Exhaling slowly, Stan straightened and turned toward the next passage. He barely managed two steps before a shrill screech tore through the air.
Small, dark shapes materialized from the empty space above him, bat-like creatures whose bodies existed only partially within the visible plane. Half of each creature was here. The other half existed somewhere beyond his sight. Their wings passed effortlessly through the stone walls, and his attacks sliced through them as though they were smoke.
"Abyss Bats." The familiar voice echoed once more. Stan was beginning to find it increasingly annoying.
He gritted his teeth and attacked anyway, but ordinary strikes accomplished nothing. His Bloodfangs passed harmlessly through their partially phased bodies, the blades cutting only empty air as the bats shrieked and swarmed around him in a chaotic dance.
Their attacks were weak. Individually, none of them posed a real threat. Their strength lay in their numbers.
They sought to overwhelm his senses, exhaust his stamina, and slowly wear him down through the accumulation of countless tiny wounds from attacks he could neither predict nor properly defend against.
Stan calmed his mind then he drew upon his newly acquired Comprehension of Space.
Coating one Bloodfang with spatial qi, he struck at the next incoming bat. This time, instead of aiming for its physical body, he targeted the space through which it was phasing.
He willed the dagger to interfere with the phasing itself. The Bloodfang blurred.
The instant it connected, the distorted space around the bat collapsed. The creature was forcibly dragged completely into the visible plane for the briefest fraction of a second, just long enough for the crimson blade to slice cleanly through its body.
The bat let out a piercing shriek before dissolving into black mist.
’It worked!’
"Yes!" A triumphant grin spread across Stan’s face as he repeated the technique on the next bat.
Another died, then another. With each successful strike, the technique became smoother. The first attack had required intense concentration, but every subsequent attempt demanded less effort as his understanding deepened.
Within half a minute, the entire swarm had been exterminated.
The final Abyss Bat gave one last shriek before its severed body dissolved into black mist upon the stone floor.
At that moment, the system responded.
[Comprehension of Space: 10%.]
[Comprehension of Void: 2%.]
[Affinity with Space: 10%.]
[Affinity with Void: 2%.]
Stan straightened slowly, breathing hard. Exhilaration and exhaustion surged through him in equal measure.
He was learning. He was actually, measurably, cultivating. The system’s readouts were not metaphors.
His understanding of space had doubled within the past hour, and with it, his ability to manipulate it. He could feel the difference. The chamber around him had become clearer. The subtle currents of spatial Qi were now visible to his senses, and the underlying structure of the surrounding space had become increasingly legible to his mind.
He was about to celebrate when the voice returned.
"Prepare yourself, kid. What’s coming next is beyond your realm. If I could stop it, I would, but the inheritance decides the trials. All I can do is give you a warning."
Stan’s stomach tightened; "How far beyond?"
"Far enough that you can’t fight it. Don’t even try. Just reach the portal at the other end of this chamber. That’s your only chance."
Stan turned.
At the far end of the chamber, roughly a hundred meters away, a circular portal had materialized in midair, a doorway of softly swirling blue light that glowed steadily against the dark stone walls.
Behind him, the chamber rumbled. Something enormous emerged from the darkness.
At first glance, it resembled a whale. A colossal, sleek-bodied creature of absolute black, it swam effortlessly through the empty air as though the chamber itself were an ocean. Its body stretched well over thirty meters in length.
Its massive fins rose and fell in slow, majestic strokes, propelling it forward with the effortless grace of a creature perfectly adapted to this impossible medium.
Then Stan noticed what followed in its wake. It was not devouring flesh. It was devouring space.
Wherever the whale passed, reality simply ceased to exist. The stone walls vanished. The floor disappeared. Even the air itself was erased.
Everything behind the creature dissolved into an expanding abyss of absolute nothingness, a widening cone of perfect nonexistence that swallowed every trace of reality.
The chamber was not being destroyed. It was being undone.
Every physical thing seemed to disappear, replaced by a void so absolute that Stan’s mind struggled to comprehend it.
He felt the pull immediately. The emptiness left in the whale’s wake was not passive. It actively dragged the surrounding world toward itself, as though reality were desperately trying to fill the impossible absence.
A tremendous force seized his body. His footing slipped.
Within a single heartbeat, his forward movement was cut by more than half as an overwhelming backward pull gripped him.
’Fuck! I can’t die here! What the fuck is this pull?! That bastard didn’t say anything about this!’
The whale’s enormous black eye slowly rolled toward him. Its gaze settled on him. Then its immense jaws began to open.
’Fuck this is bad!’ Stan’s heart skipped a beat. He looked toward the portal.
A hundred meters straight path with no obstacles.
Under normal circumstances, he could have crossed the distance in only a few seconds.
But under this monstrous pull, he needed thirty, at least thirty. But that was the problem, he wouldn’t have thirty seconds.
The whale would consume the very space beneath his feet long before he ever reached the portal.
’Think! Think!! THINK!!’ His mind raced.
His gaze darted between the portal, the whale, and the fabric of space surrounding him.
His final realization in the previous chamber echoed through his mind. He could interact with space itself.
The chamber around him was saturated with ambient spatial Qi, far denser than anything on the Antarctic surface, denser even than the residual Qi leaking from the Spirit Pool.
This place was flooded with spatial Qi. He could feel it permeating the air around him like an invisible ocean.
An idea formed.
’If I can absorb the spatial Qi directly... coat myself in it the same way I coated Bloodfang with it... maybe I can weaken the pull.’
It was the only idea he had. With no better option, he acted.