I made steady progress over the next few days. Now that I'd figured out the Modus Operandi of Imaginary Space, things became just a matter of muscle memory. Hey, the brain is a muscle too! In my former life, I'd risen to the top not just through sheer brute force, but also intelligent power plays. Musclemen were dime a dozen in the gangster community. The ones with intelligence are the dangerous ones. People like Jimmy Cron and I, calling the shots and directing the muscleheads behind the scenes. In any case, manifesting my ability no longer proved difficult, though I do still need to focus and concentrate for it to work. It can't be helped. Space magic is indeed a difficult Attribute to master and one that requires utmost visualization, spatial awareness and understanding, and heuristics. I still have a long road to go before I can call myself adept at Imaginary Space.

A hole the size of my arm materialized in space. It remained for several seconds before disappearing. Yes. This is definitely progress.

I'd experimented with Imaginary Space over the past few days, and made the following discoveries:

1. Out of curiosity, I'd tried tossing a pencil into my Imaginary Space in the brevity of time that Imaginary Space remained open. To my surprise, the pencil had passed right through it instead of entering the imaginary space portal like I'd anticipated. I repeated the experiment with several other common household objects, but they yielded the same results. It was as if Imaginary Space was immaterial, the way everything phased through it. But if that was the case, then how did the clowns and I fit in the Arch-demon's imaginary space? Had he altered the ability to render it useless? (it would be a very diabolical and demonic thing to do, but I didn't think that was the case.) Did it only fit humans? (I dared not test this conjecture lest I be missing a few fingers upon the sudden disappearance of Imaginary space)

2. I can currently sustain Imaginary Space for 7 seconds at most. No more, and sometimes a lot less. With practice comes perfection. I'd not had a lot of practice. My practice sessions were limited to times when I was sure I would be uninterrupted. Although my parents recognized my maturity, I'm still their 6 year old boy. And I can't exactly tell them the truth, can I? That their little kid is actually a gangster with demonic powers. So I bide my time. I strategically planned my training sessions and most frequently sacrificed a portion of my bedtime to do so. (I'd insisted on sleeping by my own in my own room. After many attempts at persuasion, they'd finally relented.)

3. I'd attempted to recreate objects in imaginary space after seeing the Arch-demon's application of creating clowns.

My efforts were rewarded by the briefest, most fleeting sight of a pencil (the object of my imagination) floating in Imaginary Space before both the pencil AND the Imaginary space portal collapsed. It is one thing to visualize and materialize a three dimensional portal. It is exponentially more Herculean to concurrently picture both the portal and an object in three dimensions.

4. Time can be influenced to flow differently in Imaginary Space, though this is entirely based off the Arch-demon's words. I have no way to verify the veracity of his claim. For the time being, ironic though it may seem, I decided to put my faith in the demon's words.

After conducting experiments and jotting down results for the past few days, I'd gathered enough data to do some analysis.

Discovery number one revealed that all physical objects (to my current knowledge) are unaffected by Imaginary space. This gave me reason to hypothesize that imaginary space is by nature immaterial and hence will only effect immaterial matter. I had this epiphany while studying my notes and randomly remembering one of the Arch-demon's comments I'd dismissed at the time. I can't recall his exact verbiage, but I do remember he said something along the lines of him withdrawing my soul or consciousness from my body before my death. A soul fits the definition of Immaterial. That'd given rise to my current hypothesis. That was the good news. The bad news is that the spectrum of things that I can use imaginary space on became exponentially smaller. More things are material than not, after all.

Another thing that puzzled me was the duration of Imaginary Space. It can't be very practical to be in a constant state of concentration to reaffirm the stability of Imaginary space. The Arch-demon was casually having a conversation while hosting such a large space, after all. Is it just intellect? Why is he able to accomplish such a difficult feat so casually? What does an Arch-demon have that I, a six year old, don't?

The answer is obvious. Magic. To be precise, sheer magical energy. The Arch-demon probably has loads of it. A six year old has... Well, a six year old's crude magical energy. The sheer disparity in quantity was the most obvious answer. Or perhaps my pride refused to acknowledge a vastly superior intelligence incomparable to my own. Whatever the case, I decided to attribute it to magic quantity until proven wrong.

Maybe I should try infusing a large amount of magic into my Imaginary space. I mused. Preferably a small one. My objective would be to sustain the portal for as long as possible with minimal concentration, under the assumption that a small portal would consume less magical energy than a big portal. I wasn't worried about splurging on magical energy. I'd learned from the book that it recovers naturally over time. Besides, a six year old like myself wouldn't have much of a need for magical energy anyway.

Here goes nothing...