Ain’t no place like home.

It was an old quote, but it held weirdly true even when said home was a set of shipping containers, rock floor and sheet metal roof over said rock in the middle of nowhere, something Isaac really should change at some point in the near future.

The moment he entered his storage space’s range, all the various bags he’d been carrying vanished off into the ether, making him feel oddly light even though with his level of strength, all that stuff might as well weigh nothing.

He held out his right hand, now fully regrown, back of his hand facing towards the ground, and then the massive, off-white titanium Zweihänder manifested within. It really was a beautiful weapon, masterful craftsmanship, though he’d rarely used it until now.

Now though, it would be with him, always. Old Reliable manifested in his left hand in its Kabar form and touched the tip of it to the blade of the Zweihänder. The larger weapon seemed to waver for a moment, warping and twisting as it was compressed into a single point maybe a millimeter across, which was subsequently absorbed into the smaller weapon.

All it took was a mere thought, and the comparatively tiny weapon shifted into the gigantic two handed sword, which then ignited.

Isaac went through a few different sword forms, leaving fiery trails in the air as the blade flowed from one stance into the next.

The fire winked out as though it had never been there in the first place as Isaac deactivated [Starfang].

Isaac proceeded to use a few moves with every form his weapon had, as well as the variations based on his Aspects, and having multiple weapons out to see what went well together.

As expected, using a second weapon while using the Zweihänder didn’t work out too well. He was strong enough to swing that thing around as though it were a cheerleader’s baton, but his increased stats didn’t make him any heavier.

Between the weapon’s weight and length, casually flinging it around could also throw him off balance. When it was the only weapon he held, that was perfectly manageable. Using it alongside something else was a recipe to end up tripping over his own feet.

With that little bit of practice out of the way, it was time to go ahead and get those Aspects.

The first one was a basic illusion and sensory dampening Aspect which would allow him to mess with his foes in new way, royally screw over anyone trying to use the same tactics to beat him as Krebs had and fulfill his part of the bargain he’d made with that one Las Vegas casino owner. Namely, giving him a way to prevent just anyone with a high Perception to completely and utterly rip him off.

This would in turn help him build his reputation as not only an expert on the [System], but also as someone who did as he promised.

The fact that he was also planning on using the Aspects also gave him a convenient fig leaf as to how he’d stumbled across it.

The idea of a using illusions should have probably occurred to him before now. He could move so damn quickly that any small mistakes opened up massive opportunities for him, which he could then ruthlesslyexploit. Really, it was such an obvious fit for his fighting style and his Aspect slots were still relatively cheap, the fact that he’d only thought of it now was worthy of one hell of a facepalm.

The crack of his palm meeting his forehead was loud enough to startle nearby birds into taking panicked flight, making him chuckle softly. It was one thing to feel himself grow stronger, faster, tougher and overall more capable in a fight. It was an entirely different thing to have reached the point where such a normal motion had such an outsized effect.

Anyway, it was time to get back to the matter at hand. Summoning.

Summoning List (Light)

Name

Material Cost

Mana Cost

Discoball of Doom

Tier 1 Circle, Mirror Shard, Lightbulb

10

Hardlight Gremlin

Tier 2 Circle, Mud, Flashlight, Powdered Glass, Mirror Shard

50

Lesser Illusionist

Tier 3 Circle, Mirror Shard, Lens, 5 different colored Lightbulbs

100

Glare Beast

Tier 4 Circle, Animal Bone, Powdered Glass, Lightbulb, Battery

200

Lightstar

Tier 5 Circle, Glow-In-The-Dark Sticker, Glass Shards, Clear Gemstone

250

Fata Morgana

Tier 5 Circle, Water Pitcher, Palm Frond, Sand, Fist-sized Glass Orb, Lightbulb

350

…

The Light category of monsters had some really interesting, but also bizarre entries, made all the more extreme by the rather silly names. The so-called Discoball of Doom sounded nasty as hell, but the reality of what it was actually … silly as hell. A single lightbulb, glowing brightly, surrounded by a cloud of reflective glass shards that could send that light into any direction it wanted to. The shards could only exist very close to it and it was incredibly slow, so it couldn’t realistically use them to cut people.

Instead, it would try to blind people, but it took a lot for people to take damage to their retinas if they had anydegree of enhanced stats. Really, it was more of a joke monster than anything else. It was also not what he was after.

Instead, he’d be summoning a Lesser Illusionist until he got its Aspect, and would then continue on to the Fata Morgana.

There were already summoning circles up to Tier 5 carved into the rock that covered the floor of the summoning area and the sheer amount of crap he had in his storage area meant that he could summon basically any and all creatures up to Tier 5. Lastly, the circles were close enough to where he’d created the storage area that he could just summon the materials straight into the circle. It was charged immediately afterwards, and an odd creature erupted from it. It looked like someone had created taken a mold of a human body, half filled it with luminescent white liquid and then turned the mold itself invisible, leaving the glowing liquid to slosh around in a vaguely humanoid area. The full shape itself was never quite visible, but Isaac knew that the if someone mapped out everywhere the liquid had been and compiled that into a single image, you’d get a perfectly average looking, androgynous, human.

Except, he didn’t see any of that, having had his eyes closed since before the circle ever went active. Illusions were nasty, insidious and royally fuck up your fundamental understanding of reality. However, they were mostly a visual thing, with auditory and tactile ones also existing, but the Lesser Illusionist rarely used them as they were too taxing for it.

But despite the ‘lesser’ label, the monster was dangerous as hell. Even knowing his surroundings, where it had been summoned relative to him and what was supposed to be there, it could screw with him. Sure, if pink elephants and Victoria Secret models appeared, he could safely dismiss those as illusions, but what if it merely changed the world, slowly? Like, say, rotate his surroundings by half a degree or so every second, until he was running in the complete opposite direction, or simply go invisible? Besides, seeing something with your own two eyes had a way of overwriting what you knew without you necessarily being aware of it.

End of the day, it was much simply much easier to just close his eyes, ignore anything he heard, and attack the area that the summoning area was in.

Meanwhile, he might run into a tactile illusion, but that was much easier to get around, after all, Isaac knewthat there was nothing around him, given that he kept this space completely clear as a matter of course. Nothing to trip over, nothing to bump into, nothing but the damn monster. Anything he came into contact with, other than the ground, of course, was either it, or a fake.

He lunged forwards, straight at the circle, and spun around, a blade in each hand, arms spread out to the sides, a combined [Sweeping-Far Strike] rending apart anything within range.

Lesser Illusionist (Lv. 8) has been slain. 40 XP gained (50 base * 0.8 due to level disparity)

And that was that. Isaac opened his eyes again, seeing the glow of the liquid splattered all over the place slowly fade.

Then, he did it again, over and over, until his mana ran out. He stood there, soulbound weapons disappearing, the ground around him soaked in sticky liquid. A wave of his hand sucked it into his storage space, then headed over to a designated rubbish container and emptied most of the mess into that. The rest went into a glass bottle he’d be bringing to Professor Chandler tomorrow. As far as he knew, this stuff was useless, but the somewhat kooky older man might be able to come up with something, especially as he had access to materials that hadn’t existed in the other timeline.

Now though, he had a little bit of time to kill until his mana refilled, so he headed over towards his Extradimensional Room. It could be accessed from anywhere within ten meters of where it had been summoned, creating a white-edged doorway that led into the very basic, albeit large, space.

He could still access his storage from within it, though, given that the site of the room’s creation was within the other spatial pocket’s range.

As the portal into his future home irised open and Isaac stepped through, a small hunk of crystal dropped into his hand, which he then placed against the ground. It was immediately sucked in and the entire 5x5x5 meter cube shifted to match its color and took on an interesting, crystalline, pattern, though it remained perfectly smooth to the touch. After all, it only appeared to have been turned into crystal.

In the end, he’d likely be going with some kind of hardwood or something, but having a room made entirely out of crystal, hell, made entirely out of diamond or even gold looked cool … at first. Once the initial ‘this looks so freaking cool’ wore off, it tended to make most owners cringe just looking at it, and then change it soon after. But there always those who kept the rooms made entirely from incredibly expensive materials and expected people to look upon it with wonder, rather than laughing at the pretentious creation.

Overall, while the 25 m2 floor was pretty large, using just it was a little wasteful. Therefore, he planned to put in a second floor. Creating it was pretty simple, really, and he even remembered how to do so from the other timeline. Each and every Extradimensional room had the exact same dimensions, so creating a plug and play blueprint for a second for that literally anyone could use hadn’t really been difficult.

In essence, you put a wooden beam in each corner, then connected them with another beam, properly supported by an additional beam in the middle. Do that for all four sides, put in the supporting beams, place an additional beam in the center of the room and connect it with all others, then finally lay wooden boards over the top and nail them down.

Isaac never claimed to be a great craftsman, but this was a stupidly simple creation. And even if he managed to fuck this up badly enough to bring the entire affair down on top of his skull, then, well, the only problem would be the wasted time. Isaac himself would be perfectly fine, it would take a hell of a lot more than that little mass of wood to even require him to activate his regeneration.

Drawing his knife, Isaac went to work, easily chopping through the thick wood until he was left with all the beams he needed. Perfect.

At that point, it was time to start nailing everything together. And yes, he used nails for that. Massive, oversized things he’d gotten custom from a machine shop. Normally, you’d drill holes into the beams and then run metal rods, maybe a centimeter in diameter, with a screw on the end through it and add a nut on the other end to hold it together. However, normally, people didn’t have access to something like [Piercing Strike], which let him drive the large nails through with casual ease.

That being said, he was trying to regenerate some mana, so he cut that out as soon as all the beams were in place. Nailing the boards into the beams from above was perfectly possible regular old nails and the hilt of his knife as a hammer. His mana hit full when he was around a quarter of the way done with the new flooring, so he hopped out of the pocket dimension, obliterated several more Lesser Illusionist, and then went right back to building his new apartment. No Aspect, sadly.

Now that he was done with the supporting structure and could focus just on nailing down the boards atop them, he nearly finished the entire thing by the time his mana refilled yet again.

Head out, slaughter monsters, get basically no XP and literally no Aspects, go back to crafting, rinse and repeat.

By the time he finally held a gently glowing orb in his hand, he’d created some stairs, had said stairs collapse under him the first time he walked up to, gotten help from google to create a second, better, version that had nonetheless also gone the way of the dodo, finally managed to create a workable set, put in some windows, made use of the Extradimensional Room’s ability to absorb basic utility devices and incorporate them … all in all, it had taken for-e-ver to get this thing, but now, finally, there it was.

Aspect of the Lesser Illusionist:

This is the distilled essence of what makes a Lesser Illusionist a Lesser Illusionist. Mess with your enemies’ senses, create false images to trick them, or simply create holograms for less bloodthirsty occasions.

Requirements for Activation:

1,000 XP

Open Aspect Slot

Grants:

+5 Perception

One of the following Skills:

Lesser Perception Block

Basic Illusion

Mobile Illusion

He grabbed the [Basic Illusion] [Skill]. [Mobile Illusion] wasn’t bad per se, allowing for the creation of truly incredible, variable illusions that could display anything its user wanted it to, but it also required an incredible amount of focus to use, the kind that was hard to spare in the middle of a life or death fight.

Basic Illusion (rare)

When first using this Skill, the user must choose a single subject to create an illusion of (specific person, object, creature, etc.). From that point onwards, the user may create an illusionary version of this at will (the illusion will update to match the chosen subject).

Cost: 15 mana per activation, 1 mana per second of upkeep

While the [Skill’s] description wasn’t the clearest before you’d actually used it, the situation was actually rather simple. You picked something you wanted to create an illusion of, and then you could create that thing in any position or pose you cared for. It would also update, so if he chose himself as the subject of the illusion, it wouldn’t be stuck with the clothes he had on the first time he used it.

Of course, he did pick himself. An illusionary double would be exposed as a fake after mere moments, but those moments would be enough for him to bury his blades in some vital body part.

… now he just had to get an Aspect to upgrade it. Isaac hung his head as he walked over to the Tier 5 circle. This was going to take forever, and he absolutely hated fighting illusion users.

The Fata Morgana appeared in the middle of his summoning area and the world warped. For the barest of instants, a glassy orb that shone with an inner rainbow light had hung there and then, it was gone.

Fata Morgana’s were incredibly lacking in the offense department, especially so for a Tier 5 monster, making it pretty weak in a fight, but that wasn’t what made them such a pain in the ass. Right now, he knew it was somewhere around here, even if it had cloaked itself damn near perfectly. If one of these stupid little blighters got out into the wild and started to summon more of its kind, how the ever loving fuck could you ever know there wasn’t one sitting by the side of the road, one which was incidentally hiding the sinkhole you were about to drive into?

A [Sweeping Strike] swished right through where the core had been mere moments ago, but it had moved, the air rippling as if caught in a heat haze.

He chased after it, nearly tripping over a rock telekinetically hurled at him, but he saw it at the last possible second and jumped over it, chasing after the damn thing. This continued on for two more minutes, as it lashed out with water whips and rocks, him dodging or tanking each and every one, putting enough pressure on it that it couldn’t outright disappear, but accurately targeting the damn thing was still incredibly difficult.

Eventually though, it fell apart as he managed to catch the edge of hit with the tip of his Zweihänder.

… of course, no Aspect, meaning he’d have to do this again. And again. And a-fucking-gain.

Killing these things weren’t so much a fight as a struggle to not lose his freaking mind as he chased a motherfucking invisible orb of speedy glass all over the place, unable to stop for even a few seconds for risk of it escaping out into the wild.

Twelve hours later, Isaac was in a truly foul mood. He was heading back towards the university for work and he hadn’t gotten a single godsdamned Aspect for all those long hours of work. Killing monsters at your own Level gave you a very small chance of actually getting an Aspect, so if he’d really wanted to get one, he should have done this before the emergency Level up during the Event. But he hadn’t, so … c’est la vie.

Going for Tier 6 was an option, in theory, but those things all had auras of their own and trying to fight them without having one himself was incredibly dangerous. And getting access to his own aura would require levelling up one more time and evolving his [Class] … except he wanted to get the Aspects before then. In other words, he’d have to tough it out. Grumbling inwardly, he marched onwards. This would take way too fucking long.