The following morning, the soft glow of the early sun filtered through the small, square window in Lassim’s room.
He awoke to the sounds of distant thunder from the perpetual lightning storm above the sect.
He stretched, no longer feeling any remaining soreness from the previous battle’s exertion in his muscles.
Yet, there was a deep hunger present to finally unlock the mysteries of the spatial elent that had been calling to him.
Lassim sat up, his hands resting on the edge of the bed as he took a mont to focus inward.
His inner heart world greeted him imdiately, a massive amount of dense mana filled clouds filled the area. They covered a space much larger than the small piece of rock that they initially hovered over, but now went beyond the edges of.
That little patch of rock oddly seed more lively to Lassim’s senses. It was still just plain earth, but it had a certain unique quality to it as it seed to be absorbing trace amounts of the mana clouds it was exposed to.
However, his focus shifted to the new energy sensation that leaked through the portal—a subtle, but unmistakable presence that made the edges of his consciousness and the progenitor marks across his body hum.
It was the void energy, seeping into his heart world through the connection to the heavens.
As he focused, the sensation of the void grew more distinct.
It was like a fabric stretched across the entire expanse of his heart world, invisible but tangible to his senses. The fabric wasn’t smooth—it was filled with tiny, imperceptible threads, almost like the weave of a cloth, but infinitely more complex. It shifted and bent, curling everywhere around his consciousness.
He took a deep breath, letting the sensation wash over him as he pulled the energy to move it into his mana pathways and the rest of his body.
The familiar buzzing sensation of his progenitor marks grew as it filled him, but this ti, it wasn’t the familiar sensations of jagged and frenetic lightning or the swaying surge of water.
It felt like it was a deep hum of the universe that vibrated through his bones, and he could sense that the black progenitor marks on his body begin to glow with a faint, void-like sheen. They pulsed rhythmically as if resonating with the spatial energy.
Lassim stood up, barefoot on the cool floor of his small dorm room, and concentrated. He was ready to begin the experintation.
The void responded to his will and intentions, the marks across his body glowing more intensely as he drew upon the energy. His heart pounded in his chest, excitent and a little bit of apprehension coursing through him.
He extended his hand, palm outstretched, and willed the space in front of him to shift.
The fabric of reality trembled slightly in response to his command, like a delicate thread being pulled taut.
It wasn’t a forceful command—rather, it was like gently tugging on a thread, encouraging it to move in the direction he wanted.
A small bubble filled ripple appeared in the air before him, like the surface of a pond disturbed by a pebble. The ripple expanded outward, distorting the space around it ever so slightly. Lassim’s eyes widened.
He had done it—he had manipulated the very fabric of space. He just wanted to interact with it, and cause so sort of disturbance to make sure what he did before wasn’t a fluke.
But this was just the beginning.
"Let’s see if I can take this further," Lassim muttered under his breath, feeling the void energy surge within him, sowhat as if it was an entity on its own urging him to explore its depths.
He concentrated harder, his brow furrowing in deep focus.
He imagined the fabric of space as a complex tapestry that could be manipulated, altered, and reshaped. He had no experience as a tailor, but he’d often watched the maids of his estate sew together new pairs of pants for him whenever he tore a hole playing outside as a child.
That mory was the only thing that seed to fit the tangible sensation of what dealing with the fabric of reality was, or at least, that was the closest to that feeling in his mind.
It was specifically just like those tis he would stand by their sides, looking at the threads of the fine yards of cloth rolls as they would pull them apart, then reweave them, and stitch back together into the shapes of new clothing.
The void buzzed and bubbled in response to his intent, and he felt the fabric of space loosen slightly, as if granting him permission.
He took a slow, deliberate breath and focused on a single point across the room, near the door.
He envisioned himself standing there, on the other side of the room. He wasn’t thinking of walking there or flying—no, this was sothing else.
This was folding the space cloth between where he stood and where he wanted to be, weaving the distance together so that the two points beca one.
The void energy thrumd within him, his black progenitor marks glowing with a brilliant dark hue.
He reached out ntally, weaving the fabric of space around him, pulling the threads together, closing the distance between his current location and the spot near the door. The closer distance that he could physically see, compared to the random direction he chose last ti, felt so much easier but also harder at the sa ti.
He didn’t want to make a mistake so he spent more ti concentrating on making the passage between the spaces more sturdy as he urged the fabric to fuse more than just connect with the threads of his own void energy.
Then, with a blip, for a brief mont, he felt the familiar weightlessness, as though he were standing both in his current spot and at the destination simultaneously.
His heart raced with excitent—this was it, the key to unlocking the power of teleportation. He could feel the two points in space bending toward each other, their threads intertwining as they rged.
And then, with a flicker of energy across his progenitor marks, Lassim disappeared.
In the very sa instant, he reappeared on the other side of the room, standing exactly where he had envisioned.
Lassim blinked, montarily disoriented. He looked around, his breath coming in short, excited bursts. He had done it. He had teleported purposefully, crossing the space between two points in an instant by weaving the fabric of reality itself.
The feeling was exhilarating, but there was more to explore. This was just the first step.
He took another deep breath, calming his racing heart. "Alright... I think with practice that can be used in battle, but it’s a different sensation from what I did last ti. That one felt more like the start of a tunnel, but also not. Let’s try sothing a bit more difficult and see if we can do that again on a smaller scale," he whispered to himself.
He turned his gaze toward the window, the sunlight streaming in, illuminating the small room.
This ti, he didn’t focus on just one point in space he could see in front of him. Instead, he tried to sense the fabric of reality in its entirety as he turned to face the other direction—the way the threads of space connected everything, stretching out infinitely in every direction.
He let the void energy flow through him, his black marks pulsing as they synchronized with the subtle hum of the void.
Slowly, he reached out ntally, grasping at the fabric of space around the room. He could feel the way the threads connected, intertwining and overlapping, forming the very structure of reality itself.
He tugged gently at them, testing their resilience, seeing how far he could push before they resisted.
With a flick of his wrist, Lassim wove the threads together, pulling two points in space—one near the door where he stood and one near the window—of which he couldn’t see since he was facing the other direction—into alignnt.
The air shimred with a faint distortion accompanied by the bubbles that were present on the surface of the portals to other dinsions he’d seen so many tis before. Lassim could feel the space between them growing thinner.
Then, he stepped forward, feeling the subtle shift in the fabric of reality as he moved.
The threads of space bent and twisted around him, forming a path that didn’t exist in the normal world. It was like walking through a hidden tunnel entrance, a passage that only he could see.
And then, with another simple step, he was by the window. His body had completely turned around 180 degrees as well, so now instead of facing the door he was looking directly out the window and could see the busy street behind the ivy plants that grew over the glass pane.
"Let’s go!! This is so fun!"
He had done it again—this ti, with even more precision and control. The space between two ’distant’ points, one which he had to fully imagine. had been folded, woven together, and he had walked through the result.
But there was still much more to explore. There was no way to make this useful in the middle of battle in its current state. The amount of concentration to do it safely and with low risk took too much ti.
If his life depended on it, he felt more confident, but he hadn’t fully mastered the spatial elent yet—this was only the beginning of his journey. There were deeper levels to this power, layers of complexity that he hadn’t even begun to touch.
He turned his attention back to his inner heart world, where the void energy pulsed faintly. It was much lower than he expected. Using the space elent to teleport twice had used up most of the energy within him.
He could sense it even more clearly now than before, the way the void seeped into his heart world through the connection to the constellation in the heavens. The rate at which it flowed into him ant he’d probably need a full 12 hours or so before it was full again.
Yet, there was still enough left for probably one more experint before he’d need to let it refill.
His progenitor marks flared to life once more as he focused on the fabric of reality, his fingers twitching slightly as he imagined pulling the threads of space tighter, creating a denser weave.
The room around him seed to bend and warp in response, the air shimring with a faint distortion as the space within the room beca more malleable.
Lassim reached out, his hand brushing against the fabric of space itself.
Then, it shattered unexpectedly.
The sowhat tangible sensation of a cooperative fabric turned deadly with the threads transforming into shards of multipronged glass.
The tips of his fingers on his right hand were cleanly sliced off and fell to the floor, blood spilling everywhere from his hand.
A shock of pain raced through him, hot and sharp, as Lassim instinctively clutched his mangled hand.
Blood poured between his fingers, staining the floor beneath him in quick, steady droplets. The pain was blinding, his thoughts scrambling, trying to understand what had just happened.
He staggered back. It wasn’t just the physical pain that rattled him, but the sudden, vicious backlash from the spatial elent. The void energy that had once felt so soft and malleable had turned on him, its nature suddenly harsh, jagged, and dangerous.
Clenching his jaw against the pain, Lassim’s mind raced as he activated [Lifestream], the familiar blue aura of water mana flowing through his hand to stop the bleeding.
The technique stemd the worst of the damage as he rushed to attach the fingertips that had fallen, slowing the blood flow and beginning the slow process of nding his severed fingertips. He used his mana to hold the pieces in place.
But even with [Lifestream], regrowing bone and flesh wasn’t sothing that could be done quickly at his current proficiency. He would need ti for the wounds to heal completely.
His hand throbbed in sync with the void energy that still pulsed within him. The void energy felt… twisted. Unstable. Sothing even his progenitor marks struggled to interact with.
Lassim breathed heavily, trying to steady himself.
What had gone wrong? The space elent had responded perfectly before, bending to his will. But now…
"Was it ?" he muttered under his breath, sweat beading on his forehead. "Did I push too far, too fast?"
His heart thudded in his chest, a gnawing doubt creeping into his mind.
Suddenly, he felt a faint tremor in his inner heart world, like a ripple passing through the void.
It was a sensation he had felt before—a lurking presence from the heavens watching him.
Lassim straightened, his body tense. His hand still throbbed, the blood barely under control, but sothing else was happening.
He closed his eyes, focusing inward, trying to see if he could trace the source of this presence.
His inner heart world was vast and chaotic, filled with the energy of his elents, but the void... the void on the other side of the portal inside him was sothing entirely different. It flowed like a river of blackness, quiet and still, but beneath that calm surface, sothing was lurking.
"Who…?" Lassim whispered, his voice hoarse.
In the depths of the void, a ripple.
A low hum began to echo in the back of his mind, the sound barely audible but unmistakable. The progenitor marks on his body flared again, their black glow flickering like a dying fla, and for the briefest mont, he felt Khaalseru’s presence and heard her words.
Suddenly, the marks on his body pulsed violently, and the room around him warped once more. The walls twisted, bending inward as if the space itself was collapsing in on him.
He saw multi-eyed beings peek out and other beast’s tentacles writhe from the crevices of the space that collapsing towards him. He saw the flash of a giant maw in a shard of glass they nearly touched his head.
Lassim gasped, staggering backward, his vision blurring as the fabric of reality seed to buckle under the strain.
And then, just as quickly as it had started, the distortion stopped.
Lassim stood there, breathless and bleeding, his heart racing as he tried to make sense of what had just happened.
It was then, Lassim felt a chill run down his spine as an elderly woman’s words reached his mind in a language he hadn’t spoken since leaving the Veridian Continent, "[This is my lesson to you while you are finally exploring my elent. Be more serious and practice on objects that aren’t your own body, you idiot! At least until you get more comfortable with opening the void.
There’s far worse things than death out there in the folds of space. Take this as your price from to remind you of what will happen when you try sothing so reckless. It won’t be just your fingertips next ti... Practice smarter you fool.]"
The room was silent now, still and unchanged, but the echoes of the void energy still lingered in the air, heavy and oppressive.
His hand trembled as he lifted it, the blood still dripping from his partially healed fingers. The pain was dull now, but it served as a stark reminder of how little control he truly had over the space elent and his stupidity for just using his body straight away to teleport. He really hadn’t been considerate of potential dangers.
"I need to be more careful," Lassim muttered to himself, his voice barely above a whisper.
He had pushed too hard, too fast. The spatial elent wasn’t sothing he could master easily overnight—it would take ti, patience, and a level of control he hadn’t yet achieved.
He needed to understand the void energy better before he could even think about using it In himself again or in combat.
With a weary sigh, he collapsed onto his bed, cradling his injured hand against his chest.
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