David tried to destabilize the spell—but this time, nothing happened.

  A moment ago the magic had bent on its own, dissolving like mist under sunlight. Now it refused to obey. The line of mana forming the symbol felt rigid, hardened, as if the energy flowing into it had turned the spell into solid glass.

  "Come on… move," David muttered through clenched teeth.

  He pushed at the glowing thread of power with his will. The symbol shifted—but only slightly, sliding sideways through the air, stubborn and heavy. That was all he could manage.

  And now it was pointing straight into the forest.

  Right where the kobold had fled.

  David stared at the growing symbol. The amount of mana pouring into it was… alarming. The air hummed. Leaves trembled. Even the ground beneath his boots vibrated faintly.

  This is going to end badly.

  If he couldn’t stop the spell—then he would redirect it.

  David gritted his teeth and forced the symbol upward.

  "Up… go up…"

  The more mana it absorbed, the heavier it became, like trying to push a boulder made of light. His vision blurred from the strain. The streams of mana howled around him, rushing into the symbol in thick, blazing currents.

  Then—

  Something screamed.

  A sharp sound, like someone smashed some glass.

  And the system appeared before his eyes.

  You have learned a new symbol: Fire.

  The evening sky exploded with light.

  It wasn’t a nuclear blast—but it was bright enough to put some things on fire. David squinted, raising an arm to shield his eyes as a blazing sphere of fire roared upward, punching a glowing hole through the clouds.

  Heat washed over the clearing like a furnace door thrown open.

  David was fine.

  The robot standing closest to him was not.

  Its white metal surface softened, edges warping as heat shimmered through the air. Molten droplets began to slide from its armor with slow, glowing trails.

  "Ah—damn it!"

  The fireball continued climbing, shrinking into the sky, dragging a tunnel of burning light behind it. Gradually, the heat faded. The glow dimmed. The air cooled.

  But not everywhere.

  Small fires crackled across patches of dry grass, spreading in thin, hungry lines.

  David exhaled sharply and raised his hand.

  "Alright… water."

  He activated [Major Law of Water].

  Moisture condensed instantly from the mana-rich air. Streams of clear water formed in midair, spilling downward like invisible clouds had burst open. David guided the flow carefully, extinguishing flame after flame until only smoke and blackened grass remained.

  The forest fell quiet again.

  Steam drifted upward.

  Above, a clean circular gap remained in the clouds—silent proof of what he had just done.

  David finished putting out the last of the fires and slowly walked the perimeter of the damage, inspecting everything the blaze and heat had claimed. Burned grass. Scorched soil. A blackened patch where the robot had stood too close to the eruption of fire. The machine itself was still functional, though parts of its outer casing had warped and dripped like wax.

  He exhaled and crouched near his scattered belongings.

  The phone case was gone—half-melted into a sad, rubbery smear.

  "Well… could’ve been worse," David muttered, checking the phone itself.

  The screen flickered to life.

  Intact.

  "Lucky me."

  He straightened and looked up at the sky again, squinting as he searched for the fireball he had launched. For a moment, he thought he saw it—a faint spark far above—but it had already faded into the vast field of stars. Now it was impossible to tell which light had once been his spell and which had always belonged to the sky.

  So he gave up looking.

  Instead, he sat down in the grass and returned to magic.

  This time, he tried to draw the symbol smaller.

  To his surprise, it worked.

  The lines of mana flowed more smoothly, responding with less resistance, almost as if invisible hands were guiding his control. The moment the system had confirmed he had learned the Fire symbol, something had changed. The mana obeyed more willingly now—still dangerous, still heavy—but no longer wild.

  "So the system does help… a little," he murmured.

  A faint glow formed between his fingers as the unfinished symbol hovered in the air—smaller, tighter, more stable.

  David stared at it… then smirked.

  "Yeah, no. I am not playing with fire again."

  He deliberately broke the final stroke of the symbol. The mana unraveled, dissolving harmlessly into the air.

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  The forest darkened as evening settled in.

  Shadows stretched between the trees. The air cooled.

  David rose and walked toward the small camp his robots had assembled. One of the tents stood ready.

  He crawled inside, slipped into the sleeping bag.

  The shop window reopened.

  Page after page of useless junk.

  Cheap metal hoe. Cheap metal sword. Sponge? Endless noise.

  He scrolled lazily, eyes growing heavier with each swipe.

  Today has been a normal day.

  Well… almost normal.

  David fell asleep.

  David woke up abruptly. For a few seconds he just lay there, staring at the fabric ceiling of the tent, and then yesterday came back all at once. The fire. The symbols. The kobolds.

  A smile crept onto his face before he had time to stop it.

  Then he did stop it.

  “Yeah… no,” he muttered to himself, sitting up. “That’s not okay.”

  They were strange. Small. Aggressive. But they were still thinking beings. They shouted, cast spells, ran in fear. Enjoying their deaths—even subconsciously—felt wrong, no matter how many excuses he tried to pile on top of it.

  With that uncomfortable thought gnawing at him, David climbed out of the tent and headed toward the forest.

  The place where he had left the bodies was easy to find.

  Before he even reached it, he noticed movement. Several kobolds were crouched near the corpses, tugging at belts, pulling at scraps of cloth and armor. One body nearby was clearly a new one—someone just HAD to cross the line again.

  The moment they noticed David, the group scattered in all directions, vanishing into the trees with practiced speed. All except one.

  That one was sitting with its back to him, completely absorbed, gnawing noisily on a dead kobold’s leg.

  David froze.

  His brain refused to process what he was seeing for a couple of seconds. Not out of fear. Out of sheer disbelief.

  “…What the hell,” he whispered.

  The kobold didn’t notice him. Too busy chewing.

  Instinctively, and without thinking too hard about it, David made a sharp shooing noise, waving his hands like he was chasing off a stray dog. “Shoo, shoo! Go on!”

  The kobold yelped, dropped the leg, and bolted into the undergrowth.

  David exhaled slowly.

  “Okay,” he said to no one. “That’s enough of that.”

  He dragged the bodies closer to the protective circle around his camp. Working in silence, he used the [Major Law of Clay] to dig small graves—nothing elaborate, just enough to separate each body from the open forest. One grave per kobold. It felt… necessary.

  Halfway through, something made him pause.

  A prickling sensation crawled up his spine. He activated [Mana Perception].

  There was a glow.

  Not the cores—those were inert now. Whatever made them circulate mana had stopped at death, leaving them no different from any other monster corpse. He was oddly relieved by that. He had already decided not to take the cores anyway.

  The glow came from a finger.

  One of the kobolds—better dressed than the rest, though missing his trousers entirely—had a faint shimmer clinging to a ring.

  David hesitated, then sighed.

  “Sorry, buddy,” he said quietly.

  He slipped the ring off and examined it. Inside, mana wove itself into two unfamiliar symbols, repeating endlessly like a texture in a video game. Neither symbol meant anything to him.

  He tried the ring on. It only fit his pinky.

  He waited.

  Nothing happened.

  David stared at his hand for a long moment, then shrugged.

  “Figures.”

  David spent a long time turning the ring between his fingers, watching the faint pattern of symbols woven into the metal. The glow was subtle, almost shy, but unmistakably alive. He narrowed his eyes and tried to follow the structure—two repeating signs, interlocked like gears, looping endlessly into themselves.

  "Alright… how do you work?"

  He lifted his hand and began tracing one of the symbols in the air, just as he once had with the fire mark. Mana gathered obediently at his fingertips, thin threads of light responding to intention rather than motion. But the moment he tried to shape the symbol fully, the structure collapsed like wet sand. The lines twisted, unraveled and dissolved.

  The original he was copying was small.

  It wasn’t just about drawing the symbol. It had to be written in motion, in sequence, each stroke placed in the correct order. At least, that was how it seemed to him. Magic had grammar and required good handwriting it seemed.

  David tried again, this time enlarging the pattern, stretching the lines wider in the air. He remembered the symbol of fire drawn by the kobold—the proportions, the weight of the strokes. He copied that scale, hoping size would grant clarity.

  Nothing.

  The mana refused to stabilize. The symbol trembled, flickered, then scattered into harmless sparks.

  He exhaled slowly and lowered his hand.

  "Yeah… not happening."

  If symbols came from somewhere, then someone had to know them. And if someone knew them, that meant answers.

  The kobolds.

  His mana seemed full again. David glanced toward the forest, then fired a burst of overcharge straight into the sky. The pulse cracked upward like silent lightning, briefly illuminating the clouds before fading.

  He stepped onto the makeshift platform beneath his feet—a crude metal lattice cut from a car radiator grille. Around his camp lay the silent evidence of his work: dismantled vehicles hauled piece by piece from the dome, stripped by tireless robots and stacked beneath heavy tarps. Metal, wires, batteries—machines waiting for reassembly.

  The lattice hummed. Gravity loosened its grip.

  David rose above the camp.

  Wind brushed past his face as the ground slowly drifted away. From above, the forest stretched endlessly, a dark ocean of leaves broken only by scattered clearings—patches of open land not unlike the one where he had first stepped out of the portal. He turned toward the direction the kobold group had once come from. They might have tried to circle his camp, hide their origin, approach from another angle… but something told him they weren’t that strategic.

  So he flew straight.

  Minutes passed.

  The forest moved beneath him in shifting textures of green and shadow. Clearings appeared and vanished. Fallen trunks. Narrow streams.

  Then he saw it.

  A larger clearing.

  Structures.

  David slowed and descended.

  At first, he thought the place abandoned. Then he noticed the blackened ground. Burn marks. Collapsed frames.

  Most of the settlement had burned.

  He drifted lower, boots touching the soil softly. The surviving structures resembled primitive huts—woven branches, hardened mud, rough supports. Crude. Ancient. But the entrances were small. Too small for humans. Even smaller than the kobolds he had seen.

  David crouched and peered into one of the huts.

  Bones.

  Two small skeletons lay curled near the back wall, fragile and incomplete. Struggle and fire had done their work. Scraps of leathery material clung to one of them, faintly green even through decay.

  He stared for a moment.

  "Kobolds first… now goblins?"

  The thought unsettled him more than he expected. Different creatures. Same end.

  David stepped back out and straightened to full height, scanning the ruined settlement. Wind whispered through broken frames. Charred wood creaked faintly. Nothing moved.

  But this had once been a village.

  Someone had lived here.

  He walked slowly across the clearing, searching for anything unusual—tools, markings, symbols, anything that might explain what had happened. Most of the structures were empty shells, their interiors stripped or burned beyond recognition.

  Then he noticed it.

  At the center of the settlement stood a raised stone platform.

  Not natural.

  Constructed.

  David approached cautiously. The surface was cracked but intact, the edges carved with faint grooves that suggested ritual rather than architecture. No statue stood upon it. No idol remained. Only an empty socket carved into the middle.

  He stopped.

  Thought.

  Then slapped his forehead.

  "Of course…"

  Not an altar.

  A crystal pedestal.

  The place where the settlement’s core had once rested.