Lencar Abarame stood completely alone on the desolate, rain-slicked expanse of the Thunder-Crag plateau. The morning mist clung to his damp black cloak, and the biting wind whipped against his splintered wooden mask. He watched the empty space where his spatial portal had just swallowed the Diamond General, leaving behind nothing but scorched obsidian and the lingering, metallic scent of ozone and blood.
He let out a long, heavy sigh that seemed to drain the last remaining dregs of adrenaline from his deeply exhausted body. He had done it. The operation was a massive, unprecedented success. He had played God with a human soul, rewritten a timeline, and secured the most heavily guarded magical secrets of an entire nation.
Now, he just wanted to sleep until the world ended.
Operating purely on ingrained muscle memory, Lencar raised his right hand. His bruised fingers traced a familiar, complex geometric pattern in the cold air. The ambient mana responded sluggishly to his exhausted will, beginning to warp and fold the space in front of him. He visualized his destination with the ease of a man walking into his own living room: the small, dusty, comfortably cluttered room of the Scarlet Household in Nairn. He could almost hear the familiar, comforting creak of the floorboards, smell the lingering scent of Rebecca's stew from the kitchen downstairs, and feel the soft, worn fabric of his actual bed.
He lifted his heavy, leather-clad foot, fully intending to step right through the swirling dark portal and collapse into his sheets.
But just as his boot hovered over the threshold of the spatial rift, he froze in mid-air.
Lencar blinked behind his mask, his foggy brain struggling to process a sudden, glaring logistical error. He slowly lowered his foot back onto the wet obsidian rock. He reached into the inner pocket of his tunic and pulled out his silver pocket watch, flicking the casing open.
He stared at the hands of the watch, doing a quick, mental calculation.
He had specifically, explicitly told Rebecca and the kids that he was taking a much-needed "vacation" to do some courier job. He had told them, in no uncertain terms, that he absolutely wouldn't be back for at least three to four days.
Looking at the time, and factoring in the hours he had spent infiltrating the Kiten Dungeon, observing the Golden Dawn, fighting Mars, and performing magical brain surgery, he realized that barely half a single day had actually passed since he left Nairn. If he walked through that portal right now, looking like he had just crawled out of a meat grinder, barely twelve hours into a four-day vacation, Rebecca would ask questions. Questions he really, really didn't want to answer.
Lencar stared at the swirling shadows of the portal leading home. A dry, highly amused chuckle vibrated in his chest, breaking the solemn silence of the mountain peak.
"Heh," Lencar murmured to himself, shaking his head. "Didn't realize that it had already formed a habit. I guess I really do think of that place as a second home now."
It was a strange, somewhat comforting realization for a reincarnated soul who had spent his first few years in this world feeling completely untethered. But sentimentality wouldn't solve his current exhaustion.
With a casual flick of his wrist, Lencar severed the mana supply to the spell. The spatial portal to Nairn collapsed inward with a soft pop, vanishing into the morning mist.
He didn't need to go back to Nairn to recover. He had a perfectly secure, absolutely impenetrable fortress wrapped around his own finger.
Lencar tapped the heavy silver ring on his left index finger. He established the connection, letting the unique spatial magic wash over him. The world of the Thunder-Crag Peaks disappeared in a flash of darkness, instantly replaced by the blinding, pristine, shadowless white expanse of his personal spatial dimension—the Void Vault.
The moment he stepped into the dimension, a wave of pure, unadulterated relief washed over his battered body. The freezing mountain wind was gone, replaced by a perfectly stagnant, comfortable room temperature. But more importantly, the air inside the ring was incredibly thick. It was saturated with the hyper-refined, emerald-green natural mana—the Quintessence—that constantly poured out of the Breath of Yggdrasil resting on its marble pedestal in the center of the room. Just breathing in here felt like drinking a high-tier healing potion.
Lencar pulled off his cracked wooden mask and tossed it carelessly onto a nearby wooden table. He unclasped his heavy, soaked black cloak and let it drop to the pristine white floor in a wet heap.
"Alright," Lencar groaned, rubbing his bloodshot eyes with the heels of his hands. "Time to crash."
He looked around the massive, expanding white room, his eyes scanning the neatly organized rows of his hoarded loot. He saw the towering shelves stacked with grimoires, the racks of gleaming swords and spears, the crates of stolen Diamond Kingdom gold, and the bubbling cauldrons of his alchemy station.
His eyes swept back and forth across the vast dimension once, and then twice.
Lencar stopped rubbing his eyes. He stood perfectly still in the center of his treasure hoard, a completely blank, deadpan expression settling over his exhausted features.
"Jeez," Lencar said aloud, his voice echoing in the vast, empty space. "I forgot to add the bed here."
It was a ridiculous oversight, a testament to his own hyper-focused, utilitarian mindset. Ever since he had created this spatial dimension and moved the Breath of Yggdrasil into it, Lencar had only ever thought of this place as a high-security storage unit, a mobile laboratory, and an emergency recovery base. He had envisioned coming here to heal grievous wounds or hide from overwhelming enemies. He had never, in all his meticulous planning, actually thought he would have to casually spend the night here in the near future. He had packed hundreds of lethal weapons, but he hadn't packed a pillow.
Lencar let out a long, long sigh at his current, absurd situation. He was a Stage 3 Peak mage, and he was about to sleep on a hard, white marble floor because he didn't have a bed.
"Improvise, adapt, overcome," Lencar muttered sarcastically.
He reached down to the heavy leather pouch on his waist and pulled out the thick, black Logoless Grimoire. The book hummed with the massive amount of magical data it contained.
Lencar opened the book, flipping past the destructive offensive spells and the complex curses. He tapped into his deeply depleted, nearly drained mana reserves. He couldn't afford a massive expenditure, but he could manage a bit of basic crafting.
First, he pulled on his stolen Earth Magic. A section of the pristine white floor rumbled, and a large, rectangular slab of dense, smooth rock rose up from the ground, forming a solid, sturdy, albeit incredibly hard, bed frame.
Next, he flipped the page and channeled his Plant Magic. He aimed his hand at the stone slab. Thick, vibrant green vines erupted from the rock, rapidly weaving themselves tightly together to form a highly dense, flexible mattress. He commanded the magic to sprout layers upon layers of large, incredibly soft, velvet-like leaves over the vines, creating a plush, springy surface that rivaled the finest featherbeds in the Clover Capital.
Finally, just because he could, he tapped into the newly acquired Crystal Magic. With a flick of his wrist, smooth, beautifully polished pink crystal grew out of the corners of the stone frame, forming elegant, decorative bedposts and a sleek, geometric headboard. It was a completely unnecessary aesthetic touch, but it made the makeshift bed feel less like a survival camp and more like a proper sanctuary.
"Not bad for a guy running on zero sleep and fumes," Lencar said, dismissing the grimoire.
He didn't bother changing out of his damp tunic. He was far too tired. He simply collapsed forward, falling face-first onto the soft, woven leaf mattress.
The moment his body went horizontal, his consciousness immediately began to slip away. He didn't need to actively cast a healing spell or force his mana to circulate. The environment did the work for him. As he lay there, his exhausted, bruised body naturally, passively began to draw in the dense, ambient Quintessence permeating the dimension. The refined natural mana seeped into his pores with every breath, automatically repairing the micro-tears in his muscles, soothing his aching joints, and slowly, steadily refilling his massively expanded Stage 3 Peak mana pool.
Within seconds, Lencar Abarame was completely dead to the world, plunging into a heavy, dark, and wonderfully dreamless sleep.