“Focus… tighter… come on, tighter still…”

  “Incantations? They’re just training wheels. A crutch to help sync your mind with the mana flow and sharpen concentration—that’s all.”

  “But my Fireball already hit Level 2. That upgrade gives me way finer control over the mana current the instant I release it. All I need… is to concentrate just a little harder… just a fraction more…”

  Rune stood motionless in a small forest clearing, breath locked in his chest, every shred of awareness funneled into the center of his palm.

  Mana coursed through him along a set internal pathway, meticulously compressed and channeled into the space an inch above his hand—transformed into pure fire-element, molded into a complete spell construct.

  Then—

  Whoosh!

  A faint red flicker ignited right above his palm.

  It started as a single orange-red spark.

  In the next heartbeat it ballooned outward—swelling in an instant to roughly the size of two apples.

  And then it locked in place.

  A stable, blazing orb of fire hovered there, burning with steady, contained heat.

  “…Chantless casting. Success.”

  The words came out low, almost reverent.

  A tiny, hard-to-spot smile tugged at the corner of Rune’s normally sharp, stoic mouth.

  The warm orange glow washed over his youthful but severe features as the fireball danced gently in his grasp.

  This was his very first real hypothesis about how magic worked in this world.

  He had suspected all along that spell release was fundamentally an act of pure will and precise control—one that didn’t actually require verbal components.

  Ever since the system he carried over from his old life pushed his Fireball to Level 2, he could sense everything with crystal clarity: the exact route mana took through his body, the precise instant it converted to fire-element, every subtle thread of mental force shaping and directing it.

  And through that entire intimate process he had never once detected the incantation itself contributing anything meaningful.

  So he had theorized: spoken chants were skippable—a beginner’s aid for focus, nothing fundamental.

  And now the proof burned quietly in his hand.

  As long as you could achieve exact mana control and assemble the construct along the proper trajectory, the spell simply… happened.

  But this was only step one.

  Rune stared at the flickering orb, refusing to let his guard down—in fact, he doubled his focus.

  Because the true test was just beginning.

  “Beginning compression experiment number 79.”

  He locked eyes on the orange-yellow sphere and let out a slow, deliberate breath.

  “Phase one: condense.”

  He stared harder. Veins bulged at his temples like taut wires—he might as well have been lifting a mountain.

  Whump—whump—whump—

  The once-perfectly-stable fireball suddenly shuddered violently.

  It began to pulse like a living heart—swelling and contracting in deep, rhythmic throbs.

  The roar of superheated air around it sounded eerily like slow, heavy heartbeats echoing through the trees.

  “Compress… damn it…!”

  Rune ignored the hypnotic rhythm of the flame.

  His face twisted in raw strain. Sweat beads the size of peas rolled down his forehead; his eyes were veined red.

  He could feel nearly his entire slender reserve of mental power poured into dominating this two-apple-sized construct—forcing the spell model to shrink.

  But…

  BOOM!

  After barely ten seconds the throbbing orb ruptured outward in a shower of harmless sparks and winked out of existence.

  “Experiment seventy-nine… failure.”

  The fireball’s heat was too mild to hurt its caster anyway, so the burst did nothing more than scatter light across the clearing.

  What really gnawed at him was—

  “How? The theory has to be sound. So what the hell went wrong?”

  Another failure. The seventy-ninth in a row.

  Rune’s brows furrowed deeply.

  This shouldn’t be possible.

  “Basic thermodynamics: in a roughly enclosed space, increasing molecular density skyrockets pressure and collision rate, which drives temperature up sharply.”

  “Magical flame may burn differently from the combustion I knew before, but the overt, observable principles are the same.”

  “In my last world, flame was high-temperature plasma—ionized gas held together at extreme heat.”

  If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  “Here, magical fire should be something analogous: an elemental state we can call fire-element for convenience.”

  “If the core mechanics match, it has to follow thermodynamic laws.”

  “This world imposes unusual stability on magical flames—almost perfectly constant. My mental force can apply enough pressure to create a near-enclosed environment around the construct. Reduce the volume while keeping the total quantity of fire-element fixed, and temperature should spike. So why does compression keep collapsing?”

  Rune turned the problem over and over, finding no crack.

  Then, as if a cold realization had just sunk in, his expression soured.

  “Unless… once the spell construct is formed and released, its shape—like its temperature—is locked in by the world’s rules? Impossible to modify afterward?”

  The thought sharpened his gaze to a blade’s edge.

  Because if that was true…

  …it led straight to the outcome he feared most.

  Everything he knew from his previous life—the physics, the engineering mindset—would be useless for pushing this world’s magic any further.

  It would mean he was permanently stuck as a genuine “trash mage.”

  The label itself didn’t bother him much.

  What mattered — what would constitute absolute torture — was the prospect of entering a realm governed by sword and sorcery only to find its deepest causal principles forever inaccessible...

  ......

  This was the eighteenth year since Rune arrived in this world.

  And this was no longer the Earth he once knew.

  “Don’t play on your phone while crossing the street.”

  Those were the last words Rune ever spoke on Earth.

  He uttered them to the child he had just yanked back from the jaws of death. Lying on the cold asphalt, he gazed at the small figure huddled on the sidewalk, sobbing uncontrollably. He felt the warm, sticky spread beneath him growing wider and thicker, and for a brief moment, silence claimed him.

  At the very edge of fading consciousness, he summoned the last of his strength. With his life as the price, he delivered one final piece of advice to the boy.

  Rune had been a science fiction writer.

  He was obsessed with weaving rigorous scientific principles into sprawling, imaginative tales — with probing the underlying mechanics of reality, the deep logic that governed the universe.

  To him, it represented an ultimate, cold, and magnificent beauty. He yearned to share that awe with others.

  Unfortunately, the people around him never seemed to share his passion for the physical equations and mathematical laws that underpinned existence. Their polite but visibly bored expressions made it clear: they were not the right audience.

  So he turned to novels. Through invented galaxies and civilizations, he tried to convey the truths of reality as he understood them.

  Regrettably, his works remained obscure.

  Some reviewers even called them “too hard sci-fi,” complaining that they felt like forced lectures on “useless knowledge.”

  How could science ever be useless? Rune never understood that criticism.

  But now none of it mattered.

  He had reached the end of his life.

  That day had started like any other. He headed to the supermarket for ingredients, looking forward to cooking. For him, preparing and savoring food was one of life’s great joys — second only to unraveling the mysteries of the cosmos.

  He especially loved Chinese cuisine: the layered flavors, the precise control of heat and timing — irreplaceable pleasures.

  This time, though, no meal awaited him.

  While crossing the street, his peripheral vision caught a child staring intently at a phone screen, fingers flying across it, completely oblivious to the red light. The boy stepped straight into traffic — right into the path of an accelerating car.

  A shrill screech of brakes finally snapped the child awake, but terror froze him in place, mind blank.

  There was no time to think.

  Rune’s body moved before his mind caught up.

  He lunged forward, shoving the boy back toward the safety of the sidewalk. The car’s side clipped him instead. He was hurled through the air like a broken marionette and slammed onto the pavement in the middle of the road. Agonizing pain flooded every nerve; warm blood pooled rapidly beneath him.

  The boy’s phone skittered across the asphalt and landed near Rune’s hand. The screen stayed lit, displaying the vivid interface of a typical monster-hunting, level-up game. The virtual character kept fighting tirelessly while Rune lay on his back, staring up at an impossibly clear blue sky, feeling his awareness inexorably sink into darkness.

  “So this… is what dying feels like.”

  In the face of oblivion, a torrent of thoughts surged — yet only this one calm observation condensed into words.

  “Waaahhh…”

  The child he had saved stood safely on the curb, staring wide-eyed at the bloodied figure in the road, and unleashed a piercing wail.

  Tears streamed down the young face.

  Rune understood perfectly: more than gratitude, the cries carried raw fear and shock.

  I should leave something behind for this world…

  As consciousness thinned, one last coherent thought surfaced.

  But what?

  In those final, fading moments, the answer came.

  Rune turned his head with immense effort toward the boy. He forced a weak but deliberately gentle smile.

  With his dying breath, he delivered his final gift:

  “From now on… don’t play on your phone while crossing the street. Stay safe.”

  A small act of kindness, then.

  The only, and last, thing he could offer — to the child, and to the world.

  A tiny, almost insignificant trace of genuine goodwill.

  The words fell away. Eternal darkness folded around him, soft and absolute.

  Facing death, Rune felt curiosity far more than fear.

  His lifelong pursuit of the world’s underlying principles had quietly led him toward the ultimate forbidden question: what, exactly, is the experience of death?

  So when the moment arrived, a researcher’s detached fascination outweighed primal terror.

  What does death feel like?

  Now he knew.

  Nothingness.

  Absolute, perfect void.

  Subjective consciousness dissolved completely, merging into the objective backdrop of existence. No sensation, no thought — not even the concept of “experiencing” remained.

  He was no longer an entity. Not even a fragment. Just… absence.

  “So… death is like this.”

  In the final instant before self-awareness extinguished, he completed that last observation.

  And with that, Rune closed his eyes forever.

  His life ended at twenty-eight.

  Unnoticed by anyone, in the split second before his vital signs ceased entirely, the phone lying beside him — its screen still glowing with game graphics — suffered a sudden, minuscule internal spark.

  Blood soaking the pavement acted as an impromptu conductor.

  That faint, imperceptible flash darted through the pooling crimson like something alive, then vanished into Rune’s rapidly cooling body.

  The process lasted less than a heartbeat. No one witnessed it.

  The instant the spark disappeared, the vibrant game display on the phone froze — then winked out.

  The screen went dark.

  Dead.

  Just like Rune.

  ......

  Rune was an intensely calm and rational individual.

  His entire life had been devoted to uncovering the rules beneath appearances.

  Yet when it came to what had happened to him, he recognized with perfect clarity: he had neither the right nor the capacity to investigate its mechanisms.

  Because the moment he “opened” his eyes again, blurry shapes flooded his vision. Instinctively he tried to speak — and what emerged instead was a loud, uncontrollable infant’s cry.

  He had become a newborn. In another world.

  After the initial shock and disorientation passed, drawing on his novelist’s skill at constructing logical chains and his immediate analysis of the situation, he quickly deduced two possibilities:

  He had undergone full reincarnation, memories intact.

  He had “transmigrated” — an anomaly in the usual death-and-memory-wipe process, flinging him into an entirely new reality.

  Which one it was became obvious soon enough.

  Because he witnessed this world’s anomalies firsthand and recognized with absolute certainty: this was not Earth. It was a completely novel, alien domain.

  Retaining all memories and personality, transported across incomprehensible distances and modes of existence into a fresh world — the forces and mechanisms involved vastly exceeded anything his prior scientific or philosophical framework could encompass.

  Rune placed rationality above all else.

  He understood perfectly: the “journey” that delivered him here belonged to a realm beyond his reach — divine prerogative, untouchable.

  So he did not rush to probe those forbidden truths.

  Priority one: determine exactly what kind of world this was.

  Because although he was now a fragile infant, prolonged observation revealed stark differences from the Earth he had known.

  It wasn’t just the societal structure and worldview reminiscent of some ancient historical period on his old planet.

  More crucially —

  He discovered that this world possessed transcendent power.

  Supernatural forces existed here.