A radiant white fog was covering everything in sight, but it still failed to conceal anything from my all-seeing eyes. How long has it been since the last time I had enough mana to actually cause white fog to appear? Ages, surely.

I tentatively turned around, marvelling at the physical manifestation of mana that surrounded me. I reached out and grabbed a handful of air, but there was no sensation coming from it. The air was as stale as ever, not like it would have been like if what surrounded me was real fog.

Is there a stage after this? Could mana perhaps liquefy, or even become solid? If it did, what would it look like? Like regular ice, only glowing?

I let my hand fall to my side. There are more important things right now. Like putting all of this mana to use.

I flew into the air, carefully inspecting all of the landscapes I had made whilst evading the massive ball of dirty water hovering above the tower.

Soon, I was so far up that I could easily see the whole word, including the round sea surrounding my little island.

The patchwork rug of colours under me needed some remodelling anyway. It wasn’t…varied enough. At least that’s what my sense of beauty told me. Not that it had ever been reliable, but there was no one else to assist me right in this little world of mine.

With but a thought, a massive grey stone blocked my vision completely.

What the- I stumbled away from it. This isn’t how it’s supposed to be. Something of this size should have taken far more time to appear. Putting my hand on its rough surface, I noticed that the mana concentration hadn’t sunken as much as I had expected it to.

I flew back a bit in order to be able to view it in its entirety.

It was miniature mountain made of a uniform piece of grey stone, its rough edges causing it to look like it had been broken off by some force. It gradually became smaller towards its top, ending in a sharp peak.

I rotated it a bit, but no matter how much I did so, the quasi-mountain stayed the same. But no matter how I turned it, it left a strange feeling of being incomplete. Mountains aren’t supposed to be perfectly symmetric. They should be…how exactly is a mountain supposed to look like? There are so many types of them, all of different colours and different vegetation…which I can’t imitate.

I sighed. This inability to create life seriously got in the way of many attempts to reproduce environments. I guess some barren rocks will have to do then.

After literally kneading the rock by using my close to omnipotent powers, I finally managed to make it resemble a mountain. Sure, it was quite deformed and sort of ugly but I could remodel it whenever I wanted to, which was anytime but then.

Looking around for a bit, I finally dropped the mountain onto a grey area. The ground started quaking, but with a thought it instantly settled down.

With the original mountain in mind, I quickly created a few replicas and covered the grey ground with them until there was almost nothing left. Sadly, the “mountain range” that I created looked more like a serious eyesore of a hilly landscape.

I scratched my head. Okay, this isn’t supposed how it’s supposed to look like. In the future, I seriously need to study mountain ranges, or spend some time remembering how the hell they look like. I live in the vicinity of one anyway, so I guess I’ll pay it a visit once I’m strong enough.

Off in the distance, the sea was wildly surging; some waves even managing to come close to where I was flying. In fact, the whole island I had created was slightly wobbling from side to side.

I could feel a smile spreading on my face.

Snipping my fingers, the mountains flew into the air and fell down again, the impact of them landing at the same time visibly heaving one end of the island into the air.

I should do this more often.

Noticing the lack of visible mana in the air, I decided to put playing with my world on hold. I should probably focus on being productive, not playing around like this.

With that in mind, I refilled the fires I had depleted and left after making sure they wouldn’t be implicated by the raging sea.

When I opened my eyes again, the sight of an empty room greeted me. There was a faint wooden smell in the air, mixing itself with the stink of the sweat on my body. The sun was still in its zenith, and the air was so humid it was stifling.

Owen and Frank had probably already left to spar or something similar since they usually didn’t take too much when doing something in their core spaces. It wasn’t the first time, since I tend to get immersed in the strangest things when I’m visiting my world.

Though it was still quite hot outside, the constant wind swirling around the Academy grounds during summer served to reduce the heat by a lot. I’ve been told that they only added it recently, but the reason for the delay continued to elude my mind.

“Late as usual, huh?” Frank said from behind me.

I swirled around, breaking into a grin as soon as I saw the undisguised excitement in his eyes. “I guess you want to have a little spar?”

He grunted, proceeding to walk next to me. “If I were you I’d be careful, you were barely able to beat me even before our power up, and that was only due to your stronger body.” He raised his fist, clenching it in front of his chest. “Now that the gap has become non-existent,” His head shot up, a pair of ferocious blue eyes staring at me. “I’ll pay you back hundredfold for your little beatdowns.”

“Oooh, seems like someone’s pretty motivated? Don’t worry, I’ll beat that out of you before you can count to ten,” I replied, staring back with an even greater intensity.

“Hey hey, did I just witness an official challenge?” Owen, who had at some point of time appeared between us and wrapped his arms around our necks, said “Guys, John and Frank are going to duke it out!”

Some spectators in the training field, which was still a few dozen meters away, instantly stopped what they were doing and started exchanging mana cores with others, probably betting on the outcome of our battle. Shouldn’t they be discussing something like this before making bets?

I glanced at a smiling Owen. Did he already anticipate that me and Frank are going to fight?

I took a roll of bandages out and started wrapping them around my fists, taking care to add some extra layers around the knuckles and the middle of my palms.

Then, drawing from my core, I started circulating as much mana as I could through my body before leaping into the training grounds. The thing that I didn’t anticipate though was that I wouldn’t really sink into the sandy grounds, which turned as hard as rock after a few centimetres.

Not so soft after all.

I stumbled a few steps from the unexpected resistance, but managed to gracefully balance myself again.

Behind me, I could hear Frank’s feet digging into the yellow sand. “Why do you always choose this rotten excuse of a sparring ground? It’s pretty damn hard to move around in here without falling onto your face, you know?”

I breathed in and out in a controlled manner, rapidly shifting my weight from foot to foot while punching into the empty air. “It’s a challenge, that’s why I like it.” Stopping for a moment, I watched him doing his own warmup routine. “And we wouldn’t want to have your pretty face hit a stony surface, would we?”

He gave me a toothy grin. “Yeah yeah, very funny. Let’s get down to business, will you?”

Owen stepped between us, blocking Frank from my sight. “The usual?” he asked, continuing after a nod from both of us, “Okay then, the first one to hit the ground with his head loses. You are only allowed to use your core for support, direct attacks with them are forbidden!” He jumped away, leaving me and Frank alone.

Without wasting any time, I sprinted forward with my hands raised in front of my face.

Frank sidestepped, throwing a quick jab at my still rapidly moving self. Stomping my foot into the ground, I used a gust of wind to blow myself away and shoot some sand into his face.

He didn’t seem to be fazed by that, however, as he continued his relentless assault with another punch aimed at my face. I used another gust to turn my jump into a summersault, but I suddenly felt a fist hammer down on my stomach.

I spat out a bit of spit, but managed to focus enough to turn around a little bit in order to land on my hands and feet. Jumping up again, I managed to get away even further despite losing some dearly needed time.

Just in time it turned out as Frank’s next strike, a hook, was already dangerously close to my face.

Time for a gamble.

Gritting my teeth in case this failed, I Stepped closer and elbowed him in the rips before his attack could connect. Not leaving him any time to recover, I hit him in the pit of his stomach for good measure and wrapped my arms around his ribcage.

“Gotcha!” I shouted, sweeping his legs under him and falling down with him in front.

“Nope!” Frank shouted back.

Wha- Before I could even finish thinking, the world had started spinning rapidly.

A sudden impact later, I was staring at the spotlessly white clouds above.

“Whelp, so much for beating the crap out of me,” he said with a smug smile on his face that made me want to bash his face into the next rock. He turned around, facing Owen who looked as if he had just swallowed a lemon. “Owen, I think you owe me an ant core.”

I sighed, closing my eyes and letting my head sink into the sand. How the hell did he do that? There was no way, unless…Unless he used something to rotate himself. Like a few well-placed gusts of air. Fuck, how could I not expect something like that?

I reached my hand out to him, which he grabbed and used to hoist me to my feet. Brushing the sand off my clothes, I said, “Good job. I didn’t expect that.”

Frank, who was gleefully accepting a few dozen smaller cores, nodded at my words. “To be honest, I also thought that it was over. You can thank my brain for being so damn intelligent for that.”

I rolled my eyes. Can’t that bastard be humble for once?

I quickly discarded that ridiculous thought. It’s Frank, so he probably wouldn’t change that particular trait of his even if the sky came down on our heads.

Dammit, I didn’t even get to properly warm up. Hopefully the next fight will be a bit longer.

Cracking my knuckles, I turned to face the biggest mass of spectators I could find. “So, who’s next?”