"W-What the hell happened…?!" When Ivan woke up he was met with a peculiar sight, Felis and Canis who had been training nearby completely vanished. Even his detection skills weren't able to pick up the life signals of the others inside the manor.
One minute he was just sitting with his legs crossed, and in the next he found himself totally alone. 'That one minute— no, that one second. I was thinking about concept magic and then—' Ivan was only able to muse to himself for a few seconds before the land near him shifted.
What was once an open plain of ice and art transformed into human-like visages. And with the blink of an eye, the scene he had witnessed before the flash of light appeared before him.
Everything was frozen in place, be it the leaves of a nearby tree, snow flowing from the ceiling, and even Felis who had been frozen mid diving kick.
"D-Did I go back in time?" It was a preposterous thought, Ivan knew that himself. So with trepidation he walked up to the life-like model of himself, who was sitting down with his eyes closed and feet crossed.
"It's– He– no, me? IM so warm!" The exact model of him was fleshy to the touch, body warm just like a real person. No matter how one looked at it, the being Ivan was touching currently was in fact him.
"I wonder how the insides of it look…" If whatever spell he was under copied his exterior to every minute detail than what of his interior.
However he made a fatal mistake, as they say, one should always be careful of what they wish for—
GLLLLPP
The copy's body inverted itself inside out, flesh and intestines laid bare but still as if it were still attached to the body it spewed from. "Oh god, um— ii's still beating?" As if hearing his words the flesh shuffled, the beating of the copy's heart grew furiously.
Ivan had seen many sights in his life, many disgusting things, but seeing himself approach him with his innards on full display was another thing.
"Ugh, I think I'm gonna be sick…"
RUMBLE RUMBLE RUMBLE
"Wh-What now?!" The space began deteriorating at a rapid rate. The icy ceiling started disappearing like melting snow, slowly Ivan was revealed to an open void, one in which nothing could be seen but darkness.
"There has to be a trigger… um, oh yeah, was it when I saw that disgusting sight?" Ivan composed himself, returning to a seated position. He closed his eyes and ignored the rumbling beneath him.
"...."
After about a solid minute, peace returned to the mirrored space.
When Ivan opened his eyes he was greeted again with Schnee's Lair, only empty as it had been when he first arrived after the initial blinding light.
"Well, at least I confirmed that whatever it was, it belongs to me…" Then that left only one answer, it wasn't just a coincidence that just as he attempted using concept magic that he found himself in a weird place.
"Creation magic, Metamorphosis magic, Spatial magic, Gravity magic, Restoration magic, Spirit magic, Evolution magic, each of these magics have a vital place in creating the spell known as Ars Magna."
Creation magic transformed the geography around him, spatial expanded his range of transmutations, gravity allowed the affected area to hold a sense of realness as well as gave him control of his targeted area, restoration reverted any changes he made, and spirit magic gave life to the life forms created by metamorphosis magic. Such as the copies he made to recreate the scene he was in before activating the concept magic. And finally evolution magic just simply enhanced every aspect of the space: inhabitants, realism, range, and lethality.
"The problem was how do I get other people to come in here… Wait, Ars Magna was to transform the space around me… so why am I in an entirely new space…?"
Ars Magna was created using Concept Magic, and the concept powering the magic was to protect his loved ones. As cliche as it was, it was the basis for the magic he wanted to perform. 'Then where the hell are my loved ones…?'
Space distorted once more, this time so quickly Ivan wasn't able to react. Though that wasn't due to a lack of awareness, it was because he COULDN'T react! In a matter of seconds the ground beneath him vanished and he was swallowed by the void.
And then it hit him—
Felis' dropkick that is!
"Hyaaa!"
BANG!
"Gwah!"
It wasn't the pain of her attack that affected him, it was the fatigue that was accompanied with it. His mana reserves went from full to the brim to completely empty. And all it took was five minutes in that weird space.
"Yeah! I got him, I nailed father in the face! Hihihi~ He never saw that flying kick coming~!"
'That's what's weird, Felis… I saw the flying kick coming… I saw it coming five minutes ago!'
Ars Magna, if his assumptions were correct than the reason why the others weren't anywhere inside his boundary was because they had been deleted from existence, Or more accurately, they were erased for the duration that the spell was activated.
It was a spell made to protect them, and so it hid them inside his field where they couldn[t be reached, not even by him. A perfect situation that would allow him to manipulate the space without worrying about them being affected.
A field he could go all out in against his opponent.
The problem was duration, time had frozen outside of his field and by proxy it seemed none of the others noticed that they were temporarily removed from the present. But what about the world, had time kept moving in spaces not affected by his spell?
Five minutes passed in Ars Magna, his watch had said so. But if he asked any resident of the world would they tell him what the time had been exactly when he activated the spell, or had time proceeded normally?
"Just what exactly happened…?" He needed to go back there, he needed to trigger the spell again. But even if time froze Ivan himself was the observer of time, meaning it went normally for him. And so the mana he expended using the spell hit him out of nowhere, even though within his spell he had yet to spend any.
Five minutes, the spell had drained five minutes worth of mana from the user, but from the user who roamed freely, not the one that stuck in the pose he was in before activating it.. To put it into numbers, his time in Ars Magna was equated to the amount of mana he had before using the spell.
'Like a video game, some spells have conditions that make the user expend five hundred points of mana per second. to use a really powerful spell.'
Ivan used the mana of the him seconds before the spell, and the version of him activating the spell used the mana of Ivan who controlled the space.
Since the body of him activating the spell was in a stationary state its mana was seemingly infinite, that's why Ivan had felt so much energy when he awoke in Ars Magna.
"In the end that's a downside, I won't be able to track the amount of time I have left just by feeling it. I'll need to set a timer." For now his limit was five minutes, his goal? Thirty minutes.
"Um… father, are you okay? Oh no Canis! What should I do?! I think I hit him too hard! Yue-sensei is gonna kill us!"
"...Us?"
'How the hell do I explain all of this to everyone…? Graghhh! Time shit is so confusing!' Ivan sighed, closing his eyes momentarily as the two girls bickered over who exactly would be receiving punishment from Yue.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If you want to support me please follow this link! There's a couple new links added~: https://linktr.ee/ardoaleister
Welp, I sure hope that wasn't as confusing to read than it was to write... I also hope it was worth the wait, let me know y'know! Fell free to comment and I'll try to explain it as best I could. Meanwhile, enjoy this caveman interpretation. I'll try to explain this in super simple terms for my own sake.
Time stops while Ars Magna is activated to anyone who isn't within the field. Times is erased to those Ivan considers 'loved ones'. Ivan's mana is infinite while Ars Magna is activated but simultaneously being consumed, its just he doesn't feel the effect of it until the spell ends because of the time freeze. Using advanced alchemy, the territory he controls can be manipulated in any way, shape, or form without a single touch: just thoughts will suffice. (That extends to his opponents) Ars Magna requires extreme concentration, otherwise it will be broken. Anyone caught by the spell will have their real bodies transported to the space, not that anyone other than who gets transported will notice because of the time freeze.
Once again, if you need anything cleared up just ask~! Other than that, thanks for reading! Have a great evening, and I'll see you all real soon~!.
If you want to support me and read ahead 10-15 chapters, you can check out my p.a.t.r.e.o.n right here: https://bit.ly/ardoaleister
Discord: https://discord.gg/tQ5TWbYd9t