It's been a little over a week since I arrived in this place I "affectionately" called Hell. The first few days were strange and hard to endure—mostly because of how unreal everything felt, a constant reminder of my situation. The cold, dry air felt like death breathing down my neck, making it hard to sleep. Finding food was a constant challenge. I had to hunt animals, but at least those camping trips with my father helped me get by. I could still remember how to make basic traps using sticks and roots.
But preparing a dead animal?
Have you ever had to remove and clean the organs and blood of a creature? I knew the theory of what needed to be done, but doing it was a whole different thing not because it was disgusting, but because if I accidentally ruptured an organ, the meat would taste far too bad to consider eating under normal circumstances.
Getting water was easy or relatively easy. I just had to find what seemed like a natural lake, and almost had my head bitten off by a fish that looked like a giant catfish with eyeless sockets and a hunger in its gaze that screamed mad obsession with something unknowable—not the instincts of a mindless beast. That made me wary of any place with water.
I found a shelter or more like, I adapted one. Two flat-ish rocks leaning against each other provided the equivalent of two walls. With my knife, I cut some roots growing sporadically near water though not too close to risk danger. I tied the roots together into a crude kind of tarp and used it as a third wall, leaving only one entrance and exit. The place was hidden among many similar rock formations, so it didn't stand out.
Surviving was hard. I had to hide from bigger creatures and hunt the smaller ones.
It's not like I hadn't been studying magic. I'd been reading about its basic principles and practicing some exercises to feel the pure magic within myself. I hadn't succeeded yet, but I kept reciting spells up to the part where magic was actually required just to get used to mentally calculating the formulas needed when I finally did have magical energy to use as fuel.
For now, my plan is to make my base more secure while I keep trying to sense pure magic. Humans aren't physically strong compared to the beasts around us, but we have something most creatures don't: high intelligence and opposable thumbs. And I planned to abuse both.
…
Time has passed again—another seven days.
As I said before, the first thing I did was fill the area around my base with traps. Simple ones that I could easily recognize so I wouldn't fall into them myself. Tensioned roots in tight paths, wooden spears planted in pits—that kind of thing. These traps protected me and provided at least some food.
So finally, I could focus most of my efforts on learning magic.
I sighed but not from the daily burden of wondering if I'd eat that night or not. This time, it was a sigh filled with a faint but present sense of security, like a tiny flame that could be extinguished if I kept delving into the idea that I was already dead. That maybe escaping death had been a mistake, that I shouldn't be alive. That it was just dumb luck, or the infinite probabilities playing their game, and that death would soon come again to claim my soul.
My mind began racing, as if I were being hunted from all directions, as if I were drowning.
It didn't take long in that state before I finally felt it—the pure magic.
From that moment, it was as if a veil had been lifted from my eyes.
The energy was pure, just as its name implied—the most neutral thing in existence. It didn't do anything on its own. It didn't strengthen the body, didn't grant supernatural powers, didn't defy the laws of the world. But that was because it first needed purpose—a spell—to make the impossible possible.
"This is good. This is fine" I said as I felt the tiny reserves of magical energy within me.
It wasn't much, but the constant depletion of this energy should allow me to gain more over time.
"The next step should be casting a basic spell," I thought to myself, mind drifting toward one of the spells that required the least amount of magic. Something simple—it just created water in a small quantity. One exact liter, to be specific.
First things first I began forming the spell. Starting from the atomic structure of water, to the inclusion of dissolved minerals, every component expressed in quantities my mind could handle. The shape was defined a sphere, complete with its exact diameter. I had to specify that the object should remain static in a fixed point in space.
That was just the beginning.
Next came the spell—the total result of all those variables—so I could begin applying the magic to turn the theory into something real and usable.
Three seconds passed.
Sweat started to bead on my forehead. I could feel nearly a third of my magic reserves drain away. That wasn't good—I knew I had little magic, but not this little.
The spell formed—a circle filled with formulas combining physics, chemistry, geometry, and many other branches of science, all interwoven right before my eyes. The water appeared instantly, as if obeying a new law just written into reality.
Sweat dripped down my forehead as I let out a tired chuckle.
Magic was beautiful even this mere spell that created a bit of water.
The way someone could impose new rules on the world was exhilarating.
The feeling that a part of the world itself obeyed your will... it was magnificent.
But self-criticism didn't take long to arrive.
"Took too long, three seconds is a lot. The book said a tenth of a second should be the bare minimum. Though five seconds is expected for a first spell, I shouldn't stay this slow for too long," I thought to myself as the tension I'd felt over the last few days faded, not because I felt safer, but simply because I had a path now. A possibility.
A chance to not die so easily again.