I Arrived At Wizard World While Cultivating Immortality Chapter 869: Spatial Fold Beast

At this point Azrael spoke.

His voice was not loud, yet it carried clearly into the ears of every wizard present:

“This should be a spatial fold beast. It is a peculiar living thing, born when a collapsed concept of space congeals.”

He narrowed his eyes slightly, his gaze settling on the transparent behemoth that shuddered without cease.

“Creatures of this kind exist only within the chaotic interlayer. They are very strong, and their very form of existence is highly unusual.”

“Be careful, all of you.”

The words had barely left him when the eyes all around swung as one onto him.

Viola went so far as to nudge Jie Ming lightly with her elbow, muttering under her breath:

“I knew it. This whole situation really is that fellow's doing.”

She had pitched her voice as low as it would go, but the weakest person present was a sixth-level wizard, and at that volume there was in truth very little difference between muttering and simply speaking aloud.

For a moment the expressions of no few Scarlet Hive wizards shifted slightly.

Some looked toward Azrael; others exchanged glances with one another.

Azrael, however, might as well have heard nothing at all. He showed not the slightest intention of explaining himself, and only went on:

“The chaotic interlayer is itself a distorted region formed after the collapse of spatial structure. The creatures born in a place like that are nothing whatever like life as we normally understand it.”

Listening to Azrael's explanation, Jie Ming put all his attention on the spatial fold beast before him.

The True-False Void-Piercing Pupil opened, its silver star vortex whirling madly.

Layer after layer of structure was stripped away and analyzed, and in his field of vision the behemoth's transparent body gradually lost its cover.

Yet the more clearly he saw, the stronger the warning in his heart grew.

By the analysis, this spatial fold beast was composed of nothing but pure spatial turbulence; apart from the peculiarity of its life form, there seemed to be nothing about it worth noting.

But the thing felt extremely dangerous to Jie Ming, exactly as it had felt back when he was still a fifth-level wizard, facing the Annihilation Hand and Illusion.

His intuition told him that against this thing, one careless moment would mean death!

The problem, though…

Jie Ming turned his head and looked at Clark beside him.

His Mentor's expression was as calm as ever, but those eyes, always as still as an ancient well, now plainly carried an added measure of gravity.

Jie Ming's heart sank a little.

By rights, the sense of danger the thing gave him was already outrageous. But measured against Mentor Clark's reaction, that sense of danger was far too low!

Something that could make even Clark take it seriously… could not possibly stop at this level.

Yet no matter how carefully Jie Ming examined it, he found no sign that the behemoth was concealing its strength.

Or rather, if it truly meant to hide its strength, it could not possibly be hiding only this much.

Just then Azrael's explanation reached his ears: “The greatest peculiarity of this creature is that it has no definite level.”

“At least by our normal divisions of level, it has no fixed level of power.”

At that, the expressions of several wizards nearby turned puzzled.

Azrael said slowly, “Because it possesses in itself a reflective property very close to that of the Reflection Dimension.”

“It adjusts its own state of existence according to the cognition of whoever observes it, whoever attacks it, and whoever does battle with it.”

“In other words… the stronger you are, the stronger it becomes. Whatever abilities you possess, it will answer them in the way best suited to countering you. Whatever weaknesses you have, it will mirror straight back at you.”

Jie Ming's brows drew together slightly.

Such a peculiar thing actually existed in this world?

If most creatures of the Reflection Dimension shared characteristics of the same kind, then the Reflection Dimension was evidently even more outrageously dangerous than he had imagined.

Viola asked outright, “Then doesn't that mean it holds an absolute advantage over any enemy at all?”

“More or less.” Azrael nodded.

“Unless it faces an eighth-level wizard who has already mastered Law Fixation, then against a target of any level whatever, it will present the state that is most dangerous to that particular target.”

Those words dropped the whole scene into a brief silence.

Seeing it, Azrael added, “Still, there is no need for excessive panic, because this mirroring has its limits as well.”

“It will not conjure out of nothing any power beyond its opponent's limit. The ceiling it can display is determined by the opponent's own limit.”

Viola's face darkened several shades at once. “You mean to say… that if you can't beat your own limit, you'll never beat it?”

“Yes.” Azrael's answer was crisp and clean.

“In theory, that is exactly right.”

Viola: “…”

Reality was not a game, and a limit was not so easily surpassed.

And judging by this monster's characteristics, beating it would mean surpassing one's own limit again and again without pause.

Otherwise, if you merely surpassed your limit the once, the thing would adjust its level of power soon enough!

Jie Ming, however, had already begun thinking. “Then we find a wizard of relatively weak strength to go up against it, and have everyone else strike from the side.”

“Since its power is determined by its opponent, sending out a weak one first should at least hold its intensity down.”

At first hearing, the plan sounded entirely reasonable.

But Clark, who had not spoken all this while, slowly shook his head. “No.”

Jie Ming was taken aback. “It wouldn't work?”

“I am afraid not.” Azrael picked up the thread from beside him.

“Wizard Clark is right. It is closer to a creature of the mind-side. What you are looking at now is only one spatial fold beast.”

“But once battle is truly joined…” His gaze swept across everyone present. “Every one of you will have to face one, and it will be the one that belongs to you alone.”

The moment the words were out, the atmosphere around them drew tighter still, and several Scarlet Hive wizards visibly changed color.

Someone could not help using mental energy to pass a message to a friend beside them:

“Given what this spatial fold beast is like, could Wizard Azrael be meaning to kill with a borrowed blade?”

“Settle his rival in love, then push the blame onto the spatial fold beast?”

“I'd say it's possible. He can hardly be taking the chance to purge dissenters, surely.”

“…That isn't out of the question either.”

“Hisss!!!”

In an instant the mood on the scene turned more delicate still.

Jie Ming, Clark, and Viola, though, had long since stopped attending to any of this, and merely adjusted their positions in silence.

Clark moved half a step forward, bringing Jie Ming and Viola inside his own defensive range.

Viola adjusted her law domain, keeping the Law of Pain poised to erupt at any moment.

And Jie Ming raised the energy steady-state field of the Return to Ruins Armor another degree.

Just then, the spatial fold beast, which had watched them warily from the periphery ever since its birth, seemed at last to make up its mind.

Boom!

The transparent behemoth lunged suddenly forward, its enormous body sweeping across the void, the space around it cracking apart piece by piece.

Jie Ming's pupils contracted sharply. “Here it comes.”

By his own sight and his mental perception alike, the behemoth was plainly charging straight at him.

Yet the reactions of the other wizards around him said nothing of the kind.

Some of them abruptly turned side-on; some raised defensive wizard artifacts; some even blasted a spell off in an entirely different direction, as though in their eyes the spatial fold beast's chief target were themselves.

“So it is exactly as Wizard Azrael said.”

The thought had only just flashed through Jie Ming's mind.

The next instant…

Boom!!!

The Return to Ruins Armor's invisible steady-state field collided head-on with that transparent behemoth, and the moment the two touched, the armor let out a harsh shriek of tearing.

Crack, crack, crack, crack…

The Return to Ruins Armor had been reworked by Jie Ming's own hand and was inferior to no seventh-level spell, and still it collapsed in the very instant of contact.

A chill went through Jie Ming.

“Back!”

He was on the point of unleashing the Great Void Step when his vision suddenly blurred.

In Jie Ming's eyes, space… changed.

The scene in which everyone had stood gathered together was shattered in an instant, as though by one enormous invisible hand.

The positions they occupied began to break apart and merge again, like a kaleidoscope.

Countless fragments of space overlapped and slid out of alignment with one another, and every block of space seemed to have been cut into a battlefield of its own.

Jie Ming looked toward one of them.

Inside it, Viola was locked in a death struggle with a spatial fold beast of an entirely different build.

In another block of space, the behemoth Clark faced had grown so vast that it blotted out the whole field of view.

Farther off, Azrael was likewise entangled with a spatial fold beast wholly unlike the rest.

Everyone… had an enemy of their own.

And the space between them was steadily being sealed off.

“So this is what makes the creatures of the chaotic interlayer peculiar…”

Azrael's words of a moment ago flashed swiftly through Jie Ming's mind.

“Every one of you… will meet an opponent of your own.”

Before his eyes, everything abruptly went dark.

Boom!

Jie Ming felt only a power terrible beyond all measure striking in from the side. His puppet had no time to complete a spatial transfer before a huge transparent claw came smashing down.

Crack!!

With a crisp sound of shattering, the skull burst outright.

In the instant the puppet's skull blew apart, Jie Ming did not even have time to think about repairing it.

Danger!

A warning so intense it verged on instinct detonated in the depths of his consciousness.

One careless moment of relaxation had let him taste what the spatial fold beast truly was.

Azrael had not been wrong. This thing really was dangerous!

Boom!

The puppet's shattered remains burst violently open, and dark golden radiance came gushing out from between countless fragments.

The Third Layer Dharma Form!

Terrible golden light swelled abruptly through the chaotic interlayer.

A vast body two hundred and fifty thousand kilometers tall rose sheer out of the void.

Broad-backed, two faces and three eyes, countless dark golden patterns flowing ceaselessly along that enormous frame.

The spatial island sank violently the instant the Dharma Form appeared, and the chaotic space for several hundred thousand kilometers around was forced into ring upon ring of ripples visible to the naked eye.

But almost at the same moment Jie Ming unfolded the Third Layer Dharma Form, the spatial fold beast opposite him changed as well.

Its huge transparent body began stretching madly, spatial ripples spreading ring after ring, its frame swelling at an astonishing rate.

At almost the same instant, a transparent behemoth scarcely different in scale from Jie Ming's Dharma Form stood before him.

Had this spatial island not undergone a strange change after the spatial fold beast launched its attack, its interior space extending without limit, the mere existence of this giant and this behemoth would have been enough to crush the original spatial island outright!