Path to Transcendence

Julius found that [Spatial Crack] required a special level of patience. He was still continuing his experiments with how it reacted with his body, but the progress had slowed.

Although he had learned that it was possible to withstand some of the destructive nature of untamed space by using his aura and Concepts to protect himself, mana also had a small effect. When he had used [Barrier of Severance], there had been some resistance, but it was quickly overwhelmed.

However, it also meant that it should be possible for people without an aura skill or using their Concepts to handle the dangerous environment of the void with an appropriate skill. The question, though, became how strong a mana-based skill must be to protect someone from spatial tears.

He was staying up late. But since he already knew he wasn't going to show up, it made him feel way less guilty about it. He also felt like something was going to happen tonight. Something in his soul told him that he was getting close to crossing that precipice that had been holding him back for a long time.

And that feeling is what drove him to push himself tonight.

He pulled out his finger out of the [Spatial Crack]. The fact that it remained entirely intact even after withstanding spatial tears was a great success. That was the reason why he felt comfortable implementing the next stage of his experiment.

He was still trying to connect two separate distortions. However, he hadn't been able to do so. He could create two of them at the same time and keep them together, so that wasn't the issue. As a matter of fact, he could create three of them at once as long as he maintained intense focus.

No, the issue became about finding a method to forge a connection. But he had an idea he wanted to try.

What if creating a connection from the other side of the void were easier? It was also why he was doing his best to find a way to survive the dangerous and chaotic environment on the other side.

But now he had, and he wanted to test something out.

So with a silly grin on his fac,e he walked over to the distortion in space. He looked down at his left hand and preemptively apologized for what he was planning to do with it.

Controlling his aura and mana, he molded them around his arm, making sure that he also infused his Will Concept and Phoenix Concept into it. He had learned the hard way that these two Concepts held up the best against the ripples of space.

Once he felt like he had prepared everything, he shoved his whole arm inside with a giggle. This entire time, he had been careful and only been putting his fingers inside. But he had also learned that the larger the mass of the object, the longer he could withstand the tears inside. For example, his middle finger lasted longer than his pinky.

He didn't know why. But to give himself as much time as possible, he decided to risk his whole arm.

The moment his arm was inside, he went to work. He couldn't afford to waste any time, and the clock was already ticking. He couldn't use any skills from this side of the void, but he could if a part of his body was inside.

Or at the very least, that was what he assumed since he could use mana and aura on his arm. Otherwise, he wouldn't have been able to protect himself.

Concentrating on what part of the void he wanted to rip open with his aura was hard. [Spatial Perception] didn't work, and so he randomly chose a spot not that far away from his arm.

However, he was surprised when he felt the skill respond with such ease. He didn't have to fight against anything. He barely had to use his aura to force the space to tear open and create another crack. He couldn't quite sense it like he would from the normal world, but he felt the response from his aura. It had definitely torn it open, and he could tell from his [Spatial Crack] skill that something had happened.

If opening a crack in the normal world was hard, then opening one in the void felt as natural as breathing air. It was as if before, he had been trying to punch a hole through a brick wall while underwater. However, now there was no more water to resist his efforts.

His arm was attacked by the chaotic tears of the void but because of his precautions, he managed to handle them without much issue.

He quickly removed his arm from the space and was ecstatic when he was still able to feel the distortion on the other side. The connection was still very present and it was so much easier to hold it open than the one in front of him.

It almost felt like it would continue to stay open unless he willed it to close. A very interesting detail that he believed he could use later down the road.

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Feeling really excited, he swiftly pulled out a pile of rocks he had gathered for this very moment. He couldn't help but chuckle as he imagined somewhere in one of the gardens, one of the staff would find a large missing pile of pebbles.

He searched for both of the distortions with his skill and senses. When he got a handle of them, he did his best to forge a connection. He thought of it like how his constructs were connected to him when he used them. It was because of this connection that he was able to adapt them on the fly and send them to attack his opponents.

He grinned when he felt the distortions start to move toward one another with way more ease than he had been having when he created two cracks when he wasn't in the void. It was like they naturally attracted one another.

The one in the void wanted something to attach itself too and the crack that his arm was inside was more than enough for it. The only real issue he was having was finalizing the connection.

They were already pulled together, and he could feel that they weren't that far away from actually forming a solid connection, but something was preventing them from taking that final step. However, it might just need a helping hand and so he wrangled his willpower to encompass both of these distortions.

He willed for them to connect when he felt the energy wrap around the distortions. His eyes brightened when he felt them slowly getting closer due to his actions. His willpower was fully surging as he used every ounce of it to make it happen.

However, the closer they got together, the harder it was to make any progress. No matter how much he groaned, he wasn't able to take that last step. He was damn close and he could hear himself grunting in exertion. A soft trickle of blood oozed out of his eyes from the strain of his willpower. He was sure he had popped a blood vessel or several in his head.

A deep feeling of stubbornness let him hang on, though. He continued to push everything he had. His grunts had turned into roars as he brought the two distortions together.

Then in a sensation of unbelievable relief, he felt them slot together like they had been made for one another. However, once he didn't have an outlet for his willpower to struggle against he accidently let his aura slip and he felt it release a viscous surge of aura release from his body, slamming into the surroundings and blowing away the equipment laying around the room.

"Oops," he muttered to himself.

The ruinous effect of his aura lingered for a while before he managed to take it back into himself and control it safely.

When he looked over at the distortion, he immediately noticed some changes. For one, there was a firm sense of stabilization coming from it. He barely needed to keep his attention on it to keep it from collapsing. The other thing was that there was this slight bluish hue coming from where the distortion was.

Typically, the crack in space was invisible to the naked eyes. But for some reason there was a light blue rippling in the air where the crack was. It was fascinating and he wondered why that was.

Seeing that he had some time to catch his breath, he untensed his shoulders and let out a sigh of relief. After much struggle, he finally managed to create a connection between the two cracks. He wiped the blood that was dripping from his face, but when he realized there was a lot of it, he used some fire to burn his blood away.

It was a more efficient and cleaner way to get rid of all the blood. After he did that, he used [Phoenix Renewal] to heal the popped blood vessels and torn muscles he could sense from his exertion.

Once he did all of that, he created a chair made of mana, making sure that he softened it just right. The mana wrapped around his butt nicely and had the right amount of plushness that it had him sighing in pleasure.

At moments like these, he was very glad that he had gotten better at making chairs. The satisfaction of achieving something difficult and then relaxing in a comfortable chair was unbelievable.

When he settled in, he removed a snack from his storage ring and started eating. Using that much willpower had tired him out, and he needed to refuel. He still made sure that the connection didn't fall apart, though. Luckily, it didn't take much focus on his part. From what he could observe, it seemed like the hard part was done once the connection was formed.

The question that remained was whether or not the connection did anything. If it didn't, then all of his effort would have been for nought.

After some time spent recovering, he got up from his chair and recycled the mana to reinforce his arm again. He made all of the preparations that he had made before, and then he grabbed a handful of the pebbles. He made sure to encircle them with some of his aura, and only then did he chuck them into the now connected spatial crack.

He was grinning the entire time. His experiment had worked, and he had finally created a connection between two points. Now, he wanted to test out and see if he could teleport things or himself through one of these points.

He waited for a while to see what would happen. He reminded himself that he needed to be patient, and so he sat there.

However, he had to hold himself back from slapping his forehead after several minutes when he realized his blunder. He had been so focused on creating two connection points that he failed to realize that the other side of the connection was just the void.

It didn't matter if it worked, because he wouldn't be able to verify it from this end. He closed his eyes and berated himself for his stupidity.

If he wanted to see if he could teleport the pebbles, he would need to create another [Spatial Crack] on this side and then weave it alongside the already established connection of the other two.

The only problem was that if he had such difficulty creating a connection between just those two, how much harder would it be to add a third crack to the connection?

It wasn't something he was very excited about, but nonetheless, he was a persistent person, and he wasn't leaving the room until he managed to do just that. It didn't matter if he had to stay all night. He would succeed with pure stubbornness.

So he sat down and got to work once again but this time he was emboldened by his success and thus it didn't feel as much of an impossibility like before.