The Spatial Ability User Who Puts Safety Above All Chapter 4

Growth Desire (1)

Slash!

Becoming a User had enhanced Seon Yul’s physical abilities enough that slicing off the tip of his finger was disturbingly easy.

“Argh!”

The pain came immediately, sharp and intense.

And then… Something astonishing happened.

Sssssss…

The severed tip of his little finger regenerated in real time.

Seon Yul stared at it, mouth slightly open.

Three seconds.

That was all it took for the fingertip to be fully restored.

“This is… almost on the same level as Wolverine’s hyper regeneration.”

He couldn’t drag Wolverine here to compare directly, so there was no way to measure the exact difference.

But at the very least, it wasn’t inferior by any meaningful margin.

“Which means… even if I’m critically injured outside, as long as I can get into Absolute Space, I can recover.”

A conditional immortality.

People classified Wolverine among the highest tier of Noblesse-ranked Users not because of overwhelming attack power, but because of his near-immortal survivability.

He hadn’t aged at all in the eight years since his awakening.

Many believed that, too, was a side effect of hyper regeneration.

“From now on… I should live inside Absolute Space as much as possible.”

Seon Yul still didn’t know whether his regeneration was truly identical to Wolverine’s. Whether he would stop aging while inside remained unconfirmed.

But the possibility alone was enough. He would spend more time here.

Just as Seon Yul finished testing his super-regeneration ability, a notification popped up saying that the chicken he had ordered earlier had been delivered.

He brought the freshly fried chicken and an ice-cold cola straight into Absolute Space. There was something else he wanted to test.

“Next… internal environment test.”

Absolute Space maintained everything inside it in optimal condition.

So Seon Yul began to wonder, would food brought inside remain in its best state as well?

He set down the warm chicken and the chilled can of cola and watched them for a moment.

Then he lay on the bed, scrolling through information and letting the food sit untouched for about three hours.

Three hours later.

He checked the chicken and cola again.

“Wow…”

His prediction was correct.

Not only was the chicken still piping hot, but it also remained just as crispy as when he had first brought it into Absolute Space.

Even the cola, opened and left sitting for hours, was still cold. Its carbonation is perfectly intact.

“‘It’s like everything inside is under some kind of preservation spell.”

It had been a simple experiment. But the result made one thing clear to Seon Yul.

Even without super-regeneration, the flawless environmental maintenance alone was reason enough to spend as much time as possible inside Absolute Space.

“This is… too perfect.”

This was the perfect space he had wanted his entire life…

“But there’s still something lacking.”

As he looked around, convinced it was flawless, Seon Yul suddenly realized how narrow it felt.

And along with that realization came a powerful urge… to unlock the features that were still sealed.

People naturally longed for a place to call home.

And if that home was exceptionally comfortable, exceptionally safe?

That desire only grew stronger.

“Bigger… better… more complete.”

These were things that would naturally come as the level of his Absolute Space increased.

And the only way to raise its level was simple, level up himself. Which meant hunting monsters.

Normally, that was exactly the kind of thing he would avoid in the name of safety.

But now, his desire to grow was beginning to outweigh his desire to remain safe.

More precisely, his desire for greater, more perfect safety was starting to surpass his need to preserve the safety he already had.

“Let’s run more tests.”

In the end, Seon Yul decided to conduct more tests.

The experiments from this point forward would go beyond simply learning how to live inside Absolute Space. He would test how to use it.

To him, the greatest weapon of Absolute Space was the entrance itself.

He had already used it, albeit by chance, to instantly kill a powerful monster, an Elite Orc.

It was difficult to measure the true cutting force of the entrance. But after carefully rereading the ability’s description, it seemed as though anything in the world could be split in two simply by opening and closing it.

Slash!

To test its cutting power, Seon Yul used the strongest item currently in his possession, the Elite Orc Fang.

The tip of the fang was sliced off cleanly, without the slightest resistance.

Elite Orc Fangs were considered crafting materials nearly as durable as special metals like mithril or adamantium. Yet it had been severed far too easily.

“I don’t know the exact limit… but it’s probably safe to assume it can cut through most things.”

The ability description suggested it could slice through anything. Still, he would need further testing to be certain.

“All right. Next test… I need to find out whether it can cut my body too.”

This turned out to be a more important question than he had initially thought.

If the entrance could cut through his body as well, then he would need to be far more cautious when using its cutting ability.

“My finger will regenerate quickly anyway.”

Thanks to his super-regeneration, Seon Yul was no longer afraid of losing a finger.

Swish.

He slowly extended one finger past the edge of the entrance…

[Absolute Space Entrance Closed]

The entrance shut.

But surprisingly, his finger remained intact.

“Ah.”

He slowly pulled his finger back.

The finger came out completely unscathed.

After withdrawing his finger, Seon Yul touched the spot where the entrance had been, but the entrance was perfectly closed.

“It seems my body, as the master of this space, is perfectly protected.”

That realization made him want to test one more thing.

He opened the entrance again. This time, he extended one leg outside the space and then closed the entrance.

Although his leg remained intact, Seon Yul tried to move his body outside in that state.

His leg was clearly outside the space, but his body would not pass through.

Instead, he was able to pull his leg back inside.

“Good. Then let’s try the opposite.”

The tests continued.

Seon Yul tended to thoroughly examine every possibility and create meticulous, perfect plans. Because of that, his tests were inevitably long.

This time, he came out of Absolute Space and stood in his room.

From the outside, he inserted a finger into the space and then closed the entrance from the outside.

As expected, the entrance closed perfectly, but his finger was completely fine.

Only the finger was invisible, as if it were stuck into empty air.

Swish.

When he pulled his hand out, the finger slipped out of the air.

“I’ve confirmed it’s safe from the outside as well… Then finally, I need to check the criteria for which direction I can move.”

For the final confirmation, he opened the entrance again and positioned his body almost halfway inside the space.

One leg, one arm, and about half of his torso were outside, while half of his body, including his head, was inside.

“In this state, about sixty percent of my body is inside.”

He closed the entrance again.

With the entrance closed, he tried moving in both directions.

Then he discovered that he could not move toward the outside. He could only move further inside.

“Ah! The key is how much of the body has crossed over. That’s it.”

What ultimately determines which direction he can move is which side of the entrance contains more of his body.

In other words, he could move toward the side that contained more than half of his body.

“Okay. That’s enough for this experiment.”

Seon Yul had tested the function of opening and closing the entrance in a wide variety of ways.

He intended to test every detailed function of Absolute Space in this manner.

Ordinary magic users usually awaken their abilities and then learned how to use them naturally through repeated use.

An awakened ability could vary enormously in power depending on how it was utilized.

Because of this, there was a saying among Users that while the grade of an awakened ability might be innate, its true power was determined through accumulated experience.

However, instead of relying on accumulated experience, Seon Yul was discovering the ways to utilize his awakened ability through careful, meticulous, and astonishingly detailed consideration and experimentation.

To someone else, it might look frustrating.

Experience could be gained much more quickly by simply fighting monsters and using one’s abilities in real combat. Someone might ask why he was staying in his room doing this instead.

But this was Seon Yul’s style.

He tested a stone bridge before crossing it. And even if there was a stone bridge, he would add a steel structure on top of it before crossing.

Know in advance.

Prepare in advance.

Make even more preparation in advance.

Advance little by little.

That was the fundamental structure of how Seon Yul’s thoughts worked.

After more than a week of countless tests and deliberations, Seon Yul was finally able to grasp the essence of his awakened ability, Absolute Space.

Even after all that thought and experimentation, he judged that he had only figured out about half of it.

His unstoppable pursuit of perfection made it understandable why he had no one around him whom he could truly call an acquaintance.

“From now on… I have to hunt monsters.”

At least one hopeful thing was that his desire for growth had grown even stronger.

He wanted to somehow defeat more monsters and raise his level.

He wanted to raise the level of Absolute Space, create a larger and more magnificent Absolute Space of his own, and then turn it into a perfect place.

“Let’s go with the weapon as planned.”

The area he had worried about the most was how to hunt monsters and with what weapon.

After repeated thought and experimentation, he had come up with several promising hunting ideas, but until he completed a hunt, they were nothing more than ideas.

In truth, when it came to weapons, long-range projectile weapons like firearms would be the best.

But the problem was that Seon Yul had never handled such weapons.

He had never fired a gun, not even a bow. And firearms were not easy to obtain in South Korea, so he excluded them from the first list of candidates.

So next, he considered a spear, the weapon with the longest reach.

With a long spear, he could thrust from inside Absolute Space to the outside. If he could lure monsters close to the entrance, it could serve as an excellent weapon.

“Let’s look for a spear.”

He immediately opened the market app and began searching for a usable spear.

He entered the keywords “User,” “Item,” and “Spear.”

Numerous listings appeared.

From the lowest Normal-grade items to Magic-grade and even Unique-grade items…

“Hm?”

Among them, a long, flashy spear with an astonishingly high grade suddenly caught his eye.