The world was quiet.
No. No, scratch that.
The world is never quiet when Lyra is around.
As usual, she was out there training with Kevin and Levin.
Same sword swings. Same fireball fizzles. Same obnoxiously loud yelling.
And let's not forget her newest trick: "Airshot."
She nailed it three days ago.
And me, being the supportive mentor I am, casually called it an "airhead shot."
So she launched it directly at my face.
Her accuracy has improved a little too much lately.
I swear she's secretly grinding EXP just to unlock her Dice Sniping Skill Tree.
As if the step-mom bullying wasn't bad enough, here comes the real horror:
Levin's eternal attempt to flirt with a girl who thinks love is a type of sandwich.
Every. Single. Morning.
"Lyra, you've grown stronger."
"Heh. I was already strong, dummy."
"W-Well, you're even cooler now—"
"I stronk because I AM CUTE."
"Yes! Yes you are! So cute, Lyra!!"
Or the other day—
"Levin, that was a cool flame!"
"I can shape it like this too—watch!"
Poof.
A glowing flame in the shape of a heart.
Lyra blinked once.
Twice.
Then calmly notched an arrow… and sent it flying straight through the flame-heart.
While muttering—
"To the moon."
💀 BRO. PLEASE. SPARE ME.
CAN YOU IMAGINE HOW SICK I AM OF THIS?!
EVERY. MORNING.
EVERY. DAY.
I'm stuck in a loop anime where the plot is just Levin flirting, Lyra dodging, and me rotting in accessory hell.
It's like I've been cursed to rewatch the same TV rerun about a neighbor's cat giving birth—while puking my metaphorical guts out like some mistress in early pregnancy.
"I JUST WANT A TIMESKIP BUTTON."
"PLEASE. LET ME PRESS IT. STRAIGHT TO THEIR WEDDING DAY."
"—OH MY BAD. POST-WEDDING NIGHT, PLEASE.
I CANNOT—I REPEAT—CANNOT BEAR TO WATCH THE WEDDING NIGHT SCENE."
I rolled myself under a tree. I couldn't take it anymore. Not the yelling, not the flirting, not the arrows.
I needed to do something. Anything. Or I'd lose whatever was left of my cube sanity.
So I tried again—mana gathering. Form shaping. That transparent body thing I could never hold for more than a few seconds.
I focused.
The mana flowed.
My outline shimmered faintly.
One second... two... three...
Flicker.
Gone again.
"…Great," I muttered inside my core. "I'm basically a spiritual screensaver."
I tried again. This time, I imagined myself as a cool, majestic being—hovering like a god. Floating. Radiant. Proud.
Four seconds.
From across the field, Lyra shouted mid-training:
"Kevin! Why do all my arrows fall down? Why can't they just fly to the moon?!"
Kevin, deadpan: "Because there's gravity."
I blinked.
My body vanished again.
"…What."
I didn't even have the energy to scream. I just lay there, mentally sobbing, trying to delete myself from existence.
Dang... What am I doing wrong? Am I just stupid? Maybe I need something else? I dunno. If I was as smart as Einstein, maybe I could figure something out.
…Actually, hold on.
Einstein was isekaied from Eden. I mean, Eden has talking frogs and sword-wielding pigs. It's possible. That Einstein wasn't the only one either—maybe there were others? Like Alfa Edison with electricity—he was probably a lightning mage. Graham Bell? Sound mage. Bruce Lee? Body enhancement maniac. Newton? Gravity guy—probably an earth mage or something.
Wait.
Wait a damn minute.
Newton.
Wasn't he the apple guy? The "motion and gravity" guy?
I paused.
My mana flickered again—just a pulse. Not from focus. From curiosity.
What if I'm not failing because I'm weak...
What if I'm failing because I keep stopping? Or maybe the energy gets cut because it's not enough to sustain the flow?
What was that stupid law again?
An object in motion stays in motion. An object at rest stays at rest… unless something messes it up.
Wait—
That's it. I have a crazy idea.
God, if You're listening… please let this work.
I threw up a quick prayer… and then let the inspiration take the wheel.
Every time I lose focus, the body flickers and dies. So what if…
What if I build the reaction into the ROOT?
Forget = auto-remind.
Fade = auto-reboot.
Flicker = slap myself spiritually.
Action equals reaction.
F₁ = −F₂.
"I lose focus? The universe slaps me with a restart.
So I slap back—with purpose."
Every time:
I flicker—F₁.
I react—F₂.
Equal. Opposite. Eternal.
If I stop, I restart.
If I fail, I loop.
I don't "concentrate" anymore.
I reflexively recover.
F₁ (Focus Loss) = −F₂ (Emergency Reboot)
Loop Ratio = 1:1
I built the loop.
I became the loop.
I am the Loop = ∞
My laziness… has become my engine.
"I don't know how I knew this… but it just made sense."
I sat there, still as a rock.
The mana in me held.
My body shimmering again and formed.
One second.
Two.
No flicker yet.
I whispered the loop again, like a mantra.
"Focus fades = Restart reaction."
"I don't hold the body. The body holds itself."
Three seconds.
Then—
A twitch.
No. Not this time.
I caught it.
But something was still missing. The formula needed a way to run itself…
I let the thought collapse—
Then I remembered what Kevin said a while back—
"With enough control, high-level mages can form a second brain—just from mana. A backup processor for spells, reflexes, even instincts."
That's it! But I didn't need a whole brain. Just one focused thought. Everything was collapsing because I kept losing it.
I guided the mana again, built the thought—and planted it deep.
Buried inside my root like a spiritual landmine.
⚡ "If form flickers, restart it." ⚡
That's it. That's the whole thought.
I didn't even need to hold it in my head.
I implanted it in my root, the core.
Not as a complex structure.
Just as a loop. A ping. A tap.
Like leaving a post-it note on the wall of your soul that slaps you every time you walk past it.
And it somehow worked.
Not perfectly—
but the moment I slipped again…
✨ Ping.
A twitch of mana shot upward.
And my form stabilized again.
Four seconds.
Five.
I was doing it.
But it wasn't stable yet.
Every time I lost focus, it was like juggling an egg with chopsticks in a hurricane.
I needed more than just a loop.
I needed fuel.
I needed a container.
The mana I pulled in was weak and barely enough to hold the shape together.
It trickled in… slow, inconsistent. Not enough to keep the loop going.
"I'm just... too light," I muttered.
That's when two memories hit me at once—
Like a divine forehead flick from Einstein himself.
✨ Kevin, back during one of his lecture rants:
"Once infused, the object becomes an anchor—a fixed node in space. You then manipulate the surrounding mana to warp localized space around that anchor. That distortion creates a 'fold'—a personal, tethered dimension. Like a room in your pocket."
✨ And Lyra, screaming across the field: "Kevin! Why do all my arrows fall down?! Why can't they just fly to the moon?!"
"Because there's gravity," Kevin replied, deadpan.
I blinked.
It felt like someone—or something—whispered the answer to me.
Quantum Spatial Theory.
Sᶠ = (M × C) / A
(Spatial Fold Strength = Mana Density × Compression ÷ Anchor Instability)
That's Eden's version of the theory.
A law that bridges imagination and inertia.
A formula that explains how thought becomes mass,
and how mass bends space into shape.
It's the secret to folding reality—
Without ripping it apart.
I ran the numbers in my head.
Didn't need to write them down.
It just made sense.
So… mana can become mass.
And mass can contain.
If mass equals compressed energy… then compressed mana is mass.
And mass? Mass can anchor space.
"If I fold enough mana into a fixed point... I can stabilize it."
"If I stabilize it… I can treat that mass like a shell, and store myself inside it."
I wasn't building a body anymore.
I was building a pocket dimension inside my core.
A room made of willpower.
A bag made of stubbornness.
I wrapped the shape of my body into that fold—
And locked it there.
Huh. This is going smoother than it should.
Why is this working so well?
Is it because I'm inside an artifact?
The mana here flows like warm pudding—silky, delicious, disturbingly efficient.
Gross image. But dang, it's working.
I became the bag.
I stored myself.
Inside my own soul.
Like the world's sassiest USB stick.
That was it.
And right now... I was light.
Too light.
What if I became heavy?
Not physically—I'm still a dice with the density of a soap bubble.
But spiritually.
Magically.
What if my core had mass?
This whole container I just built—
It was packed with compressed mana.
Dense. Weighty.
Mass.
And what if that mass didn't just exist...
What if it pulled?
What if it drew mana toward it—
Not because I reached out,
But because it couldn't help but fall toward me?
I didn't need to chase mana.
I just needed to become the thing it orbits.
A gravity core.
💡 Gravity Theory
Every object pulls on every other object.
The closer they are, the stronger the pull.
The heavier they are, the stronger the force.
F = G × (m₁ × m₂) / r²
(Force of attraction = Gravitational constant × Mass1 × Mass2 ÷ Distance²)
Newton had his Three Laws of Motion… but this?
This was his final boss move.
The hidden Fourth Law of Eden.
The Apple Yeet Prophecy™.
…I'm 99% sure he also got isekai'd from here into Earth.
No normal earthling invents gravity and apples at the same time.
I breathed in—figuratively.
I didn't need to be powerful.
I needed to be massive.
Magically.
Spiritually.
Emotionally.
(Okay maybe not emotionally unless those two drama gremlins keep feeding me romantic tension like it's breakfast cereal.)
I concentrated every drop of mana into my core.
Compressed it.
Folded it.
Gave it squared mass.
Let that mass pull mana in—automatically.
Effortlessly.
Like gravity.
I wrapped the mana tight. Denser. Tighter. Until it pulsed with weight that didn't exist moments ago.
And then—
whooom
A breeze swept through the grass faintly.
Nothing visible. But something… shifted.
Like the air itself recognized a new force.
Like mana started to trickle toward me—not called, not pulled, just… drawn.
My root was like a black hole.
But with sass.
Uhuk Cough "Sass Root."
Eden girls were not ready for this.
My body floated here inside the dice, humming with stable energy, and for the first time in forever, I felt proud. Confident with all my limbs again.
And then—
I got cocky.
"…Wait a sec," I mumbled, spinning gently in my own mana orbit. "If I can plant one thought… why not two?"
Multi-tasking, baby.
Imagine it:
⚡ Thought One — "Stabilize the body."
⚡ Thought Two — "Auto-yeet away if Lyra throws something again."
Simple. Elegant. Genius.
I gathered mana.
Wove the second thread.
A simple thought. Just a tiny enhancement.
I guided it into the core—
Gently. Carefully.
Like adding a second candle to a quiet flame.
And then—that very moment.
Everything shattered.
Not a crack. Not a flicker.
A full collapse.
Like the Root rejected it.
The loop—snapped.
The container—ruptured from the inside.
The gravity core—collapsed inward like a dying star, but without the glory.
And me?
I screamed so hard—
So deep—
Even the echo inside my own thoughts couldn't make it out.
Because the pain wasn't physical.
It wasn't even magical.
It was foundational.
Like my entire existence got caught in the backlash of divine-level math.
Like my soul tried to divide itself by zero.
It wasn't just my body that failed.
The world rejected the thought.
And then came the silence.
No form.
No mana.
No light.
Just void.
Like I got unrendered from the plane of existence.
…
I don't know how long I was gone.
It felt like… forty days.
I felt like I was dreaming.
Like Lyra was shaking me. Crying every day, telling me to wake up.
Hah.
I tried to scream every time she cried beside me.
I heard her. I felt her… but I couldn't reach her.
Like being buried alive in warm light.
Like being locked inside your own heart.
Maybe it was more. Maybe less.
But the kind of silence I floated in wasn't measured in time.
It was measured in regret.
And somewhere, in that vast blankness, I heard something.
Not a voice.
Not words.
Just… an idea.
A truth.
Old as the stars.
"Only one thread may root in the soul.
More, and the weave unravels."
I didn't know where it came from.
The universe? My subconscious?
Some ancient cosmic grandma scolding me from the shadow realm?
No idea.
But I felt it.
Not in my head.
In my core.
In the very fabric of my being.
And for once in my life—I didn't argue.
It wasn't a punishment.
It was a boundary I should never attempt again.
When I finally awoke, I didn't try to move.
I didn't try to rebuild.
Not yet.
I was too shaken.
Too scared of placing another thought in my core.
The fear was real.
The pain was indescribable.
So I did nothing.
Just breathed—in silence.
Feeling the emptiness.
Remembering the agony.
Those dreams came again.
I saw her again.
Her stupid face. Her idiotic grin. The laugh.
…Damn.
I'm not sure why I missed her.
And only when the quiet stopped clawing at my nerves—
Only when the trauma became tolerable—
Did I move again.
Loop.
Container.
Gravity.
I rebuilt them like prayer.
Like penance.
And this time… I didn't even look at the second thought.
I threw the idea away.
Deleted it.
Emptied the recycle bin.
Then uninstalled the recycle bin.
Just to make sure it never came back.
Out of fear.
Out of respect.
Out of survival.
The body returned—dim and transparent, like it was painted on water.
But this time, it held.
The shape was returning.
Sharper. Denser. Realer.
After five years of yeeting around like a cheap accessory—
I finally had a body again.
The transparent layout I saw inside myself—
it was slowly being filled in.
Not fast.
Slower than a turtle riding a snail through molasses.
But it was happening.
Then… I'm not sure how much time had passed.
But my body was full again.
I had limbs.
Real limbs.
They weren't transparent anymore.
I raised my hand.
Not with magic.
Not with willpower.
Just… raised it.
Fingers.
Five of them.
They flexed when I told them to.
I reached out with my other hand and grabbed it—
And for the first time in… forever—
I could feel myself.
Touch.
It wasn't cold. It wasn't warm.
But it was there.
And then—
Tears.
They rolled down my face without warning.
Slow. Silent.
Like my soul was leaking.
Solid.
Real.
Mine.
I bent my knees. Wiggled my toes.
I clapped.
I slapped my own face just to check.
"Ouch." I whispered.
I laughed.
I really laughed.
And then I cried.
Hard.
I cried so much.
And it echoed through the dice like a church bell made of dumb joy.
I sat down.
Back against the wall of the cube.
Knees pulled in, arms wrapped around them.
Tears kept falling—quiet, slow, like pieces of me crumbling apart.
I wasn't a ghost anymore.
I had arms. Legs. A core that didn't collapse like a wet paper bag.
I had me.
Well… for anyone else, maybe it wasn't much.
It wouldn't change the world.
But for me?
It meant everything.
I wasn't stuck anymore.
I was moving again.
I took a very long, deep breath.
And let go of one of the heaviest, invisible burdens that had haunted me for what felt like a lifetime.
And for now…
That's enough.
Loop.
Container.
Gravity.
The Trinity is real.
And Jesus, if You're watching—
I love You.
I swear You gave me this idea personally.
Thank You so much for the inspiration.
Amen.
(Silence.)
…Then—
I exhaled—not through lungs, but through something deeper.
I was whole.
I was back.
Finally, I reached out with my senses—outside the box.
After today's hard-earned victory, I was ready to flex.
Time to boast to Lyra about how brilliant I was for building a body from literal zero.
THWACK.
Arrow. Straight to the face.
I blinked.
"…Which absolute lunatic just threw that?! Lyra?! Is it you again?!"
And then I saw her.
I saw someone I'd never seen before.
But somehow…
She looked familiar.
Taller. Leaner.
That same reckless grin.
…Wait.
What's going on here?