Chapter I : A Lucky Meeting

Slowly, Xanthe regained consciousness and tried to look around him, but everything around him was plunged into darkness.

His attempts to move his body were crowned by a failure, it was impossible for him to move any muscle. The helplessness in which he found himself was not to please him.

However, none of this made him panic. It was not as if his previous situation had been better. He quickly began to meditate in an attempt to replenish the natural energy in his body and repair it. He noticed, however, that something was different.

While the natural energy in the area was quite present it was quite different from the energy to which he was accustomed. He began to feel strange as he circulated it through his body.

Since he had no other plan for the moment, he continued to absorb the natural energy in the surroundings. It seemed like his body was like a desiccated desert absorbing the water left by a storm. After continuing for a while, a change finally occurred, as if it had triggered something that was asleep and inactive, there was a sudden burst of white light. The room he was in suddenly became visible.

It was a cave, a simple mountain cave all that is banaler.

The room was approximately circular and looked like a natural cave, but the floor was unusually flat.

Xanthe tried to expand his senses around him, but he could not see further, as if the cave was isolated from the outside world. It did not seem to have an opening regardless of the side he was fixing. It seemed like he was in a pocket, more than in a cave.

The room in which he was should not exceed 20 meters in diameter.

The only specificity being the bluish light that exhaled walls. Walls and .. of his own body.

Xanthe froze forbidden and began to examine his legs. Or at least he tried, lowering his vision all he could see was a kind of crystalline stone that seemed to float freely to half a meter in height

What happened? lamented the young scholar

He was prepared for a lot of unexpected situations, and given the rush of his departure, he would have been lucky if nothing critical happened.

Nevertheless, it seemed that the most pessimistic scenarios he had developed were still below reality.

He was still lamenting when he perceived a curious contact. What was happening to him?

Something touched his conscience, like a finger running on his skin. The caress stopped, resumed, and this time it crystallized in a spiral of thoughts and feelings from which emerged a growing curiosity.

It seemed to him that the invisible boundaries that hindered his mind had just collapsed. The

boy was scared. He had no way of blocking the flow that flooded his thoughts and seemed to want to sift every inch of his mind.

The entity frightened him, and fear stung his stomach as he struggled in vain.

Rolling his eyes, he instinctively raised a barrier around his conscience, wanting to protect himself from the sudden incursion. It did not slow down the rhythm of this strange wave that pressed more and more against his mind.

The consciousness lifted its course of life with the slowness of a climbing plant rising towards the sunlight.

It was very interested in things, from his training to the clan, to his family and his practice of culture. Finally satisfied after this examination, it slowly withdrew beyond the frontiers of his conscience.

A new spiral of thought took possession of Xanthe's mind, but this time it was no longer curiosity: the spiral was joy and even exultation.

He was perplexed and began to probe the entity that seemed to reside with him in the crystal.

With confidence, the entity let their thoughts touch in the manner of two wild beasts sniffing for the first time. This mind was different, intelligent of course, but there was nothing human about it. There he saw thoughts that bristled the boy, touching his conscience. However, through all these sensations, a fierce and heady melody emerged. A furious ode to life that denoted the youth of this spirit.

A newborn understood Xanthe

A succession of dizzying images then swept through his mind: He saw dark caves or resided animals with a terrible appearance.

Dense forests or curious green elves ambushed imprudent travelers.

Gray-faced wolves and men with alabaster skin and a thousand other creatures still.

It was not just a being, but the womb that would be the source of hundreds of beings! A real world in the making.

Although he was not familiar with the animals he had seen, the reality was obvious. This entity would be creative of all this

This made Xanthe puzzled, the demon-beasts that had caused the ruin of his clan, were they also the fruit of one of his conscious entities?

He rejected this question that would not have led him anywhere.

What mattered was the present, and his situation could not be more complex. This matrix seemed to have collected it. Which means two things: His transport training had failed, secondly his body did not resist this malfunction.

At this thought, he remembered the animals he had seen in the spirit of this crystal. If the gem could create these beings, it could restore his body ! Enthusiastic, he undertook to communicate his request to the gem.

He felt a touch of consciousness again, but this time he fully accepted it.

The Gem did not seem to master the language, its response was in the form of sensation. He felt his weakness and his frustration at the lack of natural energy.

It is never easy to sigh the Young Scholar, at least the task seems to be within reach, it is enough for me to take patience patiently ...

After his slow realization, Xanthe took hold of this strange body even more and unknown instincts surfaced.

Without further ado, he began to meditate again to fill this thirst which troubled him, little by little he felt the natural energy of the place converge towards him and fill it with force.

He did not know how long he had to practice before stopping.

Resuming the course of his reflection, he was surprised that his body seemed deeply connected to the cave that surrounded him. The plot seemed as familiar to him as the palm of his hand, and the 20-meter circumference of the cave was also the limit of his ability to store energy. This strange energy that the Gem called mana.

Xanthe moved by curiosity, started pushing as best he could his senses, to expand his field, his mana arose in rock as he claimed.

His consciousness became wider and he felt the other get excited during the maneuver.

Comforted in his idea, he tried to extend his influence as far as possible. He penetrated deeper into the crumbling rock and disappeared in contact with his mana.

Driven by newly acquired instincts, he spent much of the mana he had accumulated to expand his estate. Whenever it grew larger, the gathering of the surrounding mana became faster and faster.

Letting himself go by this impulse of expansion, and no longer feeling the need for rest, he strove, meter by meter, to stretch as far as possible.

His frenzy eventually stopped after God knows how long, the small circular cave extended over a kilometer in diameter, and the ceiling was a perfectly smooth dome.

He was tempted to go deeper into the rock, but the other had terrified him when he pretended to go back to work.

Was there an unknown limit, from which to extend became dangerous?

His first vision, however, suggested that he could create much larger worlds, similar to the outside world!

Outside. The young scholar froze at this word, he considered the possibility that he had dug enough to reach the surface. He looked once more at his desperately empty realm and understood the distress of his Alter ego.

He thanked him mentally for this warning, before continuing his reflection.

His situation was gradually lightening, hunger was gone, and his estate now allowed him a decent level of mana.

He could no longer grow under pain of coming out on the outside, and the effectiveness of the meditation being related to the size of his field, he did not know how long it would take to accumulate enough strength to regain his body.

His strange nemesis showed once again, his hunger now filled, he exuded from him a great desire for creation. And Xanthe took to the game if he was to stay long with his little companion, as much to build a real home.

He had been secretive before and was given the opportunity to become the leader of a field. He would not let it go!

His old detractors being dead, he could finally let himself go and make his ambition of his alter-ego.

Xanthe, therefore, undertook with enthusiasm, to open up to the jewel which was bound to him, and to discover what kind of creature he could bring to life.