I was in my cell.

It had been five days since I woke up from the attack. The stark stones reminded me of medieval ruins.

The window had no glass. So I had to choose between light and cold, or dark and less cold.

I chose dark. Mana lights consumed less than keeping myself warm with the window open, so I obviously selected the most efficient path.

Needless to say, my movement options had become heavily restricted. I could go nowhere but my room, the common canteen, and the enchantment workplace. And the Academy, at pre-arranged times, under escort.

I was concerned about the trio. They were probably devastated without me. I had wanted to stick around to lift up their morale. Although the people of this world were more used to traumatic experiences, they’d been surviving each Demon war century after century. Adventurers even more so.

At the Academy, the other students were confused to see me—a foreigner—being escorted by royal soldiers. I was doing good at being unapproachable. No risk of involvement with politics and feuds. I only wanted to speak with teachers and staff, anyway. If there’s any acquaintance I actually need, I’m sure fate will smear it all over my face.

I was never a social animal. Even after Eric explained to me all the marketing tricks, I only built up a greater aversion. That’s why I explained to others how to do the whole marketing thing when we were promoting our pizzerias.

Allen, allergic to marketing.

Well, that thing about getting involved with feuds only applied to the Academy.

My feud with Lord Radenrouge was there to stay. He would get his just desserts, in time. Allen always repays his debts.

I kept in contact with my friends through letters. Unfortunately, letters were expensive. And slow.

In theory, one could relay a message to, well, a messenger. But the higher the word count, the less likely it was for it to be delivered verbatim.

On a positive note, I had successfully passed the telekinesis exam.

It didn’t take long for the Academy to return to full capacity. When I got back inside after the incident, I was amazed at how quickly and efficiently they had made it look as the attack never happened.

The only telltale was the lack of furnishings and decorations in the previously damaged areas.

And thus lessons and exams had resumed. Attendance was slowly returning to normal. Everyone was still on edge, and the security had tripled. No teacher had suffered severe injuries, so almost all the available courses were back on the menu.

So, yeah. Telekinesis. The test hadn’t been easy, but I had had two months to get good enough at it. There was nothing like the dopamine rush of levitating objects and making them move and twist with just my raw willpower.

I remember trying that shit back in my world, of course, it didn’t work there. Anyone claiming otherwise was either a scammer or delusional.

It had been a real disappointment realizing magic wasn’t real. The only magic that was not disprovable was the one about chances, but still, even though most things went as I expected, it just meant I was good at making estimates.

Weren’t it for how often coincidences happened, I would have dismissed it entirely. Did it work, or was I just a statistical outlier? Who cares. I have real magic now!

I found that cooking with magic was very convenient. Stirring a pot without my hands was a very nice trick.

Except when the hot contents would spill all over me because I failed to control my telekinesis.

I learned an important lesson there. Remember kids, always keep the temperature dampener in your ring active while cooking.

It was a shame I was not allowed to cook for myself in these new accommodations. The canteen cooks told me to stay the heck away from their ovens. Assholes.

I finished writing the letter to Ellin.

Writing letters… so inconvenient. I really ought to reinvent the internet and the email protocol. HELO, MAIL FROM [email protected].

Quest added (Build the internet: Email protocol)

My magic ring flashed again, but I dismissed it. Damnable thing. My idle complaints continued to contribute to the ever-growing quest list.

I sent an apology to the Alchemist Guild, explaining my inability to attend the apprenticeship in the short term. I’m sure the seal they used here to wax the mail would give that GM cougar a second thought before laying her wrinkly paws on me in the future. Or will it make it worse?

I had a walk across the outer ward and dropped the letters to the person in charge. At least I don’t have to pay the delivery fee here.

Quest completed (Deliver the letters) +2 EXP

Even sending letters gives me more EXP than surviving, I thought grimly.

That done, I went to work with my enchanter buddies. I didn’t get paid overtime, but I hadn’t much else to do, and the current project was interesting.

Several randoms nodded in my direction. I was highly requested these days.

「Can you make it do that thing?」

The price of success. Now all enchanters harassed me to get their requests implemented with my processors. I didn’t even know this guy’s name.

「Allen: Of course, just write down the specs for me, and I’ll take a look.」

「Specs?」

「Allen: How it’s supposed to work. Please be as detailed as possible. I need to know all the cases.」

At least it was something related to the Great Project, so I didn’t mind. The others I was going to milk out of their secret knowledge.

『Vezlaz: I hear the blacksmiths are preparing a prototype. It should be ready next week.』

「Allen: That’s good news.」

I said, nodding approvingly. Pieces were falling in place.

「Bart: It won’t be easy. We need to account for different heights, the mana crystal storage, and mobility…」

Bart glanced at Klenn to give him the chance to add his comments and feel important. But Klenn remained silent while pondering what other flashy magics he should incorporate. The problem child of the group was finally taking things seriously.

Besides the project-specific task, I spent most of the time trading my services for enchanting secrets and improving my processors. No one had any idea of they worked, nor was there any chance they would.

All processors were password-protected, written in my native language, and full of Allen-only backdoors. No one was going to crack them any time soon.

I couldn’t put backdoors on simpler circuitry. It was too conspicuous. But processors? Their extra complexity ensured that everyone accepted them at face value, so long as they did what they wanted.

No rule forced me to explain them in detail. The magical construct just had to work as advertised. Everyone else did pretty much the same. The QA team only inspected the spellwork for abnormalities.

「Bart: Anyway, has anything interesting happened outside the walls since they killed the demonic saboteur?」

「Allen: Nothing much, it would seem.」

The fact that I had been one of the main targets had been kept under wrap. We didn’t want people to blame me for their misfortunes. It was much better not to spread such information at all.

I had been in contact with Ellin and Jorgas. The only ones who spared the effort to write back.

Ellin had returned to her family house right after the attack, due to the dangers possibly lying afoot, and was having a hard time keeping in contact with everyone else. She said she was making progress on her lucid dreaming control but had yet to succeed in getting out of her body.

Corgas wrote that Namrick and Grastel were still a little shaken but doing fine. Everyone else was okay.

Ellin confirmed she had exorcised the demon alone, to her own surprise. Perhaps possessing someone unable to be afraid didn’t prove such a smart move after all. No fertile ground to be had, plus I had fought back hard.

「Allen: Anyway, I’ve been wondering… Why didn’t demons just open a portal inside the city to attack us?」

Not that I was complaining. Klenn scoffed with his haughty tone.

「Klenn: Ha! Do you think the kingdom would allow free use of long-distance spatial magic during war times?! Just how clueless are you?」

「Allen: Why? Can it be blocked?」

「Klenn: Of course, the longer the distance, the easier it is to disturb spatial interferences. Would you let demons march their armies into our cities unimpeded?」

How matter displacement and spatial interference worked was a mystery. It was a rare talent, very little info was written about it.

「Allen: But I’ve seen a portal being opened at Academy grounds…」

「Klenn: Hmpf, it was a portal to elsewhere, wasn’t it?」

He was right. I didn’t know enough about this kind of magic. I wondered if it could be used to create a bag of holding or similar. I have to learn it.

「Klenn: The kingdom has many magicians and devices specialized in disrupting spatial magic. Moreover… 」

Klenn launched himself on a lengthy explanation, from which I got that the difficulty of jamming spatial magic was inversely proportional to distance. That people capable of opening portals are rare, and that there are ways to pinpoint where portals are being opened.

So that’s why demons weren’t just sending their armies through portals. I still had to wonder how the whole portal opening mechanic worked. How did they get the coordinates right? It wouldn’t do to open a portal into deep space. Unless you want to get rid of trash.

「Allen: I see. Thanks for the explanation.」

He looked disappointed. I knew he was expecting me to ask about the details he had left unsaid, but I knew he was going to play hard to get and smile smugly while withholding his precious knowledge. It was a pattern I had come to learn.

「Klenn: Hmpf.」

I finished enchanting the current piece and moved on to the next. Every part we produced underwent rigorous testing, aided by a system I had developed myself to automate all that was possible.

Done with my daily quota, I shifted my attention to improving my personal tools. The 【All-ring】 had recently seen an upgrade to the resolution of the hallucinatory screen to 640x400, 16 colors. Even Grohm was amazed by my ability to hallucinate individual pixels. Making a physical screen was much easier in comparison.

My processors also now ran at 800Hz, although some operations needed to be optimized to keep up. It was terribly slow compared to modern CPUs. However, the simpler instruction set and custom architecture meant it could do the job reasonably fast.

The day I managed to convert all the higher-level constructs into simpler faster ones, would lead to a dramatic performance increase. Although, there were other hardware issues to be solved that Grohm was eagerly investigating. I needed that knowledge to spread wider, put more minds into advancing Informagic to the next level. Make it faster and more reliable.

Blessed be magic nerds. I could never do it alone.

I would always be many steps ahead, in any case. There was no danger of this magic technology running rampant. I had grown a sense of the people of this world. My professional estimate was that anyone trying to spread the advanced parts of such knowledge to the general public would meet unfortunate lethal consequences. Besides, magicians were really few in numbers, the ones specializing in such a field even lower, and the ones willing to divulge secrets basically zero.

Magicians were the pioneers of job security. Also, they all had big egos, as befitting for those harnessing the arcane arts.

The only immediate consequence of Informagic was that magic tools would finally work reliably. If anything, it would make magic less dangerous.

I desperately wished for faster processors, memory storage, and reliability. But there just wasn’t enough manpower to make that happen quickly. Also, the fact that I desired such an outcome made it extremely unlikely to happen. The more you want something, the harder it is to obtain.

Besides, once I reached max-level I could simply go and kill those annoyances that threatened to ruin my isekai experience.

I am a responsible person. I won’t let this fantasy world turn into a modern cesspool. Just thinking about magic being turned into just another joyless mundane thing was enough to send my blood boiling.

Magic was my dream.

Magic was my love.

My world would rape it, bend it to corporate needs, and leave it depleted so no one can enjoy it anymore. No way I was gonna let that happen.

I stopped my dystopian trains of thought and returned to the real world.

In the last weeks, I had been putting my enchanting skills to use for another project, the 【Debugger】 ring. As the name implied, I had repurposed the ring for facilitating programming and magical analysis.

It really couldn’t do much yet, aside from helping me analyze the state of processors and what they were executing, but I was experimenting.

From what I had seen, it should be possible to measure external magic processes.

Just imagining the possibilities, were I able to debug real magic—and not just programs—made my lips curl up with anticipation.

I was planning a whole line of rings with different purposes capable of linking with the 【All-ring】 for advanced coordination. And why not, even the armor and weapons. Enchanted equipment 2.0.

It was going to take time. I wanted to learn all schools of magic, exploit synergies, and make my own cheats.

Since a certain Creator had neglected to give me my well-deserved broken powers, the only logical conclusion was making my own.

The Creator… not a word since I was brought here. Did he forget about me? What did he mean by “testing” this world?

Was this one of those stories where the starting premise fades into oblivion? Was he, or it, gonna pull some surprise when I least expected it?

The more I thought about it, the more I felt a looming concern.

What are the chances there are no hidden agendas here?

Yeah, exactly.

We can’t have nice things, Allen.

Eventually, I dined and went back to my cramped room. I was practicing both Violet’s way is not-sleeping and my way of lucid dreaming, trying to switch between the two.

No more forceful memories made their way into my dreams, including dark gods.

But my sanity was slipping.

I needed something to kill.

Killing monsters. Killing time. Anything.

Quest (Kill the dark god Feras)

I had too much free time here.

No internet, no novels, no movies, no games.

Quest (Build the internet: 10 sub-tasks)

I was so bored that I started using my lucid dreams to train against Namrick. The real-life experiences contributed to making it realistic.

Haha, even in sleep, I still grind.

Well, actually, something did make its way into my dreams. Empty-faced Amy. When I saw her again, I remembered that she had appeared in that black void space within my mind.

Sometimes she took the form of different people who had been meaningful to me. Always appearing in a corner, staring at nothing, saying maybe a few words, then disappearing again.

I wondered what my subconscious wanted to say by manifesting itself that way.

Maybe something like, “get your shit together and stop delaying until it’s too late.”

The dream version of Namrick sliced me in half and stepped back, smiling confidently. That had been enough sparring against the overpowered dream-Namrick, who didn’t hold back like real-Namrick.

I flipped my middle finger to his smug face before walking down a random path. I ended in front of a familiar farm.

I walked inside and sat down at the table. The house was empty.

A moment later, Amy appeared beside me.

「Amy: Feels like family…」

And she was right. It was Erne’s and Berel’s house. The first place after so many years in which I had felt that peculiar sensation of belonging. My parents abandoned me when I was sixteen, leaving behind only a shitty letter of apology.

Yes, I didn't tell Yuri. I didn't want to make it sound like a competition. A funny coincidence that we'd gone through similar troubles.

“Family” was just a distant memory for me.

And yet, despite all, I still longed for such things.

I willed the room to lighten up with more vibrant colors, and it did. To my surprise the whole family also walked in from the doors across the room, along with the trio and my other friends. The dream characters walked around the room, looking busy and paying me no attention.

I would have preferred naked ladies, though, to cheer me up after the sound beating dream-Namrick had given me.

Dreams are like magic.

I sighed, resting my head over the table. Amy had disappeared.

How did he do it? I asked myself. How did Feras enter my dreams without direct contact?

No one answered.

Last time, I had mistakenly thought that tightening my spirit body had severed him. Of course, I had realized shortly after that I had been wrong.

If Ellin were nearby, we could have tried this sort of stuff, intruding into one’s other dreams. Directly and indirectly.

Magic is like a dream.

I willed to intrude into Ellin’s dreams. But after several attempts, I had to give up.

I blinked, teleported, flew through different dreamscapes, and even encountered an Ellin, but it was not the real Ellin. Just a mindless dream character. Inside dreams, discerning reality from illusory was no easy task, even with my experience.

Defeated, I sat down on the floor to meditate. The scenery evaporated like smoke leaving me inside the comfortable black void.

I gently moved my attention back to my physical body.

Violet’s teachings weren’t too far off from lucid dreaming.

How I had resisted the induced sleep, and how I had maintained my awareness in dream… The experience had left a strong impression on me.

Both approaches had complimented each other, so I was practicing alternating both.

Switching from one state to the other had so far kept my dreams Feras-free, and I liked to keep it that way.

Uninterrupted awareness was the key.

It sounded like something a Tibetan monk would pursue. Again, the similarities between this world and my own kept creeping up.

I had to mention these dream experiments in my next letter to Ellin.

It was time to start exploring these avenues.