Chapter 313: Collapsing Space

Julius found himself very distracted for the next couple of days. He was so distracted that his next fights barely registered in his brain. He went to them and won them. That was all he really cared about.

It wasn’t like his opponents were all that exciting either. His second match had him facing off against a girl with a similar skillset to Bethany. She mainly used simple mana-based attacks but without the fascinating disruption technique that Bethany had used against him.

He didn’t bother to let that fight draw out like the one with Keldon. This one he finished in under a couple of minutes. He could have just waited a couple of more minutes before the girl emptied her entire mana pool all by herself. She wasn’t the most accurate or precise opponent he had faced and had wasted a lot of mana in her attacks.

While they had been strong, she had to actually hit him if she wanted to do anything.

His third match of the second stage was against someone a bit better when it came to interesting skills. Another girl, but this time she used some kind of summoning magic to bring out some spirits made of fire.

Summoning magic was an interesting type of magic that differed from many others. First off, summoning magic relied heavily on the contracts one made with certain creatures or astral beings.

This can include beings like spirits, spectres, or even more common monsters.

The contract would provide the user with certain benefits, such as being able to summon them from anywhere at any time. They could also improve one’s affinity to the element or type of magic the summon used.

For example, the girl he had fought had used fire spirits as her main summoning contract. This likely allowed the girl a deeper connection to fire than she would normally have.

There were some pretty large downsides to summoning magic though. The most glaring one was the user’s inability to make a contract with powerful creatures without the appropriate strength. Since the creature you would make a contract with would stay within your soul space, that also meant you had to have a powerful soul to go along with it.

Of course, this limited the number of summons you could have as well. While seemingly similar to taming magic, there wasn’t as strict a limit on the monsters you could tame since you didn’t need to store them inside your soul.

Without a powerful soul, there wouldn’t be a way to even forge a contract with powerful creatures, much less command the creature in question.

That made the lower tiers of summoning users kind of weak. The girl was a prime example of this. While she was able to use fire spirits, the spirits themselves were weaker than other Tier 3 monsters. The trade off was that the summons couldn’t die very easily.

If they took a lot of damage, the summon would simply disappear back into the summoner’s soul space to recover.

Summoners often didn’t see the fruits of their labor until Tier 4, and sometimes, it took until Tier 5 for them to actually see any benefits.

You often saw summoners use their abilities for utility. They made good scouts since they could investigate without much risk of death. There were also a lot of people who used their summons to help with their day-to-day activities.

For example, Julius recalled that there was a food stall in Heston, where the person had a fire spirit to help them.

Still, the girl and her spirits hadn’t been much of a threat, doubly so because of his fire resistance. The flames from the spirits had barely tickled him. He tried to see if there was anything he could learn from them, but he quickly realized that he wasn’t going to be learning anything.

His own talents specialize in a different direction.

Drasil’s changes were a welcome sight as well. Marcus was correct when he said that it would take Drasil some time to absorb the properties of whatever that treasure was. However, Julius had already noticed some changes.

For one, Drasil’s coloring had already changed. Instead of being comprised entirely of a soft verdant green color, there were now white little specks flecked into his familiar. It was especially noticeable in the crown on Drasil’s head. It almost looked like tiny white flower buds were blooming among the vines.

Not only that, but the quality of Drasil’s mana underwent a significant change as well. The little spirit now had mana more potent than before. Much like how the sapling displayed a Life Concept property, Drasil was showing something similar.

The teleportation item he received was a bit more complicated. Julius spent most of the day stuck in a room, testing it and trying to figure out how it operated.

The only times he left the room were to fight his match for the day or to have dinner with the others.

He would have stayed up all night like he used to, but his friends would not have allowed him to.

Even at this moment, he was teleporting himself across the room as soon as the cooldown was up. Although he hadn’t figured out how it worked exactly, he was able to confirm a few things.

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First off, spatial magic, like he had suspected, required a high level of willpower and to an extent, a strong soul to go along with it. He believed that this was the reason why people weren’t able to utilize spatial movements until Tier 4.

He also found the mind aspect difficult. Visualization was probably one of the hardest parts. When he used the item, he had to envision the exact location he wanted to be in. It wasn’t enough to throw his will toward a spot and activate it; he had to really visualize the location.

His eyesight was enough for this in most cases, but that also limited where he would be able to teleport. He had a feeling that [Instantaneous Step] would also be like this. It was highly likely that the skill could only teleport you in a step at a location you could see.

However, after some experimentation, he figured out that [Spatial Perception] helped far more than he could hope. When he properly utilized this skill, the visualization became much simpler.

Sensing the cooldown was up again, he focused on a spot around a dozen feet away and activated the item once again, trying to really feel how the item folded space around him.