A few seconds after "Steve" disappeared, the old man re-entered the room.

-"By the way, if you want a guide, don't hesitate to as..."

- "Steve?"

The old man's face turned ashen in a single second, his mind racing at a thousand thoughts per second, he turned and left the room quietly, slowly closing the door on his way out, as if trying to escape from a sleeping dragon's cave.

As he left the room the old man stood silently staring into nothingness, this lasted so long that his assistant could not restrain herself from asking what was wrong, he had never seen her elder, an elder of Mt. Green act so lost before.

His assistant's voice interrupted his murky thoughts, he turned to look at him for a long minute and said slowly.

- "we were wrong, I should have seen it when he presented me with an eternal flame, something like that is not something a mere mortal can do, how mowed down I was, with how disrespectful I was to him, that he did nothing to punish my insolence is a godsend, if I had tried to arrest him for the little inconvenience with the disciple who knows what fate would have awaited us, my greed may have saved us this time."

- "what do you mean old man?"

- "I re-entered the room 5 seconds after leaving it and he was no longer inside, he disappeared as if he had never existed."

- "that's not so strange is it? There are some techniques that allow teleportation, although rare, it shouldn't be something so surprising, right?"

- "if it was just that I wouldn't be so worried, but not only did it disappear, but it didn't leave any trace of qi, what's more, the qi in the room is exactly the same as it was when we entered, not even the sect master could do something like that, not even with time, no matter the technique, something as complex as teleportation should always leave aftereffects, at least cloud the qi of the surroundings, but he just disappeared, and there is no sign that he is even gone, no alarm sounded in the sect either, none of the defensive formations were activated, nothing, that man teleported from inside the inner sect, bypassing all the defensive and detection arrays, and leaving not a single trace, nothing. "

The assistant's face slowly grew paler, but he didn't seem to fully understand his elder's insinuations, so the latter continued.

- "that was a demonstration of power, we disrespected him and he was magnanimous enough to let it pass, but then he disappeared from the most protected place in the sect without a trace, it's a message, -I can come and go from this little territory as I please, and you won't even notice- at first I thought he was hiding his cultivation level because it was too low, now I think he doesn't even need to, he's so many levels away that maybe that's why I can't measure the depth of his power."

Now the disciple seemed to be more aware of the situation, as he could be seen trembling slightly, he never believed that a situation like this could happen, since he was young and was recruited he always believed that his sect was the most powerful and that brought him confidence, now those beliefs were shaken when he saw his elder so agitated, it turned out that he was just a frog in a pond.

-From now on, if he comes back, we will treat him with the maximum possible respect, is that clear? And we will not mention again what happened before, he seems to have forgiven us already, if we keep insisting we would only be insulting his magnanimity with us, we have already done too much, we cannot risk provoking him anymore, go get the crystals we promised him, make sure personally that they are all there, I will go talk to the sect master about this, and see what we will do next, until further notice we will treat the stranger as an honored guest."

- "yes sir, right away."

And so the 2 cultivators parted, leaving behind a single servant standing by the door with a pale face and not knowing what to do.

As the storm brewed outside, our protagonist had no idea that his cowardice had unleashed so many waves, he just wanted to escape to a safer place, where he could sleep in peace.

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The trip to the spectral dimension felt like falling, for a second, and then the world around me lit up, a semi-transparent blue wall surrounded me, I reached out to touch it and it was solid, and the moment I made contact I felt it, this, unlike in the game, was not just a big box of unbreakable blocks in an empty dimension, it was the dimension itself, the blue walls were the borders of reality, and beyond that there was absolutely nothing, not even the void, because it would be the absence of matter, and not even that concept could exist outside those walls, breaking them would be like breaking the whole dimension as a whole, it would probably cease to exist in an instant.

Another interesting thing to note, is that the total space of reality was much smaller than in the game, about 2m³, I could hardly stand up straight, as i was 1.80, the same to lie down, just by putting a bed on the floor and it occupied the entire length of the space.

In one of the 2 meters long that were available, I placed a chest, where I put all the extra materials he obtained during my trip to the city, to have more space in the inventory.

While emptying the backpacks, I took out 1 of ectoplasm that I got during the trip, and felt how it warmed up in my hand, vibrating slowly.

As I brought it closer to the wall the vibrations increased and when the ectoplasm touched the wall of reality, it melted in my fingers like wax, and melted into the wall.

At first I didn't notice any difference, but when I finished emptying my backpacks and went to bed, I noticed that the bed no longer occupied all the available space lengthwise, but that there were a few centimeters left over on each side, it didn't take me long to realize that the walls of reality had grown, consuming ectoplasm to increase its size, making more space available in this world.

That was very interesting, as it meant that I could increase the size of this world by getting ectoplasm, the problem was the rarity with which the spirits that released it appeared, or from the treasure bags, which was also not a reliable source of them, so for the moment expanding this dimension was out of my possibilities.

Putting aside the new discovery, I sat down on the bed and began to read the book origins of darkness, refreshing my memory about the possibilities it contained.

What mainly caught my attention was the infuser and the chest, things that allowed me to transmute or repair objects, for that I required 2 blood infused cores, which required pieces of hardened blood and an empowered dark gem, in the end it all came down to the amount of blood I had, unfortunately, I only made myself a syringe, which was full, but it could only store 5000 mb, which was 5 blocks of blood, I had no room within my dimension to place the blood on the floor and wait for it to harden, nor did I have enough to craft everything, as each empowered dark gem was a full syringe on its own, plus another 3000mb on average for the hardened blood fragments I required, so that was out, at least until morning, although I would rather not play with blood within the city, who knows how the locals would take it if they saw me with pools of blood in their yard.

There was little I could do being in this little dimension until the sun came up in the other world, and I still didn't feel tired enough to sleep, so I placed the witch's furnace in the last remaining free space and sat on the bed while I slowly made a few vapors I might need later, mostly from saplings, as I didn't yet have the distillery to make more complex vapors.

Thanks to the mutandis I was using I was able to get saplings of all the types I required for witchcraft, and I made sure to plant, grow and collect a few of each type, so I spent a good 2 hours sitting on my bed until I finished all but 1 of each type of sapling I had, as I watched the witch furnace finish cooking the last of the vapors sleep finally caught up with me, so I laid down to sleep.

As my mind slipped into unconsciousness I was happy, for I had taken a pain out of my back for quite a while, as now I had Whiff of Magic, Foul Fume, Exhale of the Horned One, Breath of the Goddess, Hint of Rebirth, Reek of Misfortune and Odour of Purity.

For all that I might need until a good while from now.

My happiness lasted until I woke up, I stretched out my arms and touched the walls of the dimension, and now that I was calmer the thought came to my mind that the bed should have exploded the moment I laid a finger on it, it hadn't even occurred to me, I could have died without realizing it, I don't think the thaumium armor without enchanting could have protected me from the explosion while being next to the bed, my morning soured at the thought, luckily it didn't happen, but I should be more careful in the future, it wouldn't be funny at all if I committed suicide because of some stupid mechanics of my powers.

I got up and left the spectral dimension using the same key I entered with, now with an emptier inventory, I intended to explore the city, so when I appeared in the room they had left me in, I walked out the door and found a trembling assistant with bags under his eyes.