John was interested in the space that was there, but not there, according to the child. He had a hunch about where it could be, thinking back to the rift that he closed so very long ago.

He got up and locked his door, the enchantments glowing for a moment as his windows were blocked off. His awareness extended, covering the forest nearby, looking for the familiar location.

There was something odd about it, he noticed. A shimmer of sorts, left in space. His surroundings shifted as he teleported to it. The power was palpable, a wall holding something back with all it could, stretching forward into John's universe.

He focused on the space, trying to understand what was happening. He could see glimpses of the other side as the very air seemed to stretch. It felt like he was looking through a very thin fabric that was being stretched a bit too far.

The fabric he recognized as being his attempt at stitching up the hole. It seemed intact still, which John was pleased with. It had held up well enough, and he thought he would know if there were any breaches. But it wouldn't hold for much longer, he didn't think.

John wasn't sure what to do about that. On the one hand, he could push it back, try and repair it again. But that would be more patchwork, and he would have to keep repairing it constantly over the years, until either he understood it well enough to fix it properly, or it resolved itself.

On the other hand, he could remove his work, opening the rift and work to stabilize it. Create something that would be a more permanent means of travel between the universes. But he didn't see how that would be safe, for either the residents of this universe or the other.

The ideal would be if he could now find some way to remove it in a more permanent manner, perhaps leaving a small backdoor for him to use at a later date. But he wasn't sure how to do that. He already thought he had done an excellent job before, that it had returned so quickly was a surprise for him.

To start with, he thought that his previous work needed to be undone. It was clear that it wouldn't hold, and he would rather start anew. But if he simply removed it, the power oozing forth from this rift might cause an explosion of energy.

John set up a spatial barrier around the area, the air seeming to tremble as it was separated from the outside world. He didn't know what energies were pushing forth from this, but he hoped it wouldn't be enough to breach space itself.

And then he focused on a small point on the patchwork covering the rift, working to drill a hole through it and allow the energy to escape in a controller manner. As soon as he breached, a force of energy broke through, destroying what was left of his previous work, a rift left to another world in its place.

A familiar energy, John realized. Mana, the very same energy that coursed through this universe and sustained him. Potent and powerful.

He peered through the rift, seeing the other side. It wasn't the same view as before, however. It looked similar, a room filled with furniture he didn't recognize. But it was decidedly different.

The walls were a different colour, the layout was different. The very size of the room was completely changed, looking almost twice as large now. The only similarity was how unfamiliar everything he saw was. There were no people on the other side that he could see, nobody sitting in the chair, or resting in the bed.

The risk was worth it now, he thought. He was almost certain the world had mana, that he could sustain himself in it. For a time, at least. There didn't seem to be any immediate dangers in the area. Perhaps there would be magical enchantments, notifying some higher powers when he arrived.

But the risk was worth it, he decided. The chance to explore another world, to see things he would never be able to see otherwise.

He stepped through the rift and was immediately overwhelmed with a feeling of suffocation. He could feel the mana present in the air around him, but it was lacking. It felt as though he had just left the ocean and entered a small pond.

His health was dropping, unable to keep himself alive anymore. He focused on the space around him, twisting it to form a point, a reference of sorts for him to use later. There was nothing stopping him from teleporting here without it, but having a point of reference would make it a lot easier he thought. Something for his spell to latch on to.

And then he stepped back through the rift, feeling once more filled with life. Sustained.

There was testing to be done, now. He had realized that the rift had two sides. An obvious fact, perhaps. But one that he had forgotten in his disappointment before. If he wanted the rift to be closed and not overflow from one side, it needed to be closed from the other side.

But he also needed to know that he could get back if he were to close the rift from the other side. Lest he end up trapped and forgotten in a universe nobody knew about.

John repeated the steps he took before, stitching the rift together, the other universe disappearing from his sight. He focused on the point he formed, seeing it was still available. He tried to teleport a nearby stick to it, and it vanished.

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He formed another reference point outside the rift, and then pulled the stitches apart, opening it once more. On the other side was the same stick that he teleported, sitting on the wooden floor.

Satisfied with his tests, he stepped through the rift again. The feeling of suffocation was something he was better prepared for this time. He picked up the stick and threw it back to his side.

John worked to stitch the rift together again, his universe disappearing in front of him. A strange feeling, to know that he was in an entirely different universe, with almost no way back. If his plan didn't work, he would die. He was certain of that.

But it was necessary, he thought. To ensure the rift wouldn't propagate and cause problems. He recognized the hypocrisy, of saving a reference point in this universe while he closed it off to prevent infiltration. But he wasn't above being a hypocrite.

He wanted to ensure the safety of his universe, of his bookstore. But he also wanted to explore this universe himself, if he could. He wasn't sure he would ever find a way to do it, but he wanted to keep the option available.

His view shifted, as he teleported back outside the rift to the point he created. John quickly removed the point, returning the space to how it was, and then looked at the rift.

It looked strange from this side. He could still see through it, to the other universe. But there was just nothing there. It felt as though he was looking through an almost entirely transparent piece of glass. There was something there, and yet there was not. An apt description the child gave, he found.

For the third time today, he repeated the steps of stitching the rift together, closing it off. It felt more final this time, but John thought it felt final last time as well. He hoped it would work out better now, with both sides having been closed off.

John focused on the stick he teleported before, trying to teleport it back to the same point in the other universe. The stick vanished once more, and he hoped that meant his teleport would still work despite the rift being closed. Something he would test himself later if he ever found a way to sustain himself without the need for mana. Or at least, with much less mana.

He teleported back to his bookstore, unlocking the door as the enchantments dulled and vanished, and then sat back down at his desk. John wondered how he could manage to survive without mana.

Perhaps he could bring along an alternate source of mana. A crystal or something that he could siphon from, but one large enough to sustain him for longer periods of time wouldn't be sustainable. He could bring along many smaller ones and cycle them out, but it seemed tedious and the cost of teleporting mana in and out of his [Storage] rarely made it make sense.

Teleporting a large crystal could be viable as he could send it over first, recover his resources and then send himself over. But needing to constantly switch out crystals wouldn't make any sense.

No, mana crystals would not be enough, he thought. It would either be too large to accomplish anything, or too much effort to accomplish anything else. He needed another solution, some way of making himself require less mana. But he wasn't sure how to do that.

"Hello," a woman said, breaking him out of his thoughts.

"Oh. Hello," John responded.

"I'm looking for some fun stories, do you have anything like that? Fiction, I guess." The woman said.

John waved his hand and filled the bookshelf near him with fictions of varying genres. Fantasy, adventure, romances and comedies flew out from him and placed themselves on the shelf.

The woman thanked John and walked over, looking through the books. She would pick up a book and flip to a page at random, reading a few of the paragraphs and then place it back on the shelf. One of the books she flipped through a couple more pages, and then brought it up to John's desk and placed it in front of him.

It was a story set at the bottom of the sea, showing the life of various sea creatures and one curious squirrel as they lived their mundane lives. A bit nonsensical, but if that was something she wished for John thought it might be enjoyable.

"I'll take this one please," the woman said.

"One story, please," John said.

"Oh, yes. Well, I was out doing a job I got from the adventurer's guild a few years back. Apparently, some smith needed the eggshell of a roc for a piece they were working on. There was no time limit, and it was big money. So I figured if it was just getting the remnants of an eggshell, how dangerous could it be right?

"Well, quite dangerous, as I found out. Apparently, rocs tend to eat their shells when they're born. Before they even break out, they're eating it. And rarely do they hatch without the parent nearby. It took weeks just to even find one nest with eggs in it, and then weeks more of stalking it just to see them hatch. And only then did I discover that they eat their damn eggs.

"I mean, imagine just sitting there, seeing it hatch. Excited to be able to wait for them to leave and then go pick up your riches. And then it just eats it all. All your gold just gone, like that." She snapped her fingers.

"There were still some other eggs that hadn't yet hatched though, so I waited around some more. Only a few days until the next one hatched, and it also ate its shell immediately. The mother was sitting over it, watching intently so I didn't dare try to take part of the shell.

"Then a few days later, a chance presented itself. I saw the final egg start to move, and I knew it was about to hatch. The mother was off hunting, and I knew it would be back in twenty minutes at most. I moved in, slowly. And the chick broke out of the shell, munching away.

"I could reach out and touch the shell, it was right there. I could've taken it. But then the little chick looked at me, with big black eyes. And it chirped. It chirped at me. My heart sank.

"This poor little thing that just came to life moments ago, with its parent somewhere far away unable to protect it, chirping away happily at me. It was the cutest thing I'd ever seen. I couldn't take its shell, the first meal it would ever have. I'm not a monster.

"And so I sat down next to it, keeping an eye out for any predators that might come looking for an easy snack. And then I saw the mother returning off in the distance, a small speck that grew quickly. And I ran away, leaving the shell behind. Somebody else could get the smith his eggshell.

"I had a new appreciation for the monsters we hunt after that. They have their own lives, and they're all beautiful in their own way. If only there were a way for us to coexist more freely, but alas, it's just not the way it goes. Oh well. Thanks for the book anyway!" She said and vanished as quickly as she seemed to appear.

John could relate to the woman's story. He too had chosen to slow down and appreciate the smaller species, it was why he had started the bookstore in the first place. To think that a human of all things had a story he could relate to so strongly. An interesting woman, he thought.

He wondered what life would be like if more creatures held similar beliefs. Homogenous, he supposed. The only reason humans were so interesting to him was because they were so different from each other.