'…This new body I've taken over—I'm unsure of its name or identity.
The frame feels light, almost too light for what I'm used to, with limbs that respond a fraction quicker than my old ones ever did. Age seems young, based on height, facial features, and the body's physicality.
Maybe early 20s?
Silver hair. Dark blue eyes with a slight red hue to them, seemingly reacting to Essence lingering in the absorbed light.
Whoever this is, or was, had no knack for Vitalis or magic. I'd burn out with a couple of water bubbles… a lowborn maybe?
Why was he out in the middle of nowhere? A conspiracy maybe, or a long-lost prince…
Nah, unlikely.
Well, let's hope I don't meet any family, friends, or even worse… girlfriends. Yeah, let's not step on that landmine.
In this new world, life isn't just governed by the laws of physics I knew on Earth, but by a different kind of law.
I've come to know it as Luminary—an energy of some type, a barrier, echo… maybe even a consciousness. I can't say for certain what it is, but it is everywhere. It presses against my skin like a constant, living atmosphere..
My body also holds another power. I've come to know it as Vitalis.
This energy behaves like current, but it isn't any form of electricity—no, at least not by any model I recognise. It circulates through me the way ions move across a neuron's membrane, yet it carries intent, not just charge. Right now, as I sit here, I can feel it humming steadily throughout, waiting.
I can feel it respond when I focus, changing rhythm and pressure as if it's aware of my thoughts, intent and internal electrical muscle responses.
In the human body, bioelectric signals are one-directional—voltage spikes, neurotransmission, muscle contraction. Cause and effect.
But Vitalis loops. It's a closed circuit that answers itself, a self-sustaining oscillation that doesn't obey chemical thresholds.
By all rights, it should dissipate as heat, bleed energy into entropy. But it doesn't. It stabilises, recycles, compresses and regenerates.
The more I study it, the more it stops feeling like mere current and starts feeling like something that answers back.
Not power flowing through me, but something flowing along with me.
Co-existence…?
Through these new laws of energy, hypothesis, and experimentation, I have successfully engineered something very close to magic.
I never thought it would be possible to do so… But here I am.
The most logical approach, I think, is to rank them by tier.
Also to give them their own separate spell entries, to document my findings.
I will catalogue my arsenal here for now:
Tier 1 —
Frost Snap — Thermodynamics
Scald Burst — Thermodynamics
Redox Spark — Thermodynamics
Heat Coil — Thermodynamics
Boiling Gyre — Hydrokinetics
Resonant Scanner — Acoustics
Tier ??? —
Plasma Coil — Electrodynamics'
...
'Frost Snap
Thermodynamics
Description:
My Vitalis clamps a point; Luminary drains heat from the medium…'
—— ❖ ——
After Arion had finished writing entries for his current spells, he continued on with his experiences in this new world.
—— ❖ ——
'There are other humanoid-like beings here, that's for certain, and I know first-hand they also know magic spells—I got to know that the hard way…
Are they engineers of the laws of physics?
Do they know knowledge like I do about the laws? Or do they simply break them without even realising?
Or maybe use some rudimentary method to learn their spells?
Am I the genius, or just the odd one out?
Too many questions.'
—— ❖ ——
Arion sat back on the creaking wooden chair, staring at his Grimoire.
That madman's field…
His eyes narrowed, deep in thought.
How did he do it?
The ink on the page still pulsed faintly; the Grimoire seeped Essence from the letters already written there, a soft glow that warmed the air around the desk.
The Grimoire itself would intermittently quiver, as if awaiting its partner to act.
"Hm…" he thought out loud, pulling himself back to the page.
Quill in hand, he lowered the tip toward the page and let the next line of thought take shape.
It inched above the page, hesitant.
"Equilibrium Field," he muttered.
"Stillness in motion. But stillness… it shouldn't exist." His eyes narrowed as he glanced around, as though a different angle might force reality to explain itself.
He withdrew, pushed himself up, and proceeded to pace back and forth on the cabin's wooden floor, Grimoire sat there almost like it was disappointed. The boards groaned under his steps, each one echoing the churn of ideas in his head. Dust motes danced in the slanting light from the window.
"…If that could—hmm… no," he paused at the window, staring out.
The forest creaked faintly beneath the mist's weight.
The mist barely existed now, only crawling within the treeline, retreating away from the rays of light.
Arion looked closer—it drifted and folded on itself, the thicker parts sinking while the thin wisps rose. Equal trade. A lazy dance of order and disorder.
He stood there watching, expression unreadable.
"But he could've… ahh, it's possible… maybe?" he mumbled as he walked back to the desk.
He scooted back into the chair, quill re-forming in his hands more urgently than normal. The wood of the desk felt solid as it grounded under his forearms.
He started sketching—rings, intersecting vectors, temperature gradients. Each line sharper than the last until the page looked like a war between geometry and frustration. His hand moved faster, the quill scratching with purpose.
'Entropy transfer?'—crossed out.
'Self-contained system?'—crossed out again, harder.
"If it's sealed, then decay should accelerate, not stop. Unless—"
He froze mid-sentence, the quill hovering just above the parchment.
"…he dumped it somewhere else."
He thought back to the mist.
The mist never vanished—it simply traded places with itself, one part feeding another to keep the shape whole. To keep existing.
He scribbled the words before they could escape, ink splattering across the margin.
'External sink? Luminary lattice as medium?'
"Hmm… could Luminary Essence hold entropy?" he whispered, tapping the page.
"A… reservoir of chaos? A universal landfill for disorder?"
Maybe… maybe he transferred it beyond this reality. The thought slid into place alongside the memory of the abomination spawning from the tear that sat in the middle of his campsite.
Another line, another correction. The handwriting became more frantic as the Grimoire pulsed with brief satisfaction, then shuddered when he crossed it out, the vibration traveling up through his fingers.
If so—equilibrium false? Stillness = borrowed order?
He leaned back, eyes darting between half-written notes, the chair protesting with a sharp creak.
"He… didn't beat the Second Law…"
A pause of hesitation.
"…He outsourced it?"
The words stayed. The next one came slower, quieter.
"If that field really exported entropy… then time inside… it would've slowed? Because time follows entropy, not clocks."
The quill hovered, trembling slightly with the pulse of his hand. A faint hum rolled through the Grimoire, echoing his thought deep in his bones.
He looked down at the mess of lines and circles, the smear of ink that had turned a theory into a storm. Then, in the empty space below, he wrote one clean word.
—— ❖ ——
'Hypothesis:
If the field behaved as an open thermodynamic system, it may have exported entropy elsewhere.
Where? The only candidate medium available was the Luminary Essence lattice—a pervasive energy field with non-local coupling properties.
If Essence can act as an entropy sink, it would absorb disorder, leaving behind a false equilibrium bubble—what I possibly experienced as "stillness."
That would mean the field didn't stop decay; it outsourced it. Every atom, every breath of heat, dumped its disorder somewhere into the Essence network.
That's how the madman bypassed the Second Law—not by rewriting it, but by exploiting a loophole: shifting entropy across dimensions.
Corollary:
Time inside that field felt strangely slower… like it lagged behind.
When I left, the sun had moved an unknown number of cycles, though by my perception only a half day had passed.
If entropy defines the arrow of time, then suppressing entropy also suppresses time's flow.
The field could have created a localised time dilation effect—a side-effect of reduced entropy production.
In general relativity, increased gravity or velocity slows time; here, it was increased order.
Suppressing entropy increase locally slows the flow of time inside the field — order makes time feel thicker, disorder makes it run thin.
Just like how extreme gravity warps spacetime in relativity, extreme order warps the arrow of time here.
Conclusion:
The madman didn't build a sanctuary. He built a time pocket sustained by exported chaos.
He didn't stop decay; he redirected it.
The field was never stable—just balanced on borrowed order.
If that balance fails, the system won't collapse or explode violently. It'll simply resume what it always resisted—entropy taking back its due.'
—— ❖ ——
The Second Law still wins.
It always does.
He just held off the universe—until he could no longer.
…
Arion sat back, his weight fully collapsing into the chair, staring at what he had jotted down. The satisfaction of piecing it together settled in his chest.
Staring off into space, he was suddenly caught in deep thought by a sound.
Ting.
"The hell—"
Before he could finish, he was cut off by the Grimoire.
It suddenly pulsed and a vibration was sent toward him, trickling along his Vitalis like a spark jumping across a gap, warm and insistent.
Before he could do anything, the Grimoire closed by itself with a soft thud. Then the shard glowed, as if he had activated the Codex—but he had not.
The Codex? But I never—
The Codex flashed before him, but this time, as he scanned through it, he saw something new:
—— ❖ ——
❖[Shard Codex] ❖
[Grimoire of Vitalis]
Attuned: [Arion]
[Common]
Tool/Grimoire
[Vitalis Traits]
Pages drink true knowledge and never stain or rot; the tome answers eager hands.
Unusually resistant to most elements, resists time and weather alike.
Knowledge Is Infinite: When fed genuine knowledge, the Grimoire conjures a spectral quill and records without cost; once per day it releases a prepared spell without Vitalis cost if the wielder meets its tier.
[Temperament]
Attentive, curious—rewards honest pursuit; rejects falsehoods and hollow scribbles.
[Awakening Potential]
○○○○ — [Locked]
[Description]
Slate-and-leather binding stitched in silver thread; the edges of its pages glimmer like wet ink, and the quill's feather smokes faintly when writing.
He wrote until the ink ran dry, and the Grimoire refused him — for his words had become an echo of madness.
—— ❖ ——
"Awakening Potential?" he muttered, tilting his head at the new addition.
But then he heard it a second time.
Ting.
The sound came with another change.
The text flickered.
[Awakening Potential]
●○○ — [Locked]
"Well, well…" he exhaled through a grin. "You were holding back on me, weren't you, pal?"
The rush hit anyway—like a dopamine spike when a level bar fills. The same little kick the brain gives when progress has a shape.
"Four rings. Two filled." He rubbed his chin.
"I've seen this before. This can't just be for fun—c'mon, this ain't no charity. What's the catch, bud?" He spoke with the tone of someone being sold a pyramid-scheme enlightenment package.
Silence.
He sighed, then read the old line again.
'Pages drink true knowledge.'
"So you enjoy a good meal, huh? Guess we've got that in common!"
The Grimoire's pages rustled softly, a sound halfway between shifting paper and a satisfied purr, the vibration traveling pleasantly up his arms.
The glow thinned, threads of Luminary Essence drawing back into the shard like retreating veins of light.
"Alright. Keep eating the good stuff and we'll see how fast you chew through those rings."
He slid a green shard out from his robe, its facets catching the light and throwing soft emerald reflections across the wooden walls.
"Now, if you don't mind, this lovely lady and I need to get properly acquainted."
The green shard pulsed with glee, syncing perfectly with the steady flow of his Vitalis.