Merin blurs, his figure vanishing and reappearing in broken flashes, dodging the crocodile's sweeping tail and torrents of water.
Each movement carries him inches from death, the beast's attacks tearing cracks into the void.
His shield of displaced space, so effective before, shatters like thin glass under the beast's pressure.
He knows he cannot rely on it here. No time remains to reshape it—the crocodile presses too hard, too fast.
Only movement remains.
Merin exhales once, then vanishes again.
This time, when he reappears, not one figure but three stride forth from the collapsing space.
Each one surges toward the crocodile from a different angle, claws poised.
The monster bellows, confusion flashing in its cold eyes.
Its tail lashes, striking one of the advancing Merin.
The figure blurs aside at the last instant, forcing the crocodile to pursue it, convinced it has found the real body.
But the other two are already upon it.
One drives a claw deep into its flank, while the second rips upward across its underbelly.
Flesh and space split together in a shriek of rending sound.
The crocodile thrashes, roars, and then collapses, its massive form dissolving into shards of light. Floating where it once stood, a crystal pulses softly, heavy with power.
Merin seizes it, pressing it into his palm.
The energy within spills into him, threads of space woven with cold water and biting ice.
He sits in silence as he absorbs, watching how space births transformation—how one law bends into others.
When the last wisp fades, he opens his eyes, colder, sharper. Without hesitation, he continues on, crossing portal after portal, void after void.
At last, he steps into another dead end.
The air ripples.
A massive shape emerges.
Again, a crocodile, its body rimed in frost, lunges forward with a roar, maw gaping wide.
Merin does not flinch. His gaze hardens—he already knows its rhythm.
The beast exhales, fog spilling out to freeze the space before him, but his body flickers, vanishing between fractured gaps.
Three figures bloom from the void once more, charging the crocodile. The monster's tail snaps, striking at one image, but it passes through, deceived again.
The real Merin slides in low, claws gleaming with condensed space.
With a savage arc, he rips open the beast's belly, shredding its body from below.
The crocodile roars, its cry breaking into shards of light before dissolving completely.
A crystal hovers where it stood, dense with the same strange mixture of space, water, and ice. Merin seizes it, pressing it into his palm.
Energy floods into him, cold threads wrapping through his body, but this time comprehension eludes him.
The essence twists between states—space birthing water, water freezing into ice—but he cannot yet unravel the secret of transformation.
He exhales, shaking his head. "Not enough."
Leaving the chamber, he steps into the portals again, drifting through the endless maze. Countless voids pass, one after another, until the next dead end unfolds before him.
The moment he enters, the attack comes.
Roots spear from the void itself, jagged and sharp, stabbing into his spiritual body before he can react.
Agony flashes through him as the structure of his body wavers, cracks spreading like glass.
With a growl, his claws lash out, slicing the roots apart in one furious strike. His body flickers back, his movement technique carrying him into the far edges of the chamber.
At the centre of the void, the distortion quivers—and from it rises a colossal tree, its trunk black as night, its countless branches dripping with writhing roots that search hungrily for prey.
The tree shudders, roots thrashing through the void like serpents.
Merin's body flickers, vanishing, reappearing, vanishing again. Each time a root pierces where he stood a breath earlier, tearing holes through the fabric of space.
He shapes his defensive technique, folding layers of spatial barriers around himself. Roots hammer down, smashing against them. Cracks spread, the barriers groaning, but they buy him a breath, a heartbeat, just enough.
Then his claws ignite with the essence of the void.
He darts forward, slipping between roots, his movement technique weaving impossible paths.
The tree roars without a mouth, its trunk swelling, branches multiplying. Dozens of roots close in like a net.
Merin vanishes inside their cage.
The next instant, a slash of spatial claw tears across the tree's trunk.
Bark shatters, void light bursting out. Another strike follows, cutting deeper, until his third claw rips the core apart.
The monstrous tree convulses once, roots collapsing into ash, before its massive body dissolves into motes of light.
A crystal remains, pulsing faintly, its energy strange and tangled.
Merin snatches it from the air, holding it tight in his palm.
He draws in the crystal's energy, threads of space intertwined with a faint whisper of wood, sinking into his comprehension.
His eyes narrow, following the subtle patterns, but when the last wisp fades, he feels only a flicker of progress.
Without hesitation, he resumes his movement through the void. Portals ripple open and shut before him, each step carrying him deeper.
At last, another dead-end space closes around him, and fire blossoms.
A bird of violet flames descends, fiercer and heavier than the one before. Its cry rattles the void, and firestorms chase Merin.
His form flickers between shreds of broken space, each movement shaving closer to the beast's throat.
His claws carve open its chest, scattering embers through the dark. The bird shrieks once before shattering into light.
Another crystal remains. He absorbs it, space-fire weaving in his core, comprehension climbing, though still imperfect.
Merin moves again, threading the void, until another portal folds shut behind him. Darkness presses close.
A second firebird erupts from nothingness, wings vast, firestorms sweeping in waves.
This one fights longer, harder. Merin's defence crumbles, is rebuilt, crumbles again. His body flickers in and out of space, claw arcs slashing against the beast until its heart tears apart.
The bird dissolves, leaving behind another crystal, warm in his hand.
He absorbs it in silence, breath steady, and steps once more into the void's endless maze.
Three fire crystals now rest within him, their strange fusion unravelling.
At last, the truth sharpens—space can birth fire, and fire thrives only where space bends.
As this revelation settles, his mind churns with ideas, and in the drifting silence between portals, he deduces a technique of reach.
His claws no longer need to touch. With space compressed to a razor, he names it—Space Cut.
The next dead end tightens, and a mantis emerges, blades gleaming, its aura brimming with metal. It strikes with slashes that screech across the void, sparks dancing in the rifted air.
Merin's body flickers, claws tearing through its plated chest, and when silence returns, a crystal gleams where the corpse dissolves.
He absorbs the sharp, cutting rhythm within and moves on.
Another dead end waits, and from it storms a rhino, hide as hard as stone, hooves pounding with the weight of earth.
Its horn lowers, splitting space in its charge, but Merin twists through broken folds of the void, claws driving deep until the beast collapses.
Its crystal reveals the weight and patience of the earth, and he swallows it whole.
The battles continue—fire, ice-water, wood, metal, earth—five beasts falling, five crystals shattered and consumed.
Each energy fuses within him, reshaping his spiritual body, expanding his arrays.
No longer does he stand on the foundation of space alone; his body hums with the echoes of the five elements born from it.
From then on, he no longer kills the beasts outright.
When one appears, he scatters arrays across the void, threads of space weaving into traps that bind firebirds, freeze crocodiles, shatter mantises, halt rhinos, and root trees in stillness.
In their stillness, he probes deeper, seeking not their death, but the life structures within, peeling apart their essence.
And as his claws move and his mind refines, he begins to press the borders—blending space not only with itself, but with the five elemental laws it births.
He stands in a silent void, arrays flickering around him, eyes lit with comprehension, grasping toward a power that fuses all into one.
He does not stop.
Through portal after portal, dead ends bloom like snares, and from each, a beast emerges.
Firebirds cry, crocodiles breathe frost, mantises scythe the void, rhinos shake the ground, trees root space itself.
One by one, they fall into his arrays, trapped, dissected, their life structures peeled open and studied until their essence lies bare.
Each battle refines him, each crystal deepens his grasp of how space shapes and transforms.
His spiritual body shifts with every absorption, no longer a simple construct of space.
Fire coils through his veins, water and ice temper his flow, metal sharpens his edges, earth steadies his foundation, wood threads resilience into his core.
Layer by layer, he rebuilds himself until his form carries the breadth of all transformations space can hold.
Time stretches, and eventually, the beasts cease to change. Their strength no longer climbs, their life structures reveal no new secrets.
He crushes the last crystal in his palm, and as the energy flows into him, he feels the ceiling of what this trial offers.
His spiritual body, fed by countless transformations, now hums at its peak.
He has squeezed this place dry.
He closes his eyes.
Within him, the vast spiritual body of space unfolds, expansive and luminous, runes and veins glowing with all he has seized.
But another power waits—feral, ancient, relentless—the werewolf form he once forged in battle and blood.
He exhales, and the fusion begins.
Space law ripples through sinew and bone, meshing with claws, fangs, and instinct.
His spiritual body howls, reshaped as void energy entwines with the beast's hunger.
The sharpness of metal fuses with his claws, the weight of earth steadies his frame, the heat of fire sears his breath, water and ice temper his blood, wood pulses with vitality—and all are bound in the lattice of space.
In silence, his form stabilises, no longer only space, no longer only beast—something new, born between law and instinct, perfection and imperfection.
And when his eyes open, the void itself trembles.