Chương 26: Jackpot!

[Processing the Rare Skill shards… successful.] [Awakened Rare Skill [Spatial Motion]] Nyx immediately opened his evaluation tab for an explanation. Spatial Motion: Who needs to run when you can move through space? Allows for teleportation across distances. The energy consumption would scale with the distance. Nyx immediately sprang to his feet inside his car, or tried to, smashing his head against its ceiling. He ignored the pain and just went outside to celebrate for a bit.

Then, like the distinguished gentleman that he was, he re-entered the vehicle.

"Today is my lucky day, alright. What is this?" He felt flabbergasted at obtaining such an overpowered skill.

"It's insane!" Teleportation! Who in their otaku life hadn't dreamed of teleporting? No one! Everyone wanted to fly, and teleportation was just its humble upgrade! Nyx went to the exchange and bought himself a full can of cola. Not cold—he wished it were iced—but all beverages there were room temperature. Still, he made do with it and chugged it down in celebration. It might've felt weird for other people to celebrate good things happening by themselves. But not to him; he was all too used to doing it alone.

After a good ten minutes his heart calmed down. He went outside to test out the newly obtained skill. He'd already tested the other one, and for this one he didn't feel like delaying the test even by a millisecond. But before doing so, he went over several important considerations. First was the energy aspect. A skill this impressive was sure to consume an equally impressive amount of energy. And where there was cost, there was fear.

"What if I used it, and because it lacked sufficient mana, it consumed something from within me instead? Like life energy and stuff?" That was his biggest fear. Life energy certainly existed, or at least vitality did. And currently, he had a small amount of healing mana within him. He wasn't even sure if this skill could function on that, but considering he hadn't seen a single spirit stone labeled 'space', he was fairly confident it wouldn't require a specialized source of energy to function.

But usage of skills, when lacking mana, did consume energy—mainly mental energy. He'd felt quite drained after using Usurper a lot. And even that Shuai of Heavenly Fleet had to rest between skill usages to recover. So, all in all, testing this skill could cause two kinds of harm. If he traveled too far, his mental energy would be completely drained, which could very well lead to him losing consciousness. And the last thing he wanted, in a plain field with hungry hyenas, was to fall unconscious.

There was also the vitality, life-draining aspect—the skill could very well compensate for the lack of energy by draining his life itself. And he didn't know what the side effects of that would be. Maybe he'd become physically weak? More susceptible to disease? Any number of things could occur if he was careless. So he first went over all the instinctual information the skill had imparted upon awakening.

The usage was simple: he could view a destination, and upon activation, the skill would teleport him to that exact location instantly. And it was here that the nuances mattered. Because viewing the targeted location could happen through his eyes or his imagination. He could imagine a location—a real one, of course—and he felt pretty confident the skill would be able to teleport him there, given he had enough energy to supply it.

Though in the same vein that he felt confident at the thought of just imagining a location and using it as a target for Spatial Motion, he also felt an equal fear at the thought of messing up the details of that imagination. Stolen story; please report. It was as if his very body warned him not to mess up the details when imagining a targeted location—that it mustn't differ from what existed in reality. He took a deep breath and calmed his thoughts.

For now, he didn't plan on teleporting far; he was inside the cave, just beside his vehicle. He targeted the spot just outside the cave—perhaps thirty steps away? Thirty-five at most. He planned to run the test in two phases: first with his eyes, then with imagination. So, for the first, he focused on the target location and uttered the chant needed for skill activation.

"Activate [Spatial Motion]" The scene in front of him blurred, then instantly changed to something entirely different. He could no longer see the cave walls or ceiling, as the rays of the sun hit his face directly, warming his skin while a light breeze rustled his hair.

"Huh, it works." He took a second to absorb the implications. After getting the skill, he'd known it was real. But after testing it himself? The reality of it hit him hard, so much so that he doubted whether any of this was real or if he was still just dreaming. Shaking his head, Nyx got back inside the cave and reran the test—this time using his imagination, eyes closed.

"Activate [Spatial Motion]" This time, even with his eyes closed, he still felt a distinct disorientation, though it was less intense than when his eyes had been open. Opening his eyes, he found himself in the exact same spot as before. The rays of the sun greeted his second successful attempt at teleportation. But when he tried to get back inside the cave, he felt the world around him start to spin, nausea hitting him squarely in the gut.

"Shit, my mental energy's almost used up!" He immediately squatted down and vomited up the noodles he'd just consumed. After a good minute of throwing up, he slowly climbed back into his car, the cool air of the vehicle's AC calming the relentless attack of nausea. After a good hour—half of which he'd spent meditating to recover his mental energy—he finally started to feel good again. Having confirmed the effects of both skills, Nyx finally refocused on his current priorities.

He still felt sleepy, but early morning was also the best time to go hunting for treasure chests, since most people were probably out cold after a rough night. And having spent most of his time just staring at the heavenly fleet's battle, he wasn't that exhausted, though exhaustion was still there considering he'd fought multiple of those homunculi. But because of his cultivation of healing spirit stones, most of the injuries he'd received had healed over the span of the night.

Exhaustion lingered, just not as intensely as it could have if he'd spent the entire night shooting undead. He also needed to upgrade his vehicle to tier three and prepare some countermeasures against the Heavenly Demon finding him. It was likely she'd gone to the Archivist to buy out his information. The Archivist, intentionally or otherwise, hadn't given him the exact levels of those above-level-70 wolves that Regina was fighting back then.

That gave him something to pull on regarding the Archivist's methods of information retrieval. It was likely the guy was using some sort of long-ranged spying mechanism to get information about Regina Rare, otherwise he'd have charged extra for the wolf's exact level.

"But it's odd, I haven't seen or sensed a single person around her while I was there…" Plus, Regina Rare herself was incredibly perceptive—the moment he'd entered the area, she'd sensed him, despite fighting a wolf of that caliber, which would've otherwise taken a whole fleet to take down. And whatever method the Archivist was using, if it involved a skill, Nyx would have an advantage in that scenario. In fact, he wished the Archivist was using a skill.

A 'ding' sound came from the system's private chats suddenly, interrupting his thoughts. Nyx opened the tab as a red dot appeared over Syrin's contact.

"Interesting. What's prompted her to contact me now, of all times?" Nyx felt a bit suspicious. Just to be safe, he activated Magic Detection and replied to her message asking whether they could meet. And the moment she checked the message, his common skill, [Magic Detection], lit up.

"So she's using her skill right now." Private Chat [Are you using any skill right now?] @SenoriaSyrin??!! @SenoriaSyrin [how did you know? I'm currently using my unique skill to hunt for more treasure chests.] [And it's somehow affecting me? How so?] @SenoriaSyrin [???] @SenoriaSyrin [again, dude, how can you tell?]

"Hmm, she doesn't seem to be intentionally hiding it. Is it an extension of her unique skill?" Nyx wondered. His common skill, Magic Detection, could detect any magic being used on him, and the effects of skills counted as "magic" too. So it was a whole lot more useful than it looked initially. Nyx steered the conversation with Syrin and found out she'd been out looking to recruit him, and that she'd even opened a fleet. She also explained why his skill had told him she was using a skill on him.

Nyx grew increasingly interested in the girl's exceptional ability. After signing a non-disclosure contract with her, he called her over to his location. And while she made her way there, he shifted his focus to finally advancing his vehicle to tier three.