Chereads / A World Within. / Chapter 2 - Chapter 2: How about a walk?

Chapter 2 - Chapter 2: How about a walk?

Sitting on the edge of his bed, the boy let out a long, unhurried breath. 

The destruction of an entire world, a whole civilization, didn't weigh on him. He felt nothing. 

Perhaps once, when he first discovered his power, he had been curious, maybe even excited by the possibilities. 

But now, the routine of creation and destruction had become just that—routine.

"View" he muttered, almost lazily.

Instantly, his gaze pierced through the walls of his room, beyond the earthly confines of his world.

 The void materialized again, vast and cold, stretching out before him. Only now, it was empty.

 The stars that once filled it, the tiny vibrant planet he had nurtured, were all gone and wiped out with a casual flick of his fingers.

It wasn't the first time, and it likely wouldn't be the last.

But how did it come to this? What was this ability he had? To anyone outside, it might seem like the powers of a god.

 To create a world, to watch over it, to decide its fate with a mere thought—that was the realm of omnipotent beings. But it wasn't like that at all. Not really.

His thoughts drifted back to the moment it all started, just over a month ago. It had been sudden, inexplicable, like a glitch in reality.

 One moment he was an ordinary high school student, and the next, he stared at something impossible.

 A tiny world—no, a universe—had appeared, as if it had always existed inside him, waiting to be noticed.

He remembered the shock, the disbelief, the confusion. 

The world had first appeared in his blood cells. That was the strangest part, one he couldn't explain. He could see it—see through his own body, down to the microscopic level where blood flowed through his veins. 

And there, within the swarming red and white cells, was something more. At first, it had been a simple speck, an anomaly. But when he focused on it, that speck expanded and became vast and real.

It was a world. No, multiple worlds. Planets orbiting tiny suns, galaxies swirling within the confines of his bloodstream, as though his body housed an entire cosmos of its own. It didn't make sense, and yet, it was real. 

He had learned quickly, painfully, that he had control over these worlds. If he focused, he could shape them, alter them. He could create life and design entire ecosystems and civilizations. 

At first, it felt like a dream come true. Every fantasy world he had ever imagined, every story he had longed to live in, was now at his fingertips. 

He called it, simply, *the world in me.*

But the euphoria didn't last. His early attempts were clumsy and crude. 

The first world he made was nothing but chaos—a jumble of environments, creatures that couldn't survive in the worlds they were born into, and civilizations that crumbled before they even began. 

He had tried again, and again, creating new worlds, molding them, tweaking them like a child playing with clay. Each time, something went wrong. 

The balance wasn't right. The civilizations never grew the way he envisioned. The worlds didn't reflect the vibrant fantasies in his mind.

And so, each time, he destroyed them. I wiped them out and started fresh.

His expectations had been clear: he wanted to create a perfect world. 

A world filled with wonder, with magic, with the kinds of stories he loved reading about in books and watching in movies. 

He wanted a place where knights fought dragons, where mysterious empires rose and fell, and where destiny and adventure intertwined in every corner.

But it was never enough.

Each world failed him. The people were too ordinary. They weren't the grand, sweeping tales of heroism he had imagined. They were… human.

 Full of flaws, mistakes, and disappointments. He is a human himself, so he knew. 

That last word, the one he had just destroyed, had come so close. It had lasted longer than the others. 

He had allowed it to grow for weeks, nurturing the civilizations, watching as empires rose and fell, as cultures developed and clashed. 

But even there, the imperfections crept in.

 The conflicts felt repetitive, and the people were uninspired. They never reached the heights of his expectations. 

So, he had ended it. 

Just like the others. 

"It's all in me," he thought, staring into the void again. "And yet… I can't control it the way I want."

He knew the world existed within his blood, that somehow his body was the vessel for these creations.

 But how did he know this?

 How could he comprehend the impossible? The answer, if there even was one, had eluded him from the beginning. 

He just… *knew.* 

The moment the power awakened in him, so too did this knowledge.

 He could sense it—every beat of his heart carried the potential for creation, and every drop of blood was filled with galaxies. 

And with that power came control. 

He didn't need to understand the how or the why. He just had to *focus,* and the world would respond to his will.

The problem was that his will demanded perfection. 

But no matter how many times he tried, each world fell short.

A sigh escaped his lips. 

How many more would he create before he found the one? The world that finally met his expectations.

 The world that would live up to the fantasies in his mind.

The world in him.

Despite the immense power he held, there was something inherently frustrating about it.

 His abilities were not limitless, not yet anyway.

 It was as though he were playing some grand cosmic game, one where each new feature had to be unlocked progressively, forcing him to work within a framework that grew only as he did. 

Right now, he could only access *one* blood cell. Out of the trillions coursing through his veins, only a single one held a vast space that can accomodate so far, only one world that he barely could control.

The rest—an infinite sea of possibilities—were locked away, unreachable, and filled with nothingness, a decaying void where potential worlds could one day be. 

It wasn't that he lacked power, but rather, his control over it was still evolving. He couldn't force his way into these other cells, couldn't just create more worlds at will.

 Not yet. 

And so, he worked with what he had limited as it was. 

His powers, though extraordinary, came with their own set of restrictions. 

Time manipulation was one of his strongest abilities, yet it could only be pushed so far. At most, he could move time forward by 1000 years in a single day. 

It was powerful, sure—what other being could accelerate the passage of time in such a way? But in the grand scheme of things, it felt like a drip in the ocean. 

He could nudge civilizations ahead and watch them grow and evolve faster than naturally possible, but beyond that limit, time resisted his will. 

Then there was the ability to bring items from the outer world, from *his* world, into the one inside him. 

This ability had proven essential, especially in the early stages of creation.

 It allowed him to transport objects—tools, resources, items—through the cracks in reality and into the tiny universe he shaped.

 But even this was constrained. The size of the crack was limited, preventing him from bringing in anything larger than a suitcase.

 He could only hold the crack open for a brief period before it sealed itself again as if the cosmos itself demanded balance. 

What frustrated him the most, though, was *creation*. The ability to build and shape life and landscapes from his imagination.

 This was the core of his power, but it was also the vaguest and most restrictive. 

He couldn't simply summon things out of thin air, that were beyond his reach.

 No matter how much he focused, no matter how hard he willed it, *nothing* could come from nothing. All his creations had to be built from something that already existed within him.

 His blood, the fundamental source of his power, was the material from which every world, every being, and every biome came. 

The mountains, the oceans, the vast forests, and all the life teeming within those places—they had to be *constructed*. 

For the ones that filled the mountains and the minerals that gave life to the land, he had prepared a full suitcase, bringing in supplies from his bedroom. 

Rocks, dirt, seeds, and metals he had meticulously gathered, all transported through the cracks.

 It had taken time and careful planning to shape the worlds, to give them substance beyond the abstract.

He had even tried to bring in more ambitious items—technology from his world and advanced tools that could accelerate the development of the civilizations he created. 

But here, too, he met limitations. The technology from his world rarely worked in the way he expected. 

Sometimes it outright refused to function, as if it resisted being transported into the small universe he had created.

Yet despite all these restrictions, there was one rule, one constant that remained unshakable: *nothing within his world could go against him.*

In his world, he was omnipotent, the ultimate force.

 Nothing he created—no matter how advanced, no matter how dangerous or powerful—could ever rise against him. 

That was etched into the very fabric of the reality he controlled. 

He was its god, and nothing could defy his will. 

Even if his creations gained sentience, even if they grew to understand the nature of their existence, they could never hurt him. 

They could never even truly perceive him. He was too vast, too incomprehensible, a force that operated on an entirely different scale.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, this offered him comfort. 

There was no risk, no danger of losing control. The creations he had brought into existence, the worlds he had shaped—they were bound to him, utterly and completely. 

Not that they could harm him even if they tried. Given his size compared to theirs, it was laughable to think they could. 

To the beings in his world, he was beyond their comprehension, larger than the universe they inhabited. 

They were like ants, scurrying around their little planet, completely unaware that their entire existence was cradled within his body.

And yet, despite all this power, he still felt... constrained.

The boy sighed, running his hand through his hair as his thoughts meandered back to the limitations of his power. 

"For all the godlike abilities I have in that tiny world," he murmured to himself, "I'm still stuck here, just a high school kid."

His room was quiet, the mundane hum of city life trickling in from the open window. It was a strange contrast to the reality he controlled within him.

 Outside, life continued as normal. Inside him, time moved at his command.

 A single day in the real world could be a millennium in the world he had created. Yet for all the power in his blood, he remained... human.

"In this blood cell world, I can only conjure up one planet at a time," he muttered, his voice tinged with frustration. 

"There's got to be more. A way to create entire star systems, entire galaxies... but I haven't figured it out yet."

It was like a puzzle he couldn't solve. Maybe, he thought, the ability to create more worlds would unlock once he reached a certain milestone. 

But what milestone? There were no clear instructions, no guidebook for these godlike powers. It was trial and error, frustration, and the occasional small success. 

Still, it wasn't as if the ability had given him *nothing*. His mind was sharper than it had ever been. He could memorize pages of text with a single glance, and solve complex equations in seconds. 

The school had become trivial. Every test, every subject, he breezed through it all with perfect scores. 

His teachers were impressed, his classmates jealous, but none of them knew what was happening.

 They couldn't. No one would believe him even if he tried to explain. And he wouldn't in his life, explain this secret. 

But for all that mental enhancement, he still had no physical powers to speak of. 

He wasn't stronger, faster, or more durable than before. He was still just a normal kid in that sense.

 No matter how many times he tried to change his outer world, to bring the physical benefits from his inner world, reality stayed stubbornly normal.

Yet he couldn't shake one particular thought, one idea that had lingered in his mind ever since he realized the potential of his abilities.

 What if, over time, he could nurture powerful beings within the world he controlled? 

What if, as civilizations rose and fell, as generations passed, there emerged legendary figures—sorcerers, warriors, geniuses—that he could bring into *this* world?

"Imagine..." He leaned back on his bed, staring at the ceiling, a half-smirk on his face as he imagined it. 

"A grand civilization, evolving in my world, producing powerful figures one after another"

"And when they're close to death when they've reached their peak, I bring them out here. Granting them a longer life but at the price of serving me for eternity"

The thought made him chuckle. He could picture it, a legion of powerful beings at his command, bound by loyalty or deception.

 They would serve as his bodyguards, his servants, and his army.

 With the passage of time accelerated by 1000 years a day, he could raise entire empires of the most brilliant minds, the strongest warriors, the most skilled magicians—if only magic existed.

It was a thrilling idea. He could become unstoppable.

 A walking factory of legends, churning out powerful figures faster than anyone could comprehend.

But then reality intruded on his fantasy. No matter how many times he had created and erased worlds, no magical elements ever emerged.

 Not a single spark of sorcery, not a shred of the mythical powers he longed to see. 

He had hoped for something—some hint of the fantastic—but each time, the civilizations in his worlds developed with the same mundane limitations as the one he lived in.

"Every time, it fails," he muttered bitterly. "I wipe out one world, conjure up another, hoping for something more. Something extraordinary. But it's always the same."

There was no magic. No great heroes. No grand sorcerers or warriors with abilities beyond human comprehension.

 Just the same, ordinary development of history, technology, and civilization. 

It was infuriating, to be so close to real power and yet still be stuck in the realm of the normal.

"What am I missing?" he wondered aloud, staring into the void that only he could see.

 The darkness within him, the world contained in that single blood cell, beckoned to him, filled with endless potential.

 But no matter how many times he tried, he couldn't make it live up to his expectations.

And so the cycle continued—creation, disappointment, destruction, and then starting over again. 

Each new world was an experiment, a chance to try something different. But so far, none had met the vision he held in his mind. 

"Maybe I'm expecting too much," he mused. "Or maybe... I haven't unlocked the right ability yet."

The thought gave him a glimmer of hope. He knew his powers were evolving, growing with time. 

Perhaps one day, he would find the key. The feature that allowed him to bring magic, true magic, into his world. 

When that day came, when his world was finally filled with wonder and legends, then maybe his idea of creating a personal army of mythical beings wouldn't seem so far-fetched.

For now, though, he was stuck in a strange middle ground—an ordinary teenager with an extraordinary power he was still learning to control.

 And as he sat on the edge of his bed, staring out at the ordinary world beyond his window, he couldn't help but wonder... 

How about having a stress-free run for a bit?