Large snowflakes fluttered from the sky, landing on my face. They felt only somewhat cold, bothering me less than I expected. Oddly enough, I felt rejuvenated as if I had just woken up from an exceptionally relaxing nap.
I stared at my lanky fingers. They didn’t seem to be suffering from frostbite anymore and looked healthy and pink.
As I dug deeper into the recesses of my identity, I found myself confronted by a fragmented, discordant mosaic of Ioan's past made up of scattered, shadow-like snippets of memory that danced just beyond the reach of comprehension.
Was I Ioan? I didn't feel like Ioan.
My knowledge of Earth, rationality and science was sharp, as clear as day. It was a 40'000 lumen flashlight torch compared to the dying candle that was Ioan's memories.
Oddly enough, I felt no thirst or hunger while sitting in my glade.
I thought about the strange text I had glimpsed before losing consciousness.
Suddenly, violet and silver sparks flickered across my vision, coalescing into runes that gradually arranged themselves into comprehensible text:
I stared at the text. Was this some strange neurological effect, perhaps a visual representation generated by my brain to interpret magical energy? Or were they an inherent property of this world's metaphysical structure, a quantified manifestation of abilities that everyone here could potentially access?
Sadly, the memories of Ioan were incredibly shallow and gave me nothing to work with.
I contemplated the "Domain Bound Anima" entry.
Four hundred and seventeen people sacrificed. A chain of souls according to the Sirin’s words. Was I drawing power from the dead?
The thought was disturbing, yet I couldn't deny the evidence before me. I had survived a night in freezing temperatures with wet clothes, felt no hunger or thirst, and now had an inexplicable 'grove' of flowers blooming in the snow around me.
What did ‘tier 1’ mean? Was there some sort of a ranking system to being a witch or something? What was ‘Cultivated Essence’?
As I stared at the last line, I noticed something else—a faint violet glow that seemed to hover at the edge of my perception. As I concentrated on it, the glow coalesced into a small, pulsing orb of light. The "[1]" number next to Cultivated Essence flashed brighter than the others, now surrounded by a sparkling sphere of light.
"Hrm," I hummed, watching the orb drift with my attention.
On impulse, I tried to direct it toward the "Might of Zemlya" entry. The orb responded, floating toward the designation, causing the number to shimmer and flicker between 0 and 1.
I experimented further, mentally pushing the point toward "Swiftness of Wind." Again, the numbers wobbled between values as the orb hovered there. Then "Grace of Hand"—each time, the corresponding value fluctuated as if uncertain.
This was magic—quantifiable, movable something that I could allocate. But where would it serve me best? The question wasn't merely academic; in this strange world of witches, monsters, and dragons, the choice could determine my survival.
I released the orb and the number [1] snapped back to ‘Cultivated Essence’.
I studied the circle of grasses and flowers surrounding me with renewed interest. They shouldn't be possible in these temperatures. Their existence defied the basic principles of plant biology. Were they drawing warmth from the same source that sustained me? Or perhaps they operated according to entirely different biological rules.
I reached out to touch one of the bell-flowers, observing its vibrant color. I squeezed one of the leaves, crushing it. Upon release, the leaf unnaturally and gradually uncurled itself, repairing the damage.
Slowly, I rose to my feet. The smoldering ruins of Svalbard stretched before me, a grim reminder of what had happened here. But also, perhaps, an opportunity to begin my research.
After all, I was a warlock now. And what was a warlock, if not a scientist of a different kind?
I grabbed a dead branch from the edge of my glade and cautiously poked at the ground beyond my circle of flowers. The stick passed through without resistance. No magical barrier, no flash of energy—just ordinary, snow-covered earth.
According to the witch's words, my safety depended on staying within this domain. My heartbeat quickened at the thought of the Sirin’s yellow, predatory eyes finding me again.
Yet a scientist's curiosity burned within me. What exactly defined this boundary? How far did my protection extend? What would happen if I stepped beyond it?
I scanned the scorched village around me longingly. Burned-out husks of buildings stood like tombstones. If I remained sitting in my domain indefinitely, I'd learn nothing—about this world, about the magic that now seemed to course through me, or about how to survive outside my little circle of safety.
The scientific method demanded data. Most of all, I needed tools that I could obtain from the village.
The witch did say that I needed to ‘replant’ her mushrooms into my domain, and this implied that leaving my domain was permitted. I glanced at the yellow-pink circle of shrooms now covered in a light sprinkle of snow.
"Just one step," I murmured to myself. "One step, and I can always retreat."
I placed my foot at the very edge of the circle where the vibrant flowers gave way to snow. The invisible-hug warmth radiated from the ground beneath me, as if the earth itself was encouraging me to stay. The feeling triggered a momentary panic attack, a deep gnawing in my chest—what if I couldn't return once I left?
Drawing a deep breath, I lifted my foot and placed it deliberately outside the boundary. Then the other. Then I moved entirely out of the glade.
The effect was immediate but subtle. The comforting warmth that had sustained me vanished, replaced by the biting cold of winter. My stomach rumbled painfully—a reminder of my hunger. Fatigue crashed over me like a wave. Thirst clawed at my parched throat. All of my muscles and joints throbbed as if strained after a heavy workout. My neck ached worst of all, like I slept on the ground all night long… which technically I did.
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I swayed, dizzy from the abrupt shift. It wasn't that the domain had been blocking these sensations—rather, it had been actively somehow perma-nurturing me, providing what my body needed without food or rest. Now, outside its influence, reality reasserted itself with brutal efficiency.
The boundary wasn't a prison—it was life support. I could leave whenever I wanted, but at the cost of suddenly facing all my body's needs at once.
I quickly retreated back into my circle, and immediately the warmth returned, life flowing up through my feet and spreading throughout my body. The hunger subsided, not vanishing entirely but dulling to a manageable ache. The exhaustion ebbed away, replaced by that strange, buoyant energy that had filled me upon waking.
"So I can leave," I concluded, "but not for long."
This presented a problem. I needed to explore the village, gather resources, and learn more about my situation. But to do so, I'd need food and water—which meant leaving my domain to find them. Catch 22.
Rising to my feet, I took a steadying breath. I would venture out, but strategically. Short forays, always returning to my domain to recover. Methodical exploration, expanding in a spiral pattern from my safe center.
I stepped out from my glade again, this time with a purpose. I needed to understand the limitations of my body outside my domain's nurturing influence. As I stepped beyond the circle of flowers, I felt the now-familiar rush of discomfort—hunger, thirst, and fatigue all competing for my attention like toddlers fighting over the last cookie.
"Let's quantify this," I muttered to myself, counting my steps. "For science. And possibly… future self-pity."
One step. Two. Three. The cold bit through my inadequate clothing, but it was manageable.
By step five, I was calculating the rate at which my discomfort increased. It wasn't linear—more like an exponential function. If I assigned a value of 1 to my initial discomfort at the boundary, by step five it had reached approximately 2.7—roughly e1, the base of the natural logarithm.
Ah, lovely math: making suffering more precise since forever.
"Pain equals e raised to steps divided by 5," I hypothesized, grinding my teeth against the growing discomfort. "Which means at around step 50, I'll mathematically experience more pain than exists in the universe. Fantastic."
Ten steps out, and my hypothesis seemed sound. The discomfort was now at about 7.4—close to e2. My muscles trembled with fatigue, and my stomach twisted with gnawing, clawing hunger that felt weeks old. "This is fine," I groaned, "I’m on the witch diet plan. Lose weight through magical starvation. Five stars… but would not recommend it."
Fifteen steps: the pain approached 20—e3. My vision blurred at the edges, and I found myself hunched over, breathing heavily. Each heartbeat pounded in my ears like a heavy metal drummer with anger issues.
Twenty steps: theoretical pain of 54.6—e?. Reality was even worse. My legs wobbled beneath me, threatening to buckle. Sweat broke out across my forehead despite the cold, and nausea climbed up my throat. "If anyone's watching," I gasped to the empty village, "this is not what graceful experimentation looks like. Please don't include this in the scientific journal."
I didn’t head towards the mushrooms, instead I looked around for something of use.
Fighting through waves of pain, through watering eyes, I spotted something promising—a wooden shovel handle protruding from the snow near one of the less-damaged houses. A tool. A resource.
The shovel lay approximately ten more steps away—thirty steps total from my safe haven. At this distance, pain would theoretically reach around 403—e?. Unbearable. "That's just great," I wheezed. "The only thing between me and a glorious career as a teenage gravedigger is enough pain to make childbirth seem like a day at the spa."
Nevertheless, I pushed forward. Twenty-five steps. My vision tunneled, darkening at the periphery. Twenty-seven steps, and my knees hit the snow, my body rebelling against this self-imposed torture.
Twenty-eight, and I was crawling, fingers numb and clawing at the frozen ground. "This... is... ridiculous," I panted. "PhDs... shouldn't... crawl... for shovels."
Two meters from the shovel, I collapsed entirely. My body simply refused to continue, muscles seizing in protest, stomach heaving with dry retches. The mathematical model had been correct—there was a threshold beyond which human willpower alone couldn't overcome physical limitations. I'd discovered the physical equivalent of dividing by zero.
With the last of my strength, I rolled onto my back, staring up at the gray sky through tear-filled eyes. "This is how I die," I thought dramatically to the clouds. "Not eaten by a dragon or a bird-woman with boundary issues, but because I couldn't reach a shovel. Put that on my tombstone, if anyone ever bothers to dig one... which they won't... because I can't reach the shovel!"
I realized that I could not move back or forward, feeling drained, like a half dead corpse. I desperately thought about the strange text quantifying my witchy-ness and it once again appeared in my vision, sharp and completely bypassing my tears as if it was burned into something deeper than my retinas.
The pulsing orb of light still hovered expectantly. One point. One attribute I could enhance.
Fine, I thought at the floating magical interface. You win, weird fantasy RPG mechanics. I'm having the full isekai experience, aren't I? Next thing you know, I'll be collecting a harem of improbably proportioned magical creatures. Ugh. Harems are way too much effort with all of the social logistics involved.
With a resigned mental nudge, I directed the orb toward "Persistence of Body." It floated obediently, then merged with the attribute, causing the number to flicker and then stabilize at 1.
The effect wasn't immediate, wasn't dramatic—no flash of light or sudden surge of strength. No triumphant music, no level-up animation.
What, no fireworks? No 'congratulations' banner? Budget cuts in the magic Litrpg department, I see.
Instead, it was a subtle easing, like the loosening of a tight band around my chest. My breathing steadied, the nausea and biting cold receded slightly, and the trembling in my limbs subsided to a manageable shaking.
I pushed myself onto my hands and knees, then slowly, painfully, back to my feet. The discomfort was still intense, but somehow more... a touch more distant. As if my body's complaints were being filtered through a small buffer before reaching my consciousness.
"So this is what it feels like to level up," I hissed out. "Less 'unstoppable warrior' and more 'slightly less domain-bound zombie.' I'll take it!"
Two more steps. I crawled forward on my trembling, aching limbs. The shovel was within reach now. I grasped the handle, the rough wood scraping against my palm, and allowed myself a small smile of triumph.
Clutching my acquisition, I crawled back toward my domain. I felt like a corpse, a man dying from thirst, hunger and glade-deprivation as if I was some kind of a vampire that was seeking only one thing–to return to my magic circle. Crawling back to the glade, the pain lessened then vanished completely when I touched the circle of plants.
As I rolled through my circle of flowers, I was nearly weeping with gratitude for the instant flood of warmth and restoration that flowed up through my entire body from below.
Blinking tears away, I collapsed in the center of my domain, the precious shovel clutched to my chest.
It took me about thirty seconds to start feeling alive.
"Behold!" I announced to the empty village as I raised the shovel skyward like a legendary, precariously wobbling sword. "I, Ioan… the Warlock, have procured the Shovel of Destiny! Tremble before my might, ye piles of snow!"
My arm gave out and I nearly smacked myself with my prize.
"Day two of Warlock’s Log," I let out, lying back down to accelerate the domain-blessed healing. "Acquired one (1) shovel. Nearly died. At this rate, I'll have a complete garden tool set by the time I'm eighty!”
In another few minutes, I felt well enough to stand up.
A cursory survey of the village from the edge of my domain revealed a non-damaged pub halfway buried in a rocky cliffside that stood way outside of my range. It felt like the ideal candidate for a secure base of operations if I could somehow reach it.
The prospect of sleeping outside, even if the cold didn’t bother me, wasn’t something I was looking forward to, especially if a certain magical beast showed up to snack on me.
The distant pub taunted me with the safety of its intact walls.
As a man of science, I refused to be daunted by the dastardly limiting constraints that bound me to the enchanted glade.
I stared at the ground below my feet.
What was the earth exactly? It was soil and rocks. These things could simply be moved… could they not? The shovel tempted me like a seductress with its iron blade curves and smooth wooden handle.
I considered the facts:
- According to Grandhilda the fact that I was a man somehow wouldn't allow me to meditate or see spirits. This implied a likely evolutionary difference between men and women in this world in correlation to magic interaction.
- Grandhilda knew exactly where my glade was. Even though the Yaga made me into a ‘witch’, her core motivations were still unclear to me. It was possible that she still planned to ‘hero’ me up. She could easily send monsters after me to "train me".
- The Sirin knew where my domain was. She would return. I wasn’t sure if I could survive another night of her mentally-skewering singing. Something about her unnaturally perfect voice was absolutely breaking me from the inside, wearing down my mental resistance.
- The glade was a green patch of grass out in the open visible against the white snow. Any idiot could see it from miles away, come over and chop my neck right off with a sword or worse yet, just shoot arrows at me from a distance. Marauders were likely coming to steal whatever wasn't nailed down now that the dragon was gone. I had to steal it all first and put it all in a secure location. It was only a matter of time until someone raided the ruins of Svalbard. Gathering tools and supplies was more reasonable than simply sitting in the open where a dragon, or another fantasy creature, or even a mundane wolf could just gobble me up.
As my paranoia intensified, I made a decision. The glade was definitely getting relocated to a safer position.