Chương 281: Limitless Path Chapter Three Hundred Five

"So, we didn't blow up," Blood said after nothing happened for a minute.

"You're really on a tear today," Beth muttered back, making sure the cube was really in her necklace before moving to the other hallway. Blood caught up to her and took the lead, walking down the new hallway just slightly ahead of Beth. They continued on again for close to twenty minutes with nothing changing or happening; the hallway dark, empty, and dead to their senses.

It didn't get any less eerie that the only sound echoing down the perfectly cut hall was their footsteps, Blood using the opportunity to practice moving stealthily despite the lack of enemies. Blood's practice was interrupted by a change in the hallway, though unfortunately, this wasn't a room, but a weird disturbance.

There was a hazy sheen, something that Beth at first mistook for fog, except their was no feeling of water vapor in the air, and there was no cool or damp sensation on her skin when she walked up to the area. Instead, there was a sensation of twisting, of movement, of a kind of thickness in the air that felt very weird.

Beth didn't really understand what she was experiencing at first, but she put the pieces together pretty quickly, helped greatly by the fact that when Blood tried to blithely stroll into the area, she suddenly appeared a dozen steps back down the hallway… in midair… upside down.

"You alright back there?" Beth asked over her shoulder.

"Don't worry; head's the hardest part of me, just like you," Blood growled back.

"Yeah, I think this is some kind of disturbed area of space," Beth said.

"Another test?" Blood grumbled back as she stepped back up to where Beth was.

"Probably," Beth said hesitantly.

"But I don't know how we can get by this. It'll be a lot more difficult to get through an area like this than to just walk through an area where we're getting shot at."

"You would think getting shot at is easy," Blood muttered as she stared at the area of disturbed space.

"More importantly, we have to solve this," Beth said, reaching out her left hand and feeling resistance at the tips of her fingers when they encountered the edge of the disturbed space.

"You want to try Spatial Step?" Blood asked.

"Go ahead," Beth replied with an eyeroll. Blood shrugged and attempted it, but clearly had just as much success as Beth had had earlier when she tried to skip through the arrow trap, having taken a single step forward with no teleport happening. The step did put her too close to the strange zone, which was rather unfortunate, as the zone did, after a moment, teleport her back down the hallway… again upside-down.

The wolf returned to Beth side, muttering some choice curses about weird, sicko trap-builders under her breath. Beth ignored all the fuss, staring very intently at the area of strange space as she felt out what was happening and how. It was hard to explain, but Beth was able to feel, with something she could only really describe as her mana sense, what was going on in the hallway.

It was very, very rudimentary, and she was somewhat confused by the impressions she was getting, but she thought she was catching a glimmer of what was happening. She sat down in the middle of the hallway, ignoring Blood's further grumbling, though the wolf did sit down at her back, sitting back-to-back with her while she studied the hallway. The more she studied the hallway, leaning back against her tall companion, the more shocked and awed she became.

Whoever had set this area, this 'test,' up, had been a true master of space and spatial magics. The hallway had an area of disturbed space that moved in a fixed pattern, at least from what she could discern, and the further down the hallway she tried to cast her senses, the more complex the patterns in which the space moved. Even so, she had an inkling that the patterns were still extremely basic, showing even more the mastery of the person who had set up such a system to test and train others.

She spent ten, then twenty, then thirty minutes studying the hallway, not bored in the least, as she really felt she was on the edge of grasping something. After the first hour of study, with Blood meditating behind her, she decided, on nothing but instinct and a niggling feeling, to summon her Presence.

Blood did little more than grunt, well used to the overwhelming power of Beth's crown by that point, continuing meditating on her humanization while her companion did, well, whatever it was that needed that much power. Beth wasn't entirely going off a wild whim, but had dug back into the memories living in her head, the memories of another person, another time, another place.

She had managed to leap upon the memory of Liveria learning to sense mana fluctuations outside her body, and not just the vague senses that many had, but a fully developed ability that allowed her to detect even subtle fluctuations in the surrounding mana. It didn't feel quite right to Beth, but she could use that long-faded, blurry memory as the foundation for what she wanted to attempt.

After all, at the end of the day, the basic operating principles of mana and the universe didn't change, only the way one perceived and interacted with those principles did. She took advantage of the fluctuations her Presence made when it was summoned, watching them, combined with the way they interacted with the swirling space in front of her, fascinated by the complex interactions and feedback.

She lost track of time as she watched her power, generated from her Presence altering the mana around her body, conflict with the power based in the hallway. It took her some time to realize that the distortions of space were coming from a series of enchantments built into the stones of the hallway themselves. This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.

Beth felt on the verge of understanding when she faltered, nearly passing out, having entirely lost track of time while her Presence was blazing. She caught herself just in time, turning her Presence off before leaning back against Blood and falling asleep right where she sat. The wolf continued meditating, perhaps not even noticing that anything really had changed. Beth slept for a few hours while Blood focused on whatever she was working on, waking after a time to continue her study.

She didn't deploy her Presence right away this time, but instead studied the field on its own, letting her mind perceive how the different kinds of mana, both within the field and outside of it, interacted with the field itself. It was during this long process that she noticed that she was able to see the fluctuations in space, and how the mana was twisted by them.

Not only that, but she started to see the space mana itself, how it sat at a fundamental level below many other types of mana, which in some way rode 'overtop' the space mana. She activated her Presence again, sending out a powerful pulse that disturbed all the surrounding mana, and in that moment she finally understood. Skill Spatial Mana Detection Silver[0] learned. Beth was a bit surprised, but not shocked, considering she had heard about learning skills at a higher level than Copper[0] before.

Still, learning a skill with enough understanding that it was at Silver right away was a difficult feat, even when someone was working with an element or concept they had some familiarity in studying. The fact that she acquired the skill at Silver, considering the only space related thing she had any involvement in was Spatial Step, pointed to a natural affinity with space.

It would explain a number of things, including some of her sensitivity to some teleportation and why she had detected strange things in this underground ruin. She didn't even need to use her powered up eyes to look at the mana around her, especially the space-aspected mana, as she could just sense the mana through the new skill. The impression was especially strong for the space mana further down the hallway, but she could sense all mana in the surrounding area.

To be totally honest, it was more than a little overwhelming, and she took an hour just adjusting to the ability to sense all the mana in her surroundings. She found she could also dull the sense, like being able to partially ignore one's sense of smell even without pinching one's nose shut. She decided to review the skill's description again before trying anything with the funny space area in the hallway. Spatial Mana Detection Silver[0] {Detect the surrounding mana, with particular attention paid to spatial mana. Allows for use of the senses to perceive mana, as well as a powerful detection ability separate from the base senses.} It wasn't really anything other than what she had found just from the first hour or so of getting used to it, but it was good to see it laid out. She hopped up and stretched, disturbing Blood, who clambered to her feet and also stretched before setting her hands on her hips and observing as Beth moved forward.

The person under observation walked up to the area of fog, where space was altered and twisted, stopping right at the edge of it before stretching out her hand. She could now clearly see where the demarcation of the altered space was, the space mana that was influencing the area visible to her eyes regardless of her eye skill or other abilities. When she touched the space mana with the tip of a finger, she felt a slight pull on her whole being as the space mana partially activated but didn't teleport her.

She assumed there was a certain amount of her body or percentage of her mass that needed to be in the area of twisted mana to fully engage the teleport. Beth then moved mana through her hand, reached out, and shoved her arm into the space mana, grabbing hold of it almost as if it were a physical object. Both the mana and space itself resisted her touch, with the inscriptions in the stones actively trying to teleport her away.

Fortunately, the inscriptions weren't set up to do anything else but teleport the person in the hallway back down the hallway. If it were within the CRA Hall, for instance, there would be all kinds of anti-tampering measures to block her from manipulating the inscriptions, manipulating the mana without far greater power and control, from breaking the mana and power lines without far more advanced skills, and so on.

She didn't have to worry about any of that, so she attempted to directly manipulate the mana in the hallway with nothing but her raw mana. She had to say, she really, genuinely, had absolutely no clue what the fuck she was doing, but it was interesting. She withdrew her hand from the section of changed hallway and observed what happened, watching as the mana fluctuated in a strange swirl before settling back down, Beth able to notice that it was forcibly returned to its pattern by the enchantments in the stones.

She repeated the same thing twice more, watching and feeling the flows of mana as she disturbed the pre-set enchantment and then observed its return to its previous state. Just doing that brought her a level in her new skill, but that shouldn't be entirely surprising, as she was observing a powerful, extremely well-crafted enchantment that was directly related to the heart of said skill.

She spent some more time investigating the space mana, grabbing it and pushing it several times before observing what happened with her new sense when she pushed mana into it. She started with a skill, using Celestial Annihilation to fire mana into the affected area. That produced very strange waves, during the observation of which she got another level in her new skill, though it wasn't anything particularly useful to actually bypassing the trap.

After that, she activated her Presence again and watched the interactions between the mana she naturally leaked while using such a powerful ability and the space mana. She was able to far more clearly see and feel what was happening, watching as the ripples of mana interacted and created small, swirling patterns. The patterns gave her an idea, and she took two steps forward, appearing partway down the hallway on the second step.

She took another step and appeared even further down the hallway, feeling a great pressure resisting her as she tried to move, the space mana forming a type of grid around her, clearly trying to teleport her back to the start of the enchanted area. She was able to resist, however, thanks to her ability to see the mana and what it was doing, able to use mana from her body to stop from being teleported.

That, of course, led to another new skill, as everything to do with the Path had to do with a skill in one form or another. Skill Spatial Resistance Copper[0] has been learned. Due to continuous mitigation factors, Spatial Resistance's level is being adjusted. Spatial Resistance Copper[1] Spatial Resistance Copper[2] Spatial Resistance Copper[3] Spatial Resistance Copper[4] Spatial Resistance Copper[5] Spatial Resistance Copper[6] Adjustment completed.

The feeling of the space around her pulling on her and rejecting her faded into the background before almost entirely disappearing. She could still sense the spatial mana and its effects on her, but the formation in the walls was already having a tough time doing anything to her without her actively using her mana to resist it. The new skill and how it felt had given her a sudden burst of inspiration and she looked down the hallway, picking a spot and taking a step.

Everything around her twisted, though it lasted less than a nanosecond, and she was standing where she had intended. Comprehension acknowledged. Spatial Step upgraded from Silver[0] to Gold[0]. Spatial Step Gold[0] {Walk through space without hindrance, stepping to anywhere within range. Current range is one mile.} Beth read the alerts and through the skill description before taking another step and moving beyond the area of space mana, finding herself in the same hallway as they had been traversing for some time.

She followed the hallway, sure Blood would be fine on her own for a moment, and came upon another room exactly like the first one. This one didn't have any other doorways leading in or out, its only feature a small pedestal in the center with an item hovering over it. Beth quickly approached the pillar and scanned the item. Spatial Control Core {This core was crafted by a Sage Engineer to power an airship, increasing the power of all ship systems, in particular its movement functions.}