I landed in the centre of what appeared to be a snowy wasteland that did not look anything like the forest I had left behind. In fact, there was no forest anymore, just a solid sheet of snow that I found myself dumped into. The snow was incredibly fluffy and dry.

After taking a couple of awkward steps, I grew myself a set of snowshoes so that I wasn't submerged up to the waist.

I was really looking forward to the day I had enough Grace to run around in mid-air. That way, I didn't have to deal with trudging through muck or snow. But that was a way off. I'd have to be okay with walking on the ground for now.

I could tell I was, in fact, still within my Domain, which made even less sense. That's all I could tell. Otherwise, all the other information was greyed out.

Where were the trees? Where was anything? The snowfield just spread off in every direction simultaneously. Opening my minimap, I saw the Primary node was a ways away to the south.

I hadn't received any reward for completing the Zone Quest yet, so my story arc here wasn't quite done. With how the world had turned out, I wasn't sure what there was even left to do. If I was still in my Domain, the only explanation would be that there had been a time skip in the story.

That didn't tell me anything about what I was actually supposed to do, though. Or what the story even was.

My walk took longer than expected. It felt like my Domain was bigger than it should be. But eventually I reached my destination.

Once I was standing over the Primary Node, I called upon my Fire circuits and dumped a load of Fire onto the snow to begin melting my way towards it.

I ran out of Fire before I could even see the top of the tree. Unfortunately, my Minimap didn't have a depth gauge, so I had no idea how far I had to go.

Switching to my staff, I began the process of excavating. I even went so far as to refreeze the water I had melted, so I could grab it with the staff and fling it out of the hole.

Half a kilometre later, I finally hit the ground.

Was this supposed to be hundreds of thousands of years in the future during an ice age or something?

I had no idea why the Zone had this happen, but I dug out the tree and the ritual circle. Flinging chunks of ice up and out of the hole until I had created a cave for myself.

The tree itself was nearly ten times the size and so full of Mana it felt like a bomb about to go off from where I was.

Walking up to it, I poked the Primary Node and reconnected with it, and immediately received a system notification.

Class Level (Neophyte Conduit) Increased +5 (57) +10 Wit, +15 Spirit, +10 Fortitude, +15 Arcana

What the hell? What the fuck happened that I earned five levels? I've never gained that many levels in my Class outside of combat.

I opened up my [Domain Management System], trying to figure out what happened.

[Domain Manager]

Wild Domains

[The Pale Gaol (III-4)]

Well, no wonder it gave me a handful of levels. I'm surprised I didn't gain more, actually.

Upon examining the symbols engraved within the ritual circle, I realized there was more meaning than I had initially inscribed. In fact, I couldn't even read them anymore.

Or at least I couldn't read them in full. The initial gist of what I wrote was still there. It was more that the symbols had somehow evolved over time through wear and growth to mean far different things from what I initially wrote.

The symbol that was initially only supposed to act as a target for humans read like some kind of archaic poem about the burden of flesh.

I removed the bookshelf that I had looted from the Maleficarum-focused Zone from my Inventory. I didn't know why I still carried it around. The books in it were largely useless to me now that my ritualism had far surpassed whatever the fuck they were doing.

It was like looking at math books designed for kindergartners. The fundamentals were correct, but only in an incredibly oversimplified fashion.

What I needed now was something more reminiscent of Principia Mathematica, the book on mathematical proofs that took three hundred and seventy-nine pages in the 1910 edition to prove that one plus one equals two.

On that shelf, I threw out the six books on secure ritual design and entity binding procedures. Those books were practically party jokes, especially after what those procedures led to.

To that pile, I added any books on summoning entities from the Maleficatory or any uses for energy derived from that Plane.

Then I lit them on Fire as well, just for good measure. Nobody was going to be using poorly designed rituals around me unless I designed them from the bottom up that way. If I want my rituals stupid and inefficient, I'll do it myself.

To begin filling in the freshly emptied space, I grew a book using the closest facsimile to paper I could make. Then began copying down the ritual circle from the tree.

I had no plans to replicate it right now, but the mere study of such a design could net me incredible results. Especially since it was in the Third Ascension, that something I had made was considered at that point was crazy to me. Even if I had next to nothing to do with its creation, since this was entirely the Zone flexing its… something?

Did Zones have spare Eidos to lend? This one must, right? Otherwise, how would it create the beings that exist in the stories it tells?

I wondered if there was a way to extract the Eidos within a Zone. There had to have been a way to inject it in the first place. It was here somewhere. Though likely hidden away, such that even Fourth Ascension persons won't stumble into it, no matter how hard they look.

Maybe even Fifth Ascension, I wasn't sure how high the Ascensions went or the level of separation between them, but I couldn't imagine the gods would just leave Eidos lying around free to grab.

Even looking at the Root structure, I couldn't see anything off, so it wasn't just buried slightly off the Plane. In fact, this Zone looked practically like a real place instead of a two-dimensional animation when observing the Roots of the World Tree.

After finishing the copy of the circle, made out of Mana-resistant material and with an extra section added to prevent activation, just in case, I opened up the Pale Gaol entry in my Domain Manager.

[The Pale Gaol (III-4)]

Size: 600 km² Primary Node Integrity: 63% Primary Node Mana: 100% Primary Nodal Feed: +1.5% / Minute Primary Node Alignment: Pactbonded (Deteriorating)

The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. Nodes: 104242

Total Node Mana: 99.6% Total Node Regeneration: +3.2% / Minute Aspects: Fleshrending, Containment, Defensive, Retribution Dominion: Nature (Winter), Artificial Dominion Subsumption: 100%

Functionality:

Endless Growth

Retributive Defense Network

Winter

STOP HER FROM HURTING US

[Active Commands]

Mark Target For Death

Warning: Domain connection has deteriorated. Access is restricted.

I… wasn't quite sure what to make of this. What's with the angry message about being hurt? Who is "HER"?

Was the Domain alive?

Surely not, that would be ridiculous. It didn't have a soul.

When making it, I didn't stuff any souls inside beforehand… I think? It had a level, indicating that Eidos was stored somewhere.

The only thing I could think of was the ancient tree I originally drew the ritual on. But that didn't make sense. Plants weren't alive.

If I wanted to, I could commit mass phytocide of regular foliage and not gain a single level or kill notification.

Unless this tree was, in fact, a souled being, it was a rather unique-sounding species, a Storygrove tree. When I originally placed the ritual, I thought it was just set dressing that happened to be holding a lot of Mana, but maybe there was more to it than that.

I could gain a lot of levels if I killed the tr—

An aura so thick that it was practically tangible slammed into me, throwing me back into the wall of ice. I impacted the wall so hard that my shell was partially smashed into a pulpy mess. Once I regained my wits, agony radiated from my Core. It felt like I had been hit by a truck, which then came back around for round two when it realized I hadn't been isekai'd properly.

Don't think about hurting the tree. Message received, no need for a follow-up.

I abandoned the broken mess that was my old shell and reconstituted a new one in a few minutes. Then allowed myself a few more minutes of heavy breathing while lying curled up on the ground until the pain finally started to die down.

I made a short prayer to any god willing to provide Painkiller Mana, but despite Mana going to someone, I received no response.

The scratches that my Core was accumulating over time felt like lines of fire spreading across my body. It almost felt like I was getting close to breaking character, but hadn't quite stepped over the line to receive a full shock yet.

My attention flicked to the corner of my vision, and I stared uncomprehending at the message sitting there for a couple of seconds.

Why am I ON-CAMERA?

Pushing myself off the ground, I looked around, but saw nothing different. I was still alone in an ice cave with a tree.

Standing took the pressure off slightly, but I was still doing something wrong in the eyes of the Zone.

"Come on, at least provide me with some direction here, I'm kind of lost," I complained aloud.

I didn't really expect a response, so I was surprised when a window popped up in front of me.

[POINTER ERROR RESOLVED]

[Zone Functionality Restored] Stage Direction: Character: (Warden) Child of the High Peaks Scene: The Warden has returned to the Eternal Prison, a cell designed to hold the descendant of Grand Mage Hottan Takahashi to prevent her from defiling the natural world in the way her forefather did. Direction: The Warden would not consider harming their Domain. They returned to ensure it still functioned as intended after all this time. They have detected problems with the containment field due to normal wear and tear and plan to perform repairs.

One of my eyes twitched.

I could have received stage direction this whole time if I had just asked? The Zone wasn't set up as some kind of guessing game?

It would have been fantastic if this function had actually displayed correctly when I entered the Zone.

As for the actual directions I was being given, I had no idea how I was supposed to alter the Domain. Not with it so much stronger than I was.

But that was probably the point, wasn't it? Kaede was definitely alive around here somewhere, probably buried in the snow. I was supposed to fuck up while repairing the domain, then the main character could escape, possibly killing me along the way.

Which means this was the scene I had been aiming for. I thought I'd lost the plot at some point, but this was genuinely what I tried to achieve from the start.

This would be the most precarious point for me in the story. I needed to prepare for a fight against someone who had had hundreds of years to grow stronger.

Sitting up from the ground, I said a line out loud for the camera's sake, "Curious, something has gone wrong with the Domain's metafunctionality, this will require a different approach. Summon Staff!"

I pulled my staff out of my Inventory as I called out the command. I only felt a little bit stupid having to say the command.

Luckily, the ON-CAMERA indicator vanished a moment later. I had some time to fiddle with things before I needed to release her.

Flipping open the book to the page where I copied the altered Domain, I took a moment to try to read what the symbols actually meant. Minutes passed as I pushed my Wit to the limit, pulling apart pieces of each glyph, then attempting to recontextualize them as a whole.

After a few minutes, I could feel a stupid grin had grown on my face. If this meant what I thought it did, then I could work with it.

Flipping my staff around, I began inscribing an altered Node on the flat tip. I used the circular top as a containment circle of its own.

At the same time, I redesigned a circuit within the staff itself, changing the automatic Cold Mana infusion [Living Circuit] into one with a far more defensive Nature.

Instead of adding a connection symbol to the ritual circle, I reduced the size of the symbols to make room for a second circle in the centre of the larger one, where I drew a symbol relating to ideals found in the Argent Bastion. Protection, preserving stillness, and absolute defense. This symbol also contained a receiving property to act as the receiver from the domain itself.

Once done, I stood and added the same circle to the centre of the Domain's ritual.

While drawing that circle, I noticed the ON-CAMERA indicator had appeared again, and perfectly on cue, the symbol relating to containing humans had a huge amount of energy begin flowing through it. The ancient Wondersprout Fibre it was made of began breaking down due to being overloaded with Mana.

This really said something about how much Mana was being channeled through it, given the material had a Mana Capacity Rathe value of twenty.

Heat started building up inside me again, indicating I was supposed to do something. So I decided to go with a classic, "Impossible! This can't be happening, the amount of Mana required to cause an overload…"

As I said the line, I suppressed a smile. My addition was nearly complete.

A hot aura washed over me, coming from where the centre of the Domain should be. My outer shell caught fire due to the sheer intensity. Only for me to complete the circle at that moment, a second aura billowed outwards from my staff, shielding me from Kaede's.

A rush of steam flowed past me as the ice rapidly sublimated due to the heat. A pressure wave that should have ground me into dust was violently rebuffed by my aura.

Turning around, I faced my foe, but I couldn't actually see anything with all the steam in the air.

"Lady Takahashi, what a pleasant surprise. How long has it been since we last spoke?" I asked, pouring a little Sound Mana into my voice to help it carry.

"FORTY FOUR THOUSAND EIGHT HUNDRED AND NINETY SEVEN DAYS, SIXTEEN HOURS, TWENTY THREE MINUTES," her voice carried through the steam.

"Ah, well, I've been a little bit busy over these… one hundred and twenty-ish years," I guess. She didn't sound very happy.

"They are all dead because of you! You will pay for each of their lives, you monster!"

That was hardly fair. I didn't even get any Eidos or kill notifications, so even the universe itself didn't blame me. The fact that the Zone kind of just deleted them annoyed me. If I was going to be blamed for something, I at least wanted to be the one responsible. Ignoring the fact that I was the one who built the Domain in the first place.

I let out a sigh, "Let's get this over w—"

A thunderous boom cut me off as a beam of plasma cut through the steam, aimed directly at my Core. At the last moment, a silver barrier of ice appeared as the [Living Circuit] activated, and the beam splattered off in multiple directions. A metallic tang filled the air as the oxygen bonds broken apart by the heat of the plasma recombined into ozone.

Checking the manager, I noted that one attack had already drained eight percent of the Domain's available Mana.

I activated [Argent Flow] and sprinted to the side.

Time to play 'stay alive while the crazy old woman tries to kill you' on nightmare difficulty.

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