I was heavily engrossed in my writing when all of a sudden, the room echoed with a ringing noise. What on earth? I looked around the dark chamber, and noted that the screen-wall had a notification on it.

Requirements for Land Mode have been met!

Requirements for… Oh! I must have been planted in the ground by Temsello and Arianne. Had that much time flown past already? I hoped that they hadn’t been trying to talk to me for too long, I didn’t mean to ignore them. I quickly stood up and stretched, though my body didn’t actually feel stiff or sore. Just habit, I suppose. “Viewing Mode, please.” I probably don’t need to be polite to the voice, but it couldn’t hurt. I closed my eyes within my mind as I felt myself floating up and out of the room…

---

I felt my soul fill the confines of the body I had been forced to inhabit, and heard it hum to life. “Greetings, Temsello, Arianne. I will now begin the process of constructing Lake Quillfort Academy. Please stand by, this will take some time.” After saying that, I entered Land mode. Immediately, the world around me shifted through the color spectrum. Time slowed as a glowing green grid appeared in my vision, stretching off into the horizon. All the land around me became a dreary gray. I reached out to touch one of the cubes of gray… and realized that I actually had reached out. My body! Was it… back?

No. I glanced at my arms, and then the rest of me. I had become a being of pure white, and there was still a cord linking me to my box. Huh. This is… surreal. I bent down and touched the cube under me. When nothing happened, I tried to focus on it. I felt energy pour from myself into the cube, and it changed color, turning black.

Land claimed. Territory increased to 1 cubic meter. At this rate, total magic capacity will increase by 1 Hekare after acquiring 2 more cubic meters of territory.

Magic Capacity: 11/12 Hekares.

That had been… simpler than I had thought it would be. I glanced around, and began to focus on the cubes directly surrounding my body. As more cubes turned black, I felt a strange… stretching sensation in my heart. I reached out to another cube, only to realize that I was completely exhausted.

Error! No more magic power. Territory increased to 12 cubic meters. Magic Capacity: 0/16 Hekares.

Would you like to mana-burn some of your territory?

...Mana-burn? That didn’t… sound entirely positive. “What does that mean?” I asked? I felt like falling over, I was so tired. But gravity didn’t really affect me anymore, so just going slack wouldn’t make me fall. I wanted to breathe really deeply, but I couldn’t breathe in this form. Basically, I just felt… tired. Really tired.

Mana-burning is a process that deprives a portion of your territory of all forms of life, down to the bacterial level. The combined essence of life is then added to your Magic Capacity. Territory that has been mana-burned does not generate magic in Sleep mode. Mana-burning portions of your territory with higher concentrations of life provides more Magic Power.

That… sounded kinda evil. I was gonna shy away from the whole… draining the life from my surroundings thing. “No thank you. Viewing Mode.” Color returned to the world, and time sped back up to normal. “Temsello, Arianne, I have claimed a portion of this land as my territory. I will be returning to Sleep Mode in order to regain my power. Construction will begin once I have gathered enough strength.”

With that said, I turned my thoughts inward. Sleep Mode, please. My vision faded to black as I felt myself falling back into my mind.

---

Arianne’s POV:

Temsello and I got out of the cart we had brought with us, and Temsello picked up Adam. He looked around for a moment, before walking for a bit. I quickly followed after. “What are we doing now?” I asked.

Temsello looked around again before replying. “Trying to decide where to plant Adam. I imagine that he’ll use himself as the focus of the building, so his position will have a major impact on the future site of the Academy.” Ah, so that’s what we were doing. I turned around to stare at the lake.

I frowned, before interjecting. “Why on earth has this estate gone so long without an owner? This is a very beautiful place.” It truly was. The water of the lake was a bewitchingly deep blue, and the grass an emerald green. Wouldn’t this land be incredibly fertile for farming? This estate had vast potential! Why was no one using it?

Temsello sighed, having apparently decided on the best spot to lay down Adam. “The answer to that question lies 35 years ago. Xustiza, the adventuring group that I was a part of, had received word that a demon invasion was occurring, and we, along with many other powerful and noteworthy adventuring groups, were hired to help the soldiers of Quillfort repel it. Look, in the distance.” He pointed to a small mountain near the lake. I could see some crumbling ruins on it. “That is all that remains of Quillfort. We were driven back by the armies of the demon lord.”

I was shocked. “What? But wasn’t it you that slew the demon lord? How could your group fail to defeat his minions?” This seemingly contradicted every tale that I had ever heard about Temsello! Those tales were the entire reason that I had been so eager to join him in the creation of this academy! He was my idol!

“Heh, there were simply too many of them. In the end, it took the death of a near friend of mine, before I decided that simply slaughtering thousands of demons with my spells was not enough. I spent a day in mourning, regaining my strength from the battles while a war was fought to hold them back, before I blasted my way through their ranks and challenged the demon lord directly.” He expounded. Wow… this was much less embellished than the official tale, but it was all the more impressive for how simple he made it sound.

“Which was when you killed him, right? I’ve heard this tale before, though most of the accounts don’t have any specific details on the fight…” I said, eyes shining with expectation. I loved hearing these stories.

His next statement struck me like a hurricane. “...No. I didn’t kill him.” Eh? What? What had I just heard? “He was nearly impervious to everything I tried. He simply laughed at me, before nearly killing me with a single spell. The only reason I was able to defeat him was his hubris.” …I was even more confused now.

I asked him, “So… you defeated him, but didn’t kill him?” I didn’t quite understand how this could be the case. Why not kill the demon lord once you had him at your mercy?

Temsello remained silent for a short time longer. “Raz might have made it look simple, but dimensional magic is incredibly difficult. Insanely so. He must be overwhelmingly powerful to use it with such ease.” I wasn’t quite sure where he was going with this, but I remained silent. “I attempted to use dimensional magic to cast him from our world.”

My eyes widened. Incredible… such magic was possible? “...and did you succeed?” I asked. Such things were unthinkable feats of magic. Temsello truly was on another level. He did deserve the title of Archmage, though he should never be given the title of administrator. That was why we had Adam, after all.

He didn’t answer for a long time, and my legs started to fall asleep where I was kneeling. As I shifted in place, he spoke. “Yes. I did. Though I wish that I had known the price. I managed to tear a hole through the fabric of reality, and he was sent to another world…” He fell silent.

I got an uneasy feeling in my stomach. “What… price?” What sort of price did he pay for such a spell? I could tell that talking about this pained him, but I had to know what sort of trials I might face in my journey to become an Archmage.

Temsello barked out a bitter laugh. “If it had been a price that I could have paid personally, I would have done so without fuss, and been grateful for it. The price wasn’t demanded of me… but of the world that I cast him into. I could see what he did there, for a time… the spell that I cast was tied to me for a time. I could see his doings in that world. He killed millions before someone there managed to put him down.” His head fell. “Millions of lives, lost… for something they had no part in. I killed them that day. I can never forgive myself for that. That was when I lost my appetite for destruction. Since then, I have done my best to build, not break.”

I didn’t know how to respond to this, so I stayed quiet. He wiped his eyes, though I hadn’t seen him cry. “My apologies for foisting the troubles of an old man on you.” He chuckled, though I could tell that his heart wasn’t in it. He didn’t actually look that old, though, in his thirties at most.

Before I could reassure him of this, though, Adam’s box hummed to life. The lights began to blink and flash.

“Greetings, Temsello, Arianne. I will now begin the process of constructing Lake Quillfort Academy. Please stand by, this will take some time.” He stated. That voice really sent chills down my spine.

The box began to glow black, something I had not been aware was possible. The hum increased in pitch and volume until it became a shrill whine. Suddenly, I felt power flow from the box into the ground around it, before the whine died out and the lights dimmed.

“Temsello, Arianne, I have claimed a portion of this land as my territory. I will be returning to Sleep Mode in order to regain my power. Construction will begin once I have gathered enough strength.” It proclaimed. Then the box went dark.

I was silent for a moment. “...That’s it?” I asked incredulously.

Temsello snorted. “Overminds start slowly, but their strength increases at an exponential rate. Frankly, I’m just glad that he didn’t burn the land for more energy. He could have finished the project today if he did… but I’m glad that he didn’t.” He reached down to the ground and felt the grass. “If he had done that, the land wouldn’t recover for centuries. We can wait.”

I was startled at this statement. Overminds were that dangerous? I truly didn’t know anything of them. Still, Temsello appeared to trust Adam, I’d try not to let his words of past Overminds color my view. We were going to be working together, after all...