Chapter 555

Nearly fifty people milled about the rocky valley floor. They were a volatile mix of local adventurers, hardened mercenaries, and opportunistic merchants, standing beside canvas-covered supply carts.

The basin echoed with heated arguments as frustrated warriors were kept from their prize.

They were barred from approaching the yawning black fissure in the cliff face.

A cordon of mages stood in a loose semicircle fifty yards from the entrance. They wore deep forest-green robes trimmed with silver thread and held wooden staffs, their postures arrogant and unyielding as they faced the mob.

Their average level is a bit lower than what’s common in Alluria’s Tower, but they are more than enough to handle this rabble, and everyone knows it.

The green robes marked them as members of the Tower of Vael, a prominent city roughly fifty miles east of their location, directly on the main trade routes.

It was supposedly quite wealthy, benefiting from its position on the route to the Central Province, but within the Kingdom's arcane hierarchy, its Tower had always played second fiddle to Alluria. Vael produced excellent enchanters and utility mages, but it lacked the academic prestige and the combat-focused mages that Horatio Bluetear commanded.

Their presence here, aggressively locking down an unclaimed anomaly halfway between the two cities, painted a clear political picture. The Archmages of Vael intended to claim the dungeon for themselves and were already establishing a monopoly on its monster cores and other resources.

With how many people they brought along, they likely wanted to strip-mine the caves and hoard the power before Alluria even learned it existed.

That’s not legal, but it never stopped the greedy. More importantly, it’s a clear breach of the treaty between Towers, which means they’re either very stupid or backed by someone powerful enough to shield them from the consequences.

They also might be patsies for that same person, all to provoke a response from Alluria and see whether the Incursion had weakened them enough to be walked over. A conflict between Towers wouldn’t be pretty, and if word of several Archmages dying had spread, it made sense for the jackals to come out.

It’s still foolish. Bluetear alone could erase these people from existence with a snap of his fingers, even the stronger ones who had already gone in.

Huffing in annoyance, Nick set politics aside for the moment, knowing he’d get nowhere with the limited information he had, and began focusing on the more interesting matter.

A natural dungeon was a spatial anomaly, a localized collapse in which the World's boundaries frayed, allowing unfiltered mana to pool and mutate the surrounding environment. Historically, such phenomena required years, if not decades, of stagnant magical buildup to form.

In the chaotic environment of the Green Ocean, with the Fae interfering, it was understandable that no one had noticed. He could even excuse the one in the Sunlands, since House Hone had helped keep it quiet and the Feral God had done his part, too.

But this made no sense. The Starlit Caves were not on a trade route, yet they were close enough that someone should have noticed.

More importantly, this was the third dungeon Nick had encountered in two years.

All three dungeons had appeared within a few hundred miles of each other. That simply made no sense compared with the historical records.

Either someone monstrously powerful, stronger than an Ascended but capable of interfacing with the World, and thus not a God, has been deliberately manipulating leylines, or something is wrong with the natural order.

Neither option was good. He needed to understand what was going on, and to do that, he would need spatial magic.

His encounter with the Witch of Trelan had exposed a glaring vulnerability in his arsenal. She had effortlessly ejected him from her domain, even though [Blasphemy] should have stopped her magic.

But now… he had a chance to learn more and fix that hole in his defenses.

My ring has been useful, but it’s a bit too advanced for me to derive basic principles. It’ll be even more valuable down the line, once I know what I’m doing.

The newly formed dungeon before him was another matter. If he could observe how the World folded space to contain it, he might decipher the foundational rules of spatial magic.

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His ultimate goal coalesced: he would study the anomaly, learn its mechanics, and eventually craft a new Saga-spell—a working based on the narrative of the endless labyrinth, an inescapable domain.

Experience points and rare loot were secondary. He was here for an education.

Down in the valley, a very tall man was shouting, pointing a gauntleted finger at a mage.

"The Adventurer's Guild has had access to the Starlit Caves since time immemorial!" the mercenary yelled, his voice echoing off the rocky walls. "You have no authority to stop us!”

The mage, a severe woman with a silver circlet resting on her brow, seemed unfazed. She slammed the end of her staff into the ground, and a shockwave rippled outward, catching the mercenary in the chest and knocking him back three paces.

"The Tower of Vael has asserted jurisdiction over the caves due to observed corruption of the local mana," she announced, her magically amplified voice ringing across the basin. "The energies within are too unstable to traverse. We are establishing containment perimeters to keep the surrounding region safe. Anyone crossing this line will be treated as a hostile interloper and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law!”

The crowd grumbled. Hands drifted to sword hilts and spear shafts, but no one advanced. The threat of organized, high-tier magic was a potent deterrent. The mages of Vael had already drawn a series of glowing warning wards in the dirt, forming a boundary between themselves and the rest.

They are pretty quick; I’ll give them that. The shield should have enough power to withstand a few hits from a peak mortal, though, considering it took them all working together, it’s not that impressive.

Nick stood up. He had no interest in the shouting match, nor did he wish to start a brawl with a recognized Tower.

He pulled the Stillness tight around his shoulders, channeling his mana into the fabric and layering [Spiritual Sovereign] over the enchantments, compressing his presence until he vanished completely, even in the ether.

Just because these guys aren’t observant doesn’t mean the ones inside will be either.

He reached the valley floor with a single leap and flew over the agitated crowd of mercenaries, invisible to them.

He stopped only when he reached the secondary boundaries, much better made and designed to alert those within to anyone passing through.

It took Nick only a few minutes to analyze the runes and attune his suppressed mana to the ward's rhythm. Once that was done, he stepped directly over the glowing line, and the magic failed to register his passage, remaining dormant in the soil.

For a moment, he was tempted to leave a sign of his passage, just to thumb his nose at the arrogant mages, but he refrained.

Is this due to teenage hormones? I’ve been getting more combative. It’s manageable as long as I keep an eye out, but I don’t like it.

Unfortunately, although he knew several rituals to alter a body, he knew better than to use them while he was still growing, especially in a body that was now more magic than flesh and blood.

With a sigh, he stepped into the yawning mouth of the Starlit Caves.

The atmosphere shifted the moment he crossed the threshold. The afternoon sun's warmth vanished, replaced by a biting cold that would once have forced him to cast warming charms to survive. The ether was thick and churning, unmistakably similar to the other dungeons he’d been in.

Ah, so it’s not in the process of being born. They’re weakening its signature from the outside, and the only thing they can’t affect are the spatial ripples, because stopping them would prevent it from reaching its full size.

He walked deeper into the gloom. The path sloped sharply downward, winding into the bedrock, and he soon understood why they were called the Starlit Caves.

Luminescent crystals shone in the rock, sometimes as single points of light that resembled stars, sometimes as entire veins that looked like trails of light.

It was very pretty, but their glow also contained mana, which he was sure the local fauna had grown accustomed to, so he decided to take matters into his own hands. There was nobody around either way.

A golden sphere bloomed above his right shoulder, dispelling the gloom and revealing far more of the tunnel than the crystals would.

Soon, he reached a fork in the path. To the right, he could continue down and eventually reach the main network, where Vael’s mages were; to the left, a path that looked like a dead end stretched for another mile.

Nick took the left, walking for a while before settling into a flat stretch.

It was time to study.

He raised his left hand, fixing his gaze on the plain silver band of his spatial ring. He projected his spiritual senses into the cave’s chaotic ether, comparing the ring’s structured, folded pocket to the raw spatial distortions around him.

Raphael had warned him months earlier in the Tower archives. Elemental magic was forgiving. If a caster miscalculated a fireball’s vectors, they could get burned, which, while painful, a basic salve would heal.

Spatial magic was a different discipline entirely. It involved bending reality itself. A miscalculated basic spell could turn a man's organs inside out or fuse his torso into solid bedrock, killing him before help could arrive.

It was why Raphael was so well regarded, becoming Tholm’s apprentice despite lacking connections or outstanding power. A spatial mage below Prestige rank was rare.

Nick started small.

He extended his right hand, palm open, and focused his intent on a single cubic inch of empty space hovering before him, picturing the space as a piece of woven fabric.

He attempted to pinch the fabric, drawing the opposite ends of the cubic inch together to compress the distance between them.

A sharp pressure pushed back against his mind, the World fighting to preserve its established shape. Nick gritted his teeth, a bead of sweat tracing a cold line down his neck, and gave up.

It was such a basic spell that he could have easily overpowered the resistance, but even if that didn’t lead to horrible results, it would establish bad habits. Higher-level spatial magic couldn’t be done with brute force.

Thus, he shifted his approach. The spatial ring used rigid anchors and runic matrices forged into the silver to stabilize the folded space. He lacked a spellform to study, but he stood within a natural anomaly. So he reached into his surroundings, observing how the dungeon anchored the warped space to the physical rock.

Once he was satisfied he understood what was going on, he used that image as his mental picture and adjusted his intent. He pushed his mana into the current, applying gentle, twisting pressure to the cubic inch of air and aligning his will with the cave's natural distortion.

This time, space yielded.

The cubic inch compressed. The air inside the invisible box rippled as light from his golden sphere bent sharply around the distortion's edges, creating a tiny, floating lens of warped reality.

Nick held the fold for a few more seconds, memorizing the sensation needed to keep space compressed without resistance, then released his intent.

Reality snapped back to its original shape with a soft, audible pop, sending a brief gust through the surrounding air.

Ugh, this will take a long time unless I find something strong enough to grant me an affinity.