Chapter 13
When I woke that morning, there was a strange feeling sitting at the back of my mind. It started as something small and vague, like the first ripple on a still pond, but the longer I lay there staring at the ceiling, the more certain I became that something important was about to happen.
Not dangerous. Not alarming.
Important.
The kind of moment that changes the way you understand everything that came before it.
By the time I finally sat up, I had the odd sense that I was standing at the edge of a forgotten truth, something I should have known long ago. It felt as if I had spent my whole journey with my eyes half-closed, and today I was about to be forced to open them.
Then Ultima spoke.
“Master,” she said tentatively, her voice softer than usual. “I think I forgot to tell you something…”
I blinked. For some reason, the moment she said it, I already had the feeling I knew what was coming. It was as if my intuition had been tapped on the shoulder and told to pay attention.
“What is it?” I asked, trying and failing to keep the excitement out of my voice.
Her proverbial expression turned bashful. “I forgot to tell you about how races and magic work here!”
She sounded as though she expected me to be annoyed, but honestly, I was just fascinated. The world I’d been thrown into had rules, histories, and boundaries I still barely understood. Every new detail felt like another piece of a puzzle I hadn’t even realised I was trying to solve.
“That would have been useful to know,” I said lightly. “So, what’s the short version?”
Ultima brightened a little at that, clearly relieved I wasn’t upset, and launched into an explanation. What followed was less a casual conversation and more a crash course in the foundations of Aerolyn.
Aerolyn.
The name alone made me sit up straighter. A world with a name felt real in a way a nameless backdrop never could. This wasn’t just some random place I’d landed in by accident. It had history, structure, and beings who had been living under its laws for who-knew-how-long.
Ultima started with the races.
First were the humanoids. That part was easy enough to understand: elves, dwarves, humans, chimera beastmen, Alves, hobgoblins, gnomes, spirits, and probably others. They were the people of Aerolyn — the ones who built cities, formed societies, fought wars, and passed down knowledge. Some resembled the fantasy races I’d seen back on Earth, while others were more specific to this world. Either way, they all belonged to the same broad category: intelligent, civilized beings with culture and tradition.
Next came the daemonoids.
Ultima explained that these were, in simple terms, what fantasy nerds on Earth would call demons. That alone made me pause. There was comfort in hearing something described in familiar terms, but it also reminded me how little I really knew. The daemonoids had ranks, she said, though she didn’t go into detail yet. That implied structure, hierarchy, and probably entire systems of authority. They weren’t just monsters in the simple sense. They were organized. Purposeful. Dangerous.
The third group was the feraloids.
These were the monsters — goblins, slimes, dragons, and every other non-humanoid creature that roamed the world. That category was broad enough to be alarming on its own. It meant that in Aerolyn, “monster” wasn’t just a vague insult or enemy label. It was an actual classification. A creature could be part of the world’s natural order and still be considered feraloid. That made me wonder how many beings I had already met without realizing how they were categorized.
Once the races were out of the way, Ultima moved on to crests.
A crest, she said, was a red mark that appeared on the body of humans. It took the shape of a ring surrounded by diamond-shaped markings. The explanation sounded ceremonial at first, almost like a noble family sigil or magical blessing, but the meaning was far less pleasant. The more marks a person had, the weaker their magic and skills were.
That raised immediate questions.
Why would a mark weaken someone? Was it a punishment? A restriction? A sign of balance? Ultima didn’t seem to know all the details, or at least didn’t mention them right away. What she did say was that skills were only granted to high-level beings and to summoned or reborn otherworlders.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
That alone made me look inward for a moment, wondering where I fit into all this.
Then came the hardest part: mana.
Ultima admitted that the cycle of mana was the most complicated system she could explain, which was saying something. Apparently, mana circled through the body in a loop, and when it interacted with something called spiritrons in the air, spells were created.
That sentence alone gave me pause.
Mana moving through the body in a cycle made sense, in a loose mystical way. But spiritrons? Those sounded like invisible particles, tiny magical catalysts floating through the atmosphere, waiting to be ignited. The idea that magic wasn’t just something internal but something that required a response from the air itself made the whole system feel more alive, more scientific in its own strange way. It was magic, yes, but magic with structure.
Magic with a method.
I thanked Ultima for the explanation, and she reacted with an almost painfully adorable little sound — somewhere between a squeal of glee and embarrassment.
“Are you okay?” I asked, concerned by how flustered she seemed.
She quickly assured me she was fine, and after that we went on with the day as if nothing unusual had happened.
I spent time checking in on my floor bosses and making sure each floor was in order. Everything seemed stable enough, which was a relief. There was something satisfying about seeing a system run smoothly, especially in a place where I still felt like I was learning the rules one at a time.
Over the next few days, I regained levels too, climbing back up to level 10 and then all the way to level 20.
The only unpleasant part was the repeated tax.
That never became less annoying. No matter how much progress I made, the tax was always waiting in the background like a shadow. It was the kind of thing that reminded me power in this world was never free. There was always a cost. Always some system waiting to take a bite out of your gains.
Then, the next day, I found out it was supposedly my birthday.
I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. Birthdays had a way of making you think about time in ways you didn’t always want to. Still, I decided not to make a big deal out of it. I only told Ultima, since she was the only one I really wanted to know. I didn’t want a party or ceremony or attention. Quiet recognition was enough.
That was when a new item was unlocked.
New ITEM unlocked: Artificial Soul
At first, the name alone was enough to make me curious. According to Ultima, artificial souls were used to make Alves — artificial elves. That caught my attention immediately. A created race? Manufactured life? Or something in between?
The process, as she explained it, was simple enough in theory: take a refined golem and stuff an artificial soul into it.
To do it properly, I first had to spend 500 points refining four of my bulky golems. The refinement changed them significantly, giving them a much more human shape. They were no longer the awkward, cumbersome constructs I’d started with. Instead, they became something closer to people — graceful, elegant, and eerily alive in a way that made me uneasy even as I watched.
Once that was done, I used the artificial souls.
The moment I did, each soul burst into white particles, dissolving into a glittering haze that flowed into the golems like mist being drawn into flame. It was an unsettlingly beautiful sight. The particles sank into them, and the change was immediate.
One by one, the golems transformed into human-like beings.
They had shorter pointed ears than traditional elves, pale skin, blonde hair, and eyes that were either green or blue. Each of them bore at least one black horn, which gave them an appearance that was both elegant and slightly intimidating. They weren’t quite elves and they weren’t quite human either. They were something else — something made.
There were three girls and one man.
The girls seemed to be around my age, while the man looked to be in his twenties. Since I’d neglected to put clothes on the golems before the transformation, I had to look away in embarrassment while Kuroe handled that part for me. It wasn’t exactly a dignified moment, and I could feel my face heating as I waited for the matter to be resolved.
When they were finally dressed, I turned back and looked at them properly.
The first girl, whom I named Addison, had blue eyes and a single horn in the middle of her forehead. The moment she looked at me, her expression gave me the distinct impression that she saw me as some kind of beloved mascot — maybe even a new puppy belonging to a little girl.
The second, Avery, had green eyes and two horns. She looked defiant at first glance, but there was also a trace of embarrassment beneath it, as though she was trying very hard not to show uncertainty.
The third girl, Amelia, was shy and blushing. She also had green eyes, but three horns instead of one or two. Her expression made her seem soft-spoken, nervous, and deeply aware of herself in a way that almost made me want to reassure her immediately.
The man, Arlo, had blue eyes and one horn. He looked at me with such intense respect that I almost felt uncomfortable. It was the kind of expression that made it seem as though he saw me as some kind of beloved father figure, which was not something I had been prepared for.
They all wore similar uniforms: white shirts with black accents, leather shoulder pads, and a clean, deliberate style that made them look like a matched set. Arlo wore long trousers and a long jacket, giving him a more mature appearance. The girls, on the other hand, were dressed in black skirts that were far too short for my comfort, paired with long white socks and black shoes.
It was obvious at a glance that Kuroe’s sense of style came from a culture that had no idea what modern sensibilities were supposed to be.
And yet, despite that, the four of them stood before me like something more than creations.
They had bodies. Faces. Expressions. Reactions. Even in their first moments of life, they already felt distinct from one another. They were not empty shells, nor were they mere tools. Looking at them, I couldn’t help but feel that I had just brought something new into the world — something that would eventually grow into its own place in my life.
I didn’t know yet what role they would play, or how they would change the path ahead.
But looking at them, I had a feeling that my journey had just entered a much more complicated chapter.