Chapter 192: Specific imaginations

"Well, that's just a nice piece of backstory. But now, let's talk about the different uses of the World of Space and its subtypes," Rith said and cleared her voice.

"As you know, the most widespread use of the World of Space is the creation Storage Spaces. Mages, nobility, merchants, armies, everyone that needs to carry large amounts of items want a Storage Ring, or Necklace for themselves. In its earliest explanations, Storage Spaces were called 'Imaginary Boxes'. Everyone would simply try their best to forcefully imagine the properties of storage devices into various objects, mostly made of Hermium or just Sorbothium infused with Space energy, or Golden Sorbothium, as we like to call it."

"In fact, to this day, the act of 'imagining' hadn't changed much. But now, after countless hours of trial and error, we've developed some tricks to increase the chances of it working. Some specific ways of imagination and application," Rith said, and brought out a small golden ring.

Evin noticed that Rith was using a lot of convoluted words here and there, and frankly he was struggling a bit with it. 

"This is a Sorbothium ring that we use to teach young Cosmics to create their own Storage Space. Take this in your hands and do as I say," Rith said.

"Alright," Evin replied and perked his ears up.

"First, completely fill up your mana-core with Space energy. … Now, shove all of the energy you have into the ring, while thinking of your family… Now, take the energy back, and direct it back inside it, but this time, think of your house. Repeat this process a few times, but think of some other personal memory each time you direct the Space Energy into the ring. This will help the ring become familiar with your will." Rith said.

Evin sat down and focused on bouncing the huge amount of energy between him and the ring. He tried to think of a different thing each time he did it, stuff ranging from the first ever pen he owned to the last person he stalked as a spirit. Around an hour passed as he thought of random subjects in his life. Gradually, he felt his connection with the ring becoming stronger and stronger.

"Alright, it should be enough… Now, think of that ring as the house of all those memories, the happy ones, your first times, your special moments," Rith said and Evin obliged. A dozen minutes later, Rith's next instructions came.

"Now tell the ring that even though it houses all your memories, it can never be the house of your possessions. It will never be actually useful, since memories and emotions aren't real, and that only gold and material possessions matter." Rith said.

'?'

'Are we using reverse psychology on this ring? What's happening?' Evin briefly thought with amusement, but he faithfully followed Rith's instructions.

"No, you have to actually say it with your mouth and be sincere about it," Rith urged from the side.

'Is she trying to prank me?' Evin thought and looked back at Rith's face, but he could only see sincerity and urgency in it. Finding no evidence of him getting epicly pranked, he could only trust Rith and hope she was serious about this all.

"Oh, my little ring, you. Although, you're the house of all my precious memories… you will never become the house of my belongings. Didn't you know? Memories and emotions… They're all useless in the end. Stuff that only serve to remind you of your embarrassing past. Compared to that… think about gold and possessions… now that's something actually valuable. Too bad you're unable to contain those…" Evin said in the most sincere tone he could manage, all while looking at Rith, to see whether she was holding back a laughter or not.

But suddenly, the golden ring on his hands started to shine brightly, greedily sucking in the huge amount of Space energy that Evin was juggling. Panicking, Evin tried to fight back, but a shout from Rith stopped him from doing so.

"Don't fight it! It's happening! Recharge your mana-core with Space energy and keep feeding it until it stops!"

'Shit, she wasn't joking!' Evin thought and focused on keeping his mana-core charged, trying not to overwork it accidentally.

For the next twenty minutes, Evin had used up about 130 kgs worth of mana, trying to sate the ring's hunger, before everything was finally over. 

Weirdly, the ring's golden hue had disappeared at some point, leaving only a pale-yellow metal. Evin curiously inspected the item, wondering if everything was finished.

'Is that all? It just seems like it uses a huge amount of mana…' Evin thought.

"It's finished, bring out one of your more important possessions and put it inside it," Rith said.

Evin did as the Cosmic instructed, and brought out his Soul-tethered spear from inside his shadow. He then tried to access the ring he made, like he would a normal Storage Ring and was allowed access inside it.

As Evin's consciousness glanced inside it, he found that the Space he had created was rather small. Compared to the one he bought from Rith it was probably a fifth of its size. But it was his first time creating something of his own, so he was quite satisfied.

"As expected, a user of World Sprites really do have it easy," Rith commented from the side. 

"What do you mean?" Evin asked curiously.

"Usually, it takes a day or so for it to develop a wisp of consciousness."

"Wait, this thing's alive?" Evin gasped, all sorts of accusatory thoughts filling his head.

"No. At this point, it's just a dead object. But when you were interacting with it like you would with a conscious being, it briefly gave birth to a World of Space Sprite. Those things are mischievous beings, who would do most likely do everything opposite of what you want. Thankfully they're dumb as bricks so when you started talking about the ring not being a proper container of your possessions, its stubborn bone took over and created a Storage Ring. But since it doesn't have a Beast Lord to latch onto, it disappeared and turned back into mana," Rith explained.

"Wait, you can just create World Sprites like that?" Evin asked. If this was true, then couldn't he mass produce Dark World Sprites somehow?

"If you're thinking of creating a bunch of Dark World Sprites, you can definitely try, but it will only work if you're around the Vulpine Mother, or another Beast Lord of the Dark World. But in that case, I'm sure that they'd rather stay together with them, instead of you," Rith reminded with a mocking smile.

Evin was a bit disappointed, but he still decided to try it out when he had the chance.

"And you also said that it usually takes days to get it to work," Evin asked, suddenly remembering Rith's casual remarks about the thing.

"Ah, yes. Usually it takes about that long. But I've heard that owners of World Sprites have it easier for whatever reason. Though, I didn't think it would be this fast…" Rith replied with a slightly threatening smile.

"Well, at least you won't have to watch me juggle a huge amount of mana back and forth for such a long time, right?" Evin laughed awkwardly in response.

"Hmm, whatever. Let's get to talking about portals next," Rith shrugged.