At first, I was slightly alarmed by my newest ability’s sparse description.

  Spatial Sight

  Allows the user to visualize space.

  Actually using it hadn’t immediately assuaged my worries either. Rather than providing me with a nice neon exit sign, the skill lit up my entire field of vision with countless, translucent purple specks. Thin purple lines connected each dot to its neighbor, overlaying the space with a grid pattern.

  Had I been anywhere else, I imagined that would have been incredibly underwhelming. In the center of each spatial pocket, the grid was both entirely static and uniform. As I moved closer to the boundary of our enclosure, though, that changed.

  Firstly, each dot started to get farther apart. I didn’t need to pull out a measuring tape either: With more empty space around each speck, the air grew noticeably less purple compared to the higher density space at the center. I was fairly certain I understood what was happening, but just to make sure, I cast Mold Space, compressing the area in front of me. As expected, the dots shifted closer together, packing themselves more tightly.

  Neat, but nothing revolutionary. Thankfully, things grew much more interesting when I looked at the boundaries of our pocket. Unlike within, the grid pattern here was no longer perfectly straight, curving to the sides in countless different directions. A quick cast of Bend Space recreated the phenomenon, confirming that the space trapping us in was heavily bent.

  All of this was well within the realm of expectations. What I hadn’t counted on was two newer features that I doubted my spells could touch.

  First, there were certain spots where the lines between neighboring dots had been cut off. Experimentally, I placed my hand at one of these locations and attempted to move it to the side. The space around my hand began to stretch, adjusting to my motions, but try as I might, I couldn’t reach the dot in question.

  How is that even possible? This time, I chose two disconnected dots, placing a hand on each of them. Then, I attempted to clap, bringing my hands together. The movement started out as normal, but as my hands grew closer and closer together, they started to slow down. They never fully stopped, and it wasn’t like there was a firm barrier in the way, but try as I might, I couldn’t bring them together.

  “Trippy.” It seemed that whatever forces were at play had somehow forcibly disconnected one region of space from another.

  And in fact, this was fairly common as I looked around. Every few centimeters, there would be a break in space, creating dozens of distinct pathways out that were entirely secluded from one another. On a whim, I grabbed the others and decided to travel into one of these sections. As soon as we neared it, it expanded, widening until it could easily fit all three of us.

  This time, I could see as the space curved to the left, and with the sides of the spatial corridor cut off from the rest of the world, there was nothing we could do but follow the pathway laid out for us. In short order, the path went through a full loop, and we walked right back into the same spatial pocket but from the other side.

  Despite having a better understanding of what was happening, this actually wasn’t that helpful. Compression and curvature, I could deal with. If the space around us was entirely severed from the outside world, though, then there was nothing I could do.

  Thankfully, there was one final twist: an anomaly, roving around the spatial bubble around us. As it moved about, the space around it expanded to permit its passage, contracting again as it left. I hunted it down, and the moment I stepped close enough to it, it stopped and widened to let us through.

  This time, the walk was considerably longer, but when the passageway ended, lo and behold, we’d reached an entirely new pocket. Not even bothering to stop, I tracked down the next anomaly, bringing us to a third pocket in short order.

  Over and over, I continued on in this fashion, dragging the others along until we’d made hours worth or progress in the span of a few minutes. With each successful jump, I could feel all three of our spirits lifting, though the others largely remained silent, as if afraid that any word could suddenly disable my newest skill.

  It would have been nice if things remained that simple, but after a few dozen of such hops, something changed.

  Where once there had only been one pathway out, now there were two.

  Both of them shifted about the barrier looking entirely identical in every way. Somehow, I doubted that both would lead us to an eventual exit, though. More likely, one would move us forward, while one would deposit us further back.

  After a good thirty minutes of poking and prodding, bending and compressing, I was finally forced to admit the truth.

  “I have no idea which way to go.” The admission seemed to cause Verin to deflate, and understandably so.

  Cal, on the other hand, took it in stride. “Hey, this is already way better than we’ve been doing up till now. You just got your new skill, like, what, an hour or two ago? I’m sure you’ll figure it out eventually.”

  Her confidence went a long way in perking me and Verin off, and as if realizing that she’d just let Cal be the voice of reason, Verin bristled, straightening herself up. “Quite right. A minor roadblock is no cause for alarm. We’ve endured for this long; I’m sure a brief pause will not finish us off. Lead on, and we will follow.”

  It was touching to see the faith they were putting in me, even after months of class trial failures, and I resolved not to make them feel their trust was misplaced. A sense of warmth suffused me, and newly emboldened, I let my instincts guide me, choosing one of the two paths out.

  That fuzzy feeling lasted all of a few minutes until we spilled out into the next pocket, once again finding a familiar site awaiting us.

  There, beckoning us forward, was a tiny, singular pebble.

  The first many spatial pockets only had a single exit, which meant we had a lot of idle walking to do as I considered where exactly I’d gone wrong.

  Not that I had any guarantee that I had gone wrong. It was entirely possible that there was no way to know which path I should have taken, and the right way forward was entirely random.

  Somehow, I doubted that. While no one had outright said that the dungeon needed to be fair, thus far, it hadn’t thrown us into anything that truly had no solution. Had there been some minor difference between the two anomalies that I’d missed? Something that would have signaled which way to go?

  Hoping to gain some unexpected insight into the space around us, I dialed my Perception up to the max, focusing on the many dots and lines connecting them.

  For a good ten hops, all that did was give me a mild headache as my frustration mounted. What was I supposed to notice about a grid pattern? Sometimes it curved one way or another. Sometimes it was stretched or compressed. What more was there to even see?

  It was that exact thought that had me pulling up short, ignoring the surprised yelp as Cal and Verin stumbled into my back.

  Maybe that’s exactly it, though. What if there’s not anything else to see? Rather than trying to suss out some hidden facet of space, I focused on what I already knew. Presently, we were walking through the corridor connecting two spatial pockets, and while I’d unconsciously dismissed it as meaningless, this time I noticed something new.

  It was slight. Barely worth commenting on, really. But while it felt like our steps were entirely straight, the spatial grid told a different story. Ever so slightly, the space was curving to the right.

  When we reached the end of the passage, I practically dragged us into the next, and while the space twisted about for a moment, after a few steps, I found the same thing. Bit by bit, we swung to the right.

  The next path and then the next after that repeated this finding, until I was able to say with some confidence that it wasn’t a fluke. It was a pattern.

  “We’re traveling in a spiral…” Was it really that simple?

  Impatient to test out my newest theory, I forced us to up our pace, going so far as to place Verin on my back once she began to tire. Soon, we returned to the same pocket that had tripped me up before, with two distinct paths out circling the boundary. I walked directly forward, not wanting to accidentally turn myself around and mess everything up. When one of the anomalies passed in front of me, I stepped forward, freezing it in place. Staring into the disconnected passageway, I focused as far as I could in the distance, closely examining the spatial grid.

  It’s… curved to the left? If I was right that we were walking along some sort of clockwise spiral and we’d just traveled one entire loop of it, then moving to the left would bring us back a loop, effectively returning us to the start.

  I stepped away and waited for the second passageway to arrive. This time, I was thrilled to see that the space inside subtly curved to the right as expected. While I was nervous that I’d somehow gotten it wrong, I still pulled the others inside.

  When the corridor at last ended, we were greeted with a new spatial pocket, as per usual.

  And better yet, this time, there was no lone pebble waiting for us.

  If the same pattern continued to hold, I might have finally found our ticket out.

  Guided by our new strategy of only moving clockwise, we continued to mow through each pocket at a record pace. With each new jump that didn’t send us back, my confidence continued to soar, and when we reached the first pocket that we hadn’t marked with a number yet, I was finally sure we were on the right path.

  The dungeon did try to make things a bit harder for us, adding in more and more false exits until each pocket had a full five different pathways out. Certainly, if we’d been relying on luck to see us out, we’d have been stuck here for decades. With Spatial Sight, though, four false exits wasn’t much harder than one, and we continued to advance without pause. More than that, now that we were further inwards in the spiral pattern, the correct path grew more obvious, as the inner loops curved more tightly to the right than the outer loops had.

  Biology was the only thing that slowed us down. Some regions, like the desert, had taken us a full week to traverse. I was secretly hoping that this one was much smaller, but with spatial shenanigans at play, who knew how long it would take before we reached the end? Eventually admitting we weren’t going to clear the region in a single day, we set up camp feeling far better than we had in months.

  Luckily, it looked like the dungeon was listening to my many heartfelt pleas. Only two days later, something finally changed.

  That should have been a positive. After multiple hundreds of boring, lifeless spatial domes, anything else was a sight for sore eyes.

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  Unfortunately, it seemed that the dungeon wasn’t willing to let us leave so quickly.

  To my left and right, space disconnected, in essence only allowing us to move forward or back. That was fine, though: In the distance, a great mass of mana sung out to my Mana Sense, leaving no question as to our eventual goal. Unfortunately, reaching whatever was producing that mana wouldn’t be as trivial as simply walking up to it. Up ahead, the space was so horribly mangled as to make me want to vomit.

  It was as if someone had placed a thousand pairs of wired earbuds into their pocket before spending the day at an amusement park, each wire becoming inextricably entwined with all the others. Experimentally, I fired an arrow into the spatial morass. Theoretically, it was traveling straight and at a constant speed. To our perspective, though, it seemed to dramatically speed up before slowing down to a snail’s pace, all while wobbling and stretching and turning in curly-q’s.

  Eventually, it reached a section where the space was bent left and then right in rapid succession, tightly layering the space over itself in a series of folds. Something about the tight folds stopped the arrow in its tracks, seeming to act as a barrier of sorts.

  If the arrow couldn’t get through, I somehow doubted we would, which meant our plans to simply waltz right out of the region were put on hold.

  I spent some time searching for some secret passage forward -- one that might be untouched by all the chaos before us. When no such path appeared, though, I was forced to admit the unfortunate truth. Readying the spellform for Bend Space, I approached the messy tangle barring our way with resolve.

  So how long do we think it’ll take to straighten all this out?

  Bend Space has reached level 18!

  Mold Space has reached level 24!

  Spatial Magic has reached level 28!

  Day in and day out, I honed my spatial magic as we repeated the same routine. We got up. We ate. I cast Bend Space five thousand times. We ate again. We went to bed.

  Repeat.

  It was draining, mind-numbingly repetitive work, but I couldn’t deny we were seeing progress. By now, I was making a point not to count the number of days we’d been stuck here, as I imagined the number would only depress me.

  As we continued to slowly trickle towards the great wealth of mana, my anticipation grew even as anxiety welled up within me. Was this it? Were we done once we reached the end? Every region we’d cleared had some form of boss fight, didn’t it?

  I shuddered to consider what sort of absolutely hellish boss a spatial region might have. Could it cut into us with portals? Teleport attacks directly into us? Dodge anything we threw at it by redirecting the space around it? There was a reason Spatial Magic was considered an Epic ranked skill, and I was dreading discovering what sort of havoc a talented practitioner could wreak with it.

  It was, then, rather baffling when we finally neared our destination enough for me to see just what was producing all of that mana. We were still a while off yet, but with the new boost to my sight from Arcane Vision’s class trial, I could make out a small sphere hanging in the air. Entirely invisible to my standard sight, it sang out to Mana Sense, undoubtedly the cause of all the loose mana being flung into the air. To no one’s great surprise, said mana was a dark purple-black, signifying that it was spatial in nature.

  To discover that something so small was responsible for such a dramatic effect was already a surprise. Having finally grown close enough to identify what I assumed was some sort of artifact, though, I only became all the more stunned when I finally pulled up its description. Only, what God’s Eye returned to me wasn’t an item’s description at all.

  It was a monster’s.

  Anchored Spatial Spirit, Level 36: 100/100hp

  Naturally formed in areas with high amounts of spatial mana, spatial spirits hold a great mastery over their element. While spatial spirits often differ greatly in their form and abilities, this spirit is “anchored.” Massively spatially weighty, it is unable to move either mundanely, or through its own spatial magic. Immobilized, it fights by altering the space around it.

  While fragile and weak in one sense, its mastery over spatial magic allows it to trap enemies long before they even lay eyes upon it. For those that close the distance, they will find their strongest attacks effortlessly repelled. While in rare cases, the anchored spatial spirit may redirect an attacker’s strikes back onto them, in general, they lack offensive options, relying on their trapped prey to starve or die of old age.

  I’d assumed that everything we’d faced so far had been an invention of the dungeon, not too dissimilar from the sky biome’s floating islands or the dark region’s labyrinth. If I was reading things correctly, though, this entire time, we’d been trapped by the magic of the creature up ahead. In a roundabout way, this had all been one multi-month-spanning boss fight.

  I’m going to have so much fun killing that thing. As much as I didn’t see myself as particularly bloodthirsty, the spirit deserved some serious payback at this point. Renewing my efforts, I unraveled layer after layer of spatial folds, bringing us all the closer to freedom.

  Unfortunately, if I could see the boss, nothing kept it from seeing me.

  In reality, I imagined that it had been aware of us for a long time now, but while we were obviously stuck, it hadn’t felt the need to intervene. Now, with us slowly creeping towards it, it seemed like it was willing to take a more hands-on approach.

  I cast Bend Space for the millionth time, straightening out the grid in front of me, ready to advance.

  Before I could move us forward, though, that very same patch of space began to bend itself back into its previous shape, undoing my work. It was hardly instantaneous, but the intervention was concerning in and of itself. Our pace was already lackluster. Anything that threatened to slow it down further was less than ideal.

  Worse yet, it seemed that the spatial spirit’s powers grew stronger as we neared it, which might have explained its laissez-faire attitude thus far. With each meter we won, the space around us resisted me more and more, snapping back into place faster and faster whenever I manipulated it.

  Bend Space has reached level 19!

  And yet, it wasn’t quite enough to stop us completely. What I’d hoped would only take another day or two ended up lasting a full week more. Had I been physically moving the space aside with my hands, I had no doubt that I’d have worn my fingers down to raw stubs by now. As it was, it was likely just my imagination, but my mana core felt a bit sore from the constant workout.

  Meter by meter, we advanced, until at last the spatial spirit looked to be within arm’s reach. Not that it actually was, considering all the expanded and layered space protecting it, but even having it look so close bolstered our moods considerably.

  Maybe I can even end this now. Could a few Mind Spikes reach the spirit? I let a Sense Minds ripple out from my citadel walls, only to sigh as the ripple seemed to get caught up in the same spatial folds as conventional weapons did. Not entirely unexpected, but still annoying. Regardless, I didn’t let it get to me too much. We were close!

  Our heightened moods lasted only until I cast Bend Space once more. Rather than the slow and reluctant -- but otherwise successful -- casts that I’d grown used to by now, the spell grabbed onto the spatial grid and did absolutely nothing.

  I tried three more times to similar results before I was forced to admit that I wasn’t getting anywhere. The spirit clearly had reinforced the space immediately around it to a much higher degree than anywhere else.

  “Please tell me we’re not serious right now.” The outburst caught the attention of the others, and I explained our new predicament much to neither of their delights. While Verin seemed to steel herself to the inevitable extra month of entrapment as I trained up my spatial magic, it was Cal who offered a different pathway forward.

  “Not to sound dumb, but what if you just tried hitting it?”

  The two of us stared at her until she threw her hands in the air in mock surrender. “Hey, just an idea! I don’t think you’re going to beat a spatial spirit in a contest of spatial magic, but that’s not all we have, is it?”

  Verin opened her mouth to no doubt lambast the princess, but with a whispered mumble, I cut her off. “Huh. She might have a point, actually.”

  Pulling up the description for Bend Space, I recalled a portion I hadn’t given much thought to originally.

  Bend Space

  Temporarily alters the curvature of space at a given location. The maximum possible concavity and area affected by the spell increases with the spell level, the mana supplied, and the caster’s level in Spatial Magic. Objects with high mana and mass moving through the altered space will lower the duration of this spell or, in extreme cases, cancel it entirely.

  That last bit was the kicker. High mana and mass. If we packed enough magic into a single attack, could we break through the spatial folds?

  Beats waiting here for another month, at least.

  “Okay! We’re going to try to hit it really hard.”

  This proclamation was met with a cheer from our resident warrior, while Verin only managed a weary sigh. “Very well then. What do you need us to do?”

  Only a few minutes later, we were ready.

  Lacking any serious direct offensive abilities, Verin was in her glacier. The front of it looked oddly flat as the ice attempted to grow into the tightly folded space only to be rebuffed. While the skill didn’t appear to be doing much, though, her glacier was exactly what we needed in terms of mana and mass.

  Cal was up next. Audibly radiating power, she had her feathered sword held out before her. Next to her, I stood with my hammer in hand. Both of us had spent the last minute slowly channeling our respective weapon-charging skills, Empower Strike for Cal and Overload Weapon for me. Whereas Cal’s class skill used neutral mana, I was supplying my weapon with a mixture of earth mana and spatial mana.

  The first was to add more mass to the already heavy hammer. The second, I was less sure about, but I was hoping the spatial mana might cut through the spirit’s magic better than plain-old neutral magic.

  “Hate to say it, but I think you’re packing more of a punch than I am. Want me to go first and loosen it up for you? Feel like we might mess up if we attack at the same time with this much power.”

  Not an entirely unwarranted fear. The spirit’s description had mentioned something about redirecting attacks back onto the attackers, and every drop of my mana was going towards my attack rather than my defense. I had no desire to be right next to her as she used that much mana.

  I nodded, and that was all the signal she needed to begin.

  “Never tried cutting through space before. Should be fun!” Her voice betraying none of the strain that was evident in her body, Cal slammed her sword down with every ounce of her Strength. The sheer force of the attack sent a gust of wind barrelling into us, but it wasn’t the air I was focused on.

  The spatial grid, up till now so firm and orderly, went nuts. The dots in the air began to ricochet off one another as if we were in the world’s most intense game of billiards, and the lines between them shook and undulated like a pit of snakes having seizures. Ultimately, though, Cal’s blade had been stopped, the force of her blow absorbed without getting us through.

  It was a good thing, then, that we weren’t done.

  While I rarely consciously used the ability, passing the first Dexterity threshold had allowed me to invest my movements with stamina, adding to their force or speed. It was mostly intuitive, adding a decent force multiplier without changing my fighting style at all. Now, though, I leaned on it heavily.

  With hundreds of points of mana invested into my hammer, I threw every ounce of stamina I could into my next swing. Bolstered by a Strength of 35, it was without a doubt the strongest attack I’d ever levied. As the blow smashed aside the air before it, I could sense the spirit trying to manipulate the space around me, redirecting my strike. In the face of my Stygian Warhammer, it was no use, the attempts breaking apart before they could change a thing.

  The first fold came undone, and then the second after that, until a chain reaction began to pass through the barrier separating us from the boss. One after another, each fold snapped open, straightening out. Unexpectedly, instead of opening up like an accordion and pushing us backwards, the space rushed past us, keeping us right next to the boss as it returned to its natural state.

  More importantly, unlike with Cal, the space hadn’t yet robbed my blow of all its force. Even as the grid rushed past us, in essence transporting us dozens or perhaps even hundreds of kilometers in the span of a second, my hammer was still headed downwards.

  Right on target to hit one particularly frustrating boss.

  I expected some last bit of resistance. Perhaps the hammer would be teleported out of my hands. Maybe the spirit was tougher than it looked.

  But no. The very moment the hammer connected with the inky body of the spatial spirit, a much awaited notification rang out for all three of us.

  You have defeated an Anchored Spatial Spirit!

  This time, I was forced to turn my Spatial Sight off as all of the spirit’s many working undid themselves in a flash, the grid going absolutely wild. Even just catching a glimpse of it was enough to thoroughly nauseate me.

  When all was said and done, though, the world around us returned to normal.

  Behind us, in the distance, we could make out the start of the graveyard region. Beneath us, on the ground, we spotted a small black chest, doubtless our reward for surviving.

  And at last, after many trying months of maddening boredom, the three of us were free once more.

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