Scroll 23: Lemitless Power
To Mila, despite being thoroughly accustomed to the chaotic altercations that regularly shook the adventurer guild, this was the first time she found herself directly in the crosshairs of violence.
Although her hands still trembled slightly from residual adrenaline, her mind was not completely dominated by fear.
Was he jealous? Jealous of Garlan’s filthy insinuations?
She peered through her round glasses—the ones she had started wearing solely because she felt they gave her a more sensual, intellectual edge, akin to the bookworm librarian types rumored to entice elves.
«I don't even know if elves actually like girls with glasses,» she thought, her gaze drifting toward the tables. «But it's definitely worth a shot.»
Mila propped her elbows on the countertop, resting her chin in her hands as she perfectly positioned herself to fully admire Alaster’s figure.
«Mine... in just two more days... I’ll get him into my bathtub... I’ll strip him completely naked.»
She drifted into an intense, vivid daydream about everything that had transpired. Her visceral desire practically bled through her gaze.
«He was so furious, so protective... and all because of me. He was defending me...»
She disobediently licked her lips, which were now painted a deep, striking crimson. But as she stared intently at the elf, she was being observed in return—by the wildly chaotic, envious eyes of a drunkard.
At his table, Alaster sat speaking casually and conversing informally with Jinneth and Arya.
—Are you telling me that my soul becomes momentarily corrupt—
He didn't finish the sentence.
A sharp, desperate shriek from a female adventurer pierced the air, forcing him to snap his head around.
When Alaster’s eyes locked onto the scene, his entire world ground to a screeching halt.
Garlan was there, sword unsheathed, holding Mila ruthlessly by the throat.
In that instant—that singular, frozen second—images of Mila flashed through Alaster’s mind in a violent explosion. Her warm hazel eyes, her kind smile, the sweet trail of her scent... followed by the memory of her voluptuous waist and the words that, however superficial, had made him genuinely happy.
«You're quite handsome,» Mila had said in one flash.
«Sshh... don't tell anyone, my beautiful elf,» in another.
And now, right before his eyes, that kind and sensual woman was about to die. She was about to die because he hadn't had the balls to crush that miserable bastard when he had the chance.
No.
Inside his chest, a white-hot fury ignited. It was a blazing rage, just as burning as the one he felt when Jinneth had almost been violated, but this time, it was far more bloodthirsty. It was accompanied by a crushing weight of guilt—the guilt of not breaking the savage’s neck sooner.
Before Alaster’s eyes, his vision of Garlan blurred and warped at the edges, drawing closer.
Suddenly, a sudden blast, a sharp ringing sound, left him completely deaf.
He felt his left arm burning with intense heat. Suddenly, he was standing directly in front of Garlan.
«Why is my hand burning?» Alaster thought, utterly unable to hear whatever Garlan was shouting.
A thin thread of blood seeped from the corner of the drunkard's mouth as his lips moved, but the world remained entirely silent.
Until everything rushed back.
The sound. The overpowering, metallic stench of iron. The heavy clatter of a greatsword hitting the floorboards.
—What... what did you do?! —Garlan choked out, as panicked screams erupted across the entire hall.
One of those screams belonged to Jinneth.
Alaster lowered his gaze. His hand had pierced horribly into Garlan’s abdomen.
With a dark furrow in his brow, Alaster yanked his arm back in one swift motion. It was completely crimson, painted in thick blood all the way up to his elbow.
Garlan staggered backward and collapsed.
—A healer! —screamed the girl in plate armor, running desperately toward the large, bleeding warrior—. Is there a healer here?! Healer! Ahhhh, a healer!
The woman wailed frantically while Alaster simply stared down at his own hand.
«I... did I kill him?» Alaster murmured in his mind.
He turned toward the counter. Mila’s face was as pale as a sheet of parchment, and she instinctively shrank back when she met his glowing violet irises.
Mila stared in absolute horror at his blood-drenched arm, and then at the desperate girl throwing potions over Garlan while a guild healer rushed over to stabilize him.
Alaster looked back—not at Garlan, but at Jinneth. She was on the verge of tears as she approached him.
A nearby receptionist quickly tossed her a cloth, and Jinneth immediately began wiping the blood from Alaster’s arm.
—Monster! —Garlan's party member screamed at him, her eyes wild with rage—. If he dies, it's your fault!
—No, —Alaster said with eerie calm—. If he dies, it’s his own fault. Or are you completely blind?
The girl didn't answer, but she glared at him with pure hatred.
Jinneth’s hands were trembling violently as she kept cleaning his skin. Arya stepped up, pouring water from a canteen over his arm to rinse the rest away.
—He’ll live, —Arya remarked casually—. But you need to control yourself, you foolish elf.
A short while later, Alaster returned to his table while Garlan was carried out on a large wooden bench serving as a makeshift stretcher by two burly men, followed closely by the armored girl, who kept throwing caustic glances at the elf.
For Joseph, keeping his emotions under wraps wasn't exactly a new skill. Back on Earth, his second-best talent—aside from programming—was resisting the daily urge to stab someone in the office.
«Nothing changes,» Alaster thought, sinking a bit deeper into his chair. «Except now, instead of clueless managers, it's drunk adventurers. The level of idiocy is practically identical.»
He took a deep breath to steady his heartbeat. He rubbed his temples, mentally reviewing the last few hours.
«What an exhausting day,» he thought. «I nearly die in the woods, a mage practically proposes to me, and now I almost tear a man in half with my bare hands... Plus, I'm still walking around half-naked.»
He looked at his clean arm. He was secretly terrified. He was terrified by the fact that skewering a man bare-handed hadn't made him feel a deep remorse; instead, he just experienced the profound relief of knowing Mila and Jinneth were safe. He didn't regret stepping in.
Jinneth felt Alaster's closeness. The elf pulled his chair in and wrapped her in a protective embrace, instantly dispelling all the accumulated tension.
Jinneth's heart raced at the contact and the firmness of his chest, deeply moved by the genuine concern he displayed.
—I'm fine, Al, —she whispered, returning the embrace to comfort him.
—Let's go home, —he asked, pulling away slightly—. I need this day to end now.
Arya, who remained with her arms crossed observing them, chimed in, breaking the moment:
—I'll see you guys later then. I have to turn in an official report about what happened. And you, —the elf pointed a sharp finger at Alaster—, need to speak with Mila before you leave. She's staring fixedly at you from the counter.
Alaster turned and caught the receptionist's intense, persistent gaze behind her round glasses. He stood up, leaving Jinneth at the table for a moment, and walked over to the counter.
Mila stared at him with an overwhelming intensity. Internally, her thoughts were racing:
«If I really think about it, he probably just saved my life from that lunatic... and I looked at him with fear. But elves are supposed to be aligned with good!»
Mila, whether she liked it or not, was still completely rattled by the danger. But at the same time, she had always craved adventure—and now, she had finally tasted it.
«Maybe this isn't the best part of me,» she thought wickedly, «but seeing him almost kill someone for my sake... it turned me on like never before.»
—Are you alright? —she blurted out, extending her hand across the counter to grasp his now-clean arm.
—Yes, —he replied with a smile.
Just a moment ago, a senior guild official had approached them to confirm that Garlan was out of danger, though they wouldn't be seeing him anytime soon; he was bound for the dungeons the moment he could walk, facing severe charges for assaulting a guild staff member.
—I am perfectly fine, —Alaster reassured her.
As he spoke, Mila began swiftly writing something on a scrap of parchment, subtly sliding it inside the small leather pouch of copper coins Alaster had completely ignored during the altercation.
Alaster froze instantly as he felt the caress of her hand. The woman's touch, which had been anchoring and supportive before, was now soft, deliberate, and agonizingly slow.
—Do you remember our arrangement? —she whispered, her voice dropping to a sultry, low tone.
Alaster swallowed hard, his eyes involuntarily dipping toward Mila's generous, restricted breasts. Two distinct, hardened peaks were subtly straining against the tight fabric of her white shirt.
—You saved me, —she continued, her eyes locked onto his—. You deserve a proper reward from me.
The moment a pair of other receptionists walked past behind her, Mila immediately cut her words short and straightened up.
Alaster smiled. The woman’s words—a breathtaking beauty whose proportions promised to be an spectacle—had struck him directly in his weakest spot: his ego. His self-esteem, thoroughly fed by her intense gaze and persistent words, flared to life.
—Thursday, —Alaster murmured.
Mila smiled warmly in response. She glanced around the bustling hall, and once she was absolutely certain no one was watching, she playfully winked at him. She pushed the leather pouch across the counter, leaning in close one last time.
—Don't be late. It's a date, —she said, her voice carrying a slight, sharp edge of anticipation.
Twenty minutes later, Alaster and Jinneth arrived back at the inn. Upon entering, the elf bypassed the bar where Barnaby was managing the floor and went straight up to his fourth-floor room to fetch his books.
He marched back down the stairs carrying a heavy stack of texts: the [Dimensional Space Spell: Theory and Practice] grimoire, the [Primary Attack Spells] manual, and a tome on magical formations. To Joseph's understanding, formations operated under a completely different subsystem of magic, similar to the logic the orbs used to read people's statuses and stats.
He had absolutely no intention of losing all feeling in his backside by sitting on the uncomfortable wooden chair in his room. Besides, down in the common room, he always had Jinneth's pleasant company waiting in one of the corners.
Even if he didn't want to openly admit it, the young woman's constant attention, the tea she brewed for him, and her simple presence—along with how incredibly cute she was—were profoundly relaxing.
A spite of the fact that Joseph was convinced the young woman's attitude stemmed from her naturally sweet disposition rather than romantic interest, his mind kept bringing back memories of the fact that they had almost kissed in her bedroom. His deeply ingrained skepticism, however, kept sabotaging those thoughts.
«She was just vulnerable at the time because I saved her,» Alaster told himself as he reached the bottom steps. «She probably regretted it afterward and is just trying to be nice now. She's a good girl.» With that characteristic rationalization, he felt a wave of comfort wash over him, even if his logic was incredibly flimsy to hold up. With that, he filed the matter away as closed.
He settled into a massive, plush sofa in a corner of the room, right next to a window that let in a generous amount of natural light. Immediately, he began flipping through the books.
He started with the most basic one: [Magic for Beginners: The Grand Compendium]. It was a thick volume, and within just a few pages, Alaster realized the massive mistake he had made by assuming he could simply cast magic bare-handed forever. The book debunked many of his assumptions. In fact, his initial plan to buy metal armor to cover the physical squishiness common to all mages turned out to be complete madness.
According to the manual, mana flowed through common metals with excessive ease. Because of this, wearing metal on your body made it incredibly difficult to concentrate mana to formulate a spell, both inside and outside the body.
Standard metal armor would cause mana to scatter uncontrollably the exact millisecond it was drawn from the core. The book was unequivocal: only special metals, like Mithril or Adernite, could be used in a spellcaster's gear.
The text also explained that casting spells by pulling mana directly from the Odo center, concentrating it in the chest meridian, and then releasing it raw through the veins to the outside world was a self-destructive process. Performing minor magic, like a tiny spark to light a campfire, wasn't an issue since body tissues could handle the low voltage.
However, once you surpassed a certain threshold of mana, the consequences became severe—potentially causing limbs or body parts to rupture if a catalyst artifact wasn't used as an intermediary.
Alaster reached into his pocket and pulled out the ring Detrix had given him. While he kept the little box, he slipped the band onto his finger, resolving to wear it from now on.
First, he had to learn to channel through it. The steps described in the book were simple in theory: draw mana from the core, guide it through the arm to the ring, and charge the object with enough energy. As he injected the flow, Alaster could perceive the artifact's capacity in his mind. The gold-and-silver band, etched with runes and crowned by a gem, glowed with a faint, steady light.
The book provided an exact mathematical formula:
• Mana Transfer Rate = (Inteligence / 2) second.
Alaster transferred a few mana points into the ring and tried to manifest a flame. It proved considerably harder than he expected. It took him nearly fifteen minutes to realize the secret was to visualize the mana originating directly from the gem, not from his own hand.
The grimoire heavily emphasized visualization—not just of the energy flow, but of the structural geometry of the spell itself. He had to think of the physical concepts of ice, its molecular structure, and the energy required for a phase change from gas to liquid, and then to solid. At the same time, he had to map an exact sequence of magical symbols in his mind.
Technically, he was supposed to incant a chant, but he had realized long ago that he didn't need to speak them aloud.
Joseph had always thought magic books in video games were an absurd oversimplification, where pressing an option in a menu consumed the book to learn the skill immediately.
Reality here was different: a true understanding of physical phenomena gave strength and stability to the construct built with mana, and for that, he had to read the grimoire.
From what he could gather, physical skills for warriors had to be practiced repetitively until automated, allowing them to activate via a specific gesture or stance so the body executed the technique almost instinctively. After all, that was limited to sword strikes, strength buffs, or enhanced leaps.
Magic, by contrast, possessed infinitely superior potential, ranging from lethal explosions to the literal ability to fly. The only real constraint was the available mana pool. Joseph felt a spark of genuine excitement at the system's possibilities.
He set aside the basic manual and picked up the [Primary Attack Spells] book, a collection containing four practical spells. He had previously learned two in a rush: [Fire Arrow] and [Ice Spear], which were common, low-tier magic.
However, he now understood the Guildmaster hadn't given him the book for those starter spells, but for the remaining two—spells that likely would have caused him severe internal injuries had he attempted to use them days ago without proper knowledge.
The first was [Fireball], a Tier-C Medium-Grade spell that created a large-scale, explosive sphere of fire. It consumed 400 mana points per cast. Alaster calculated that with his current pool of 1,700 points, he could barely manage a few shots, with the added risk of torching an entire forest or the city itself.
The second, and his preferred choice, was [Spike Wave], a Tier-C Medium-Grade ice element spell. The spell first generated a freezing wave that immobilized enemies in the area by freezing their feet, before sprouting icy spikes shaped like giant broadswords from the ground in a conical area extending ten yards or more.
The best part of this magic was its versatility: it allowed him to conjure individual spikes that erupted with tremendous force. Unlike standard ice spears that floated in the air without support, these spikes anchored firmly into the earth, drastically increasing their capacity to impale heavy targets. Its only real drawback was an inability to hit airborne enemies.
«If I had this spell in the woods... that Wyvern would have had a miserable time,» Alaster thought. Though he immediately admitted that if he had dumped the required 350 mana points all at once without Detrix's ring, his own meridians probably would have detonated.
«Now I have what I need. I'll study for a while, master these spells, and the next time I go out on a quest, everything changes.» He still harbored a deep frustration over nearly dying on an assignment that was supposed to be simple.
A shifting movement on the sofa broke his train of thought. Jinneth hopped onto the cushion beside him with her usual boundless energy, holding out a large wooden bowl filled to the brim with popcorn.
Alaster looked at her as she smiled. No matter how many times he looked, the young woman seemed to grow prettier by the day. Her athletic frame was highlighted by her comfortable loungewear: soft, gray cotton shorts and a cropped white blouse with a faint blue tint. Her coppery hair hung completely loose over her shoulders.
It was her usual outfit.
—They only have a little salt, but they're good —she said, settling in—. Still studying? Why don't you take a tiny break? —she added, pinching her thumb and index finger barely an inch apart—. Just a teensy break for some tea.
Alaster rested the book on his knees.
—Make it coffee instead.
The young woman, who had already pulled her feet up onto the couch, launched herself with agile grace, walking across the cushions to the edge of the furniture.
—Back with coffee in ten minutes! —she chirped, spinning around with her hands on her hips, her bare feet sinking into the padding—. Don't eat it all!
Alaster paused his hand inside the bowl and smiled.
—I'll try my best —he promised.
The young woman took off, sprinting barefoot across the main room toward the kitchen.
For Joseph, the next day flew by in a blur of study sessions and quiet moments shared with the young woman. However, the routine shifted one morning.
Alaster was in his usual corner of the sofa while Jinneth poured him some fresh coffee. It was barely 7:20 AM.
The inn was completely deserted. By this hour, the usual crowd of adventurers and workshop laborers had already wolfed down their breakfast and cleared out, leaving the place in a peaceful silence that wouldn't be broken until midday, or perhaps even evening.
It wasn’t that Alaster loved waking up early by choice. Rather, the utter lack of television or smartphones in this world forced him to go to bed early—if that trance-like meditative state could even be called sleeping.
Enjoying the quiet morning, he leaned back into the sofa.
He wore a loose, noticeably oversized linen shirt and dark, fitted trousers that were incredibly comfortable. They had been a gift from Jinneth, who had flatly refused to let him pay for them, claiming they were a token of gratitude for defending her against Garlan at the guild.
Alaster hadn't pushed it. Deep down, he found it very difficult to say no to the young woman's gray eyes
He focused on the grimoire in his hands: the volume on spatial dimensions. He had already managed to assimilate the two previous attack spells, though he hadn't been able to practice them due to the obvious risks of blowing up the inn or drawing unwanted suspicion in the city.
The spatial storage, however, operated under entirely different parameters; it was a utility magic that could be rehearsed anywhere, anytime.
He extended his left hand forward and concentrated exactly 20 mana points into the ring on his right hand. After stabilizing the flow, he began to visualize a tear in the fabric of space. He mapped out the geometry of the interior and the characteristics of a vacuum exactly as specified in the manual.
Mentally, he reviewed the sequence of symbols in the correct order: over two hundred characters in succession. Fortunately, many patterns repeated, and his Intelligence stat proved to be much more than a cosmetic number on a UI, granting him staggering mental retention.
As he finished processing the final line of symbols at high speed, a sound like a snapping guitar string vibrated through the air, followed by twin harmonic echoes. Just in the space where his left hand pointed, a small, clean tear manifested, hovering in midair.
—It worked... it actually worked! —Alaster exclaimed, clapping the shoulder of the girl beside him.
Jinneth, who had been curled up under a blanket to her shoulders nodding off to sleep, bolted upright.
—Huh?! What?! Is the bread burning?! —she yelled, her eyes flying wide open.
—No, look. I did it.
The young woman stared at the rift suspended in the air, her eyes overflowing with curiosity. She leaned her face close to the geometric anomaly to examine it.
—Is it dangerous? —she asked.
—No... it shouldn't be —Alaster replied.
—We have to test it —she suggested immediately—. Hmm... maybe with a mug.
Jinneth scanned the room and spotted a wooden mug on a nearby table left vacant by a customer the night before. She threw off the blanket, snatched the object up at a brisk pace, and without a word, tossed it directly at the rift. The mug vanished instantly the moment it crossed the threshold.
Alaster immediately perceived the object's presence in his mind. It appeared registered in a sidebar of his mental interface—a rustic-looking inventory screen.
He wondered briefly how to retrieve it, and almost instantly, the mental image vanished and the physical mug emerged from the rift.
The spatial fracture commanded a certain respect; it looked like a shimmering, smoky tear that distorted the view of objects directly behind it, emitting a barely audible hum.
The mug clattered onto the hardwood floor. Jinneth stretched from the couch and poked it delicately with the tip of her bare toe, maintaining an expression of extreme concentration as if analyzing the object's structural integrity.
Alaster couldn't help but burst into laughter at how serious she looked while doing something as profoundly unprofessional as inspecting a potentially dangerous object with a bare foot.
—Nothing happened —she concluded, nodding—. It seems safe! —The young woman blinked a few times and tilted her head—. How much fits inside there?
Alaster consulted the technical specs on his interface.
—Twenty cubic meters —he stated, his eyes widening in surprise. «That's roughly the volume of a small box truck,» he calculated internally.
—Well, Al? —Jinneth asked—. How big is it?
—It's bigger than a cargo wagon. About half the size of my bedroom, give or take.
The girl flashed a broad smile.
—That's huge! You can transport whatever you want with that, effortlessly.
Alaster smiled back, weighing the commercial options unfolding before them.
—Maybe we should start moving ahead with our own business, Jin.
The girl's smile grew even wider, and she began bouncing in place, gesturing enthusiastically while the elf spoke to her calmly from his seat.
A few yards away, at the kitchen entrance, the young woman's parents watched the scene in silence, wearing matching smiles at the obvious affection and camaraderie the young couple displayed. It was a picture-perfect family scene—except for the faint smell of burning drifting from the ovens, indicating the bread was, in fact, about to burn.
They conducted numerous tests on the "inventory," as Alaster called it. They discovered he could insert any object; it occupied a portion of space that was automatically subtracted from the total available volume, regardless of its irregular shape.
Furthermore, exactly as detailed in the grimoire, items did not change state inside the dimension: food didn't spoil, hot things didn't cool down, and nothing froze. The interior space lacked temporal flow; it was simply an vacuum devoid of time—or at least, that was what Joseph hypothesized.
Alaster remained pensive, staring intently at the floating rift while mapping out plans on how to leverage this spell for economic and practical advantages on his future missions.
Suddenly, his train of thought cut to a dead stop as he felt Jinneth's body. The young woman had slid close to his side and pressed herself completely against his right arm.
With her slender but athletic arms, she locked around the elf's limb with surprising force. Alaster felt his own hand get trapped firmly between the girl's soft thighs; it was a sudden warmth that caught him entirely off guard, leaving him paralyzed and utterly pinned by her grip.
In the quiet of the common room, he heard with total clarity the sharp sound of the girl swallowing hard, visibly trembling with nerves.
—Al... —she began, squeezing her fist—. Do you remember when we were in my room?
Alaster's mind raced backward at high speed. The images of that day flashed through his head: the intimacy of the moment, the closeness of their faces, the thick tension in the air... and the exact millisecond her ex-boyfriend had rudely interrupted them.
—Yes... yeah —he replied, clearing his throat—. I remember it well.
Jinneth buried her face slightly against his shoulder, and with a shaking voice reduced to a thin, fragile whisper, she finally released the words she had been guarding:
—I... it's just... I like you.