Nihility [ Isekai • Dragon Evolution ]

"Here it is, three Guaxino skewers," the stall vendor said as he handed me the three meat skewers I had bought from him. I gave him the money for them, only 10 copper coins in total, and started eating them as I walked.

I said I was going to explode the city, and I was somewhat doing it, but my focus was on creating more defenses and attacks against Jack. I had spent over an hour constantly trying different questions through [Knowledge Library] until it gave me something I could use against him, and it gave me something after hundreds of attempts. It gave me the complete list of enchants on his overall that blocked my magic last time. If I didn't have [Mathematical Cortex] to allow me to divide my focus into several at the same time, I would probably be knocked out until tomorrow. There were so many enchants on it that my skill gave me everything at the same time, and my mind instinctively used the parallel thoughts sub-skill to be able to handle the amount of information. It was so much that I almost used the entirety of my MP on it.

I was currently at 75% of my magicules, it had drained even the reservoir I gained with [Liquid Quantum Flux Matrix] from the sheer amount of the sub-skill I had to use. The headache after it was massive, I had even puked a little, but I managed to not attract too much attention to myself, at least I think.

As I walked around with my main focus where I was going, a parallel thought developing magic using [Magical Programming Language], another parsing through the hundreds of enchants Jack has, trying to understand it, which I was having a hard time because it uses runes, and I had no actual concept of them yet, two were concentrating all the anxiety, depression and other negative emotions I was feeling to avoid having them cloud my judgment, and yet another one I checked around me with [Magicule Detection]. The skill was blinded by the city's shield, but I wasn't interested in what was outside of the shield, but what was on the inside. That was how I noticed a few magical signatures following me around.

Sighing internally, I continued to walk around, checking out the city, looking for something like a library or the building of the guild society. I was planning on reading a book about runes to understand them better, and having a better chance at cracking down Jack's protective enchantments.

When I noticed I was walking in a more hidden part of the city. The buildings around me looked worn down by time and the weather, and didn't seem like they had received any kind of maintenance in several years. I frowned, trying to remember how I got here when I was trying to keep to the more crowded parts of the city.

"Hey, kitty. You seem lost," one of the people following me started to approach me. "Do you want any help? This uncle here can help you."

I turned towards him, noticing how there were a few magical signatures on his person. I couldn't yet make heads or tails of them, but I just knew they weren't your everyday jewelry.

"Yes," I said, trying to feel anything weird around me as I talked, as well as keeping an eye on him and the others following me, who were pretending to mind their business around us. "Would you mind pointing me towards the city's library?"

"Library? Oh, of course," the small question told me there was no library, at least in this city. I would have to go to the mage's guild, then. "I can bring you there myself."

"So this is how it is, I see." I thought. "Your tactics won't confuse me. I'm from São Paulo. Though I wonder how did they managed to bring me here."

I kept trying to sense anything amiss, but couldn't. I had no other choice but to play along, at least for no–

My mind froze. This felt weird. The several parallel thoughts I kept running until now helped me notice how my main one felt slightly different, like my mind was being guided to arrive at specific conclusions– Ah, now I see, this is how they get you.

"No," I said.

"Perfect, now if you– what?" The guy looked confused, as if my answer wasn't what he expected, which only confirmed my thoughts.

"I said no. Is this how all of you operate? Using something like mind manipulation to trap your victims?" I asked. The guy in front of me tsked and then whistled.

"If you just had followed us, everything would have ended without any problems," he said, the others dropping their act and surrounding me. Among them, I saw one furrowing his brow as he looked at me. "Now, you see, you have two choices. One, give us the bag and follow us to a special place where we can find a use for your specific body. Two, we kill you and grab the bag. It would be a waste of merchandise, but whatever."

I focused my [Magicule Detection] on him and finally sensed it. He was sending pulses of magicule towards me. I could feel how my thoughts changed slightly as they hit me, but now that I knew, I had just to keep checking with my other focus to see if anything was amiss.

It took me a moment after he said it for me to register what he had actually said. I was too busy understanding how the mind trick worked. To say I was disgusted would be an euphemism.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

"What about a third option?" I said. I was still a little apprehensive about killing people, only having it done once for real with the bandits I found near Flamecrest. I wasn't counting the adventurers on the white void of that dungeon, as they were just temporal copies. "I was in need to test it more, you know?"

Before they could answer me, I accelerated my mind and sped it up even more with a localized acceleration using [Time Manipulation]. Everything became redshifted as the light coming from around me came slower to me. [Mathematical Cortex] calculated the acceleration differential, and a second of normal time was the equivalent of an hour for me.

I slowly pointed my hand towards the one who was talking to me. I knew how to alter gravity using spells and a more manual application of [Spatial Manipulation], but if I were to fight Jack, I needed more tactics.

Gravity change was the most basic use of [Spatial Manipulation]. It was a very intuitive action to do, you just had to reach for it, pull, and BAM, you changed gravity. What I was trying to learn what to do was the more complex things you see in fiction. Portals, teleportation, cutting using space itself, and even making pocket dimensions, all of these were applications of manipulating space itself.

The first thing I was trying to do was the creation of portals. I had a basic understanding by observing and sensing the portal plaza of Flamecrest. I pushed space with my skill, deforming it until it buckled and ripped open. I was expecting it to open a portal to somewhere else, except it didn't, it just opened a portal to nothing.

I forced it close by slamming space around it into it when I started to feel the pull it started to exert on the surroundings. It was obvious I was lacking something, but it was not something I could just go on trial and error while I was dumping all my magicules on this sped up environment I made.

It also gave me an insight for my next test.

I pulled space and compressed it in a line in front of me until it ruptured, then I used the same principle of a warp engine, expanding space behind it and compressing in front of it to move the rupture in space. It passed through the legs of the kidnappers in front of me.

I was going to start my next test, but I felt my mind becoming sluggish as my magicule reserves started to run dry. Before I returned to the normal flow of time, I activated my barrier skill to protect myself from anything they might try to throw at me.

Time returned to normal, and their legs suddenly gushed out blood and everyone of them fell to the ground, screaming in pain and holding near their knees, where the spatial rupture cut through, I even saw that there was a deep cut in the stone of the ground, but I couldn't check how deep it was because of the lack of light and the miniscule size of the hole itself.

"What–have you done?" The one who seemed to be the leader, the same one who tried to talk me into going with them, shouted at me as he held on to his open wounds.

"You were the ones trying to use magic to make me go with you. I just answered in kind and used magic against you." I said coldly, even though I was feeling weird at how easy it was to just lop their legs off. Made me wonder how does society works when a single person can just wield this much power, let alone the ones stronger than me.

"You're dead! You hear me?" The leader shouted, but I ignored him and began retracing my steps, trying to find the portal plaza of the city.

As I walked, I tried asking some questions to [Knowledge Library] as to how portals operated, as well as teleportation. I had seen both in action already, and it didn't cost me anything to at least try to get answers.

[Spatial manipulation, such as portal creation and teleportation, requires complex calculations to get the exit coordinates relative to the origin point.]

[Teleportation by the manipulation of space requires complex calculations and the fine control of space to create a localized bubble of normal space before compressing the distance between the origin and the target coordinates until the bubble phases through the fourth dimension into the new coordinates]

Okay, so first things first. The world would be ending soon. My skill had finally given me a meaningful answer! Second, okay. It seems that I needed to have the coordinates of my destination when opening the portal for it to actually work. I didn't know that.

I walked to a small alley and tried to create a portal again, but this time I used [Mathematical Cortex] to calculate the relative coordinate of the roof of the building I was in front of. Space buckled, and I felt how it gave way in a particular direction. The moment I felt the other end "connect," the corridor between the two points expanded until it was a circle with two meters in diameter.

I could feel the corridor between the two points of space and how it didn't exist in the same three-dimensional reality as the rest of space, which could give one a headache if they focused too much on it. Looking with my eyes through it, I could see the other side of the portal, and when I looked upwards to the other side, which was on the roof of the house, I could see myself standing next to that exit. I was now thinking with portals.

Another thing I noticed was how more stable it was compared to the ones in the portal plaza of Flamecrest. Those made space vibrate with how much power their were using, but I made the same with a fraction of what they used, I had a few guesses as to why, but nothing confirmed.

"Time to confirm, now," I said as I stepped through the portal and exiting through the other side without so much as a wave of energy. It was completely seamless the connection, but it also consumed a lot of MP to open and keep it open, I was already on the low end of my reserves, I was tanking it even more after it, so I went back to the alley and closed the portal.

There were two more things I wanted to at least know the basics of how to do with [Spatial Manipulation] before I faced off with Jack, teleportation, and pocket dimensions. Pocket dimensions actually could be on the back burner for now, but teleportation would be something very useful in fights. I also needed to go to the mage's guild of this city to get a book on runes to try to break the ones protecting Jack.

So much to do but so little time–maybe not? I was an ouroboros dragon after all, the last thing that I was lacking was time. I just needed enough magicules to pull it off, but I could have all the time in the world right now. I didn't know how I hadn't thought of this before. It was right in my face all this time, I just wasn't seeing it.

I needed to create my own temporal loop.