High in the sky, the sun rained down its light from its cubey celestial body, illuminating the block-by-block generated land below. From the tall trees of the forests, the size-dwarving mountain ranges in the very far off distance and the smaller hills closer by, everything, well, mostly everything, was made up from one meter cubed squares. It was surreal. Not only was the world made of voxels, but even the creatures were made of the same roughly six-centimetre voxels. Cows mulling about, pigs partaking in smashing their bodies into the grassy ground to turn it into mud, and chickens just loitering, blankly staring into nothingness.

  Not a single realistic thing existed in this blocky world, including the six academy students who popped into the world out of nowhere and ended up in a clearing with a small pond inhabited by frogs; all six of them had taken on a blocky appearance to fit into the game world's aesthetics.

  "I would say I'm surprised, but this is ultimately the result of your involvement, so I can't really be," Lizu joked as she visually inspected one of her arms that was now a rectangular cuboid, cladded in her thin voxel onesie. She peered at her fellow realworlders, seeing how they all had been converted into voxels and their clothing turned into an almost flat layer of voxels, just like herself.

  "This really goes to show; stigmai really are in a realm of their own, I can't wait to see how things play out this time," Inkaro said merrily, sounding increasingly ecstatic as he witnessed the infueness of a stigma for the third time: the first being Yuuvia getting rare treasure in the dungeon's lower levels, and the second was from seeing how much of his cooking Anazenpha could consume by herself, beating out the other girls combined by three times.

  Enetha sat on the grassy ground, feeling its realistic texture against her hands through her onesie. As a thought popped into her head, the little princess reached her other hand into her onesie through its hood hole. After some blind rummaging, the little princess pulled out Umbra Termination's chess piece from her onesie. Yep, she was made of voxels, not even the octopus chess piece was spared. The little princess sighed in relief before putting the octopus back within her onesie, happy nothing weird had happened to any of her figures.

  Face in the grass, butt in the air, Yuuvia was still sleeping. Despite a chicken sitting on her back, nothing had any hopes of stoking the noble girl from the bounds of her slumber. That was until the chicken pecked her in the back of the neck. The chicken proceeded to be hurled far into the sky, only to be seen slowly falling to the ground as it rapidly flapped its little wings.

  With a huff of indignation for the rude awakening she'd been dealt, the noble girl was mere moments for chastising the others for letting an animal hurt her, only for the sights of her surroundings to come crashing in on her, all at once. She dashed to the nearest body of water, a little lake that all six of the group could surround if they formed a ring by holding hands, and was awestruck by her current state. Her awe was born from a disbelief that such a thing was possible.

  "What is going on!" Yuuvia bellowed as she stared down her voxel-turned face before looking over her shoulder and adding, "I would be mad right now, if it weren't for how cool I reluctantly found this. Emphasis on the reluctant part, understood?!"

  "This is completely unreal! I'm literally in a video game! VR and DIVE games are one thing, but physically being in the game is a whole nother level," Nuenala exclaimed excitedly as she flailed her arms, legs, and especially her metalic tail about to express her glee. Anazenpha joined in on Nuenala's cheering while not understanding why, but happily doing it all the same. The snake girl cheered, "Unreal, unreal!"

  While the duo continued to cheer away with no end to be heard, much to Yuuvia's annoyance as the girl's booming voices were projected right into her ears, Inkaro strolled up to one of the many oak trees surrounding the clearing. Lizu trailed shortly behind him, anticipating he already knew what to do. And if he didn't, at least the group had Nuenala to fall back on in the event that trial and error fails.

  Crossing his arms and tapping his chin, Inkaro visually inspected the oak tree, finding it mildly humorous how each log was, just like the rest of the blocks around, was a one-to-one-to-one meter cube.

  Wanting to add her two cents, Lizu asked, "Do you think we just... punch the tree?"

  Inkaro shrugged as he raised a hand and punched it with his left fist. Nothing happened. The duo stared at the unfazed tree before Lizu punched one of the tree's blocks with her right fist, resulting in some pixelated blocks forming on all the oak log's exposed surfaces. She followed her first punch with another right hook and then a left one, each time resulting in more pixelated cracks to form from both punches. The duo hummed, thinking over why there was a discrepancy between Lizu using her left hand and when Inkaro used his.

  With one last right punch from Inkaro, the oak log popped out of place, with a few small oak pixels, and landed on the oak log block connected to the ground. Following the two glancing up at the rest of the oak tree, floating like the concept of gravity was merely an optional suggestion, and finding it interesting, Inkaro reached out and picked up the minuturized oak block.

  Having been drawn in by the noise, the others slowly gathered round Inkaro, mostly confused why he had a tiny version of a tree log. Lizu quickly filled in the others on what she and Inkaro had discovered, leading to the girls murmuring, mostly led by Nuenala, about this tidbit of information.

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  Eventually, the topic of what to do with the mini oak log was brought up by a discussion-exhausted Yuuvia.

  "Maybe if you can break it, then you can fix- wait, no, I mean put down? Yeah, put down the block," Anazenpha suggested, almost tripping over and messing up her choice of words in a barely bilingual, linguistically cute way.

  That little mess up on Anazenpha's struck Yuuvia right in the heart, leaving her overwhelmed by her snakey cuteness. The noble girl was on her knees, panting heavily, like she was struggling to breathe, when that was far from the truth. Aside from briefly checking to see if she was hurt, the others decided to leave Yuuvia alone before they made her weird breathing even demented.

  Holding the little oak log in his right hand and heeding the bottomless pit that cosplays as a girl's suggestion, Inkaro pointed the mini block at the ground with a mighty swing, resulting in some pixelated cracks forming in a one-by-one square. The others eyed the scene before Inkaro sycophantically tapped his hands together and swapped the mini block to his left hand.

  Trying once again, Inkaro raised his left arm this time, getting faint awes of anticipation from Enetha and Anazenpha, before swinging the miniature oak log down on the cracked grass. In time with a wooden creaking noise, the miniature block disappeared from Inkaro's left hand and was placed on top of the cracked grass, restored to its original meter cubed size.

  The princess and the snake demon audibly "huh"ed, triplely so when Inkaro, leading with a right one, repeatedly punched the oak log until it broke back into its miniature form, which Inkaro picked up from the ground.

  "Ah, I see. So we use our right hand to initiate breaking blocks, and the initial use of our left hand is for placing," Lizu murmured as she repeatedly tapped the oak log behind her with her right hand until it broke like the first.

  "Right first, then punch-punch-punch! Constructive destruction!" Anazenpha proclaimed earnestly, fists raised to the air in preparation for war.

  Harnessing this newfound knowledge like forbidden from an ancient tome and clutching tightly at the chain of her voxelated Inscription of Injected Providence tome, the snake demon booked it for a nearby tree and punched away at its logs. Enetha joined in on the quest of gathering oak logs, in the most literal way possible by punching the same oak log as Anazenpha, inadvertently learning that multiple people punching the same block speeds up breaking it. Just from watching the two girls punch the tree trunk into tiny cubes, Yuuvia mentally scoffed.

  "Hmph, as if I'd be so wild as to punch a tree with my bare hands; besides, those two have it covered," Yuuvia stated while vaguely gesturing a hand in the tree punchers' direction.

  Nuenala vaguely nodded her head at Yuuvia's creative excuse to get out of punching. She looked upon the noble with suspicion and hesitant acceptance as the words Yuuvia spouted resembled something adjacent to logic. "So.. what you're saying is, we should go punch stuff other than the trees?"

  Turning a little red, not from shame, but from flexing her cheeks to keep herself from pouting like a child, Yuuvia managed to mumble out something in a hushed voice: "I um... duh."

  Seeing the slow blush encroaching on the noble girl's voxel-turned cheeks and revealing an opening for the blacksmith, Nuenala boldly commented, "Fair enough, Dainty Hands."

  Yuuvia didn't even get the chance to recover from the verbal jab before Nuenala whisked her off as she held onto the noble tree-punching-neeysayer's wrist. Watching the two duos partaking in their various endeavours, for a brief time, Inkaro lightly tossed the miniature oak log between his hands as he thought over a few things.

  "I suppose that leaves us with finding more game mechanics?" Inkaro turned to Lizu, only to be greeted by her squinting eyes and sour expression, not aimed at him, of course. So if not him, Inkaro wondered what it was. The guy veered his gaze to where she would theoretically be looking, but he saw nothing there. How strange.

  "Is it me, or is there a faint thing in my vision?" Lizu mumbled as she wafted her hand with indignation, mainly from the fact she couldn't touch the thing bothering her vision. Somehow, her question was surprisingly out of the blue, yet oddly on point.

  Now that Lizu brought it up, Inkaro wondered why he hadn't noticed the blatant addition to his vision, even if it was so faint: a faint, transparent, one-by-nine grid of grey squares with one having a pale beige highlight and another having a silver one.

  In fact, upon closer look, he saw a flat icon of the mini oak log in the first slot of the linked square line with a digital, white one in the bottom right corner. Other than the number, the first slot had the pale beige highlight on top of it, while the silver one was located over the second slot.

  As he eyed the slots, the silver highlight shifted one spot to the right. Unsure of how he did it, Inkaro used all manner of mental imaging to get the highlights to move, until he envisioned a rotary wheel, making the pale beige highlight jump to the last slot, and the mini oak block disappeared from his right hand in the process. Glancing at his empty hand, it dawned on Inkaro that the highlights corresponded to his hands(pale beige being his right and the silver his left hand, respectively). Just to test it, Inkaro continued to toss the mini block between his hands, and, as expected, the highlights repeatedly switched places. But around the twentieth block toss, Inkaro noticed another grid in his vision appear briefly.

  After some testing and discovering its appearance was tied to him focusing both highlights on the oak log icon at the same time, which also caused the miniature oak log to not appear in either of his hands. It surprised him a little, having expected it to cause the block to appear in both hands.

  But bringing himself back to his original discovery, Inkaro realised the second grid was a two-by-two one: "Fascinating."