Black crystal scales ripple across his body, each plate etched with faint runes of space, refracting dim light from the void.
His head has stretched into that of a great wolf, muzzle long, fangs gleaming, yet his arms are still human—extended, corded with muscle, each finger ending in claws like jagged blades.
His legs bend like a beast's, ending in wolfish paws, and a tail sways behind him, heavy with power, its slightest flick warping the air.
He breathes, and the void bends.
The space around him quivers like fragile glass, lines of fracture spreading in ripples wherever his body moves.
A thought, and his claw tears the air apart. A rift blossoms wide, and he steps through.
Darkness folds, and he emerges into another endless void, ringed with portals that shimmer faintly. He stands still, eyes narrowing.
The texture of this place is different—denser, harder, more resistant—but his body feels it too keenly.
Even here, the walls of space are brittle beneath his presence.
If he willed it, he could carve his way through and end this trial maze instantly.
But he does not.
Instead, he stills his aura and waits.
His eyes glint as he thinks. This level exists for a reason.
The monsters here will not be the same as before.
They must hold answers—ways to temper his power, ways to deepen the meaning of space.
The portals vibrate in a low hum as Merin moves, slipping through one after another, until a new dead-end void answers his search.
From the centre, a beast steps forth—its frame lean and wolfish, but its eyes black pits, its jaw stretching unnaturally wide.
When it snaps its mouth open, the void itself bends, and every ripple of energy rushes inward like dust pulled into a black hole.
Merin narrows his gaze.
His claw twitches, but he resists the urge to end it instantly.
Instead, he raises his hand, conjuring long-range strikes of space law and weaving fire, water, metal, and earth into sharp arcs.
Each blast vanishes into the beast's maw, swallowed without a trace, as if they had never existed.
Troublesome. Dangerous. A perfect opponent.
Merin doesn't close the distance.
He pushes himself instead, channelling again and again, refining the rhythm of his attacks.
Space Cut sharpens, thins, tears more cleanly through the void.
Still, the beast devours.
Only after countless trials does he change the flow, twisting his cut into rotation, layering slices of space in a spiralling cyclone.
A tornado of rifts explodes from his hands, spinning wild, its edges shrieking with shredding force.
The beast opens its jaw, but the storm is too vast, too consuming. It howls as the black-hole maw collapses inward, its body torn apart into threads of dust.
A crystal falls from the fading remains.
Merin seizes it, sinks his senses deep within.
Space law resonates inside, dark and heavy, echoing the pull of collapse.
He breathes slowly, absorbing, dissecting, engraving its truths into his body.
His shield hardens, his displacements refine—defence no longer brittle walls, but shifting layers that bend and drag like gravity itself.
He lingers in this layer, hunting more, repeating the cycle until every monster's value is stripped bare, until nothing new remains. Only then does he move on.
One step, and the world folds.
When he opens his eyes again, he stands in the boundless white space. Silence. Then a voice fills the emptiness, calm and vast.
"You have one year. Comprehend the tablet. When the time ends… You will step into the next trial."
The voice fades, but Merin does not waste even a breath.
At once, he sits, spirit sinking into the vast spider-web diagram that glimmers before him, its strands alive with hidden rules.
He has already walked thirty-two nodes of its one hundred and twenty-eight, but now, with the foundation he carved in the maze, the paths open far more easily.
His mind races along the threads, tracing, grasping, turning comprehension into instinct.
One by one, the lines fall into him. Thirty more nodes bend beneath his will.
Time dissolves.
Days slip into months, months into a year.
When his eyes open, seventy-three nodes shine in his core—woven truths of space law carved deep into his being.
Before he can reach for the next, the white around him fractures.
He stands in a vast chamber, walls gleaming pale as if carved from bone, and before him rises a staircase—wide, steep, and unending, vanishing into clouds above.
Around him, other figures flicker into existence, fellow participants cast from their trials, each gaze heavy with the same realisation.
The voice does not return, but none is needed. The test is clear.
Merin steps forward first, planting his foot on the lowest stair.
He waits, senses flaring.
Nothing here will be so simple as a climb.
A pulse slams into him, an unseen force driving into his spiritual body, seeking to fracture and scatter it.
His scales ring faintly, but hold, unshaken. His lips curve faintly—too weak.
He climbs again.
Step after step, the pressure mounts.
On the six hundred and eighty-ninth stair, at last, one black crystal scale on his arm shatters into dust.
The energy grows sharper, more insistent.
Merin tightens his grip on the rail of his will and ascends.
Each step hammers against his spiritual body, a ceaseless tide that seeks to grind him into dust.
He does not resist blindly—he listens.
He perceives how the force strikes, how it seeps into the cracks of his scales, how it seeks to unravel him strand by strand.
And in that perception, he reshapes himself. His spiritual body bends, reforges, adapts.
Step after step, his form grows more resilient until the blows that once fractured him now slide off, unable to pierce.
Others stagger around him, some slowing, some faltering, but Merin presses forward, passing one trialist after another.
His breath is calm, steady, the endless stairs falling behind him. At last, he sets his foot upon the ten-thousandth step.
A portal hangs before him, glowing with pale light. He does not hesitate. He steps through. Darkness swallows him whole.
When he wakes, the ground is damp beneath his fingers, the smell of moss and wild earth heavy in the air.
He blinks, and his heart jolts—this is not the vast void, nor the tempered world of his spiritual body.
This is his flesh, his bones, his physical form.
The trial has changed.
He stills his breath, cloaking his aura, every thread of power hidden away.
Around him, the jungle looms, thick with ancient trees and the quiet stirrings of unseen beasts.
Silent, watchful, Merin slips into the shadows of the undergrowth, roaming the wilderness with measured steps.
The jungle breathes around him, leaves whispering with the wind, beasts stirring unseen.
A low rumble shakes the air, and he halts.
Ahead, a massive form pushes through the trees—three leonine heads, each crowned with a golden mane, eyes burning with Tao King might.
The beast roars, the sound splitting the forest.
Merin steps forward, claws unsheathing, space quivering faintly around him.
They clash.
His claws tear against its defence, space energy slicing air itself, while the lion's triple maws belch soundwaves and elemental force.
Blow after blow crashes, but neither yields ground. Wounds scratch the surface of power, but no strike digs deep enough to decide the fight.
Both pause, gazes locked, breath harsh. They know.
If either presses further, both will bleed, and in this jungle where hunters wait in silence, even the victor would not live long.
In mutual acknowledgement, they step back, turn, and vanish into opposite shadows.
Later, Merin comes upon an ancient tree, its trunk hollow with a cavernous hole.
He slips inside, seating himself in silence, the wild cut off beyond bark and root.
Closing his eyes, he turns inward.
His spiritual body stirs.
Runes ripple across it, countless threads of space and the five elements weaving together.
They press against the ceiling of their limit, yearning to break.
He reshapes them.
Each rune refines, harmonises, no longer dissonant sparks but a flowing constellation.
At the core, a single rune blazes brighter than all, swelling, compressing, until it ignites with golden brilliance.
Power floods through him, and his body shifts—his spiritual body stepping into a half-divine state.
When he opens his eyes, the space around him bends faintly to his will, the five elements clearer, sharper, pliant as if they were extensions of his breath.
Merin steps out from the hollow of the ancient tree, the air sharp with the scent of soil and wild beasts.
His pace carries him deeper into the jungle until a shadow moves across his path.
A beast—massive, its body armoured with bone plates, Tao King realm aura spilling like a storm—emerges from the brush. Their gazes meet, and the silence shatters.
They clash. Fists, claws, and elemental force collide, breaking trees and cracking earth.
Once again, it seems a stalemate—neither able to pierce the other's limit.
But this time, Merin does not step back.
His eyes harden, his will pressing forward.
Space quivers as his spiritual body bursts forth.
Hands elongate, fingers twist into black talons, his jaw stretches into the muzzle of a wolf, crystal scales ripple over his flesh, and a scaled tail unfurls behind him.
Power roars through him, a monstrous form that merges man, wolf, and space into one.
The beast lunges.
Merin meets it head-on.
His claws carve the air, space itself rending, and in a blur, he is upon the beast, tearing into it.
Screams echo as scale and bone shred beneath his strike, blood splattering in wide arcs.
The beast thrashes, but Merin's claws pierce deeper, raking until its body collapses in ruin.
The carcass falls heavily, trembling the earth beneath its weight. Merin plants his claws upon it, his chest rising and falling.
Then, black fire blooms from his hands—the devouring flame. It consumes flesh and bone, licking away even the beast's essence, and the crystal hidden within its body rises into his grasp.
Yet as the flame burns, a thought sharpens in his mind. Fire is only a vessel—why not space itself?
He focuses, weaving the devouring technique anew, stripping away the fire law, replacing it with the endless pull of space.
Flesh, crystal, essence—all are swallowed, absorbed, unravelled into him.
When he walks again, leaving nothing but ash and silence behind, his mind churns with calculations, shaping this new Devouring Space technique into a weapon that matches his path.