After our attack near the end of the tenth month goes smoothly, all things considered, I get ready for the next step. More and more people from Charlie’s village and our closer allies start to pop back around the world. Even the ones with stronger finances compared to the average had limits to their pockets. So most of them come and start to concentrate near Pando’s village. A much needed reinforcement of high level troops and crafters. Though there is the occasional person depositing money in Charlie’s village bank and coming back early to help around Earth.

However, my goal today has little to do with other people. It is about my class trial. All my preparations are in place and so even before the month technically ends I’m ready to leave.

Any time I go, I’m risking something, but with everything that I learned, if we can’t hold out until the next attack in a month, then I guess we shouldn’t even bother to poke our heads out of the cities and go turtle until we can find a better strategy. Or the enemy might have suddenly grown a lot stronger.

There is always the chance they will come out with something new that will totally surprise us out of the left field, like the strange contraption that threw me into that other dimension that ate away at my limbs.

Luckily, I watch it closely and instead of the elves using it to rain death on the battlefield, even the ‘lesser artifacts’ were kept under lock and key in their safe zone. I can only hope the damage I caused wasn’t just cosmetic. Because if they can keep throwing people into that caustic version of the void, it would get bad really fast. That other place wasn’t the smooth and calm place I floated on for years, but worse than the craziness I experience when coming back to earth or the instance after meeting the judge and the Automaton. This other place was hostile even to a system user and it acted quickly. With the tatics in use, things might get dicey and we would probably lose all our high level combatants with even the occasional ‘sniping’ run. Still, too much of my knowledge of that place is just second hand or based on speculation. Even what I read is of little help with how rarely my book broaches the subject.

I hadn’t exposed that I was alive just yet, helping in more tangential ways during the fights and getting better gem powered personal engravings backed by more expensive alloys. Usually with a decent amount of gold which our mining efforts across the globe allowed. The others in my inner world had barely managed to salvage a few tons before the system reabsorbed everything. Just a couple of decades of real time on Earth and all the big reserves like Fort Knox or the Bank of England had been completely swallowed and we didn’t find a single vault with more than a ton of gold. Even the quick expansion of avatars ahead of Pando’s domain failed to encounter anything significant.

Still, our mining efforts were growing at a nice pace and the influx of metals and better engravings allow us to hold our ground while keeping breathing room even as their numbers and power keeps growing faster than ours. It’s a strange pursuit race, but so far we had the upper hand in every single one of our fights and the option to retreat and I want to hold on to that for as long as I can.

I’m finally ready for my trial. The monthly attack has come and gone while everyone that matters knows my plans. Even having just reacquired my body isn’t an excuse to delay with the weeks since.

I’m tempted to take one last look at all my preparations, but that would only be procrastinating. So I tap the screen inviting me to the trial and press the confirm bottom without giving myself time to delay it.

Please wait for 3 seconds.

What a difference compared to the only other time that a countdown showed up after I managed to get into the second layer of the trial. That had been a whole 2 hours.

I wait until the system pulls me.

It seems different from what happened in the instance and I don’t understand the principles of this ‘teleportation’. A moment later, I’m in a very similar starting chamber to my last trials. Except that this time I’m not surrounded by yellow stone, like in an ancient Egyptian tomb, but something closer to white marble I would see in a well preserved Grek structure. Everything is old but not in a state of disrepair though I don’t sense outright magic to keep it that way.

I may simply not know what to look for, but it is either something intermittent or this is less than a millennium old.

As I lean forward to take my first step, the perfect mind to body connection calls to me the idea of my new body stat. It ‘changed me’ more than imagined, even if at first glance it had been moderate beyond returning that sense of malleability with my own body.

The largest shift was the massive impact on the calculation of the inner world’s size and that had a chance to completely upset the system’s plans for this trial, especially as I wasn’t limited to the normal size that trial rewards gave expanding it evenly and by a small amount. The stat came out of left field and as far as my book was concerned both its presence and by consequence the size of the inner world I achieved was the domain of much, much higher leveled people.

The formula I used, for obvious reasons, was based on twice my lowest stat. Multiply that by my level and then my soul stat and I get the maximum diameter of the inner world. Little did I know that those were not the only attributes that could change that. As my second special stat came, the diameter got multiplied by a tenth of my new stat, which made my inner world 8,8 times larger.

That is much much more than I hoped to get any time soon. An increase so great that It will simply change how I interact with my inner world.

Inner world

2*307.7*100*92,4/1000*88/10=

Maximum diameter: [50.0km]

Current diameter: [modified]

Still, there are limits to how much of that I could expend in a timely fashion. even now spinning the single narrow beam to spot stuff at a greater distance, it hadn’t reached anywhere near close to the 25 kilometers limit from the center spot, being only some 18 km long and 3 m wide. A week ago I got stuck by this soft cap so my efforts were concentrated elsewhere. To further improve my inner world would require either oodles of time or a higher skill level of nonsystem powered manipulation of space.

What would have let me completely dominate on the last levels of the trial, now is still very significant, but just on the sane edge of believable.

I spin my perception field slightly and find not only the gaps between corridors to be around 500 meters, a larger jump than I expected.

Then I start to look at other parameters. 50 layers deep from top to bottom. A 25 kilometers height all around anywhere that I can reach. And if my guess is correct and it is another disk as the edge behind me seems to suggest, it’s roughly 100 kilometers in diameter.

A second later as I’m ready to step out of the initial chamber, the same sense of ripping that the system always forces comes once again, but this time I won't be denied. I leverage my soul and grab my inner world with everything that I’m. It is a part of me, a piece of my body and an extension of my will.

I harden the mental imagery that took me this far.

For a moment the system’s grip almost fades as if surprised by my actions, but it comes back in full force. Like the last time I tried this, it pulls me and my body floats to the ceiling of this chamber as I tether myself to my inner world. But just because I can’t affect the system directly, I’m a lot stronger. I can feel the strain on my body, but it is within tolerance. It needs attention, but it isn’t overwhelming.

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Seconds pass with no change and I feel the futility of my actions.

Yes, I could stay in this impasse nearly indefinitely if the system didn’t change the equation, but that would be fruitless. Maybe the system will give up after a while, but it seems more likely that it will double down.

So out comes my second idea.

I let go of most of my inner world while keeping a single room’s worth of space.

Nothing as limited as my own body as the last time around using other methods, but only a fraction of a fraction of the entirety.

I imagine the very inner world yielding to the forces acting on it and becoming more flexible.

To my surprise, it obliges very easily.

The pull from the system takes the main concentration away from me, moving it further than I can reach, but there is a small room around me and the system isn’t happy about that. So it pulls further and further well beyond what it needs to take it from my reach.

I imagine it’s frustration like it had told a child to sit in a particular spot. I comply, except that my back is on the cushion and my feet are dangling above scraping the walls.

“Hey, I’m sitting… just like you asked.”

Like most parents, the system doesn’t take humor well. I start to feel a strain to keep the inner world flexible in this new facet helped by the system in a roundabout fashion. I’m forced to go to my third provision.

And I pray that this will work because the rest of my ideas are either dangerous or they can be best described as hail marys.

I grab an even smaller piece of space. One that fits entirely inside my body making the rest as flexible as possible letting the system pull the rest of the room.

The system eagerly takes it out of my direct range until it’s satisfied I can’t pull any more shenanigans. Another tendril of its will tries to interfere with that is inside my body, but like in the last trials, I manage to nearly ignore it, something even easier as the image of my own body not being interfered by the system that I hold feeds and imprints on my unlocked body stat. The system seems mollified, even if it knows that I’m actually an inch from a sitting position. My feet are in the right place and my back is well rested against the top rail, but I can still pass my hand below my bottom and the seat.

“That will show you system.”

My will reaches inside this corner of my inner world and I take a staff prepared specifically to test a few things I was curious about even as I restart to walk.

The nature of this place, like the void, reveals itself instantly. The system steals minute pieces of whatever object a system user carries similar to what I see in the void. The only things it hadn’t touched last time around were my starter clothes and I wear those now. This state even feels the same on a superficial level to the normal void, but my perception field sees minute differences. Not all of it is made equal, nor does it affect everything the same way.

The copper and steel composing the largest part at its base are eaten away almost as quickly as a popsicle melts after dunking in a glass of water. Going up the ladder reveals a level of inherent protection I hadn’t properly measured so far. Silver will last much longer and gold can’t even compare. Then when the alloys come, I start to form a formula for how long they will last and it is very similar to the magical conductivity one. Something we can plot out easily after years of experimentation. Other metals also follow that same parameter until Mitrhil comes to break those conventions. Anything alloyed with even the slightest bit of mithril multiplies its half life in the hostile place a few fold and after a certain threshold, it simply makes the alloy immune.

That is a property that I have to explore because it might be useful in other places like the version of the void I almost died in. That is probably something I can explore during the days or weeks over here.

I glance at the disjointed and strange gems on top of my contraption that aren’t intended as practical magical focusses, but just a quick and dirty contraption to test their resilience to this place. That I had absolutely no data on.

And though I don’t have proof, I’m fairly sure that the rate of decay won’t change after cutting, polishing or setting it atop a staff. And a few more things I can ask the others to make in the inner world to test and further learn the limits of our crafting. If I’m willing to invest my very limited mithril on the endeavor, I might even find more answers about protections against places like this in this first round. IT might even become important as this very trial grows in the future.

After learning what I can from this test, I put away the staff. With no need to have it crowding the limited space protected by my body, I push it through that link between myself and the main inner world. It takes almost a minute to cross, though I imagine that pulling would be easier. So I do just that a moment later, getting a small bag of nuts and berries from one of the dozens of such stores in my inner world and indeed it’s much easier. I’m tempted to take it out and munch on it, but I had just eaten a larger meal in case all my plans failed and I had to go back on a fasting regime, with the possibility of failing to keep a link to my main inner world looming over the horizon.

A flexible inner world, stretching in another dimension as the system pulled on it, I think I can maintain this indefinitely, but better safe than sorry.

With a head shake, I start to run as my mind turns to the map building effort that my other half and his seed take up with gusto.

A few seconds later, he has a pretty decent chunk of the map laid out with a clear path for me to follow. So I head to the first corridor down following the orange colored root weaving through the growing map. With only one thing left to test, I reach all the way into my main inner world and pull on the mana there. Not directly, even though I could do it safely if I didn’t directly use it, but mostly by forming the conduit and allowing it to flow to the runes around my body.

Suddenly I’m not only floating but the Mithiril infused runes propel me way faster than any design of the past. A thousand revisions, efficiency and top speed gains aplenty, real Mitrhil and Gold making a decent portion of the weight of the roots inside my body make the levitation and propulsion a lot stronger than any of my previous attempts.

I hit the corners at some 200 kpm not needing to conserve my Stamina, or rather Vigor nor worry about what I’m going to eat to fuel my body. So I tap the breaks slightly, shift the direction of the runes and hit the walls with my feet at nearly full speed to redirect my momentum.

I can feel my muscles strain, reaching close to their limits, but at the same time, I sense that I have more to give. The next time, I hit the corner faster and faster. Slowly optimizing my movements, adding to my muscle memory and taking the techniques I use in this place to my absolute limit. I stretch my muscles, strengthen my tendons and improve my already impressive coordination and all of that without feeling more than a twinge of pain that fades before I hit the next wall. Several skills are pushed to their limits, the most significant of which end up being running.

Feedback from my body is essential for the start of my journey, but another avenue is just as important. The perception field and it can get about as much information as I would return naturally through the feedback mechanisms that the system had suppressed in the past.

But even as I’m impressed by my actual speed, I know it won't be enough, not if the trial keep growing as they are. I may be an order of magnitude faster than the last time around, but the trial grew in several dimensions. Eventually, I would have to travel insane distances to cover everything.

So, I will have to come up with even better flying instruments that work over here or find another way to get around the trial altogether.

Even as I fly around like a madman, my other half updates the path on the map in real time. Occasionally, he marks the position of the little puzzles or other notable places for both of us to look at and record in our memory, but my main job is to focus on transportation.

In no time I have the rough pattern of this place and soon I will get a complete map.

My initial size guess proves to be correct. Roughly 100 kilometers wide and 25 kilometers tall and divided into fifty layers.

In the back of my mind, those numbers spin by themselves until a new one is born: a million kilometers to go through every single corridor if I found a path that didn’t fold over itself and made me retread ground. There are a few spots that aren’t solidly packed with corridors, so the actual number is a little lower, but I would still need over six months to fly through each inch of this place if I was forced to physically travel to all of it for some type of achievement.

Then the map is complete. Each inch of the corridors and the puzzle spots the hidden opportunities that would ordinarily be expected of someone with a slightly larger than normal perception field but I could see them from miles away.

I look at a puzzle piece that is supposed to be part f an egg similar to the one I saw in the past, but also somehow different. This one is not nearly as complete, so if before I had to find 3 easter eggs, this will need at least 5 to make something coherent.

I still don’t really understand what I gained from that egg, except possibly learning what I would one day be like with a high level class, pulling information from the Aether at a much more fundamental level than I could hope to do now. As I grow copies of the 4 egg pieces I already found, and start to fit them together in the little free space of my internal inner world, I know for certain that I will need 7 or 8 to get to the final form.

I will run around once again slightly slower while paying attention to my surroundings so that I can spot the stone egg pieces in the middle of dirt and other seemingly natural formations.

Let’s get down to it then.