several seconds, his thoughts racing.
"So they don't enchant tools… they enchant space. These people embedded spell-logic directly into objects."
His eyes sparkled.
"This unknown world never fails to amaze me."
He closed the chest.
The screen vanished.
And suddenly—
The mana shifted.
A crushing pressure slammed into him. Dense, suffocating. Like standing at the bottom of an ocean made of pure magical gravity.
"What…?!"
He turned and ran.
Through the overgrowth. Past the roots. The trees blurred at the edges of his sight. Behind him, the ruin pulsed like a beating heart.
As he reached the outer edge of the jungle, he felt a pulse. A click.
Inventory accepted.
The ores. The bones. The book—they vanished from the chest screen and appeared in his mental inventory, almost as if absorbed by an unseen force.
But something was wrong.
Dozens—no, hundreds—of new presences emerged.
He skidded to a stop, spinning around.
Figures in the mist. Undead—square-bodied, glowing-eyed—emerged from the thick black mana. Some carried rusted swords. Others stumbled like corpses in a trance. Tall spiders—unnaturally large and low to the ground—clicked between the trees, eyes gleaming crimson.
"What…?"
He narrowed his eyes.
Summoned?
He extended his senses.
No blood circles. No ritual glyphs. No mage signatures.
"This isn't a necromancer's summoning. No presence. No anchor. They're just… appearing."
To be sure, he cast Search Magic.
"Trace Radius: one thousand meters. Filter: human presences."
The spell pulsed outward.
He blinked.
Nothing.
Only monsters. Dozens. Hundreds. Sprawled across the forest like seeds.
"…No one's summoning them. Then—this place generates them naturally?"
Still no fear.
Only a flicker of excitement.
He chuckled.
"To think I get to test my spells like this."
His mana core flared again, fully restored.
He raised one hand, charging a basic Flame Line.
The blast shot forward, striking one of the zombies in the chest—but barely slowed it.
"Hm."
Another—Shock Bolt—hit square in the skull. Still not enough.
"...So low-tier spells won't do."
He grinned.
"Fine. Let's raise the bar."
He clapped his hands together, forming a two-handed weave.
"[Volcanic Lance]!"
A spear of magma erupted from his grip, tearing through four of them at once.
That worked.
More began to rush him—clumsy, reckless. He moved without fear, casting steadily, destroying dozens with mid-tier spells. Every time he paused, they simply reappeared. Pulled from thin air. Clawed out of nothing.
He frowned.
"They don't stop...?"
He focused. Their behavior was simplistic. No tactics. No speech. No formation. Just blind charging.
Low intelligence.
He gathered them.
With a wide circle of illusion and bait-spells, he led the horde into one cluster beneath the trees.
"Let's end this."
His hand rose skyward. The air shimmered.
He planted his feet and raised both arms.
Above him, a red magic circle expanded in the air.
"[Meteor Impact.]"
A hot streak fell from the sky. Fire burst through the trees and slammed into the horde.
The explosion rocked the jungle.
Everything within the circle was vaporized.
Silence followed.
The air buzzed. Mana sizzled in the wake of the spell. The undead had vanished.
And the sky—began to shift.
The first light of dawn crept over the edge of the hills. Morning color touched the sky.
He watched carefully as the remaining monsters burned, realizing that the sun reflected the thick mana back into them—causing them to ignite and disintegrate.
No new monsters appeared.he let out a sights of relief
The suffocating black mana began to purify .The pressure lifted.
"this is much better ." he muttered
He looked down at the crater left by his spell.
It was wide—but that wasn't what caught his attention.
It was the texture.
He descended into the hollow and crouched at the center.
The stone at the bottom was unnaturally clean. Smooth. Squared.
He ran his fingers across it.
"…This isn't placed material…"
He narrowed his eyes.
"…But it fractured like it was part of a larger grid."
He stood slowly, eyes drifting to the horizon.