Chapter 139: Limits of the Vessel

When Valerian woke up, it took him a moment to look around and understand where he was again.

’Right, still in the trial. How long did I sleep anyway?’

With no natural light inside the cave, he had no way of knowing what time it was. Channeling his mana, his body appeared on top of the mountain he created the cave in.

It was day now, and the purple leaves of the trees swayed in the wind like they did on any other day.

’What should my next steps be?’

After losing a whole month thanks to his loss of control, he had to make a new plan on what to do next. He couldn’t just return to the village as he didn’t feel confident facing whatever was waiting there for him.

And he still had to find a way to leave this place. [Godstep] was amazing, but it didn’t allow him to leave this dimension. To do that, he would need to develop another technique with his space magic.

’Can it even be called space magic at this point?’

His connection to space had reached a new height during his rampage, and he wasn’t sure if magic was the right word anymore for it.

’It’s not an affinity like the rest anymore, is this what Sylas meant with the concept of space?’

Channeling his mana, he felt the immediate connection with the surrounding space, like he could just take a step and appear somewhere else. No more carefully folding space, just movement, disconnected by the boundaries of distance.

He held up his hand and used his mana to compress the surrounding space into a small ball over his hand. The space around the ball bent in an unnatural way, and the ball itself looked like a distorted version of the space that it compressed.

’I wonder...’

Curious, he held out his hand and aimed the ball down at the forest. He continued to compress the space until he felt like he couldn’t anymore, and then released the ball.

A soundless white light appeared in the world before dying down as fast as it appeared, and Valerian looked down at the aftermath of the attack.

’God damn.’

In front of him, a deep trench that traveled for quite some distance scarred the landscape. The trees that were at the edge weren’t blasted away but cut in half, and the sides of the trench were smooth like they were carefully carved into the surroundings.

But the attack left a mark on him, as Valerian could feel his body struggle with the amount of divine mana that he released.

’I can’t spam it, there needs to be a downtime.’

His physical vessel was still too weak to release too much of his divine mana, so while running out wasn’t really a thing, overheating was.

’And I still need to figure out Twilight...’

Turning from the deep trench to a different side of the forest below, he raised his hand and called on Twilight.

The black substance appeared from his hand and began to form the shape of a sword: the handle, then the guard, and then the blade.

It resembled a real sword more than it ever did before; it was just missing the final push that would turn it from the smoky black goo into a real sword.

’Haaa, there is so much to do.’

He had to become strong enough to confront whatever was in Riftfall, he had to find a way to leave this dimension by deepening his understanding of space, and he had to finish his sword.

Lucky for him, this trial didn’t have a time limit, so he could theoretically spend as much time as he wanted to in this world, but he still wanted to finish it as soon as possible, getting already sick of the white forest.

’Well, there is no use in crying over it. Where should I begin?’

Dismissing Twilight, he placed a hand on his chin and thought about the next goal.

’The most difficult thing is probably finding the way out, then Twilight, and the easiest is becoming stronger. But I can’t eat more monsters...’

The most straightforward way to become stronger was to devour the bodies and cores of the monsters here; not only would his physical body become stronger, he would also acquire more traits.

But that would also open the possibility of losing control again, and who knows when he would regain his senses again. Valerian wasn’t sure why he even snapped back in the first place.

’Haaa, Twilight it is then.’

Looking down on the forest, he sent out his mana to sense for any monster nearby. But his rampage must have scared them away because he wasn’t able to find a single one.

’Let’s just go then.’

His body disappeared and reappeared high in the air; his form flickered again as he rapidly teleported to cover his limited range.

He stopped when he felt a monster in his range. Before he could fall to the ground, he teleported to the monster.

He appeared on the ground, standing before it; his eyes scanned the beast.

A long, serpent-like body with white scales that were the same color as the forest around it. It was so big that it was a wonder that it was able to slip between the trees without knocking them over; its length was over a hundred meters that slithered between the trees.

Curious, Valerian took a closer look at the body of the serpent and was surprised to find that the body wasn’t actually moving between the trees but phasing through them.

’Of course, everything here is a space monster.’

The serpent’s slitted eyes moved to Valerian’s form, and the pupils constricted when it locked onto him. Meeting the slitted eyes, Valerian’s own began to glow under the activation of [Dragon Eyes].

│─────── STATUS ─────── │

│ Race : [Abyssal Serpent]

│ ─────── ORIGIN ─────── │

│ Core : S

│ ────── ATTRIBUTES ────── │

│ Strength : S

│ Agility : S+

│ Dexterity : S+

│ Vitality : S

│ Intelligence : C

│ Void Mana : A

│ Charm : -

│ ─────── TRAITS ─────── │

│ [Spatial Phasing]

│ [Void Fang]

’It’s strong, my body is only in the A-rank right now.’

Valerian summoned Twilight. Its form was still unstable, and the edge wasn’t really sharp, but he couldn’t think of a different way to finish it than to use it, even in this half state.

When the weapon appeared, the snake saw it as a sign of aggression and opened its large mouth wide, while the white fangs glowed in a purple light.

Faster than its large body would normally allow, it slipped through the space and reached Valerian quickly.

Valerian’s form slipped away when the jaws closed around his body, and he slashed down with his sword on the body of the serpent.

Cling!

When the blade hit the scales, it just bounced off harmlessly, and it wasn’t even able to leave a scratch.

’Shit.’

The serpent was fast and used its flexibility to strike at him again with its head, but it only met empty air again, as Valerian now stood in front of it again.

’I have to somehow penetrate its scales, but Twilight can’t cut it. And I’m guessing it has a resistance to spatial attacks.’

As a monster born in this dimension and reaching its current strength, it had a naturally high resistance to spatial attacks or distortions. So, cutting space like he did back in the Voidwoods to clear the battlefield with the beast horde wouldn’t work against it.

The whipping of the wind caught his attention, and when he turned to the side, he saw a wall of white scales directly in front of him. He brought his sword up to protect himself, but the impact still hit hard.

The air around him exploded by the sheer power behind the tail swipe, and the shockwave of it uprooted the trees around it, and he was sent flying through the forest, taking down the trees in his path.

When he landed, he shook his head. He wasn’t hurt, but being thrown around was still very much dizzying.

’Its lower body passed through the trees and became physical when it hit me. How annoying.’

"KSSSSHHHH!"

Valerian’s head snapped up as the serpent was already right in front of him, after crossing the distance in no time. With its jaws wide open and fangs glowing purple, it was already onto him.

He held out his hand and hardened the space in front of him, not to a point that he did at the ranking tournament, but enough to create a barrier.

The fangs closed in on Valerian, but they were stopped and hovered high above him for a moment.

The muscles in the serpent’s jaw tensed and the purple light around the fangs intensified; cracks appeared in the air, and it broke through the barrier.

Teleporting away and into the air again before he could get impaled by the long fangs, he looked down on the long snake, trying to come up with a way to kill it.

’Making it open its mouth and then attacking could work, but that doesn’t feel right...’

The point of him fighting wasn’t simply to kill; it was to form his blade and improve at space magic, so taking such an approach felt like a cheap shortcut to him.

The wind was rushing past him as he fell down from the sky, readying Twilight to continue the fight.