Over the past few days, Evan’s understanding of the Law of Space had steadily deepened, which made it easier to digest and increased his affinity with it. This also let him gain a certain degree of control over it, and he finally began forming his first techniques with it.
One fundamental thing he grasped after several attempts with the Law of Space was that it primarily governed distance, position, volume, direction, and the connection between points.
That understanding let him first grasp how the Law of Space actually worked, but further on he realized these were the core basics underlying every possible application of the Law itself.
For example, when he’d eliminated Adrian, his intent had been to lock the space around him in place, so he couldn’t escape, buying Evan time to reach and finish him off.
But instead, Adrian had ended up exploding. Why?
Normally, when a body moves, it occupies a position in space, changes position over time, and that causes the surrounding space to continuously update itself.
What Evan had tried to do back then was block the movement of space itself, so the body within that area couldn’t move.
The muscles would still react and contract in response to intent, but the body wouldn’t actually move, because the space around it was locked. That had been the plan.
But instead, he’d used a bit too much force, and that had caused not just the space around the body to lock, forming something like a cage in the exact shape of the body and immobilizing it, no, it had locked the entirety of the body’s own space, down to every single muscle, every single cell.
In other words, he’d locked the very existence of the creature itself.
That would have been fine if the target had been an inanimate object, but a living being? Doing that to a living thing was essentially a contradiction of life itself, because to stay alive, a body needed its internal mechanisms to keep moving, to keep generating energy, that was what sustained life. But if everything was locked in place, that went directly against the very concept of being alive.
That created an unwanted reaction, where the Law of Space tried to force something in the wrong way, going against the rules of life itself, which led to a contradiction that ultimately made the being explode.
Trying to keep someone alive while locking down everything that kept them alive was something the Law of Space alone, applied at that scale, simply couldn’t do, and he understood that well, because he also possessed the divinity of the God of Life, thanks to the bloodline he’d gained from Seraphine.
The only way to accomplish such a feat would have been to incorporate the Law of Time as well, freezing every biological process while simultaneously preventing time from progressing within the body.
Unfortunately...
His understanding of Time was practically nonexistent.
His affinity with it was so small that it might as well not exist.
After analyzing everything that had happened during Adrian’s death, Evan finally understood where he had gone wrong
This time, he corrected his technique.
Instead of locking every point of space within the creature’s body, he applied just enough force to immobilize only the space surrounding it.
The B-Rank creature froze in place instantly.
Evan could sense it was still alive, void energy still flowing naturally inside it, a sign it was still active, but it couldn’t move, because this time he’d only locked the space outside it.
’Good... this should keep me safe from any sudden explosions.’ Evan thought with a quiet sigh of relief.
After all, if he’d overdone it like last time, the creature would have exploded again. The difference was that this time it would have happened less than five meters from him, making the situation even worse than when the creature had exploded on its own at the moment of death.
A wave of fatigue immediately washed over him. It wasn’t overwhelming, but it was unmistakably there.
All he’d done was lock the space around the creature, a seemingly simple action that had still cost him a considerable amount of energy. That was one of the downsides of still being a beginner at manipulating a Law.
With a deeper understanding of the Law of Space, he could have minimized the affected area, controlling only the space and particles strictly necessary for the technique.
However, his control wasn’t refined enough yet.
Instead, he’d locked down every spatial particle in the surrounding area that could affect the creature, along with plenty of useless ones besides. The result was energy consumption far higher than what was actually needed.
But it was enough regardless.
Now came the next step.
Compression.
He couldn’t let the creature explode. So he had to do the exact opposite: instead of letting the energy and force disperse outward, he’d force everything to converge inward.
He’d collapse all the surrounding space toward a single point.
And that point was the center of the creature’s body.
Without hesitation, Evan manipulated the space around it, including the space immediately surrounding the being’s body, forcing every direction to converge toward the point he’d chosen.
The moment he activated the technique, the space around the creature began to tremble and warp.
The being finally sensed the danger.
A terrifying pressure began crushing it from every direction, making its entire body shake violently, as if some invisible force were compressing it from the outside.
Before it could even process what was happening, the surrounding space collapsed inward.
In an instant, its three-meter-tall body was compressed in on itself.
Where that gigantic creature had stood only moments before, now there remained only a small sphere, barely bigger than a human head.
A being that, until just moments ago, had dominated the battlefield had been reduced to a condensed mass, compressed to the absolute limit that space itself could allow.
Seeing the result, and realizing that, for the first time, his technique had worked exactly as intended, a wide grin slowly spread across Evan’s face.
It was the kind of smile that looked anything but normal.
"Now this is what I’m talking about."