I looked all around me for the voice. At least I thought I looked around as I couldn’t feel my body moving.

“Over here,” said the voice to my left.

I looked to my left but there was nothing.

“Not there, you’re too slow. I’m over here now,” said the voice with a hint of a laugh.

The voice was coming from the right now so I looked there and still nothing.

We kept on doing this for a minute or so until I just decided to ignore it and looked at the red light.

“Really? You’re no fun, I’ve been stuck here for centuries and then you come along and here I thought I would enjoy myself but now you’re ignoring me,” said the voice as if it was pouting.

I stared at the red light trying to make out more of its features as I ignored the annoying voice.

“Alright, I won’t make fun of you anymore,” said the voice, “How’d you get here anyway?”

I looked behind me as that was where the voice came from and started to speak but I couldn’t. I couldn’t feel my mouth opening nor hear it and I couldn’t even tell if I was speaking at all.

“Speak with your mind, idiot,” said the voice.

I didn’t know how to speak with my mind so I just thought the words I wanted to say.

“I was sent here,” said a different voice.

It was said almost immediately as I thought it out. The voice that spoke it did not sound like mine. It sounded more mechanical and hypnotic.

“Sent by who?” said the voice.

“My summon, the codex of magic, Malakir.”

“You summoned the codex?” said the voice with mild surprise.

“Yes,” I said nodding, or tried to nod.

“Interesting,” it said softly.

“What do you see?” it asked after a moment of silence.

“I see a red light behind me in a mass of darkness.”

“So this is what Hell and I look to you.”

“What do you mean?”

“I am the red light and Hell to you is a place of darkness that strips you of your senses.”

“So Hell changes in appearance depending on what I think it should look like?”

“That is the reason why it is unexplored. Oh and by the way, you are not dead... yet. You have merely been sent to what you call Junx, the southern continent of the world known as Arun.”

“But Malakir did not use teleportation on me. It didn’t look like space magic as it seemed to be all types of magic at once.”

“That is because it is a special kind of magic.”

“Please explain.”

“The gods, having feared their own creations to rival them. Which just goes to show you the creator is just as much afraid of his creations than his creations are of him. The gods kept hidden what they call ‘False Rank’.”

“‘False Rank?’”

“The eleventh rank, the rank that their creations can achieve to rival the gods themselves.”

“I need to reach that rank!” shouted my mechanical voice as I forcefully thought those words.

I wanted to attain power that would rival the gods themselves to deter anyone from harming people I care about.

“A mere five year old wishes to get that rank?”

“Yes!”

“... why not? I can give you that rank. I’m bored in this continent anyway,” said the voice nonchalantly.

“... are you planning something?” I asked questioningly, “no one will do something like that without any price to ask.”

“Of course there is a price, but I won’t tell you what it is. You’ll know what it is when you do it. It’s not something you have to find or do because I know you will do it anyway.”

I was still skeptical and asked, “Really? I can’t believe you will do it.”

“I swear upon my name.”

“What is your name anyway?”

“They call me Devil, Satan, Lucifer, and many others, but that is not my real name. My real name is something that has not been uttered in a long while. They might’ve even forgotten,” he said sincerely, “but you do not need to know my name. Call me what you will for now.”

“Alright so how are you going to make me reach that rank?”

“Well first off, I need to know what you are capable of.”

As he said that, the surroundings changed. From the darkness light shone and revealed that I was in a strange forest. The trees looked nothing like I’ve ever seen. They stood at the highest around hundreds of feet tall. The tallest ones had a seemingly large circumference. They had long leaves almost a feet long. The branches were thicker than my body’s arms and legs combined. The bark of the trees were of a dark purplish hue.

The light slowly dimmed as if it was conforming to the forest that grew around me. Small grasses grew near my feet and around me. They had small thorn like spikes at their edges.

I slowly began to feel things as well. The rustling wind, the smell of the forest, the taste of my own mouth as I also began seeing my body. It was the same as the time that Malakir sent me, only I wore different clothes now. I wore a dark purple robe with a small golden Ravenex on the left shoulder.

“Welcome to the Nameless Forest,” said the voice to my right.

I looked there and saw a swirling mass of darkness. It spun around like a whirlpool and in the middle of it was that same red light. It was smaller this time so I wasn’t able to tell any details.

“Here, I want you to look for something.”

“What do I have to look for?” I asked my voice back to normal.

“Just walk and you will know what it is,” said the darkness.

“That does not make any sense at all!” I shouted angrily.

“It makes perfect sense so just go and look for it,” said the darkness commandingly.

Seeing that the darkness was not going to stop until I did what it asked, I just walked randomly behind me. I decided that if I was going to be looking for something, that I will find that something as far away from this crazy darkness as possible.

The grass crumpled as I walked over them. The only sounds that could be heard was my footfalls and the occasional gust of wind that rustled the leaves.

My surroundings didn’t seem to change as I walked but I knew it did as the darkness was no longer behind me. Before long, I started to feel lost as the area around me never changed and nothing else was going on.

I started to panic and ran back to the darkness. Even if it was crazy and annoying, it was better than the silence of being alone in this strange forest.

I ran and I ran but even when I took less the time that I was walking from before, I never seemed to change places. I was completely and utterly lost.

I started to hyperventilate but after it started I began to calm down.

There should be a way for me to find my way here, I thought, Magic is all powerful and is only limited by my own imagination. I have to make my own spells.

I started to think of ways that I could find my way. I had to be able to feel mana in objects. I remembered how Malakir made me feel the mana in the air so I focused my senses into a blade of grass that was in front of me.

At first I couldn’t feel anything but after an hour I started to feel Earth mana from it. Elated, I broke the feeling because of my concentration breaking and I tried it one more time.

Two hours passed and I felt Water mana. Four more hours passed and I felt Wind mana. Six hours and I felt Form.

During this time, the sun never moved above me and I was starting to feel the mana in the ground.

I needed a way to be able to do this quicker so I tried experimenting with magic.

I created a spell called Wind Sight that allowed me to feel the mana in objects as well as its position around me by blowing a gust of wind all around. This was much too obvious so I created another spell with the same idea of Wind Sight only much better. The spell consisted of Wind, Spirit, Arcane, Inner, and Space mana. Since the Space mana on it was not pure, it was weaker by a bit but it still got the job done. The spell would make Space itself freeze for less than a second and give me an image of the area I chose. I could freely choose where and as to how large the area by using only one Space mana. I called the spell Spatial Recognition.

After reaching that, I began to distinguish the many different mana all around me. The ground had an abundance of earth mana but it also had fire, water, wind, and surprisingly, void mana. The trees had water, earth, wind, form, and inner mana.

This made me think that each plant had water, earth, and wind within them. I stopped sensing the area around me as I had an unexpected thought.

Things created by Form mana have no life, it may look like it but any living being created was only similar to a corpse. This was what happened when I first started to use Form magic.

So what would happen if I also added the mana within it, I thought.

I created a blade of grass similar to the ones on the ground. I added mana into it by storing the type of mana in the same places as the ones on the ground.

After creating the plant, I became exhausted as a lot of mana was used to create it. I planted it on the ground and I sensed it create roots.

The plant was alive! I thought, I can’t let anyone know about this.

After testing it out with the plant, I decided to feel the mana all around me and I felt a sphere of mana. It reached a radius of ten meters with me as the center. The sphere was made of space mana and was the cause of me returning in the same spot.

I tried to think of a way to get rid of it with Void magic. I didn’t want to touch it because it might teleport me and Void magic is used in close distance.

I had to think of a remote way of using the magic. And I began practicing.

I practiced it on a small blade of grass in front of me. I used void magic to disintegrate it when it was in my grasp and I watched the mana affecting it.

The Void mana devoured the mana inside the grass and then the grass slowly lost its own form. I tried it again on a different blade of grass as I changed the amount of Void mana within it.

I experimented with different combinations of Void mana and other types of mana to influence the the disintegrating effect.

It ended with me combining Void, Nature, and Arcane mana. I could now use Void magic from afar as well as direct it to only disintegrate what I want.

I called the spell ‘Dispel’ as it could even affect mana itself while not affecting what the mana is infused in.

I used the spell on the sphere surrounding me and it broke. I was finally free. It slowly remade itself and I ran straight to a side that hadn’t started fixing itself and got away.

I kept on running and I found the darkness again. “You’re back,” it said as if it was expecting me. I paused to catch my breath and sat down tiredly. “Did you find what I told you to find?”

I nodded and said, “Yes. I found the different types of mana in everything and how to get rid of the mana.”

“Good,” it said joyfully, “Now we go to your next lesson.”The surroundings changed from the forest into a snowy wasteland.

A tall mountain with no end in sight, completely covered with snow. A strong blizzard blowing through and starting to freeze me. There was nothing in this world but the mountain, the darkness and I.

“Learn how to live in this environment. It will change abruptly all the time.”

And then the snows melted quickly and an extreme heat replaced it. The mountain began leaking magma as it slowly fell down.

The sudden change in temperature made me feel weird and so I began to make myself colder with Wind and Water magic. As I began that, it became snowy again and I changed the temperature around me with Wind and Fire magic.

“Welcome to the Mountain of Frost and Fire,” said the darkness as it seemed to laugh.

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