In the Abyssal Depths, at the world’s end on a continent that had already perished, there were two rules that one must follow.
Do not move during the “night.”
Never let yourself be seen by the Watcher’s Eye.
Hio was breaking both of those rules.
When night fell, rather than hiding from the Watcher, he openly revealed himself.
Then, every Strange Entity that reappeared would confirm Hio’s location and rush toward him like mad.
He didn’t know how many Strange Entities resided at the world’s end, but from the perspective of someone facing them, it felt like fighting against infinity.
In such a situation, the only saving grace was that when a new night began, the entities did not reappear in the exact same positions and circumstances as the previous night.
If they did, Hio would be in a nightmare scenario where powerful entities he couldn’t quickly dispose of would pile up, surrounding him until there was no room to breathe.
If he had to resume battle in the center of a swarm filled with all sorts of bizarre monsters, including Colossal Abnormalities, it would be the worst possible situation.
Fortunately, the locations of the entities changed every night.
Well, even so, the cycle remained the same.
He would quickly dispatch the weak entities just like the night before, leaving only the increasingly powerful ones.
He would then force his way through the gaps to find a path, fleeing, counterattacking, and rolling through the ashes until he barely greeted the dawn at death’s door.
Enlightenment remained as elusive as a passing cloud, and the nights repeated where a single second of carelessness meant certain death.
Given the circumstances, he couldn’t move even when the day came.
Although his body had been reconstructed upon reaching the 6th Circle, placing him in the realm of a superhuman, rest was essential after pushing his body to such an extreme.
“……Gasp!”
Hio’s eyes snapped open.
As he pushed himself up, he immediately raised his staff to guard his surroundings.
But there was nothing.
There was only the pitch-black Abyssal Depths and a heavy silence.
And there was the silent figure of Theodore, looking down at him from right beside him.
“……It’s daytime.”
He finally remembered.
The previous night, as always, he had struggled until he was surrounded to his limit by the Strange Entities, only to collapse into sleep the moment day broke.
Before falling unconscious, he seemed to have squeezed out his last bit of strength to re-summon Theodore, who had long since been broken.
Theodore conveyed his will to Hio as he slumped back down.
Roughly translated, it was a suggestion to rest today.
Of course, Hio shook his head.
“I have to push even further to the limit.”
Even at this very moment, Kreutzvalt would be watching him through this sticky Abyss.
Just thinking about it made Hio feel suffocated.
If Kreutzvalt’s only goal was for Hio to reach Tetradia as quickly as possible, he would have appeared before him long ago.
He would have told Hio to stop wasting time and start moving.
However, even though three days and nights had passed, Kreutzvalt had not appeared.
That meant this was what the monster wanted.
It meant he desired Hio’s growth more than he desired him to reach Tetradia.
It likely wasn’t the noble heart of a master wishing for his disciple to grow.
He must have a different objective in mind.
Hio didn’t know exactly what that was, but to break through this suffocating situation, he eventually had to draw the man out.
For now, Hio’s and Kreutzvalt’s goals aligned.
Pushing the body and mind to the limit, then growing at the threshold of death.
“It’s soon night. Let’s get ready, Theodore.”
And so, the fourth night arrived.
The start of the fourth night was no different than usual.
As soon as he felt the Watcher’s presence, he fired three Explosions into the creature’s eye, and the Watcher recognized him immediately.
Then, every existing Strange Entity perceived Hio and identified his location, rushing toward him driven by instinct.
The anomaly began to appear around the halfway point.
—Chirp—Chirrrp!
It had an appearance reminiscent of a cockroach and a cry like a cricket.
The entity was roughly the size of a human, a form Hio had never seen before.
That meant he had to be extremely cautious.
The way Strange Entities mimicked the creatures of the outside world was limited only to their appearance.
Most of their abilities were bizarre and unpredictable, having nothing to do with their physical form.
This was the Abyss, where the common sense of the world did not apply.
He had to be wary of everything he encountered for the first time.
Therefore, while Hio dealt with the other creatures, he kept an eye on the human-sized cockroach in the distance.
He certainly did.
However, that creature was not the kind of entity one could handle just by being careful.
—Chirp! Chirrrp!
The creature raised its insect-like legs.
While Hio dealt with another entity, he maintained his Barrier and prepared for Blink, readying himself for anything.
“……Huh?”
Suddenly, the world flipped upside down.
Despite his preparations, he couldn’t help but be flustered.
His head was pointed toward the ground, and his confused legs flailed in the air.
He hadn’t felt any sign of it, but in the blink of an eye, the heavens and the earth had swapped places.
However, even if the world was inverted, this was a sea of Strange Entities where not a moment of panic was permitted.
—Kieeek!
In that brief moment of shock, three attacks poured in.
The first strike cracked his Barrier, the second shattered it, and just before the third could reach Hio’s chest, he managed to use Blink to escape the spot.
However, because his sense of direction was a mess, it was a Blink without a precise destination.
The feeling of being upside down like a handstand did not disappear even after the teleportation, and no matter where he moved in this world, he was bound to be surrounded by entities anyway.
He used Blink several times in succession to grasp the situation.
He had to save every drop of Magic Power to survive the night, but what choice did he have?
He had to buy time with Blink and locate that cockroach entity.
Fortunately, he spotted the creature the moment he cast his fourth Blink.
With a fifth Blink, he arrived beside it.
At the same time, he controlled the area with the 6th Circle magic, [Gravity], and detonated two Explosions reinforced by the Abyss onto the creature’s head.
—Chirp!
The creature burst apart with a pathetic scream.
Simultaneously, the inverted world returned to normal.
Thud.
Being flipped, he fell headfirst to the ground.
It wasn’t an ability that merely confused his perception; it had literally flipped Hio.
Furthermore, it had left the other entities unaffected and persisted even when he used Blink.
How was such a thing possible when it wasn’t even magic?
Was it because the laws of the world were a mess here?
Or simply because it was a Strange Entity?
Curiosity flared, but he had no time to think.
The entities were surging in like a tidal wave.
Among them were plenty of creatures Hio had yet to encounter.
However, he didn’t meet anyone as shocking as that cockroach, and he managed to survive the fourth night.
The fifth night.
Whether it was good luck or not, that cockroach appeared again.
Even though it was chirping and raising its front legs just like the night before, Hio didn’t take any special measures.
He simply calmly searched the energy around the creature while preparing for the world to flip.
—Chirrrp!
As expected, his body was flipped upside down in an instant.
A quite satisfied smile hung on Hio’s lips.
Boom—!
The smile soon vanished, of course, and he had to sweat profusely under the onslaught of attacks from all sides, but he had achieved a result nonetheless.
He found out how the creature had managed to flip him.
The answer was the Abyss.
The Abyss existed in every space and within Hio’s body like air, so the creature had used it to flip Hio’s space without actually touching his body.
That must have been an ability the entity possessed since its birth.
And.
‘…Could I do that too?’
There seemed to be no reason why he couldn’t.
Hio could also manipulate the Abyss.
Furthermore, he could do it through the advanced methods he learned from Kreutzvalt, not just that primitive way.
Of course, it would be difficult to be as skillful and fast as the creature, but several applications came to mind immediately.
‘I could use it on empty space, and even if I don’t flip their bodies, just binding them should be enough…’
Boom—!
Whatever the case, he had to survive the fifth night first before he could research it.
The sixth night was a bit special.
He immediately used the cockroach’s ability, which he had practiced during the day, in actual combat.
He controlled the space by directly manipulating the Abyss within it.
Hio had approached the creature’s ability through a magical lens and perfected it as a technique: Inversion.
It was a turning point that completely overturned his existing common sense.
Originally, wasn’t Magic Power something you accumulated in your body to make it your own, and then used the Power of the Crest to manifest it into magic?
Moving the Magic Power that existed in the atmosphere was supposed to be nonsensical and impossible.
But the Abyss was different.
The energy of the Abyss was stored within Hio’s body right now, but this was literally just storage.
It hadn’t become a part of his body like Magic Power; he was simply storing it and mixing a bit of it in just before the completion of a spell.
In that case, how was it any different from the Abyss scattered outside?
There was no reason he couldn’t manipulate the Abyss in the atmosphere.
It was a study and experiment born from that thought, and the result was a success.
While it was too much to flip an opponent like the cockroach entity, he succeeded in stopping the movements of the entities by controlling the energy scattered around him.
Of course, the range wasn’t wide yet and its application was extremely limited, but given this level of success on the first attempt, he felt the possibilities for the future were endless.