Strawberry Devil in a Fantasy World

I entered my subspace through the third or outer layer where only a simple battlefield was constructed.

After adjusting the time flow of both subspaces, and in relation to the centre of the subspace where Smoothie was staying, I began converting the volatile mana into useable mana. With how much mana I had collected, it would literally take a year to convert all of them.

I want to level up, but... Is there a faster way to convert all these delicious mana?

[Yes.]

How?

[Insufficient qualification.]

That's just sad... Can you tell me the qualification?

[You must possess |Force|.]

Ah? That's a bit tough. I'm supposed to nab a guardian somewhere and steal their trait? Well, if that's what it comes down to, I'm up for it. Are there any other qualifications I need?

[No.]

Okay, great. I guess I'll be off to hunt some snakes in a bit! Interesting. Fun, fun!

Before I left my subspace for the hunt, I used up all the converted mana and absorbed them into myself to assist with levelling up. It really wasn't much considering my current level. My spiritual stats increased by a bit while my physical stats remained constant because they were capped by the system.

One of my biggest challenge now was to find a way to overcome the physical stat limit. My bet was that |force| trait should help me with it since it was the only special trait that was closely associated with the physical.

When I returned to the outside world just above the temple, the scene I saw wasn't as I had expected.

Little did I know that those humongous floating islands were acting similar to pressure valves. With a reduction in mana pressure, the islands were slowly sinking back into the ground. Because I was little mischievous, I decided to cloak the interior of the sealing barrier with an illusion.

Managing illusions on such a large scale was quite difficult not because the inherent size but rather the volatile mana interfering with my phantom construct. To the observers looking inward, the islands that were sinking were now returning to their original positions.

"Fun, fun, seeing them all flustered just made my day!"

The demons, still yet to complete whatever ritual or magic, had proceeded to the next phase or so I was made to believe. Those gigantic and ominous looking magic circles hovered in the sky. Energy was rapidly accumulating between the layers of magic circles. I really wanted to see them finish what they intended to do. After all, it made things all the more interesting.

"I guess I'll delay them a bit more." I chuckled to myself at the idea of toying with these try hard demons. Seriously, if this sealing barrier could be broken that easily, it wouldn't haven't survived to this age, with or without a guardian.

With that said, I sniped two demons closest to me with a mixture of void and chaos bullets. This way, shields and barriers, they couldn't block my attacks.

The next instance, two demons fell from the sky.

"Why am I so good at this?"

Replacements usually took a few minutes to appear. With that time, I figured I'd best track down the snake guardian and strip him or her of that |force| trait.

Hidden in my own void barrier, with my celestial eyes, I began tracing remnants of energy links lingering in the shadows. They were like threads of fate, intertwined and weaved in ever peculiar knots and patterns as if trying to deter me from locating the exactly position of the main body. Of course, I already had the general location but that was as much help as my radar could provide.

What exactly is this shadow ability thing? Is it like a spatial ability? I don't get it.

[It is a spatial ability that operates below three dimensions.]

Heck? Wait, then it's almost like a subspace of its own then? Or maybe a proxy dimension? How am I supposed to track that thing if it's not fully in this world? That's a cheat... But then again all the guardians seem to have cheats. Screw this, I'm going all out.

By going all out, I meant that by activating |dedicated one|. It was a trait that allowed me to unleash my potential hidden within every fiber of my being. Given how most of my soul energy remained untapped and idle after I had integrated them into myself, I had yet to utilize them properly. It was akin to having a brand new hard drive sitting around doing nothing. The only downside to this trait was the usage limitation. With consistent use, it would slowly but surely wear down my soul.

Now with the trait activated, the scope, efficiency, and power of all my abilities rose manifolds. In addition, multitasking and simultaneous calculations would become second nature to me.

Next, parallel and perpendicular lines formed in the approximate area where the guardian was. After the lines connected, black surfaces came into existence forming a perfect cube. All that happened in merely a second, that was to say, an area half the size of a city was shrouded in a perfect black cube. 

At that moment, the fate of the snake guardian was sealed. No one escaped my special sealing barrier, absolutely no one.

Of course, I wasn't going to search the entire cube. There was a better method, one that I had never tried myself.

Before that though, I had to transfer out the barrier Kanoko was in to somewhere safe. Only once I confirmed that the snake hadn't escape did I initiated my next step.

Starting from the corners, the gigantic cube fragmented itself into smaller cubes. Since I wanted cubes that could fit into my hand, they were first split into a million cubes. Once that was done, the cubes began flying toward me in files. In the process, the smaller cubes again began to split into thousands, and then into more thousands until each one could snuggly fit into my hand.

"This is quite neat, I suppose? Having more computational power really is something else. I'm learning new techniques every day. It's just too bad I have to rely on that trait to use this technique..." I quietly murmured while observing this strange phenomenon as tiny cubes converged into my palm. 

Under normal circumstances, the cubes should have piled up. Yet, these tiny cubes only converged into a single cube, and the energy density needless to say condensed to unfathomable level.

A moment later, the space that was just recently within the gigantic cube was now in the palm of my hand as a single small black cube. Inside contained the snake guardian, his shadow clones, and whatever else was originally in those cubes.

"Hmm... I could capture the excess mana with this technique. Maybe not now...?"

As much as I would love to rely on my high spec trait, I would hate to receive any backlashes. The last two times I used it, I didn't feel any side effects likely because I didn't use any powerful skills extensively.

Anyway, I returned to my subspace posthaste with the black cube in hand.

Once inside my subspace, I promptly processed the cube with the |dedicated one| still active. Otherwise, without it being active, I simply couldn't interact with the contents within the cube, and if I messed up, it could potentially detonate.

Come on... Condensed soul energy is such a hassle. My mind calmly initiated countless vigorous scans and analysis of everything contained inside the cube. Not a single piece of information was missed. The speed at which I processed all that information was just mind boggling.

Before long, I was able to completely isolate the trait or traits I was looking for. One of them was |force| and the other was |shadow dweller|. However, the latter couldn't be duplicated or removed due to the blessing this guardian had received. A god's blessing wasn't something I could tamper with. With that being the case, I forcefully removed the |force| trait and inserted into myself.

Strictly speaking, I only removed one of the |force| trait it had. By doing so, the two entities, Slizerine and Slisthe, fully merged to being a single guardian that it used to be. At least, that was what the snake was originally based on my analysis of its memories.

His ability [grim phantasm] functioned as I had previously speculated. A double could be split off and used like a main body. Although it was more powerful and sovereign than my clones related to the main body, it was restricted to only having one double with limited lifespan and operational range. Moreover, it could only exist where there were plenty of shadows and mana to sustain it whereas my clones could basically go anywhere they wanted to. All in all, the guardian temple where it resided was actually the ideal location for this guardian.

All its secrets were exposed to me. In addition, I had analyzed the operating space of this strange shadow world.

"Catch and release!" That was a phrase I often heard in a certain occupation. Funny enough, I was about to do the same.

Since guardians could teleport to other fellow guardians, I decided only to release it after the dust settled. Thus, it would have to stay in the cube for a bit longer.

With |force| now in my possession, I began using it to the utmost. Though, even if I didn't have it before, my subspace allowed me to do much the same activities as if I had |force|. However, the difference was as clear as day, perhaps due to the naturally evolved form of |force| that came with my level.

Manipulating forces of nature came to me freely. For one, I no longer required fey magic to float or fly. Fey magic was something that came with my original race but if I didn't have it, I would have been stuck on the ground outside of my subspace. As the trait name suggested, I could control physical forces such as gravity to some extent. Creating black holes was still out of my reach but if it was within my subspace, I could definitely detonate a gravitational bomb with the aid of |creator|.

Naturally, this trait allowed me to create force fields and things like that. I could throw a punch and amplify the force that would come from it. Likewise, I could also throw a punch and cancel that force. Of course, there were limits to the increase and decrease in forces.

Next up, |force| could be used to strengthen my body. It wasn't the conventional type of strengthening but rather resistance to alteration or change. This would allow my body to become nearly immune to magic and abilities that could harm or alter my body.

With |force| enhancing my body to the limit, I decided to level up. Levelling up and whatnot, I was extremely familiar of the steps I had to take to maximize my stats. Currently, with |dedicated one| still active, I was able to convert the dangerous mana to neutral mana at an exponentially faster rate.

Without further ado, time to level up! For real this time!