Chapter 361: Astral Dungeon Trial: Entering
We’d just arrived at the spot and Eric began explaining everything he had planned for me, "Right, so for this test, or rather trial of sorts, there are a few rules you must abide by to pass. And don’t worry if you fail, you can try this again at a later date. Also, there are four things you must keep in mind."
"The first of which being that you must follow this rule, which is that you must only use your power and control over [Space] and nothing else. You can however, use your other skills and affinities to empower your spatial abilities but nothing else."
"The second thing is less a rule and more a goal of sorts. You must reach the fifth floor to pass, but every floor after that will determine how I train you in the future, or if I even need to."
"Thirdly, you can use your physical prowess but only whenever empowered with space magic. I know I haven’t properly taught you this, but it’s best to learn this kind of thing in real combat so you can properly utilise your power. The rest is more about strategy and how best to use your skills, but this is something you can only gain by real practice, otherwise it will be flawed and hard to retrain."
"And the final thing you should know is that I will be trailing along behind you to keep you safe. I’ll only step in if your life is truly in danger or something unexpected occurs like a spatial rupture, or a spatial monster breach."
"Right, I understand." I nodded.
"Good. Then in that case, you may begin." Eric said as he vanished into the spatial layers. But just before he disappeared from my senses completely, he said one last thing, "Oh, and you have to enter it yourself. Also your job to figure out how."
With that, he disappeared completely, thought I could still vaguely feel his presence nearby with [Spatial Vision]. Either way, the test had finally begun, so I had to get a move on.
The first thing I did was close my eyes and concentrate on the space surrounding me, searching for the Dungeon.
I knew it was somewhere close by, otherwise Eric wouldn’t have taken me here to this specific spot. He only seemed to want the best for me, seemingly only teaching and pushing me to do the best I can with what he teaches.
Reaching out, I searched through the spatial layers all around me slowly, making sure not to miss any fluctuations in space that might be a crack and lead into the dungeon.
It took a quite a while but I did eventually find the Dungeons location. But it wasn’t where I thought it would be. It was underground, in a spatial tear beneath the sand and deep into the stone.
Immediately I used [Spatial Shift] which I had managed to get to level seven in this time, and entered into the first floor of the Dungeon.
The moment I appeared there, I felt my surroundings trembling. It was as if the Dungeon itself was reacting to my presence and roaring at me like I had just entered the territory of an apex predator.
I scoffed with a sneer and observed my surroundings.
The walls were made of some kind of crystalline gemstones that phased in and out reality, becoming transparent when disappearing and completely solid colours when appearing, like solid-coloured rocks.
Their colours were primarily a deep blue with purple sparkling accents here and there, the colours of spatial magic.
It would seem that this Dungeon is filled to the brim with spatial energy. Would be a great place to increase my prowess with my spatial abilities. Then again, that’s exactly why I’m here.
The second thing I noticed after the shifting scenery, was that the ground I was on was completely stable, yet the rocky terrain just a few centimetres away from where my body stood continued shifting.
And looking at it, I soon came to a conclusion, ’Looks like my body, or rather my presence here stabilises the unstable space here.’
With nothing left to do, I ventured forth into the depths of the Dungeon, but without any indication of where I should be going, or what to look out for.
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After several minutes of searching through the everchanging Dungeon, I was starting to lose it a little. No matter where I went, there was no way for me to map it out in my head because it was always changing, with paths closing and opening all around me.
Sometimes I would go down a tunnel and it would close up, or if I tried to go backwards it would do the same. Or a hole in the wall would just randomly appear and then disappear before I could properly register it happening.
And in all this time, I had yet to come across a monster. I’m not sure if that’s because there simply weren’t that many on this floor if any at all or not, but I hadn’t sensed anything so far.
Either way, it was clear that this aimless approach would get me nowhere and I would just be stuck and wasting my time if I continued like this.
Something needed to change. I needed to change. So, for a few minutes, I sat down and leaned back against one of the many rock walls and thought for a while, trying to come up with some kind of solution.
And eventually I did come up with several ideas in case any of them failed.
The first of which was to try and stabilise the space around me, and make it so that the surroundings didn’t shift in an out of material reality.
I got back up and placed a hand onto the wall I was just leaning against, seeing the space stabilise the moment my hand touched it, yet the surroundings still warped slightly. The surface changing its geometry but still staying as a wall.
Closing my eyes though, I focused on my mana and began pouring it into the wall, letting it ripple through the unstable material and spread to the rest of my surroundings.
When I was done, I opened my eyes and was pleasantly surprised to see that it had actually worked and that the walls weren’t shifting anymore. In fact, the small purple sparks seemed to be growing into actual crystals.
Though, after a few minutes of observation, I noticed that the larger the crystals grew, the more unstable the blue stony surfaces became. I think its because the crystals were draining the mana I put into the walls and growing.
’Good to know at least.’ I thought, knowing that this might come in handy later.
Still, this didn’t help me out of my current situation, so it was time to move onto one of my other ideas.