Chapter 136
Translator: MadScientist
Chapter: 136
Chapter Title: Repair Work
I drew upon Aru's primordial mana, recalled the sensation of touching the fabric of space just moments ago, and sealed the gap in the spatial boundary.
It didn't take long. After all, there was only one breach that needed immediate patching right now.
Fortunately, in that short time, no one searching for this entrance from outside managed to get in.
A moment later, having finished my makeshift repairs, I returned to the warden's seat and placed the hat back on my head.
My vision expanded in an instant, and my senses stretched out to the outer edges of the Interstice.
And there, in the shadows of the forest, a massive silhouette stood faintly like a shadow.
He was still glancing around. But the leisure from when I first spotted him was gone.
His movements carried a growing impatience and bewilderment.
Of course he couldn't find it. Any spatial connections leading to the Interstice from that area had already vanished.
'Did he not come fully prepared?'
He wasn't Asma to begin with. He didn't have that grotesque chimera-like form I'd seen before.
My guess was that Asma couldn't come here right now, so another Apostle had been dispatched in his place. To finish whatever they hadn't managed to complete here.
'He's not just planning to stall for time, then?'
A sudden question arose in my mind. How exactly had the forces of evil discovered this breach?
I'd found this place through the entrance used by Blazing Glory, the true warden of the Interstice.
But how had they?
Of course, if they'd investigated over a long period, it wasn't impossible.
Just look at the Tower of Intelligence. They hadn't known about this place at first, but the moment I led them to the suspicious spot, they noticed it right away.
Recalling how Asma had been subdued in an instant by the Tower of Intelligence, they probably hadn't reached that level...
But they were no pushovers, regardless.
Anyway, I'd put out the immediate fire.
Well, if that guy out there was a being as powerful as the Tower of Intelligence, he might force open the spatial fabric and step back in here.
I'd just have to watch closely for that.
The moment he pried it open by force, I'd seal it again from inside.
I'd sense it through the connection to this place already linking us, even without wearing this bizarre hat.
'This is ridiculous... It's not like we're playing hide-and-seek.'
Somehow, I'd ended up in a situation where I had to hide here.
There was still a little time left before the chat room members gathered here.
Was it spare time? Sort of.
This seemed like a good chance to hunt down and seal every last remaining breach.
Now that I was connected to this place, I could step outside anytime I wanted, just like Blazing Glory had as the warden.
Come to think of it, as the connection to this space sharpened, I sensed a few more things beyond the traces of the prisoners' escape.
One of them was the mark of someone forcing open the door to the first floor.
Something had been driven into the ground to pry open the first floor by force.
The nagging sensation of that something still embedded there.
It felt intrusive, like an itch.
I headed there first.
And I found a spear stabbed into the ground.
A long shaft of black, its overwhelming size intimidating at a glance.
The blade was buried deep in the earth, and at the opposite end protruded a hook-like structure.
'...Asma's weapon?'
What a peculiar artifact. That was my immediate thought upon seeing it.
Lately, I'd kept my distance from artifacts, but I'd always had a deep knowledge of them.
I didn't even need to analyze it—its extraordinary nature was apparent from the first impression.
At the very least, dense threads of solid mana were tightly wound around the spear.
An extremely high-grade artifact.
...This was a Spirit Treasure.
Artifacts have clear grades.
Common, Enchanted, Precious, and Treasure.
The flame artifact Vinsen had was Treasure-grade, and after I learned to forge cores with Aru's primordial mana, I'd become able to create Treasure-grade artifacts myself.
But this spear surpassed that.
The tier above Treasure.
That was a Spirit Treasure.
Even though I could make Treasure-grade ones, I hadn't because I lacked inspiration. Lately, too much of my focus had gone into magical integration amid all these events.
I hadn't expected to encounter a Spirit Treasure like this out of the blue.
I refined the mana threads around the spear while probing its abilities.
In simple terms, it had two core functions.
Piercing. And backlash against order.
Absolute penetration that could pierce any defense or barrier. And when that piercing touched upon laws or order, it reflected the backlash entirely onto the target.
I couldn't grasp its full scope from the flow of threads alone, but one thing was clear.
This wasn't an ordinary combat artifact.
The moment concepts like order and laws got involved, its caliber changed entirely.
It wasn't called a Spirit Treasure for nothing.
For now, it seemed this spear had forcibly opened the first floor. The cracks radiating from around here made that obvious.
Did the order sealing this unopenable place trigger a backlash that opened it instead?
Even for a Spirit Treasure with such power, realizing it would require an immense amount of force.
And Asma had that kind of power.
I probably couldn't do it even if I poured out all my current mana.
Examining the artifact closely gave me a real sense of the Apostles' strength.
'So each Apostle wields that level of power.'
The one outside right now was the same.
Of course, from the nuance of the conversation I'd overheard when I was kidnapped, Asma seemed especially strong in raw force.
In another sense, though, we had an ally who could dispatch even someone with that much power in an instant.
'For now, did they... leave this behind?'
He'd probably been caught by the Tower of Intelligence before he could retrieve it. Otherwise, no way they'd abandon something like this here.
I placed my hand on the spear for a moment.
The instant I applied force to pull it from where it was deeply embedded in the ground...
"Ugh."
A groan escaped me involuntarily.
...It was too heavy.
Not like the Hero's sword, with some unbreakable will imposing a restriction.
It was literally just heavy. And above all, sunk way too deep into the earth.
It was simply a lack of physical strength, so there were ways around it.
I transformed the surrounding mana.
I softened the hardened ground and pulled out the spear.
With a smooth shuk- sound, the blade came free more easily.
I barely lifted it with both hands. Swinging it with my own strength or wielding it properly was out of the question at this weight.
And that was even after becoming a Transcendent, my body remade with strength beyond a normal human's.
'I'll store it in my subspace for now...'
Someday when I had time, I'd dissect it properly.
An artifact infused with concepts of order and laws. Understanding its structure would yield me tremendous gains. I was already looking forward to it.
I didn't linger and fully shoved the spear into my subspace.
Then I turned around and began patching the wounds left by the prisoners' escape, one by one.
As I repeated the monotonous task of stitching up each tear, my thoughts wandered.
Where exactly was the arrangement left for the Hero?
By now, my senses were almost fully linked to the area near the first floor's entrance.
Was this the power of perception? The place felt as familiar as a long-inhabited home, laid bare in my mind's palm.
Yet nothing caught my senses.
Not even after I'd felt the nagging presence of that spear in the ground.
'Where the hell did they hide it?'
Did I have to go deeper down?
That would be a problem.
I'd naturally assumed it was around here. Because it was for the Hero.
Did the Hero have a way to go further down?
No matter how I thought about it, it didn't make sense.
It might be different for a successor.
But an arrangement premised on the Hero himself? Navigating the Interstice's layers would be nearly impossible for him.
So why wasn't it registering in my senses?
'Is it because the first floor was forcibly opened?'
Thinking it over, that was the only difference between when the arrangement was placed and now.
The Hero wouldn't have anticipated the first floor prisoners freely coming and going when he arrived.
Should I close the first floor again...?
It seemed possible. Fortunately, my senses reached all the way to the first floor entrance.
'Might as well, since I've already started...'
I was already repairing the scratches in the space.
This might be the start of a full-scale restoration.
Right up until the day I was set to meet the chat room members.