Awakened Earth!!

The man nodded at me while continuing to admire his appearance in the mirror. "It was worth it just for this new look," he said. "Though, I admit, that was the most hellish pain I've ever gone through in my life."

I nodded. He continued, "Well, if you had become a sage, the potential evolutions would have been saint or saintess. But it's very difficult to evolve to such a level. Majins have an advantage, as they find it easier to evolve. After all, a sage, saint, or saintess is just an evolved version of a human. But a Majin is your evolution. Evolution has taken you down the non-human route."

I pointed out, "Majin is just a general term, often synonymous with 'monster,' though it's a bit more complex. You could think of a Majin as an intelligent monster, whereas 'monster' encompasses a wide variety of beings, many of which can be mindless. A Majin can never be mindless because being called a Majin implies intelligence. So, an intelligent monster is essentially what a Majin is."

The man nodded, as if it made sense.

I then realized time had stopped. I looked to my side, where the Ancient One had just appeared.

"You know... the Time Stone should be a lot more powerful than it really is. I mean, think about it. It can literally stop time," I said.

"The number of beings that can actually move around when time is stopped is rare, even in the multiverse. It's just odd that in all parallel versions of the Marvel Universe, there seem to be so many beings who can easily move around when time is frozen. This pretty much makes the ability to stop time useless in the first place."

The Ancient One chuckled and handed me a book. I examined it. It looked like a fancy Bible. After reading it, I frowned. "I wrote this, didn't I?"

The Ancient One nodded. "It seems like a cross between a Bible and a basic magic teaching book. Basic magic books are designed to be extremely easy to understand for educational purposes. However, this one goes into intricate detail about the fundamental mechanisms of spells, unlike more advanced magic books that typically only record the spells themselves."

"In my case, it talks about imagination magic," I said. "The magic I use is based on imagination, which essentially involves manifesting something through magic by envisioning it. I'll admit that the magic of Kamar-Taj has its advantages in teaching due to its consistency, but it's also limited by its own system rules. When you have a magic system, you're bound by those rules.

"Imagination magic, on the other hand, is about manifesting whatever you can imagine. The only limits are your mana and your creativity. It's the most powerful type of magic, but it's difficult to learn because how someone pictures, say, a fireball, varies from person to person. That makes it harder to teach. This book feels like a strange mix of a basic magic guide and a Bible."

The book also explained drawing power from other dimensions or the World Tree, though it never specified how. It warned of the dangers, such as being influenced by dimensional lords or dimensional energies. It noted that drawing from the World Tree was the safest option, as the tree has no consciousness and, therefore, won't negatively affect you. Additionally, it mentioned that you could borrow power from me by essentially having faith in me. Your faith would allow you to draw from my power, and it explained this as the best method.

It outlined that this was the best option because I wouldn't have any direct influence over you. The process is entirely automatic, so I wouldn’t even realize the power was being drawn. My mana is in purest form, meaning there wouldn’t be any negative effects."

There's an explanation that by praying to me, I can give you more power than you'd normally be able to handle—something the World Tree wouldn't allow—giving you a massive power boost in a life-or-death situation that could potentially save your life. This is a lie. Drawing power from me isn't necessarily the best way to gain strength. In truth, there's no such thing as a "good" or "bad" way to draw power if you're able to negate the negative effects.

The Ancient One handed me an empty book, identical to the one I was holding, and used magic to copy the contents of my book over to it. Ah, it's one of those paradoxes that doesn't make any sense—who wrote the book in the first place if I just magically copied it? The Ancient One gave me a smile before disappearing as time restarted.

I'm just going to put up a sign. It's too much of a pain in the butt to deal with every single person. I naturally grabbed some materials from the storage space and made a makeshift sign, placing some convenient enchantments to automate things.

I also got a bunch of books from the storage room inside the dimension. Why are there a hundred blank books? Alex—honestly, she likes correcting the weirdest and most random things—said it might be useful and shoved them in the storage room.

I'm kind of impressed with how much stuff is already in there. We've been in the Marble World for like five minutes. Well, not literally five minutes, but you get it... I throw the kaijin a copy of the book I made before telling him to get going.

Ah, I'm going off on a tangent.

I used to make fun of all those anime characters that use thought acceleration and get lost in their thoughts. Turns out, when you can speed up your thoughts, it's very easy to get lost in them. And it's not even that bad because no real time passes—it's only a few milliseconds. Still, it's really annoying.

On the upside, this sign, plus the automated features, should take care of things. And now that I've got a bunch of books, I'm going to automate them too. I don’t think anyone will be able to find this place for a while.