I’m telling you, man, the Grandmaster has to be disguising himself as one of the rank and file. How else would he have met everyone to send them [Messages], and how else would he know everyone’s name?

He knows everyone’s names because the higher-ups keep files. As for his identity… I really don’t think we should be talking about this. I hear the Grandmaster gets touchy when people ask about who he is.

He can’t be everywhere. Besides, what’s he going to do if he does catch us? Give away his identity by reprimanding us? There’s nothing that-

SHADOWS, ATTENTION!

YES, SIR!

New mission came in, you both were chosen specifically. Memorize the file, burn it, and be ready to move by tomorrow at first light.

YES, SIR!

… Aww man! Escort duty! Why are we getting put on a punishment detail?

Probably because you keep running your mouth. I’m surprised it hasn’t happened before… Wait. What’s that say at the bottom?

You know what… you… did.

Grandmaster! I didn’t ask any questions, I swear! It was all him!

Don’t throw me under the carriage! You were curious, too! Grandmaster! He was curious, too! He also wanted to know your identity!

Meanwhile, an amused Shadow [Commander] overheard their complaints as he was walking away.

I put that in there because he was slacking off on training, but that works, too.

* An amusing incident I watched via [Scry] in the Hero’s Shadow HQ

------

There were some problems going out and fighting with just my sword for equipment. First, I still wanted my armor under the assumption that I would eventually… err… grow back into it?

This might be the most bizarre start to a life I’ve had yet. I thought as I stowed Herobane and started picking up my armor.

The second problem was that while normal swords aren’t exactly heavy (clocking in at less than 5 pounds), the Sanguinite that Herobane was made from was a bit denser than normal steel and caused it to weigh just a few pounds more.

Normally, not a problem. I mean, once I got to the upper teens of levels, it could have weighed 20 pounds, and I likely wouldn’t have batted an eye. As a child who was now significantly lighter and much shorter, I had to wonder if it would be more like Herobane was the one wielding me rather than the other way around.

And then there was the third problem.

“Owwwww,” I moaned as I tripped over nothing and fell head-first into the obelisk.

It was my first day with my new body. And it had also been quite some time since I had a body at all.

And that’s why my first order of business was to get used to the new meat suit… after I got some better clothes on. It took me that long to realize I was only wearing the lightly padded clothes I usually wore under my armor, and they apparently hadn’t resized with my body.

Thus, the tripping.

The good news was that I had my inventory and a few different outfits I could try on.

The bad news was that none of them would resize to me because, apparently, children’s clothes and adult clothes count as different things.

“Stupid world and it’s stupid arbitrary rules,” I grumbled as I tried on set after set, hoping that maybe one of them would be the grand exception.

“Well, this is certainly a throwback,” I muttered as I actually did find the one grand exception. The adventurer’s clothes that I had been summoned here in my very first life immediately resized to me with no problems, and soon I was wearing a small-sized pair of boots, light-brown pants, and a green shirt… that still had the scorch marks from back when I had tried to dry it out in the swamp.

Those are certainly memories. I thought. Then, with a shake of my head, because dwelling on that would remind me of a certain someone, I thought about my next plan.

“I don’t really want to clear the tutorial again,” I groaned in frustration, not quite sure where it was coming from. Then, I had an idea. “I know! I can just teleport out! [Panic Button]!”

I gave the minuscule mana required for the spell with [Cast From SP]… and the spell fizzled.

I realized what I had just almost done and sat down hard.

Wait, wait, wait. I thought. Did I just try to teleport out of here as a literal child? I shuddered. I haven’t checked my abilities to see what will work. I don’t even know if my HP is fine. And I was just about to teleport into the land of the demons, who only obey me because of my strength. I shuddered as I had one final nail for that coffin.

And all this without respawns enabled.

Why the heck would I do that? What am I, a…

“Child,” I murmured. “Holy carp, I was about to teleport out of here because… I was bored of the tutorial and impatient.”

I got up and started pacing. I needed to work this out… but it was also a struggle because a part of me was just screaming to move on and do something interesting. Planning was boring.

Work with me, stupid attention-deficit child brain! I scolded myself. We can at least check the numbers. Right? Numbers go up is good?

There was some grudging consent to that, and I flipped open my status.

Status

Name

Titus

Level

1

Class

Trainee-Demon Lord

Race

Demon Lord

HP

19/20

MP

0/5

SP

50/50

Age

8

“[Trainee-Demon Lord], frick,” I muttered and attempted to swear.

That was obviously the biggest sticking point. I didn’t know much about children in Placeholder, especially since I wasn’t born and raised there, but I did learn a few things just from all of my time spent going around incognito.

Trainee classes were basically glorified sub-classes that let children get some experience in the real class before they turned 18.

Which meant that I was now dealing with the same issue that I had foisted onto Jonathan Andrews, the [Hero] who killed me while I was casting [Restart], because he became a [Hero] at 8.

I didn’t take too long to think about that grim irony. I had the rest of my stats to go over, and it was both bad… and not terrible.

20 HP meant I could be killed by a strong breeze. My stamina was also pretty low, and I had to worry about running out mid-fight again.

But mana wouldn’t prove to be an issue once I got out of the mana-draining tutorial dimension, assuming I could still properly use weapons.

To check, I pulled out Singularity just long enough to see my maximum MP change and watch the mana start to drain.

And, since it worked, that meant that I was basically working with 0/1005 mana instead of 0/1050 mana. Functionally no different.

I should probably just wait the trainee years out. I thought. It’s 10 years, but that’s better than dying.

I nodded to myself… for half a second.

“That’s gonna be so booooooring,” I moaned as I slumped down against the obelisk.

And… my childlike self did have a point.

I can’t practice spells while I’m in here. I can’t work toward an alternative for [[Edit Character]]… I had some ideas for that one during my last long “slumber.” I couldn’t edit my own character, but my “character” wasn’t the only gamelike part of me.

And I won’t be able to contact the Syndicate, the Children of Flame, or-

My eyes widened. “Oh frick, that’s bad,” I blurted out. “The Hero’s Flame will tear those two apart if I’m not [Scrying] on people and giving orders.”

With the last of my time before respawning, I had made some arrangements but…

“Those orders were never meant to hold for 10 years,” I sighed. “I need to get back to Placeholder soon if I want there to be anything left of the Children of Flame or Syndicate.”

I restrained the childish part of me that wanted to immediately rush out and clear the tutorial. Instead, I did something I hadn’t done in quite some time.

I worked through my [Martial Arts] forms.

… Well, about half of them because that was all my attention span could take, but it did the trick.

I quickly worked out how to use my new tiny body, but I did feel very uncomfortable with how small my reach was.

The good news is that I only have to kill ants… and I have a legendary weapon this time around. I pulled out Herobane, two-handing it because that was the only way I felt like I could swing it correctly, and then stalked through the tutorial.

I made sure to find the smallest group of giant ants, a group of three, and then I took a deep breath.

I was having flashbacks from all the struggles I had had in the tutorial. And I couldn’t be sure I would respawn if I died here. My hands were shaking a little, but I moved into the room and shouted.

“Bring it on!”

The three ants obliged and…

I slashed the first ant before it could reach me. It died to the single hit.

I got a bite on my shoulder from the second but stabbed through the monster in retaliation, Herobane’s health stealing enchant putting me back to full.

The third ant grappled my leg, and I just stared at it.

“Well… uhh… GG I guess,” I muttered as I brought Herobane down for a third time.

The enemies were slain, and I took only a single point of damage… that I had healed back.

“Did I really struggle with these guys back in my first life?” I asked the air. “Was I really that… pathetic?”

That was a bit uncharitable, given that my weapon was pretty much carrying me, but it eased my feelings about the tutorial immensely.

I was sure that I could take on the boss immediately, but I had one thing I wanted to check first.

-----

Warrior #23490 was on patrol with Warrior #23491. Nothing was out of the ordinary, just like every other cycle for as long as they could remember.

And then, they ran across the invader.

It was… small. Smaller than 90’s instincts told it that it should be. 91 didn’t care. 91 charged.

90 chirped a warning. Something was wrong. The presence coming from that swarmling-sized intruder matched closer to that of a queen.

And that’s why 90 could only watch in horror as the invader evaded 91’s attack and then killed it with a single strike in return.

90 ran in terror. It had to escape. It had to find others to help. It had to-

90 stopped short as the invader appeared in front of it and stared it down with its mandibles on full display.

90 froze.

There was a brief sensation of heat, and then Warrior #23490 knew no more.

-------

[Fire Strike] definitely wasn’t doing the damage it used to, but that was still more than enough against tutorial enemies.

But that wasn’t the bad news. No, killing elite ants always gave me some levels, enough elites, and I could even hit level 4.

“Still level 1,” I muttered as I checked my status.

Then, I went back to the obelisk room to think.

I always get teleported out of here when I hit level 5. If I can’t do that, there’s no reason to fight the boss.

I slumped. It looked like I would have a boring wait after all.

Then, I remembered something.

Didn’t Pride get out of here? Even though I didn’t get any experience from the kills?

And that’s when I remembered the secondary obelisk that spawns after the boss dies. At worst, it would allow me to teleport out of there like it did for Pride. At best… I think there were some other things I could do with that obelisk that Pride didn’t bother to check on. If it gave me something to do while I was in the tutorial instead of porting immediately as an 8-year-old, that would probably be the better route.

And so it was time to clear the tutorial… for the very last time.

I have to admit I had a few mixed feelings about that. Most of them were that the place was awful and I wouldn’t miss it, but there was a strange part of me that was going to miss my between-respawn scrying sessions and chilling in the inky void.

Since I wasn’t planning on coming back, I made sure to shove dragon parts into my inventory until I was just under my maximum encumbrance… which was a surprising amount given my current age and size, but I guess my levels in [Pack Mule] must have not cared about any of that.

And then it was on to the boss fight.

There were two main parts that I was concerned about with said fight. First, not dying to the acid spit of all the ranged ants. Since it would only take me four hits to bite the dust, that was a bit sketchier than usual. Second was the boss itself once it showed up. While I could try the same trick that I did previously, where I suckered it into the lava flow and then went over-encumbered to sink to the bottom, I wasn’t too sure of my ability to swim against the current.

Getting yeeted by a lavaflow off the edge of the world would have been a bit poetic with how it would bookend my adventure, but also an idiotic way to go that I could easily avoid.

And so, despite my childish impatience, I forced myself to devise plans to deal with both of those things before I went into the boss room.

Then, it was time to put them into action.

The first part was easy. A quick use of the stored mana in Singularity was enough for a single [Blink] to skip past the reckless charge downhill and instead plop me straight into the lava. And I could then fire at the enemies with impunity with [Mage Bolt]. Phase 1 was a shoe-in… until I got bored.

“There’s gotta be a faster way to do this,” I grumbled as I switched to [Wordless Casting] my [Mage Bolts] and slowly whittled down the number of enemies.

The problem was that even the normal ants took 3 [Mage Bolts] to go down… and that was without the dang healer ants topping them off.

I also had to avoid counterfire from the ranged ants. I wasn’t a large target, and that was doubly true since only a part of me was sticking up from the lava, but there were enough enemies that I still had to be careful and dodge on occasion.

Or even spend some time down underneath on the even rarer occurrence where I got hit.

And that would have spelled my end right there if I hadn’t spent so many perk points. [Health Regen – Fast] meant I would heal to full in 10 minutes instead of an hour. Or, what I used it for which was half my health bar in 5 minutes, since that was the edge of my tolerance for sitting around doing nothing.

However, the going was slow enough that even the more rational part of me agreed something had to change.

I could cut through them easily with Herobane if I could reliably get in there and get away. I thought as I took one of my breaks. The issue is that [Flash Step] is on too long of a cooldown to go both ways, and I can’t even afford the cost of a [Blink] with my entire stamina bar and [Cast From SP].

I paused at that thought.

Wait a sec. [Blink] has a range of more than a hundred feet now with all of my skill modifiers. So… what if I made a smaller-range spell? I furrowed my brow in concentration, ignoring the fiery lava and the screeches of the ants outside it.

Stolen novel; please report.

I could even add back in the chant, give it a cooldown… yeah, that could work. I thought. Use the new spell to get in and close the distance, then [Flash Step] out of there if things look like they’re getting dicey.

I nodded to myself. I knew exactly where to make the new spell, too. Somewhere I had the freedom to do exactly the experimentation I needed. A place free of distraction.

I retreated to the Mindscape.

… and was assaulted by a fusillade of bright colors.

Is that… a bounce house? I asked.

“YES!” I shouted, and before I knew what I was doing, I was inside, bounding up and down, doing flips and other maneuvers that I’m sure would have made any poor adult supervisor pale in concern.

Okay, that’s enough now. I gently chided… myself? My inner child? We’ve got work to do if we ever want to get out of the tutorial.

“Fine, I’ll get out of the bounce house,” I grumbled… and then immediately raced over to the play set and ran up it to go down the slide.

I was wasting time. I needed to stop it.

Even though this is kinda fun… No! Bad! I thought, reeling myself back in mentally. This is my mind, right? So my mind should be in control here. Let’s go. Get rid of the playground equipment.

It all disappeared, with my body in the middle of running around on top of it. Fortunately, I was in control there. I made a soft landing on the pure white ground.

Okay, you had your fun, but now it’s time to get to work. I thought to child me.

“Don’t wanna!” I pouted and stuck out my tongue. “I want to play!”

You can play later. I replied. For now, we need to make the spell. I could feel more of an argument coming, but I forestalled it. This place isn’t safe to stay insensate for hours upon hours. We could get caught in the lava flow and dumped into the corruption. Do you want to get corrupted?

“No,” I said with a hefty dose of disappointment.

Then help me make the spell. I swear we can come back into the Mindscape to your heart’s content… after we beat the boss and make sure that everything’s safe.

“You mean it?” I asked. “As much as I want?”

Yes. I lied. As much as you want.

That was enough to get my little worker, who may have also been all in my head, motivated to make the new spell.

We got it whipped up in short order. It turns out that making an underpowered version of a spell I both made and habitually used was pretty easy.

Before I knew it, it was time to give it a test drive.

“Space, warp before me and connect me to my destination,” I gurgled out with a mouthful of lava. “[Telehop]!”

I reappeared 10 feet away, Herobane in hand, and right next to a surprised ranged ant.

My two-handed sword swing dusted it and since I had activated the stamina drain enchant it replenished a good chunk of my stamina bar that had been used up in that single [Cast From SP] spell.

But I wasn’t done with just that. I slashed the one next to it and ignored the few bites that came through because of Herobane’s lifesteal.

I cleared out a twenty-foot swathe before the ranged ants started getting too much room to aim at me, and I quickly retreated to the lava flow with [Flash Step].

It was on the third trip that I realized something.

I’m gaining back more SP than I’m losing in these fights. That means…

“Fire, strike my foes. [Fire Bolt]!” I cast. It required that I take my hand off my sword and a good chunk of my SP, but the bolt flew true and slew a ranged ant. Then, with only two kills, I was already back at full.

But that was very, very good news for my plans. If I could constantly restore my SP and then cast from it, I would be able to train magic indefinitely as long as I was in combat. And since Thomas seemed to think that my manipulation point conversion was inefficient due to low spell skill levels, I thought I might already have enough mana on my island to accomplish my goals if I got enough training.

Assuming I can actually figure out how to take down the OmniverseEngine. I thought, and my mood soured a bit.

I played that thought out more when I was back in the lava pool. I could destroy Placeholder. That would be easy. But if I had any guess of the scale of the System I was inside, that would be a bit like killing a single cell of a human being and claiming I really showed them.

I cleared the first phase before I managed to think of anything helpful. And the second phase was a snooze fest as always with [Elemental Strike]. The elite ants went down to [Fire Strike] after [Fire Strike], though I did have to stop and catch my breath quite often. I didn’t dare use Herobane against them since they could become immune to its attacks by changing their carapace, and also because if I made a single mistake, they could kill me from full health.

By the time I remembered that fact, and that the boss was even scarier, I had already cleared all the elites out and taken the standard 5 HP damage from the boss as it made its starting sonic-damage screech.

But I was prepared. Out came my adamantium crossbow already loaded with an explosive bolt.

… and it was a good thing it was already loaded because there was no way I could draw that thing back in my current state, even with the crank.

I took aim, which was awkward since the crossbow was much too big and heavy for me, and fired.

Just like the last time, there was a crack as my bolt broke the sound barrier, and then an explosion as it hit.

The boss screamed in agony… but lost less than a quarter of its health.

“Dang, I thought that would kill it,” I muttered aloud.

RUN! I mentally screamed as I stashed the crossbow and sprinted for my life.

The boss followed hot on my tail. It reached me, and its pincers snapped shut…

On the spot I had [Flash Stepped] away from less than half a second earlier.

I reappeared at its side and scored a quick slash along its flank with Herobane. It turned to face me, and I would have had to abandon my attack if not for one unique thing about my current form.

For once, I was short enough to run under its legs easily.

It snapped and stomped, trying to pin me down, as I frantically wove back and forth, scouring the underside of its belly with Herobane whenever I got the chance.

And then, the jig was up. Its pincers snapped shut, and I was a hair too slow.

It didn’t actually make contact with me, just my shirt, but that was enough for it to grab hold and toss me bodily across the room.

I went on a high arc and slammed into the wall. My HP bar was practically non-existent, and I had reason to believe that I was only alive because the System decided to give me a concussion and some other injuries instead of finishing me off outright.

I quickly found out that the other injuries included broken legs, and so I was forced to crawl away as the boss approached.

However, the one silver lining was that I had been sent near the entrance, and there was the room where I would usually respawn if I died. And I was in range.

“Space, warp before me and connect me to my destination,” I said through grit teeth as the boss’s pincers came down. “[Telehop]!”

I reappeared on the other side of the doorway, but that would only delay the inevitable by a few seconds. I was still dead unless-

“Oh…” I stated lamely as I watched the boss struggle and nash at the entrance, trying to fit into the small doorway that was nowhere near able to handle its bulk. “Unless that.”

Given that incredibly close call, I was beginning to rethink my plans about heading to the outside world immediately.

I’m sure they can last 10 years. I thought. It was definitely a lie, but one that the throbbing pain in my legs made easy to accept.

Anyway, with my newfound invincible cubby hole, the rest of the boss fight was easy. [Mage Bolt] it until it decided to flee, and then spend a bit of SP casting [Restore] to get me back into fighting shape.

From there, I just had to cheese my way through the fight from the safe room, and, since the boss didn’t seem to have any way to regenerate, it just took a bit of time.

I was awarded with the appearance of the obelisk… and something else that I hadn’t seen for quite some time.

System: New Achievement. Childhood Solo Champion. Class Perk Points Gained 10

System: New Achievement. First Childhood Solo Champion. Class Perk Points Gained 10

System: Congratulations! You have performed a heroic feat at a young age! You have been granted the learning class Trainee-Champion of Placeholder!

System: Error. Couldn’t assign class

“Great, more stuff I can’t use,” I grumbled. Then, I had a realization. Or can I? I asked myself, a grin slowly coming over my face. I have access to admin commands, so I just have to make the perk points usable.

And while I could probably finagle a way to get the class too… It honestly sounded weaker than [Demon Lord]. It sounded more like a second-string [Hero] or one of the classes that Gram had made up during my most recent dirt nap.

Anyway, I shoved that onto the todo list, but it wasn’t at the very top. No, the very top was to finally take a peek at what options that mysterious second obelisk gave.

I wasn’t disappointed.

System : Options

1. Teleport out of the tutorial

2. Tutorial Settings

3. Move to lower floor

“Alright, let’s look at the tutorial settings, then,” I replied.

There were a lot of things under that section. I had options for enemy density, their levels (which were currently set on the lowest value), which factions they would be hostile toward (which I quickly excluded my own, I was tired of fighting ants), and then the one that I had been waiting for.

“Mana drain settings, here we go,” I rubbed my hands together as I selected that one. My stay here would be much more tolerable if I could cast magic.

System : Current mana drain settings

Entity Titus: Full mana drain

All other entities: Drain excess

My eyebrow twitched when I saw that. Annoyance 1 was being called “Entity Titus.” Annoyance 2 was that I was specifically called out while everyone else was listed under “all other entities.”

However, that entry made me pause.

Huh. So, everyone in here got drained? I wonder if by excess it means that it’s siphoning off fractions of points when people are topped off?

That was the only explanation I could think of. No one else seemed to even notice the drain back in my first life.

However, that didn’t matter. What did matter was what I would do next.

“Switch entity Titus to drain excess,” I commanded.

The fake System screen showed a confirmation, and then I was also listed as “Drain Excess.”

But that got me thinking. What if there were other options?

“Set entity Titus to reverse drain,” I commanded with a hint of hesitation.

System : Passphrase verification required. Please speak passphrase

I groaned.

System : Passphrase incorrect. Please retry or exit

I tried to put myself in AltSys’s shoes as I thought it over.

“Screw you, Titus,” I answered.

System : Passphrase incorrect. Please retry or exit

“Screw you, Admin,” I tried again.

System : Passphrase incorrect. Please retry or exit

That played out for several minutes. To be honest, I didn’t have a clue what the enigmatic admin would have set as a passphrase… or why he included stuff like this in the first place.

That would mean that he’s planning on coming here later. I thought. Which means that he has his own plans for this world.

Which told me nothing helpful. It always felt like I knew too little about admins to be able to do anything.

I closed out of that prompt and kept looking at options. It had a lot of useless stuff related to hospitality protocol, even what kind of food was given in the cafeteria, but I didn’t find anything else worth mucking with.

I have to know what that option does. I thought as I went back to the main menu.

“Move to the lower floor!” I commanded.

The ground rumbled hard enough that I almost fell over, and a section of the floor about 10 feet around the obelisk detached and started moving downward.

I wasn’t sure that I liked this anymore.

There’s corruption down there! I thought with a hint of panic.

“Space, warp before me and connect me to my destination,” I shouted as quickly as possible. “[Telehop]!”

I was too slow. The miniscule range wasn’t enough, and my fingers brushed a few inches short of the edge as I fell back down and took a couple points of fall damage for my trouble.

“I’m gonna die! I’m gonna get dumped in the void!” I wailed.

Calm down, calm down. I thought, trying to get myself under control. AltSys wouldn’t make a system like this to dump someone in the void. It would serve no purpose, and everything else in there had a use. So this one has to too!

I felt a bit better as my more rational part took charge.

“Unless the use was to finally kill me off once and for all!” I wailed and began full-on crying.

And that got the rational part of me to freak out, too. It didn’t seem like something that AltSys would do after he put in so much effort to stop me from jumping after the [Restart] ritual, but then again, I couldn’t claim that I knew AltSys that well. If he thought that my death here would be for his benefit in some way, he probably would do it in a heartbeat.

And so I wailed and closed my eyes… until the obelisk and surrounding stone platform thudded into place.

I peaked with one eye.

Well. I’m not dead. I thought.

I got up and brushed myself off, a bit ashamed of my breakdown and very glad no one was there to see it.

And I found myself in a nearly flat, circular arena. Its “walls,” if you could call them that, were only a few feet tall and didn’t seem like they would do much to keep me in. It also had no ceiling, which gave me a nice view up to the main floating portion of the tutorial, where the lava flows were cascading down into the void.

That left me wondering what the arena’s purpose was, but that got answered momentarily.

System : Would you like to summon the special boss?

“Ha! No,” I immediately replied. I had almost died to a normal boss. A special boss that AltSys had specifically created that was only accessible if you somehow beat the tutorial without hitting level 5? Yeah, no. This smelled all sorts of fishy.

However, after going all the way down there, it would have been a shame not to at least take a peek around. So, after ensuring that the obelisk now had an option to return to the main level, I walked around a bit.

There were a few boulders here and there to give it some flavor, but it was mostly just… flat. And boring. Which meant that it was time to check out the walls.

I quickly hopped on top of one and saw that the arena extended a bit further. That made me even more curious about the wall placement, but I answered my question as I looked out into the distance past the edge of the arena platform.

A feeling of wrongness hit. I was looking at something that wasn’t supposed to exist. It was corruption, and only instincts formed over many lives being a [Demon Lord] saved me as I immediately shoved off the wall back into the arena.

A black scar in reality knifed through the area I had just been. Simultaneously, I got a notice from the System.

System: WARNING! Corruption detected! Quarantining!

Before my eyes, the black scar vanished and was replaced by… it was replaced by…

“What is this?” I asked as I walked up to it with a frown. It seemed like a white version of the void, but somehow… emptier. If that was even possible.

I needed to leave as soon as possible; there were way too many dangers and unknowns.

So, that’s why, using all of my 8-year-old willpower, I immediately went up and poked the “quarantined” area.

I probably should have won a Darwin award right there, but the good news was that it didn’t seem to do anything aside from making my arm feel numb.

“Okay, that’s enough near-death experiences for today,” I said as I tried to shake the feeling back into my arm. “Let’s go back up and figure out what I’m going to do with the next 10 years.”

The way up was a lot less terrifying than the way down, and I kept my eyes open.

That void really does just go on forever. Or maybe there’s a boundary somewhere at the end? I mused. Hard to think that the area beneath it’s all corrupted.

I shifted my gaze a bit lower to look down into the shifting corruption.

That was a near-fatal mistake.

In response to simply being looked at, a spear of corruption lanced out of the area beneath the tutorial, and it nicked my ear as I dodged to the side at the last second.

The good news was that the System was on it.

System: WARNING! Corruption detected! Quarantining!

The bad news was that the System wasn’t on all of it.

System: ERROR! Protected Entity corrupted! Alerting all available admins!

System: ERROR! No admins available! Dumping memory for affected section in 5 minutes!

I really didn’t like the sound of that. Nor did I enjoy the feeling as my ear slowly became more corrupted.

It should have been painful. My body should have been telling me that something was wrong.

It didn’t. If I hadn’t known what was happening, I might not have even suspected it beyond the growing sense of wrongness I felt. I felt like everything that made me… well… me… was slowly being whittled away.

My body tried to panic again, but I managed to shut that down.

It called for admins, so they have to be able to do something here. I thought as I ignored my rising panic. And I can feel a part of me resisting. Probably [Memory Protection]. So, I just have to find some way to stop the spread.

I quickly pulled out Singularity and tried to make manipulation points, or at least, the fraction of a fraction of a manipulation point that my remaining mana would get me. I didn’t know exactly what to do with them, so I sort of just shoved them toward my corrupted ear.

That pushed it back… for less than a second. After that, it seemed to grow even faster, and there was only one thing to do.

You better not screw me on this, System. I thought in what might pass as the closest thing I had done to prayer in quite a while.

I pulled out my sword and quickly slashed at my ear..

My HP yoyoed as I dropped to next to nothing, and then the lifesteal kicked in to bring me back to about half health.

Fortunately, my gambit paid off as the corrupted piece of me fell to the ground, and the System took care of the rest.

System: WARNING! Corruption detected! Quarantining!

And then, it was over. The countdown was terminated. I fell to the ground with a sigh of relief, and pulled out a spare wand to [Restore] my ear.

“Corruption… is terrifying,” I muttered.

And that meant I had found a possible weapon.

If I ever want to take down the OmniverseEngine, then corrupting it has likely always been the goal. I thought. But, I don’t think I can just bring some up with me to Placeholder. Placeholder’s cut off, and I think the quarantine would stop it from spreading too far anyway.

I frowned as I continued that thought process. “So, the only way corruption would help is if I could get a ‘protected entity’ into a different world with more connections.” I snorted. “If only I had something so… convenient.”

I trailed off.

More connections… Protected entity… Source of corruption.

“Holy carp, I have my plan,” I muttered.

I had all the pieces in play. It would just require the death of the current [Hero], a few judiciously used admin functions, and a daunting number of manipulation points.

Thomas thought that magic skills were the key to getting more manipulation points per mana. So… I guess I start on that. Time to get my conversion efficiency up.

The good news was that I even had 10 years alone in the tutorial to practice without distractions. That would definitely get me started on the right foot.

------

Spoiler alert: I didn’t get anywhere close to 10 years. I got, at best, maybe a year and a half.

As for how I spent that year… well, most of it was studying the various pieces of magic scattered around the tutorial.

Examining the secondary obelisk let me work out the scrying spell I got to use while waiting to respawn, which I took to calling [Advanced Scry]. With that spell and Singularity, I could mostly keep tabs on my secret organizations and stop the Hero’s Shadow from murdering the entirety of the Syndicate and the Children of Flame.

… They still got a pretty big chunk, though. The Hero’s Shadow was very good at what they did.

Anyway, I also got to peek under the hood at all of the messages I got from AltSys’s alias while in the tutorial. I reworked that spell into [Delayed Message] but couldn’t quite get all of the conditional triggers down to fully match the original.

Then there was the illusion magic hiding the mimic I had died to oh so long ago. I was incredibly bummed to find out that it was just [Major Illusion], which I had effectively learned twice before.

Getting all those figured out prompted me to reactivate hospitality protocol, which perhaps bore the most fruit.

The electric discharge it did before verifying my “mana fingerprint” didn’t seem to be there for anything but flavor, and even if it wasn’t, I was already pretty confident in my [Electricus] casting. However, the mana fingerprinting thing was at least worth enough to study just to get another [Deprendio] spell in the mix.

The biggest learning opportunity from the tutorial was definitely in [Spatius], though. I needed to return to the tutorial to use the corruption. So, I figured the only way that would be possible would be to create an [Interdimensional Teleport Beacon]. It went together quickly thanks to all of the space magic examples I had to work with. I mean, the setup was spinning up and winding down pocket dimensions on the fly and then creating stationary gates into them that filtered people out based on their party, so I had plenty of inspiration.

… Though, that last bit was more [Deprendio] magic, and I had to admit that it mostly went over my head. I could probably have replicated the exact same spell, but I had no clue how it worked.

I feel like there’s a programming metaphor there.

Everything else aside from [Spatius] was hardly worth the effort. There were a slew of “summoning” spells for making various food items I just bundled up under [Create Food]. There were a few [Ignis] and [Frigis] spells in the mix for heating or cooling bath water, which at best served as a reminder that those schools were actually heat and cold, not fire and ice. There were some [Terris] ones for moving the earth around to make the doors. Finally, there was even an [Aeris] one for blow-drying people after they took a bath or shower.

The last one I learned just for giggles and named it [Breeze].

And that kinda sums up my problem with learning in the tutorial. I was in the body of an 8-year-old, and almost had the attention span to match. If it wasn’t interesting, it got put aside. If I had been working too long, I treated myself to breaks in the MindScape.

And the MindScape was the actual disaster here.

Would any of you trust a bored 8-year-old, even the most mature one, with essentially omnipotence inside of their own realm?

No. Of course not.

The playgrounds and bounce castles were okay. I mean, fair. I could use some relaxation every once in a while.

The attempts at recreating candy and junk food from vague memories I never really had were probably a bit concerning.

However, the big one was video games.

I had never actually played video games due to my creation as an NPC. However, as a part of my creation, I was given an in-depth understanding of the games themselves, probably so that I could talk to any “nerd” PCs. That, in turn, meant I could recreate pretty faithful adaptations solely in my mind to be a couch potato and relax.

And just like I would have if I had been given the chance back on Earth, I spent a bit too much time on them.

------

Are you just going to sit around and game all day again? I rumbled to my childish self inside the Mindscape.

“Why not?” child me asked while chomping on some chips that I thought might be nacho cheese flavored but had no way to compare.

It’s a waste of time.

“Not more of a waste than plotting world domination or whatever,” child me waved me off with his game controller.

I’m not plotting world domination. I’m-

“Yeah, yeah, taking revenge on whoever put this System together in the first place,” child me rolled his eyes. “You sound just like every villain ever.”

Since I was losing an argument with a 9-year-old, I pulled an adult move.

I switched off his console.

“Hey!” he shouted.

Time to get back to work.

“I was having fun. Do you remember what fun is?” he asked.

Fun doesn’t matter. I snapped back. I have a goal and we have to-

“And I say your goal is stupid! Why couldn’t you just make a goal of making video games in Placeholder? You’re good at illusions and the best [Enchanter] in the world probably!” little me protested. “Instead, you’re just going to hurt a bunch of people for no good reason!”

I wanted to throttle… myself. And at that point, I desperately wished that this multi-personality issue counted as a condition, but apparently, [Restore] thought I was perfectly healthy.

I took a moment to compose myself.

Even if I wanted to live like a civilian, at this point, it’s too late. I thought at my younger self. You remember the prophecy? The one Thomas thought he was fulfilling? Yeah, I have less than a century left before that comes calling and I’m wiped out for good.

“So? Normal people live less than a century anyway. That’s like an eternity,” child me said, flipping back on the console. “Just stop worrying about it so much. It’s not like it’ll bring Megan back.”

And at that, I saw red.

The Mindscape was forcefully shut down, and little me stumbled as I returned to my senses.

And then, it was a war as both parts fought for control.

The childish part of me just wanted to stay there and play video games.

But it was up against a several centuries old [Demon Lord] who was done playing around.

I forced my body to walk past the friendly tutorial enemies all the way to the second obelisk and prepared to port out.

“Wait, wait!” my body shouted. “Stop! You don’t want to-”

Yes, I do. I replied mentally as I touched the stone. Teleport me out.

With that, my older self triumphed for good. There was no way I would feel safe enough in the outside world that I could go insensate for hours at a time in the Mindscape, so I would likely not touch the thing until I was fully an “adult” again.

However, that wasn’t the only reason it hadn’t been so smart to teleport. If I had remembered what had happened with Pride I would have known that, unlike the normal teleport, I didn’t get to select my destination.

System: The realm trembles as a new Demon Lord is born! Demon morale has been restored, and darkness begins its nefarious plans to conquer the world

Faroff? I thought in panic as I saw the System text appear. No! This is the worst possible spot! I need to get out of here because-

“Hey, is that a kid?” Alder, the [Hero] asked as he cautiously approached with 9 shadows following him.

The [Hero’s] here. I could only watch as I was encircled.

Frick.