Konrad had the weirdest of dreams that day.
He was on a dry, flat, salty plane, surrounded by mountains on the distant horizon.
Fishbones littered the cracked earth around him, but not the tiny kind he'd find on his plate after a meal. They were skeletons much larger than him, and—
"It is your job now to bring this all back to life," Paula said, standing next to him, naked as usual.
"B-bring what where?" Konrad yelped, realising he wasn't alone, but—
The more he tried not to look at her, the harder that task became.
She was her pretty version after all, not the cut-up and sewn-back-together corpse.
A brunette woman in her late thirties, albeit not a wrinkle or a blemish in sight.
She wasn't a particular beauty, had no great curves, but he couldn't find a flaw in her, either.
And if he had to say one thing that might have turned him off—
It was that she resembled Strelok way too much.
"Once you finish ogling, you might as well pay attention," the woman scoffed, though she flashed him a smirk. "And you should look around, too. This is no small task, but—"
"Wait, hold on," Konrad protested, holding up a hand. "Where are we now?"
Was this even a dream, or was the parallel brain messing with him while he passed out?
She did say some crazy things, after all.
Those numbers—they couldn't be right, either.
"Where, where?" the woman sighed. "In your pool, I guess."
"Pool? My pool, huh?" he repeated, trying to make sense of the word, furrowing his brows. "This looks more like a dried-up ocean to me, though. Is this somewhere in Kasserlane?"
He never left the country, in all fairness.
Heck, he'd only seen two duchies of it so far. Maps were rare, too, especially ones showing the entire globe. But even from the neighbouring countries, he knew pretty little.
Forget that. Did Kasserlane even have a shore?
He couldn't remember.
"You're not even close," Paula noted. "This is not on the map. This is your pool."
"Pool, pool, you're not making sense," Konrad snapped, staring her down, only to realise—
Yeah. Okay. She was still naked.
And even if her long brunette hair draped over most of her body—
"I don't get you," the woman sighed. "That's exactly what the greater demon had called it, too."
He froze.
"Wait. You mean—my mana pool?!" he scowled, looking around once more.
This place? But it was enormous.
"Yes. That," she said, pointing at a tiny puddle nearby. "And that's all the mana you have left right now. So you'll have to fill it all back up. Otherwise it'll start to shrink, and—"
"B-but how?!"
This had to be a joke.
Sure, he still remembered that insane number she said that even made him pass out, but—
"To clarify," Paula interrupted his thoughts. "Yes, it's about two million mana with your measurement. And no, I didn't make you pass out. You're exhausted after the Zone, is all."
TWO MILLION?!
That was a huge number. Incomprehensible compared to what he had until now.
A thousand times his thousand, and then twice that.
And yeah, fair, he had been in the Zone for like a week and slept like, what?
Twice? Three times? But—
"Wait. This number," he muttered, eyes wide. "How does this compare to what Lily has?"
Could this have been his chance to stand on equal ground with the greater demon?!
"Dunno," Paula said, shrugging. "Didn't get a read on hers, but I guess it's in the same ballpark?"
Insanity. How long would it have taken him to fill this all up?!
Even with his most efficient methods—
Or by holding a big concert for fifty thousand people—
Nope. Still incomprehensible. Impossible, even.
"Well, okay," the woman sighed, adjusting her hair. "I do owe you a confession. My original had never filled it up, either, since she had lived her entire life on Earth, and all—"
"What?" Konrad asked, blinking. "But didn't you say something about it shrinking?"
No way this place was even bigger than this.
Trying to imagine what he could have done with this amount of mana—
Well, for one, it almost broke his mind, and two?
None of them would have fulfilled his wives' request to lie low, for sure.
"I'm only a figment of her memories, but yes. It should have been bigger when she was born. And it overflowed with her essence, too," Paula claimed, kicking at a cracked piece of mud.
"Bullshit," he scoffed, shaking his head.
Though, if he thought about it—
If she couldn't refill her mana and had to make do with this amount from the day she was born until she died? How much had Konrad used up in the few months since he had it at all?
His first limitation was his tiny pool.
Then he got a decent one, and only had to sort out his recharge rate, but—
Did he recharge his whole pool a thousand times since?
Well, no, but again, he only had it for a few months.
"When you met her," Paula offered for reference. "She only had this pool filled up to around a third of the way. And she used most of that to help you teleport the CNPP away."
Hah. To think that Konrad wanted to do it alone?!
How much mana did she pour into that spell? Two to three hundred thousand?!
"And she also gave a fraction, albeit much smaller, to her twin brother," the woman reminded.
Right. Which raised another question.
Two more, in fact.
"How much?" Konrad asked. "Since he had no magic before, and—how does this even work?"
He had already transferred his essence to someone else before.
When opening Stella's transmutation bracelet.
Or giving his all to Maou Midori to banish Lucifer from Earth, but—
"How do you give the capacity—the pool itself to someone else?!" he demanded.
"Um. I don't know?" Paula tried to shrug it off, but Konrad would not have it. "I mean, she wasn't even thinking about it, and did it anyway. And in your memories, too—that dragon crystal?"
Right. He did remember that.
He touched that huge ruby, and somehow his tiny mana pool expanded.
Back then, he thought it was because he absorbed the mana itself, and it stretched his container, but—now? He got an empty container from the start.
After learning so much about magic, he felt like he still knew nothing of substance.
But the fact remained that he had this entire ocean to himself now, and he had to fill it up.
While lying low. And running the duchy of Halaima itself.
And learn a lot more, and—
"I can help you with that," the woman offered with a smirk, twirling a long strand of hair. "I mean, I'm your parallel brain now, and will live inside this pool for good, right?"
Was that how it worked? Konrad wasn't sure.
"Wouldn't you drown if my mana filled this place, though?" he asked, half joking, but—
Paula shook her head, eyes glinting.
"The opposite. I'll grow along with the amount you have," she said. "Besides. I could help you with spellcasting, too. And then I'd use the same mana from the same pool, so—"
Running this place. Lying low. Recharging.
Yep. That's what he had to do.