Mia was currently reading a really old book, well, a transcript of a very old book. It seems that there are various spells to copy the contents of books into other places, mostly blank books.

The good part is that this book might have information on what Gina once told her about how mana came into the world, the bad part? Whatever Mia finds, she can never tell anyone. This book is so old that even spell made to translate stuff don't work on the language of the book so the fact that Mia can read it like any normal book would put way too much attention on Mia. Attention of people who probably would do anything to get to her.

The people around Mia didn't really notice what exactly she was reading so she had that going for her. As for the actual contents of the book, it was a diary of some sort. Whoever wrote the book had a very strange life, at least as far as she was able to read.

The writer of the book was someone named Ziliks. He was a human that lived in the continent during the times just after mana started to settle in the world. He luckily was part of the aristocratic class of whatever place was his home. This was before the Ancient Kingdom of the continent came to be.

Apparently, someone employed the author to follow someone around and write about what they found and that he did. This man, due to the mana, learned some kind of magical ability that let him 'see' everything around him in detail. At first it was almost a useless thing, but as he began to walk around with the man he was following, his ability was getting stronger and stronger, to the point he was able to tell how many blades of grass were in a certain point, and the man wrote about it. He also encountered a lot of people who were just learning to use mana in some way. Those encounters usually resulted in the man he was following being hit by some sort of spell that they spent a few days trying to dispel. The most memorable one so far was one that changed the man sex and they had to fake a wedding to get the cure.

There are some mentions that the man the author was following was looking for a god of some sort so maybe she will find some information about what Gina explained to her in this book.

As Mia was making progress on the book, she suddenly felt strange, like the air got heavier around her. Nobody besides her seems to have noticed. In a bit of a panic she got up and tried to walk around the library a little to see if this was something that was normal but she didn't say anything in case it wasn't. If someone was trying to do something to her in specific, not getting into a fight inside the library was the best for now.

She walked a little, went all the way to the third floor to put the book she was reading back in place when she was suddenly accosted by a middle-aged man with the uniform of the academy staff.

“Quite the book you have there. Did you manage to read it?” The man asked Mia as she was putting the book back on the shelf.

“What? Who are... It's you! Why are you using a spell on me? Here of all places? I will shout for help if you don't explain yourself!” Mia said somewhat angrily but carefully enough to not be too loud.

“Ohoho. I must be getting rusty if you noticed my little spell. So, who are you gonna call for help?” The man said, amused.

“I will blow a hole in the wall and call the principal!” Mia said somewhat more seriously. This man was not an ordinary person. She felt like she was staring at her dad when he got serious, if not worse.

“I don't think he will do much.” The man said as if he was privy to a joke Mia wasn't.

“...You are the principal, aren't you?” Mia asked. She didn't know if it really was him but if it wasn't him, it was better to know now.

“You are a smart one. It usually takes a few months until someone finds me out, even when I make this so obvious. Let me drop this disguise.” The man said, revealing himself as the principal in all his glory. Once the illusion dropped, Mia knew one thing for certain. This man was in another league compared to everyone she knew. He was suppressing himself a lot but Mia could instinctively feel how powerful the man was. If she ever fought him seriously, she didn't know if she could even make a move before she died.

“Ugh, hello Mister Principal. What do I owe the honor?” Mia asked, more than a little confused.

“I heard a lot of things about the strongest mage student in the history of the academy so I had to take a look at her myself.” Mia was shocked. She knew she was way above average in relation to magic but being told that she was the strongest mage to ever enroll here as a student was really a surprise.

“Thanks?”

“You are welcome. So, you only had a basic review of magic as far as I am aware. Do you think we are up to par with what you know?” He asked seriously.

“Professor Mirai explained things really easily and it looks like she knows a lot about magic so I think I will learn more than enough but I don't think I will have much use for most of it. I don't even use magic like everybody, as you know, so unless I learn the theory behind the spell I don't think I will learn much in the way of applicable knowledge.” Mia explained.

“Wait, what? How do you use magic?” The principal asked, really confused.

“Uh? Professor Mirai probably didn't have time to give you a report yet. I can use spells without having to align mana nodes and all that. I can just imagine and think about what I want to do and once I put mana into it the spell just forms. They are also way more efficient and powerful than what normal people can do, at least from what I saw so far. Here, take a look.” Mia said as she created a ball of light.

The man looked at the ball of light for a few seconds and began to laugh like a mad man. He at least had the courtesy to use some sort of spell to make sure he wasn't heard by anyone but Mia and Onyx, who was following her.

“Mia, was it? You are a very interesting girl. Why don't we have a more in depth discussion about magic somewhere we can actually use it?”

“...Sure.” Mia answered after thinking for a moment. On one hand, she could just say no but that didn't seem to be a good idea, not because the principal seemed to be a dangerous man, but because Mia actually wanted to know more about magic and he seems to be the best one for the job. On the other hand, she might be misreading everything and walking straight into a trap. In that case, even if she said no, the man could just kidnap her.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“Ok. I will be waiting at the front of the building. It would be disrespectful to not say bye to your friends.” He said before opening a portal to the outside and leaving. Mia quickly said her goodbyes, saying that something came up but that she plans to visit the library as much as possible so they don't need to worry.

As soon as she left the building, the principal signaled for her and opened a portal to what Mia understood to be his office. The first thing she noticed there was that this place was bigger on the inside than the outside.

His office was on one of the towers that were close to the walls of the academy and looking from the outside the office, if it was the last floor of the tower, shouldn't be much bigger than her classroom.

“It's bigger inside than outside. Is it special magic? Or is it that the materials used make this space bigger inside it? Does it uses mana from the ambient to maintain itself? What happens if there is a hole on the wall? The space itself is maintained or it will be like a balloon and everything will spill outside? Did you make it? How much bigger can you make an place like this in relation to the outside?” Mia began to rapidly ask the principal as the questions popped in her mind.

“Slow down. I am not going anywhere.” He said, trying to calm Mia down before she had him write an essay about his office.

“...Ok.”

“First, it's dimensional magic, my almost original form of magic. No, the walls are normal stone. Yes it uses my mana to maintain itself but it is charged to stay stable for the next 500 years or so. I don't know what happens if you punch a hole on the wall as you would have to break the spell maintaining the space first and I don't want to test it nor can I do it as I am the originator of the spell. You can make a place like this as big as you want as long as you have mana as far as I am aware.”

“Is dimensional magic something like creating a dungeon? Creating another world?”

“...You are not that far off. For the most part you create a pocket dimension that is anchored somewhere or on something.”

“Where is this pocket dimension then? From the outside we are in your office but are we really there? You can't put something big inside something small.”

“This place is between this reality and the next one.”

“Is your portal also dimensional magic?”

“No.”

“What is it?”

“It is just a normal portal spell, a bad one at that. Since we are inside the academy, I can just create these portal doors anywhere. If I was outside I would have to use some more complicated spell to open them.”

“What happens if you create a really big pocket dimension in one place and try to portal yourself out to the same place you are, but outside, after leaving the area where the pocket dimension would compare to the outside?”

“You can only leave a pocket dimension via its entrance, one that you have to put in yourself when you create it.”

“So even if I create another exit while inside the pocket dimension, it will look for the entrance I used to enter?”

“Yes.”

“What if I or someone else close it while I am inside?”

“You... I don't know...” He said with a smile after thinking for a minute.

“Another thing. The windows. I can see outside but we are not outside. Is it a spell reflecting what is outside or I am really seeing outside?”

“The borders of the dimension are weakened just a little bit so I can see outside. From outside they aren't able to see us though.”

“If I created a place like this, what would it be like? Would it have air? A floor? Light? Does time flow normally here?”

“A basic pocket dimension is devoid of anything but its borders. So at first it would only have the ground, walls and roof. But there would be no light, no heat, no cold, no time, no anything.”

“So if I put a hot meal inside one, it will stay the same even if I take it outside months later?”

“In theory, yes. But once you open a pocket dimension it starts to assimilate with the place it's connected to via its entrance. The air, heat, cold, etc... Here is all from the outside.”

“What if you closed the dimension and only opened when you needed it?”

“Closing the entrance is the same thing as collapsing the dimension.”

“Why? Because it stops receiving mana? Isn't this place actually somewhere? If you closed the entrance everything inside here would just vanish or stay in 'here'? What would happen if they recreate this place? Would everything stay in place like before or would the new dimension push everything to give you an empty space and everything that was in this area before would stay 'outside'?” Mia began to rapidly ask again.

“Girl, how old are you?”

“10. Can you create a pocket dimension inside another one? Can you access another dimension inside another one?”

“No.”

“What if you created another dimension touching this one? Would you be able to walk freely between them somehow? You also said you could anchor a pocket dimension into an item, does that mean the dimension moves along with the item or it will always stay in the same place it was created?”

“It is an interesting theory but I have never been able to test...” He tried to say but was cut off by Mia.

“Does the size or quality of the item affect the dimension in any way? Does it have to be an item with space inside it or it can be anything? Can you teach dimensional magic to me? Do you think I could take a chunk of land and put it inside a ring? It would be nice to have a house anywhere.”

“Yes. Those are relevant but you can...”

“Do you have a pocket house principal? It would be cool to have a castle always available to you, wouldn't it?A nice forest would too, maybe some farms too, imagine, always having access to food. Then when everything is in place I can get some friends and family for Onyx, a whole forest for them to play. And then a dragon. Dragons are cool aren't they?” Mia had lost it. The brakes were off and she either reached her destination or crashed along the way.

“Dragons are indeed worthy of admiration. Their magic still fascinates me.” The principal added.

“Right? If I had a dragon friend, I could just put him into my portable castle as a guard and call him anytime I need him. I would have to have some animals there for him to eat too but that wouldn't be a problem. Do you think dragons need mana to breathe fire or it is something they do normally?”

“Studies suggest both answers are valid. At least for true dragons, not the monster types.”

“Do ice dragons breathe ice or cold flames? In case of cold flames, how does it work? Fire is normally just air burning, isn't it? Unless it is purely magical fire so it doesn't really care about what nature wants.”

“Yes. Mana can completely inverse what happens naturally as if it was natural. Did you know that it's impossible to create natural light with magic?”

“Really? I never tried. But it shouldn't be. I mean, yes, if you create something of the light element it becomes almost glass, but if you can create water, wind, fire, earth, metals, etc... you should be able to create whatever natural light is, right? We can see it, it exists so there is no reason for it to not be recreated with someone that can recreate anything as far as we know.”

“I never thought about it.”

“First we have to find what exactly light is. Then we copy it.”

“Yes. Let's try.”

On that day, a friendship like no other blossomed. An old man who liked nothing more than studying magic and a girl who wanted to know everything about it began a journey that would flip the world on its head.