Chapter 560

Nick remained still. His eyes saw nothing, but his spiritual senses expanded to fill the cavern. The spatial shift left a distinct wake in the ether, and he could follow it, sensing the ripples that preceded the creature’s materialization.

As expected, the beast shifted its position from the floating debris directly into Nick’s blind spot. It happened nearly instantaneously, but he'd been prepared, so it was only a matter of willing a kinetic shield over his left shoulder a fraction of a second before it arrived.

The Guardian appeared in mid-strike, its claws grinding against the barrier. Sparks of conflicting mana cascaded across the cavern, illuminating the floating rocks surrounding them. Nick pivoted and cast a concussive blast from his open palm.

Of course, his foe blinked away, the shockwave passing through empty space and shattering a floating boulder fifty yards away.

It materialized upside down on the ceiling, angled toward Nick, who hummed, curious what it would do now that it was clear its basic tricks wouldn’t work.

He treated the exchange as a test, and while he was sure his mother would have pulled his ears for his arrogance, he didn’t feel in any real danger. He had more than enough raw power to flood the cavern with lightning, reducing the beast and the floating debris to ash, but a mere core was not what he was after.

He just needed to test the limits of his new spatial spells against a master of the discipline, mapping the gulf between his rudimentary technique and true affinity. Once he’d fully grasped how far he had to go, he intended to take that power for himself.

Focusing his intent, Nick wove a [Spatial Fold] around the Guardian’s front-right limb, locking it in place and preventing further teleportation.

The beast reacted with casual disdain, sending a pulse of mana through its body and effortlessly unraveling his spellform. The fold shattered before it could fully form, and the backlash left a mild ache in Nick’s temples.

“Alright, no need to get feisty,” he chuckled.

Releasing an offended hiss, the Guardian retaliated, swiping its tail and opening a vertical tear in reality that raced across the cavern floor. The rift severed the floating rocks in its path without slowing, and was clearly meant to do the same to his body.

This time, Nick used [Spatial Relocation]. He seized a large chunk of rock ten feet away and forced it to swap places with the empty air directly in front of him, then flooded it with spiritual mana.

The rock appeared with a sharp pop, intercepting the spatial tear.

It cracked and shattered into pieces, but to his delight, the effort had been enough to disrupt the attack.

The Guardian vanished again and reappeared directly above him, dropping like a guillotine blade. Nick sidestepped the blow with a gust of wind, having anticipated it, and lashed out with a whip of pure force.

His strike caught the beast in the flank, sending it tumbling through the cavern, where strange flows of gravity pinballed it around.

He knew it wasn’t enough to truly hurt it, so he wasn’t surprised when it righted itself mid-air. This time, however, it didn’t launch another attack.

It clearly recognized the power disparity between them. Its spatial strikes couldn’t penetrate his shield, and his spiritual tracking matched its agility.

The beast coiled its shifting limbs, preparing to fold space and retreat into the dungeon’s depths to a more favorable position.

A dungeon Guardian retreating. To think I’d ever see the day.

“Oh no, you’re not going anywhere,” Nick said as he unleashed his mana.

Only his monstrous control kept the power from spilling through the tunnels and alerting everyone with sensory abilities to his presence. The air turned viscous, locking the drifting boulders in place and dimming the glow of the crystals.

There was some resistance, as the dungeon clearly didn’t appreciate his claiming a portion of its body, especially when facing one of its Guardians, but it was weak, unable to truly contest his hold.

The Guardian thrashed, its form blurring as it tried to shift coordinates, but the mana had grown too dense, and any magic it attempted to cast unraveled before the full might of an Eidolon.

“Well, if you don’t want to play anymore, I guess we can move on to the next part,” Nick said, raising his hands and focusing on the concept of restraint, of divinity binding mortality.

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“[Gleipnir].”

Silvery ribbons of spiritual light erupted from his palms, shooting across the cavern and striking the Guardian as it continued its futile struggles. The chains wrapped around its limbs, looping over its back and sinking into its body.

Unfortunately for it, these were not embodied tethers to be broken by force or sheared by spatial tears. They were divine anchors, locking the beast’s presence to the physical plane and binding the very concept of movement.

Unable to sustain its magic any longer, the Guardian plummeted, crashing onto a flat expanse of rock, where silvery chains held it fast against the stone.

It thrashed and hissed, grinding against the floor in an attempt to shake off the restraint, but the spatial warping around it stopped. It was neutralized.

Nick descended slowly, landing a few yards from the struggling beast. He drew a long breath, letting the battle high fade, and began meticulous preparations for the ritual.

For this, he needed to synthesize his past successes. He lacked the sacrifices that had anchored his affinity for air, and this beast was not a Prestige-tier legend like the Crimson Basilisk, which could impart a high-ranking Trait on its own.

That didn’t mean it was useless. With his new power, he could easily make up the deficit by drawing on Earth’s ancient Hermetic traditions to an extent he doubted any practitioner had ever imagined possible.

With a pull from his spatial ring, he retrieved some chalk and the harvested cores of the lesser spatial hounds, crushing them under his boot until they were reduced to a fine dust. He mixed the byproduct into the chalk, creating a highly conductive medium attuned to the local mana, thus weakening the dungeon’s interference.

He then walked around the bound beast, tracing a wide circle. Within it, he drew a perfect heptagram—the seven-pointed star representing planetary spheres and the crossing of cosmic thresholds. He annotated the intersections with ancient Greek symbols for the four cardinal directions and the three planes of existence, creating a miniature map of reality.

It’s technically intended for astral summoning, but its principles are essentially the same as those required for spatial magic.

Once he was satisfied with his work, he placed the remaining hound cores at the seven points of the star, using them as stabilizing nodes to channel any erratic energy.

After all, using a living sacrifice always carried the pesky risk of resistance.

With that done, he set out to work on the spiritual protections.

When he assimilated the Basilisk core, he used a shadow familiar as insulation. Here, he had to rely on his own skills.

Nick drew his mana inward, expressing his soul more strongly than he usually cared to, until his body glowed with power. Humming a nameless tune, he visualized his essence as an unbreachable wall, capable of containing any pressure and bending it to his will.

As the power settled, he stepped into the center of the heptagram, standing directly above the thrashing Guardian.

He raised his right hand, shaping a blade of kinetic mana, and began the incantation. The words resonated in the cavern, spoken in the dead tongue of Hellenistic scholars, shaking the air with sheer intent.

"As above, so below," Nick chanted, his voice dropping into a resonant register. "I stand at the crossroads of distance. I command the threshold to open. The lock is broken; the key is forged in blood and spirit.”

With a smile that would have sent hardened adventurers running for the hills, he drove the blade down, piercing the Guardian's chest and striking the core directly.

"I claim the path as mine own,” he rumbled, crimson light spilling from his eyes.

The core could do little against his will, and the dungeon’s howl of anger was lost as it shattered.

Dead, the Guardian dissolved into a shockwave of light. Raw spatial mana erupted outward, seeking release. At that moment, the hound cores flared, catching the expanding energy and funneling it along the chalk lines. The array then forced the chaotic surge inward, driving it straight up through the soles of Nick's feet and into his chest.

“Let the assimilation begin,” he roared, and the pain began.

He could have avoided this. Simply absorbing the runaway power would have been easy enough, but he wanted to extract every ounce of potential, so he needed to guide the process manually.

Nick felt his internal organs trying to fold in on themselves. His blood seemed to flow backward, sideways, and through a fifth dimension at once. The concept of distance collapsed within his own body; his heartbeat sounded miles away, while the cold stone beneath him felt as though it were pressing directly against his brain.

Spatial mana raged through his soul, scraping violently against the buffer he’d set up.

But for all its might, it wasn't enough to overwhelm him. The very structure of his soul made that so, drinking in the power and using it as fuel to grow the Tree of Life further.

Pressure mounted, threatening to turn him inside out, but Nick held on, watching the divine construct grow for the first time since his rank-up, its branches reaching in directions his mortal senses couldn’t grasp.

As time went on, the light pulsing beneath his skin began to dim. Pain ebbed as the stolen power condensed into a burning point in his innermost soul, then settled into a steady thrum.

The cavern returned to its quiet, sullen gloom. The chalk lines were burned into the bedrock, permanently scorched into the stone.

Nick collapsed backward, lying flat on the ground.

He stared up at the debris as it began to float again now that his mana wasn’t pressing it down. His chest heaved as he dragged in ragged breaths.

“That took a bit more out of me than I expected,” he chuckled.

Fortunately, it had worked.

Compared to his other affinities, this was still a very minor thing, barely worth mentioning, really, but he could already feel how useful it would be.

Spells that had baffled him suddenly became easy to grasp. Structures he’d been unable to envision, even with his enhanced mind, now seemed as easy to understand as basic lessons.

Now it was only a matter of time before he transformed spatial magic into another of his mightiest weapons, and given its utility, he would dedicate himself to it.

Nick rested on the ground for a full hour, letting his strained soul settle. When the tremors in his spirit finally subsided, he pushed himself up.

He raised his hand and focused on a chunk of obsidian twenty yards away.

“[Spatial Relocation].”

There was no resistance this time. In fact, if he hadn’t encountered it before, he would never have known that reality was so opposed to such magics.

The chunk simply vanished from its spot and reappeared in his hand, as simple as that.

A satisfied smile touched his lips.

Nick spent the next while playing with his new affinity, testing the limits of his spells and working on new ones, each coming together as easily as his elements did before his rank-up.

He still had much work to do, but he’d secured his prize.