Author’s Corner: This is the tentative end of the hiatus! As long as I can keep the writing spirit up, I will try to do regular chapters again. I may take breaks every now and then as needed, but I should not need another week to do so again(I hope).

After setting our mind on the new plan of action, I once again began practicing my Toybox power. There were still so many possibilities for this power, which I had never explored. By now, I was able to make a small portal that led to the Toy Chest that could fit my arm inside, without causing a headache. Of course, if I tried to do it too frequently, like make two of those portals in a row, I still get a mild pain.

For my next trick, I wanted to see if there was another layer passed the Toy Chest. If forcing a portal open without an exit opened the Toy Chest, then what would happen if I did it again, inside the Toy Chest? As I was contemplating this, Celeste shot me a rather evil glare. “John, no more dangerous psychic tests unless you’re in a clone body.”

… Okay, so she had a point. Discovering the Toy Hand power had knocked me out for a couple of days. Opening portals that led to fixed dimensions like the Toy Chest could potentially cause even more problems. “Noted… And I agree.” I gave a sigh as I got up and went to the medbay to sign into my clone.

Let’s try this again! Another safety precaution, after getting into my clone, I sent my consciousness into my grove, and gathered a few ingredients. Using my handy dandy pill refining method, I created a batch of pills from the psychic stress relief formula. This would be much easier to use than a spell, if my head started to feel like it was about to explode.

Now, with my batch of pills in my hand, and my clone body active, I started work on my experiments again. I opened a portal to the Toy Chest about two feet wide, and immediately tossed one of the pills into my mouth as I felt the headache starting to form. Immediately, it halted, and even began to settle down since I was not passing anything into the portal yet.

For this, I actually wanted to do two experiments. The first, to see if mana would cause any strain when passing through the portals, and second to establish the second portal. Using my Mana Manipulation, without giving it any elements or spells, I sent my mana directly into the portal. To my surprise, there was not the typical pain of something passing through, at least not to the extent I had expected. It felt more like a warm breeze were passing through the portal.

And, to be sure, I even ignited my mana on the other side by gathering the fire mana in the air and lighting it up. Sure enough, as long as the flames did not directly pass through the portals, I did not get a great shock. However, if I sent the command through my mana to create a spell effect like a barrier, then I felt a surge of pain that was barely suppressed by the pill I had previously taken.

This should be an advantage for druids, since we can make use of the mana on the other side of the portal to attack. Most likely, the mana was treated as a formless, weak energy until commands were sent through that would let it do something. Then, those commands gave it substance, which triggered the headache.

All in all, that was a pretty good success for the first experiment. Now, for the second one. Sitting down in front of the portal, I closed my eyes and rested until the last remnants of the headache from before were gone. I did not want to go into this at anything less than my best condition.

Once my headache was gone, I opened my eyes, and focused on the portal. Gradually, it began to widen at a slow, but steady pace. I hadn’t truly taken a look inside the Toy Chest yet, and wanted to do so now that I was dedicating some time purely for my psionics training. For that matter, I had never actually stepped through one of my portals before, either… Though, thankfully this is only one portal, not a linked pair, or there would still be a considerable risk of danger.

I had to stop twice while expanding the portal, to allow my head to recover before continuing on. But, after about ten minutes of slow, methodical work, I had a two meter portal into a nearly pitch black world sitting in front of me. “Come on… like pulling off a bandaid… but the injury is my brain, and the bandaid is my skull.” I hesitated a bit, before going for it.

Eventually, I stepped inside the portal, feeling a much sharper pain, more like when I had forcefully used the Toy Hands power. I immediately popped another pill into my mouth, but the pain didn’t fade much at all. At this point, I was halfway through the portal, with one foot on either side. I had three options, and none of them were fun. I could either finish going through the portal, and let my headache intensify to the point of bleeding eyes. I could go back and have the same thing happen, or I could sit down on the portal itself and wait to take that last step.

I chose option three. Having no desire to black out for a while again, I obediently planted my butt down on that portal and rested there. Every couple of minutes I would toss back another pill, until I was completely out nearly an hour later. By that point, the majority of the headache had passed, and I just took that last step into the Toy Chest. And then proceeded to lay flat on the floor while clutching my head and wishing I had made another batch of pills before taking that last step.

Without the pills, the recovery took considerably longer, a total of three hours. When I was finally confident enough to open my eyes without wanting to gouge them out, I looked back and saw Yin, Sharon, and Celeste standing on the other side. The latter was explaining some things to Yin and Sharon, though I still couldn’t make out what yet. Most likely, how either of them coming in to ‘save’ me would just get me killed from the pressure. Well, at most I’d lose a level when I loaded up a new clone, but still it’d hurt like hell.

About fifteen minutes later, I was able to process sound without my ears feeling like they were splitting open. “Alright, looks like he can chat now.” The Deus Ex dutifully reported to the two women, who each let out a sigh of relief.

“John… You do realize that this is probably the most suicidal thing you’ve done so far, right?” Sharon glared at me and spoke, logically irritated by my going where no man had gone before, and collapsing into a mess of psychic pain in the process.

However, I could only let out a weak laugh. “You weren’t there when I jumped into a giant snake’s mouth… or headbutted a bear to death…” The more I thought about it, the more I realized… I do accidentally suicidal decisions a lot!

“It’s true… he did.” Yin said regrettably, shaking her head from side to side.

“...Okay, let me try this again. Do you have a shred of self-preservation instinct?” Sharon asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Well.. I’m in a clone. That counts, right…?”

“Barely.” She buried her face in her hand, shaking her head. Alright, I totally earned that facepalm. “But next time, try to realize you’re in over your head before Yin comes running for me to tell me that you are in trouble? If Celeste hadn’t beaten us here, we would have dived in after you to try to pull you out. And, according to her, that would have been a very bad decision.”

Celeste nodded her head slightly. “Unless you want to risk the portal closing behind you and trapping you in an unknown dimension, possibly with unknown monsters.”

I really hope there weren’t monsters in here. That would just be cruel. Then again, it would also make sense that this place wasn’t immune to monsters. “Had not thought about the monsters. I kinda don’t want to be in here alone anymore…”

Sharon laughed wryly at that, smiling at me. “Well, let’s see if we can fix it. Once your head finishes clearing up, bring us into your grove. You should be able to do that just by sticking your hand through, right? No need to fully come out.”

That… is a perfectly reasonable idea that I wish I had thought of first. There is no increase in mana from me if I have people in my grove. It was specifically stated that even three thousand years in the future, no technology existed that could see through a druid’s grove. Therefor, this ability should also not be able to tell if I had people in my grove.

A short while later, after Sharon and Yin got in their own clones and my headache cleared up, I stuck my hand outside the Toy Chest. The three girls all grabbed my hand, and I quickly wrapped my mana around them, bringing them into my grove. Although there was a considerable headache brewing from the surge of mana passing through the portal, it was nowhere near the level of when I personally stepped through.

Before bringing them out of my grove, I went ahead and brewed another batch of psychic meds. Unfortunately, the headache proved to be rather distracting, and I failed to properly refine the first batch. The second one came out fairly well, though, and I popped one into my mouth when I retrieved them. Afterwards, I brought the girls out as well.

Finally, I took a chance to look at my surroundings. This place was… empty was the only word I could come up with. There was no sky that I could see, no horizon. The only light was what flooded through the portal leading back to the ship. The ground, from what I could tell, was not even made of dirt. It was not metal, nor stone, nor any element I was familiar with.

“Celeste, you reading this?” I asked, as I examined the mana of the ground with my Aura Sight and Mana Sense.

“Yeah, I see it. According to my database… this should be Dural Mana. It’s a strange mana type, with only a little information listed. All I know is that it has similar physical properties to earth, but is far more mana-conductive. The ground here would probably make for fairly good construction material if it could be refined.”

After Celeste’s explanation, Sharon spoke up. “Anything for the blind people?” However, before I could respond, she created a fireball above her, which immediately blinked out. Instead, an orb of light rested above her head. Okay, that was a bit creative. Make a small flash with fire mana, then capture the escaping light mana to condense into a ball… small, harmless light.

Even with Sharon’s light globe, there appeared to be nothing more to see in this place. The visible area expanded to a little over fifty meters, but it was all exactly the same. “It would really suck if this place was as empty as it appears.”

“John…” Yin said warningly, before Celeste pulled out her cannon wristband and fired it into the distance without warning. Yin immediately went into battle mode, her body sparking with electricity as she shifted into her stormbird form. “Trouble?”

Celeste however, did not answer. We watched the shot of plasma sailing into the distance, and I thought I saw some figures briefly illuminated by it. Then, after a few moments, the shot seemed to come back at us from behind. Thankfully, Sharon was able to quickly set up a barrier to block the blast from hitting us.

“So… assuming we are in the center, this area has a radius of about two kilometers. And the height is…” Next, she aimed her cannon upwards, firing a second blast. I was somewhat expecting the ground to blow up and the plasma bolt to fly up from beneath us, but what actually happened confused me even more. Looking up, at the same time that Celeste’s shot disappeared into the darkness, an identical one appeared just a few feet away from it heading back down.

“Celeste, can you please stop doing that?!” Sharon cried out as she hastily set up a second barrier. This blast seemed quite a bit stronger, having not traveled the same distance as the first.

“Five hundred meters.” Celeste nodded her head, satisfied with her readings. Then, she turned to Sharon, an innocent look of confusion on her face. “Hmmm? Oh, sorry. Science, and all that.”

Even Yin was annoyed at that, but stayed in her bird form for now. “No time… not alone.” She opened her mouth up, gathering lightning in it, and shot it into the distance at a slightly higher angle. Yin’s lightning moved far faster than Celeste’s plasma shot, and passed over our heads a dozen times in a split second. However, after that it suddenly stopped, and a loud shriek was heard from the darkness.

“Was that a monster? That sounded like a monster.”

“Yes, Captain Obvious, that was a monster.” Celeste groaned as she equipped her full battle armor, her metal wings sprouting from her back. Sharon likewise called out a pair of two headed dogs.

The creature in the distance had a towering figure of at least fifty meters. From the brief flash that I saw thanks to Yin’s blast, it had a large cube at the base of its body, with an odd, winding appendage coming out to the side. From the top of the cube poured forth a long, snake-like body, at the top of which a demonic white face resided, two large hands coming from the sides of its body.

“Is that a…” I started to ask, but just didn’t want to finish.

“Yes… That’s a jack in the box.” Sharon said, in a mix of surprise, disappointment, and anticipation.