It took nearly twenty minutes to reach the palace grounds.
The sun was beginning to set, casting long shadows across the city. In that dimming light, faces became harder to distinguish and Arthur slipped inside the palace by taking advantage of that.
Inside, the aftermath of conquest was already unfolding . The corridors were littered with fallen guards and shattered furniture. And as he reached near the throne room he heard the sound of clashing.
He stopped just outside the doorway and peeked inside. The Haixiguo King lay slumped against his throne, blood soaking through his robes. He was clutching his chest with blood flowing from the wound. The Da Xu King stood before him, victorious and utterly at ease, like a man already bored of winning.
"I have sent my son away with my queen…He will return for revenge," the dying king rasped weakly. "And when he does… your kingdom will fall."
The Da Xu King laughed, cutting him off with a dismissive wave.
Arthur took a deep breath and ran inside the throne room. Two royal knights immediately noticed him and lowered their weapons.
"Stop! Identify yourself!"
Arthur dropped to one knee, lowering his head just enough to conceal his expression.
"Your Majesty," he said, voice steady, "I am commander of the Seventy-Third Infantry. We have captured the queen and the prince."
The lie landed exactly as intended, the wounded Haixiguo King's eyes widened in horror, "W..What?!" and coughed up blood.
The king of Da Xu laughed, and walked towards Arthur, "Hahaha.... Good job soldier, now take me to where the queen is." He said while giving a lecherous smile,
He then looked towards the fallen king and said to one of his knights, "Take him with us, I want him to watch with his own eyes what I am going to do next."
Arthur clutched the dagger inside his sleeves and just as he was getting up he threw it at the king's head.
The blade left his hand in a flash of steel, but the attack was intercepted by one of the knights who collapsed as the dagger buried itself deep in his throat.
"Tsk." Arthur clicked his tongue in annoyance, but he felt since there were only nine knights left he could take care of them and took out his sword.
Both the kings widened their eyes at the turn of events.
"You traitor!" One of the knights shouted and swung towards him while the others surrounded their king.
The fight was brutal. Arthur shifted constantly, trying not to take the blows directly.
One after another the knights fell. And Arthur took wounds in return, a deep gash was carved across his ribs, another attack pierced his shoulder. He felt pain for the first time in almost a year, but it didn't slow him down.
By the time the last knight collapsed, Arthur huffed and could barely stand, he clutched at the wound where his left arm used to be and blood soaked the floor beneath him. He had finally taken down all the knights but was wounded severely.
The Da Xu King still lived, but he was pale and tried to recover his composure.
Arthur limped forward towards him.
"Surrender and I will shower you with riches, if you want I can even make you my general." He pointed towards the fallen king and said, "Serve me instead, a warrior like you is wasted on a small kingdom."
But Arthur ignored him and kept walking towards him, that's when a few other knights barged inside the throne room, the king seeing his knights enter gained some confidence and sneered, "As you wish then."
But before the knights could reach him, Arthur gathered what strength remained in his body and threw his dagger and before the king could react the dagger pierced his skull.
Arthur could hear some shouts and see the widened eyes of the king as he fell dead. But by then the world started to fracture around him and like shattering glass everything before him vanished.
The second trial was over.
…
Arthur again appeared in the black space and the voice appeared in his mind,
'So there's only three trials.' Arthur muttered inwardly and then answered, "Yes."
He did not feel the familiar sensation of his consciousness being transferred somewhere this time. Instead, the darkness around him receded gradually, as though the environment itself was being put back into existence layer by layer.
First came the faint outline of ground and stone beneath his feet, he found himself standing on the edge of a vast cliff that overlooked a seemingly endless expanse of mountains. Several steps ahead of him stood a solitary stone pillar.
It was unremarkable at first glance and was devoid of any ornamentation with only a weird symbol etched on its surface. But the longer Arthur looked at it, the more he felt that the space around the pillar did not behave correctly. Its edges appeared to shift when he tried to focus on them, and the distance between himself and the structure seemed to stretch and compress in a disorienting way. It was as if the pillar existed in multiple positions simultaneously, overlapping realities perfectly aligned with one another.
Before he could approach the pillar and examine it, the voice returned, resonating directly within his mind.
There was no explanation or guidance given, not even how much he had to comprehend about the law. Arthur sighed slowly, neither surprised nor alarmed. He had already figured out how the pagoda operated. It forces its participants to grow by placing them under extreme conditions and leaving them to either improve or die trying.
He looked at the level of his Spatial Manipulation, and it was at Level 2. And even with this low level he could teleport over long distances, create space blades and even warp travel. He could only imagine what was possible with higher levels.
He walked towards the pillar and narrowed his eyes as he focused on the symbol. At first glance it resembled a single character, something akin to ancient calligraphy, yet the longer he observed it the more impossible that interpretation became.
The lines of the character were not static, sometimes they folded inward, branching into microscopic geometries that reconfigured themselves every time he tried to follow one path to its end. It was less like looking at writing and more like staring into an equation that rewrote itself faster than the mind could solve it.
Arthur extended a tiny wisp of Aether toward the pillar, not forcing it in but allowing it to brush against the distortion surrounding it in a way one might dip a hand into water to test its temperature. Instantly, he felt feedback rush through his perception. Every point in space contained relationships to every other point, and those relationships were governed by rules far more intricate than simple distance or direction.
For the first few hours, he made no visible progress; he wasn't even able to make heads or tails from the symbol, but he didn't lose hope even though the symbol was extremely difficult to interpret.
If it was someone else it might have been a death sentence to them, as comprehending one of the major laws like the Space Law only in seven days was nearly impossible, maybe only heaven defying geniuses could achieve that.
But with how developed his brain was after going through repeated evolution, he was now able to think faster than super computers. Even parallel processing was possible, but Arthur only uses that while controlling Behemoth, as to stabilize and move the huge structure of Aether, uncountable calculations were needed every moment.
He allowed multiple chains of analysis to run simultaneously, while partitioning his awareness. One part of his mind observed the symbol directly, another mapped distortions in the surrounding space, while a third reconstructed those distortions into models he could manipulate conceptually.
At some point his frustration vanished, replaced by a quiet certainty that he was no longer looking at the symbol, but a dimension folded in the shape of a symbol. The symbol was not a depiction of space, it was space itself.
When that realization took hold, the barrier that had obstructed him vanished. The symbol unfolded in his perception like a blooming fractal, revealing abstract shapes nested within a dimension, each one connected by invisible transitions.
He was so entranced by it and started to delve into its inner workings that he lost track of time, the voice appeared again and said something but he wasn't paying attention as his whole focus was on the symbol.
He saw how the perceived, functional, or logical proximity between two points could be reduced by changing how connections are defined, even if their physical or initial distance remains the same. He saw how containment could be achieved by folding coordinates inward, multiple concepts now revealed their underlying logic.
Arthur did not move from his place, he simply stood before the pillar as his understanding deepened, until even the space around his body began to mirror the phenomenon he was studying. And if someone looked at him from a distance his figure would have appeared warped.
Suddenly, without warning, the pillar vanished.
The sudden absence broke his concentration. Arthur sighed, drawing a slow breath as awareness of his surroundings returned to him, the trial had clearly ended.
He raised one hand experimentally and pressed it forward. The air rippled like the surface of a disturbed pond. When he withdrew his hand again, a white lotus rested in his palm, freshly plucked from a mountain far away from him. He studied it for a second before allowing a faint smile to surface.
"So this is Level 5," he muttered quietly. It was a huge leap that might have taken him years to develop.
The difference was not merely quantitative. Earlier, his spatial manipulation had been forceful, effective but inelegant. Now it responded like an extension of his intent rather than a tool he had to wrestle into obedience.
Distances that once required multiple jumps could be traversed in a single teleportation. For reference, if earlier to travel from Earth to the Sun he needed at least ten jumps, now he could cover ten times the distance in a single teleportation. And it was the least of what he was capable of now. He felt he could even create smaller dimensions if he possessed sufficient energy, he could collapse space in a small area, shrink it, create space gates and a lot other things.
The voice returned once more, carrying a note that almost resembled acknowledgment.
A crystal the size of a fist materialized before him, suspended in midair. It was transparent, and white smoke-like substance swirled inside it with randomness. Arthur reached out and took it, immediately sensing that the energy contained inside was not like spiritual energy, mana, or Aether.
Arthur turned the crystal in his hand, this was not merely a reward for him. It was likely the key he had been searching for since the imbalance between his body and soul first manifested.
A gate of light appeared silently before him. And without hesitation, Arthur stored the crystal inside his dimensional storage and stepped through.
***
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