Isaac sat on the edge of the cliff, thoughtful. Beside him were the servants now lined up. His face was slightly sad and worried, some indescribable emotion could be felt.
- "I'm hungry…" he said at last.
Although he wasn't really hungry biologically speaking, he had gotten used to the tasty meals Artiel made every night.
He wanted a roast wild boar marinated in maple sauce, or rather a sauce whose taste was very similar to it. Finely chopped sweet potatoes and seasoned, fresh vegetables.
Just thinking about it made his mouth water.
It had been four days since they were gone. All the while, Isaac continued to add runes to his spellbook as well as improve both maid and soldier golems. However, after a while, this task became more and more boring.
Something was missing.
He had never really realized, after a few weeks spent in their company, the daily life he had found was really something he loved very much.
He was slightly sad that he had to put an end to it so quickly. Nevertheless, he had to find answers and find a way to find his old world which he started to miss.
The repetitiveness of the task of improving the golems had become tiresome after a while and the nostalgia gradually returned to him.
He had been sitting on the edge of the cliff for a few hours under the starry sky, thoughtful looking at the stars and the sky. He would have liked to have Mat by his side to enjoy this adventure.
This clear sky without light pollution, the refreshing and limpid air, this pure water without any trace of impurity. The scenery he had the joy of admiring was unparalleled compared to Earth.
There, human development and exploitation had made this kind of place extremely rare. A few more decades and they would become totally non-existent.
A new world full of possibilities. It was something to protect. In the future, if he managed to find his world again, he would make it so that Falanx did not follow the same path as Earth.
Or, let it take a more serene path than the one taken by Earth. If he had to combine modern technology and magic, the possibilities were endless. What's more, if the brilliant minds of his world were to arrive on Falanx, things would change drastically quickly.
Isaac's face was sad and pale in the light of the moons. His thoughts were unstable and it was felt in his vibrating, irregularly pulsing aura. His clothes, previously not emitting any light, slowly began to glow more and more.
Taken by feelings, Isaac suddenly stood up and sniffed a little, trying to hold back a tear that was starting to form.
- "Cancel follow command" he said suddenly.
- "Confirmed" answered the servants immediately.
Once the command was said, Isaac jumped up and slowly soared into the skies, gaining more and more height before passing the clouds.
He had never tried to climb higher. Theoretically, with his aura and unlimited amount of mana, it was possible for him to go into space if he wanted to.
But he wasn't going to test this theory. At least for the moment.
The cliffs got smaller and smaller as he rose in altitude until the clouds began to shrink in size.
The air around him was still normal, neither too cold nor too hot, and there was plenty of it, although it was slowly decreasing as Isaac was getting higher. Gradually Isaac was so high that the curvature of the planet on the horizon began to show slightly in the distance.
Isaac stopped then turned around looking at the world below him with a smile.
The sight of snow-capped mountains, forests with huge trees, the cold blue ocean and glaciers looming in the distance. The sight was splendid and the rays of the two moons allowed him to see the majestic sight which presented itself before him.
- "One day, I'll show you this," he said out loud.
Below, cumulus clouds, stratus clouds and a towering cumulonimbus cloud were visible, stretching immensely over the plain a hundred kilometers from the sanctuary.
Flashes of light were visible on a regular basis, crossing its summit towards its base and intermittently illuminating the covered ground obscured by the cloud mass.
Something made him look majestic and mysterious. The way it moved, its color, it all seemed to be so mysterious from above.
Notably its flat surface above, like a plain in the air, floating high in the sky.
- "A beautiful place to build a small house" said Isaac with a small smile.
This sight refreshed his heart a little. Several tens of minutes passed like this without him moving, patiently and quietly admiring the sight in front of his eyes.
In the distance, the sun was starting to rise and the sun's rays were starting to caress his skin. He decided it was time for him to come back down when a thought crossed his mind.
He was thinking of a person he had totally forgotten as he leaned into his research, the first person he had ever met upon entering this world and the only person who seemed to know the Admin.
The young woman whose name he didn't even know had appeared to him out of nowhere as he was falling down from the sky and disappeared in the same way. Who was she? What was she doing? Many questions that he would not have time to get answered before finding her.
But how to find her? From Isaac's perspective, she looked like an assistant, probably created by the Administrator to help him run the world.
- "All systems are stable and nominal" said Isaac aloud.
It was the first words she had said when she saw him. A system report or diagnostic, the kind seen on the many servers and computers of his old world.
If it was an assistant or a function of a possible system, how could he invoke her? Just as the windows he had in the garden were generated by the logic rune, did Falanx also have a logic rune?
Or was the entire planet a rune of logic? He only had theories to formulate but none seemed realistic. He didn't have enough information, he had to find it.
For this he had an idea.
Isaac suddenly raised his hand in front of him, open palm facing down before closing his eyes. His aura relaxed then began to spread widely. From an initial radius of five meters, it grew before reaching twenty-five meters then stopped.
- "Summon: Energy Reactor"
The air around him took on a golden hue as the aura filaments began to rake the air for every bit of mana present, slowly emptying the area of energy.
After a few minutes, the area was totally emptied of mana and natural energy and was focused on a sphere floating below Isaac's hand.
Surrounded by twenty minimized arcana and barriers, the energy inside was in a constant battle of expansion, controlled only by Isaac.
The sphere was made up of all the energy that was present around as well as an immense amount of mana that Isaac had taken from his own reserves.
The amount of mana concentrated could be compared to three times that concentrated in the mana ray. The sphere was pulsating but was compacted to such a level that it retained a size of barely two inches.
Still, the light emanating from it was now far too bright to be able to look directly at it. If it weren't for the thin barrier surrounding Isaac which was absorbing some of the superabundant light, he would have closed his eyes already.
Despite the small amount of air around, strong winds were forming before being repressed by Isaac's aura.
About twenty minutes passed again. The sphere had grown three times its size and the concentrated energy was now comparable to ten times the golden ray. The energy was so colossal that Isaac had to quadruple the number of containment barriers.
The few waves that emanated from it, no matter how weak, created impulses so powerful that they could probably do great damage to the rune of protection. Even Isaac was surprised to see that he could muster such a large amount of energy in one place.
However, he was not totally shocked.
The operation of gathering energy was relatively simple. After all, he had managed to do it easily the first time around, but trying to control that energy was far more complex.
Between making a nuclear bomb and a nuclear reactor, things were quite different. What's more, with his unlimited mana reserves, he could easily muster an extreme amount of energy.
He could probably bring a desert back to life if he put enough mana into it to regrow vegetation. It was something he had to test later.
His current experience had two main purposes.
The first was to verify a simple theory postulated from his observations with the rune of logic of the Garden. Indeed, the latter had many advanced features of Administration, defense and maintenance.
Logically, if a world were to be managed by a system, the same functionalities should be there. The systems the young woman he had met spoke of must therefore contain both surveillance, defense, integrity and other features.
It was even possible that the woman was one of these systems. From this postulate, he could therefore try to force the defense system to take over as the rune of the Garden had done.
By creating a spell powerful enough to make it react, he could thus confirm his theory. In the current altitude conditions, things were much easier and safer than doing it straight down.
The place was therefore ideal for this kind of experimentation.
The second objective was also to be able to know how far he could concentrate energy. Was there a limit to his mana reserves? Did mana have an extreme limit at which it would break?
He didn't know and it excited him a lot. He didn't want to do it before because of the presence of his two apprentices. But now that they were gone, he was free to do so.
Mana, natural energy, spiritual energy. Everything he knew as energy was focused on this one point. Around him, even the air had become unstable, forming luminous distortions and creating spatial disturbances over long distances.
Just as he was about to add energy again, what he expected happened.
Above him, immense northern lights formed and completely surrounded him. The auroras appeared much higher and were charged with an incredible amount of spiritual energy, although more scattered.
Then a blue window appeared in front of him. Transparent like the ones he had seen since being transported to Falanx. A long smile then formed on his face, an expression of satisfaction decorating the latter.
[Security alert]
Level Offensive spell has been cast on [Falanx]. Area of consequent damage identified.