…that said, master and grandmaster class manabeasts can cause similar ripples, but on a much smaller scale. If we take that into account, it would easily explain why some saurian onslaughts were nothing but border skirmishes, while others caused devastations and incursions hundreds of miles deep into our empire.

  — Excerpt from Lurkers in the Wealds

  Day 165, 5:00 PM

  I snuck back into the cave, climbing the wall, with Newt being none the wiser. Then, I waited for the boy to wake up. I was in a good mood, and scaring the life out of him seemed like a great prank. I sat on the floor, right in front of him, tucked away my vial of glowers, and stared into the darkness while contemplating my future plans.

  My savings were enough to see me to the eighth layer of the third realm with two hundred and eighteen crystals left over. Not an overwhelming amount of wealth for an eighth layer third-realmer, but more than enough for me to kick-start my new cycle of amassing wealth.

  To be on the safe side, I decided to sink another one hundred of them into my realm. While the sum was humbler, it would make little difference, since most of those crystals were fallbacks in case of unexpected failure.

  I decided to avoid gambling if possible, and I wouldn’t fight fourth-realmers in the pit, as it would attract too much attention.

  Suddenly, I heard movement in the dark, and Newt shook his vial of glowers. I glared at him, right between the eyes, and he yelped, stumbling back in a hilarious display. Yet, I maintained a serious face and acted like nothing had happened.

  “I am no longer a townlord of Hailstown. The process was surprisingly simple, as long as you could grease the axle of the imperial cart.”

  “You had to bribe them?” The youth struggled for breath, sounding more shocked by the revelation of bureaucratic corruption than a year of life my prank must have cost him.

  “Pay predetermined fines, taxes, back taxes, and reimburse people for their losses.” I went soft on him, he was still too young for anarchistic indoctrination. “But basically, it was a combination of atoning by paying blood money and appeasing the imperial faction for abandoning my post.”

  I gave him a moment, which rather than using to process the information he wasted on scrutinizing my perfectly neutral face.

  “What about you?” I asked, picking up the conversation. “How are you progressing?”

  “I’m happy with the advancements I’m making.” He sounded genuine, which made me more glad than it should have.

  “Natural progress is acceptably slow up to the fourth realm, but at the fourth realm, you would need around one hundred and twenty years to fully sculpt your realm without auxiliary means.”

  That caught his undivided attention, so I kept going.

  “Some tonics and spell seals can hasten the process. But both use cartloads of mana. I was planning to test their effect if I scribed them in my realm. They would be useless later, but should they prove effective, I could draw a bunch of them in my realm and sculpt it, then once I am finished with the rest, I can remove them and replace them with the formations beneficial for my strength or growth.”

  It was something I had considered several times and would probably use in the third realm, since that one required roughly two and a half years of non-stop sculpting. When you added in sleeping, eating, and earning manarium, you could easily waste ten years in it, and that’s not counting training and reading, which I would do inside loops. Plus over two thousand hours just extracting and processing mana from realm-appropriate manarium.

  Which begged the question of how did Newstar gather mana so quickly? He was either burning higher realm manarium like I did to speed up my growth, or he had a secret. Considering how broke he was, it wasn’t difficult to draw the right conclusion.

  His shocked silence bought me enough time for a literal train of thought to rattle through my mind before I refocused on him.

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  “Do not look so shocked. You can do a lot with runic seals, but experimenting and getting things right would take ages. Time is everything for the awakened. Days or years wasted on something which may or may not save you some time while shaping your realm is not worth the effort for the most.”

  I, on the other hand, had a plan of going to the cave next door, and spending a year or two analyzing the speed at which I sculpted my realm with or without such seals and comparing the cost to benefit ratio.

  The gains at the second realm were middling at best. Two percent increase at the cost of three hours work, then another four or five to reset everything and resculpt the realm properly meant about ten hours wasted, while the gain at roughly the seven hundred hours I had left to sculpt equaled fourteen hours, with four hours saved in total.

  The cost? Seventeen loops or thirty-four mind-numbing weeks of doing the same thing over and over, pacing across my realm at regular intervals and memorizing random numbers. All to prove the concept with reliable data.

  No wonder nobody had done it. Without controlled, replicable circumstances, two percent increase wasn’t noticeable at all. Additional spell seals increased the speed, but seemed to give diminishing returns, capping at five percent for six of them.

  At the third realm, five percent would save me two and a half moons of time, including the necessary waste of time to eat and sleep. Not too shabby for less than two days’ work. At the fourth, we’re talking about at least a year.

  But, there was always a but, and this problem had a big one. I didn’t know how the seals within my realm would work when combined with those in the outside world, since I had read about chambers and potions which could halve the time needed to form realm structures.

  Another thing to test, but Thunderbluff didn’t have those as they were prohibitively expensive to build and run. Without a large enough population of wealthy awakened, such chambers weren’t rentable.

  Problems for later. So, with my scientific streak satisfied, I fully expanded my realm, then scribed a single support seal right before the realm barrier, and got to work.

  Days blurred by, the inner world of my being growing more awe-inspiring by the day. Tributaries boosted the large stream heading down the volcanic mountain, which swelled into a river, rushing down the eternal mountain before smashing into the realm barrier, ever pushing it and demanding for its confined world’s expansion.

  Much like water, earth and fire did the same on the other side through lava, fed not just by the side vents and their flows, but also by the river of metal. Lightning smashed the realm barrier, booming with thunder, as if roaring at the obstruction and the temporary pause on the realm’s expansion. Wind’s pressure was much gentler, and the only ones not providing direct pressure were the trees and the grasses of my masterpiece, but even their excess was carried by the water to contribute to the world’s growth.

  Staring at the place, I wondered if the grassland could flower. With a thought, a wave of bloom rippled, whites and yellows blossomed, red bleeding through them, while blues spilled out of the grass. The colors spread, mixing and branching into different hues, swallowing most of the green grassland, but leaving enough for eye-pleasing contrast.

  For a moment, I felt like a god, a world at my command, eager and about to change with a single thought of mine. And yet, this malleable, adaptable place had only a single possible future. I had to capture it in amber, freeze it in time to make it perfect.

  No, I’m not freezing it. Lava and water flow even though my first realm is set in stone, so it’s not frozen. Only my ability to shape the realm is severed.

  With that thought, I destroyed the seal which had eased my job for a while, and replaced it with the final sculpture of earth representing strength and endurance, as earthly as could be.

  The realm was complete, but I didn’t get a level-up notification. I checked the condition - To level up, achieve a perfect realm, and I knew the problem instantly. While by textbook definition my realm was perfect - fully sculpted and void of heart demons, I disagreed. It was good, more than good enough, but in my mind it wasn’t perfect.

  Another loop passed followed by another until I figured out how to make the flowers change without exertion of my will. They bloomed and wilted, replaced by others. I don’t know why, but adding such change in the otherwise static world made me feel more whole, and BSD acknowledged my feelings with a notification.

  [You have achieved a perfect realm.

  You have leveled up.

  Select a skill within sixty seconds or a random one will be assigned to you..

  Expert Mana Purity - Your mana greatly condenses compared to an average awakened of your realm, nearing that of those a whole realm ahead of you.

  Expert Mana Finesse - You control mana outside your body with exceptional proficiency.]

  The notification was welcome, and the choice was shocking and difficult. A two-tier upgrade to a skill related to mana. It was something worth serious consideration, but ultimately, I logically deduced that while an increase in mana purity would make handling mana in my surroundings easier; the increase in my skill and finesse didn’t flow the other way round. Besides, hopefully, it was something I could learn with time and practice.