Chapter : 1117

The silence in the aftermath was more profound than the violence that had preceded it. The clearing was a graveyard of glittering, frozen splinters, the last remnants of the Unbeatable Orchard. The oppressive, life-draining aura that had defined this biome was gone, replaced by a clean, crisp, and unnaturally cold stillness. Lloyd’s spirits materialized around him, their forms shimmering with exhaustion but their spiritual presences radiating a shared, triumphant awe. Iffrit’s magma armor was cracked and dull, Fang Fairy’s lightning aura was a faint flicker, and Bingyu’s regal form had a translucent quality, a sign of her immense energy expenditure. They stood as silent witnesses to the absolute victory he had achieved.

Lloyd took a deep, shuddering breath, the last vestiges of the [Lazy Sage]'s colossal power draining from him, leaving a bone-deep weariness in its wake. He had won, but the cost had been high. He had pushed his spirits to their absolute limit and gambled everything on a single, ten-minute window. He felt a wave of profound gratitude and pride for them. They had held the line.

It was in that moment of quiet satisfaction that the System chimed in his mind. It wasn't the usual, simple notification of a quest completed. This was different. It was a deep, resonant, foundational tone, the sound of a major milestone being reached, like a new law of physics being written just for him.

The Administrator's synthetic voice spoke, its usual dispassionate tone now laced with something that might have been synthetic respect.

[Congratulations, Contractor. You have successfully neutralized a Tier-9 Conceptual Threat. Your strategic adaptability and innovative application of diverse assets have exceeded mission parameters. Standard rewards have been processed. A special reward has been unlocked for achieving a flawless victory against a conceptually-entrenched opponent.]

Lloyd's brow furrowed. "Flawless victory"? They had been on the verge of collapse. But he supposed in the System’s cold logic—zero casualties on his side, total annihilation of the enemy—it was a flawless outcome. A "special reward," however, was new. He had expected Farming Coins, perhaps a bonus item. But the System's language suggested something far more significant.

[Granting new foundational ability: [Spatial Power].]

The moment the words registered, the world in his mind changed. It felt like a new room had been unlocked in the architecture of his soul. A vast, silent, and utterly empty space opened up within his consciousness. It wasn't a memory or an idea; it was a place. A place that was both infinitely large and infinitesimally small, existing outside the normal rules of reality.

It was a void. A perfect, sterile, and endless expanse of pure, featureless white. There was no up or down, no light source yet perfect illumination, no sound, no temperature. It was a dimension of pure potential, a blank canvas of reality, and it was his.

His eyes, still looking out at the ruined orchard, widened in dawning comprehension. He focused his will on a particularly large, jagged piece of the shattered tree trunk, a piece the size of a carriage. He didn't try to lift it with his Void power or burn it with his spirits. He simply… willed it to be in the new space.

It vanished.

There was no flash of light, no sound of teleportation. One instant, the massive chunk of debris was there; the next, it was gone. The transition was so clean, so absolute, it was as if it had never existed.

Stunned, Lloyd closed his eyes and turned his focus inward, accessing the white void in his mind. And there it was. The carriage-sized piece of wood was floating silently in the center of the endless white, perfectly preserved, stripped of all momentum, existing in a state of perfect stasis.

He tested it again, methodically. He focused on his own practice sword, which lay discarded at the edge of the clearing. He willed it into the space. It vanished from the ground and appeared in the void, floating serenely next to the chunk of wood. He then focused on a small, insignificant pebble. It, too, was instantly stored. He tried something more complex: a handful of the glittering ice dust left over from Bingyu’s blizzard. The entire handful vanished and reappeared in the void as a static, unmelting cloud of particles.

Chapter : 1118

The implications were staggering, a cascade of strategic possibilities that left him breathless. This wasn't just a storage ability. This was a perfect, undetectable, and seemingly infinite inventory. He could carry an entire armory, a library, a year's worth of supplies, without a single ounce of weight. He could make evidence, bodies, or treasures vanish without a trace. It was the ultimate tool for a soldier, a spy, and a king.

But as he continued to experiment, pulling the items out of the space and putting them back in with a thought, a new, far more audacious question began to form in his mind. The System had said the space could store anything. Living or non-living. If he could put an object in there… what would happen if he tried to put himself in?

The idea was insane. A reckless, intuitive leap into a territory the System hadn't explained. Stepping into a private, mental dimension felt like a form of conceptual suicide. What if he couldn't get out? What if time flowed differently? But the potential reward, if it worked, was a power that would change the very definition of what was possible. The temptation was too great to resist.

He dismissed his exhausted spirits, sending them back into the warm, restorative depths of his soul. He stood alone in the silent, glittering graveyard of the orchard. He took a deep breath, steeling his will. He didn't physically move. Instead, he focused his entire consciousness on the act of entering the white void. He willed himself to be there, just as he had willed the sword and the stone.

The world dissolved.

The physical sensation of his body, the cold air on his skin, the solid ground beneath his feet—it all vanished. He was no longer a physical being in a physical place. He was a disembodied point of consciousness, floating in the center of his own, private, infinite universe of white.

The experience was profoundly disorienting. He had no body, yet he could perceive. He had no eyes, yet he could see the endless white in all directions. He was a ghost in his own machine. He felt a flicker of panic, a primal fear of being lost in this perfect, sterile nothingness forever.

It was then that the Administrator's voice chimed in his mind, a calm, grounding anchor in the conceptual void.

[Secondary function of [Spatial Power] detected. Welcome to the Nexus Point. This space acts as a transitional hub, existing outside of conventional time and space. From here, a new form of travel is possible.]

A new form of travel. The words ignited a firestorm of excitement in Lloyd's mind, chasing away the fear.

[To initiate translocation,] the Administrator continued, [form a clear, high-fidelity mental image of your desired destination. The more precise the image, the more accurate the translocation. The System will calculate the energy cost based on distance and dimensional variance. Focus your will on the intent to 'exit' at that location.]

Instantaneous teleportation.

The very concept was a world-breaker. It was the ultimate power, the dream of kings and mages since the dawn of time. A power that made armies, fortresses, and borders irrelevant.

His mind raced. He needed a target. A familiar, safe location for his first, terrifying attempt. The image of his stone sanctuary, the simple, functional house at the heart of his Soul Farm, coalesced in his mind. He pictured it with perfect clarity: the rough-hewn stone walls, the simple wooden stool, the faint, opaline shimmer of the portal in the corner, the specific pattern of cracks on the floor where Iffrit had slammed his zanbatō.

He focused his entire being on that image, on the absolute, unshakeable intent to be there. He took a conceptual "step" forward in the white void.

The endless white collapsed in on itself. For a fraction of a second, he was nowhere. It was not a feeling of movement, but of replacement. One moment he was a point of consciousness in the white void, the next, reality was reasserted around him.

The solid, familiar stone floor was under his boots. The scent of old wood and quiet dust filled his nostrils. He was standing in the center of his sanctuary, the portal to the ninth level shimmering gently a few feet away.

It had worked.

He had crossed nearly a mile of the Soul Farm's terrain in less than a heartbeat. It wasn't a Void Step, a short-range, line-of-sight blink. This was true translocation. A journey without a path.