Chapter 540: Spatial World

Chapter 540: Spatial World

“Come in.”

Michael leaned back slightly, one brow rising as the door eased open.

Lyra stepped in, her dark robes whispering against the floor, the same flowing garb she always wore. No effort to.

Michael tilted his head. “Do you not have mercy on your master? To visit me at this late instead of letting me have peace?”

The corner of Lyra’s lip twitched upward. She scoffed softly, though her voice was level when she replied.

“Do you despise my presence so much?”

“…Of course not,” Michael said after a pause. “But night is for resting. I’d love to keep it that way.”

Lyra’s eyes glimmered faintly in the dark as she countered without missing a beat.

“You weren’t resting. Not even close. That’s why I came when I sensed your presence still awake. Also, it’s not that late. The day is still quite bright.”

Michael pinched the bridge of his nose, exhaling through it. “Just because I wasn’t resting doesn’t mean I wanted to do anything else.”

Lyra’s lashes lowered—just enough to hide the quick, treacherous roll of her eyes—before she schooled her face back into that marble-still calm.

She knew better than to let it show.

The man in front of her held her life on the thinnest of threads, and though he seemed in a mood light enough to tease, she didn’t mistake that for familiarity.

Her tone turned solemn. “I have completed the assignment you gave me.”

Michael’s gaze sharpened. “Were you detected?”

“No.”

Michael stared at her.

“Report.”

Lyra stepped closer, the hem of her robe whispering over stone. “Per your order, I checked on the other lords.”

There were eight noble houses in Thornvale. One viscount, two landed knights, and five barons. The viscount’s territory was the seat Michael occupied now—nominally ruling the whole of Thornvale. On the surface that is.

Before Michael’s arrival, the domain was rotten through and through, and the silence from the seven other houses for days made their stance plain. They did not take their new lord seriously.

Lyra began with the knights.

“Two landed knights hold hereditary grants by deed,” she said.

In nobility, knights can be considered part of the upper class through significant deeds. Of course money can also buy it at times.

They are… nobles, technically. But at the lowest of lows on the noble ladder.

Lyra lifted a gloved hand, counting first. “The young one, Sir Cailen, has just inherited his territory a year ago. He’s relatively clean.”

Then a second finger. “The old one, Sir Halvern, is corrupt.”

Michael’s eyes thinned.

“On paper, Blackmere is self-sufficient with farming, yet his ledgers show coins like a river. His personal guard wears etched steel. Strength and riches do not align with his land.”

Michael cursed inwardly. Another parasite.

“Move on to the barons.”

Compared to the knights, the barons were the bigger fishes.

Lyra’s mouth flattened. “All five barons are corrupt,” she said.

Michael drummed a finger on the desk. “No exceptions?”

“Two are… noteworthy,” she allowed. “Not for virtue. For strength.”

His gaze lifted. “Why?”

“Personal cultivation,” Lyra said. “Both sit at the advanced stage of the knight’s path. That is far beyond what you normally find in barons.”

“Names.”

“Baron Alric of Greyfield. Baron Maddox of Redridge.”

Michael didn’t say anything and just nodded.

“Good work,” Michael said at last. “Go and rest for now.”

Lyra inclined her head. “Yes, my lord.”

“Find Lia or Ace. Tell them I said to give you a room in the manor. I’ll call you later for a fuller debrief.”

“Understood.” Lyra stepped back.

“Dismissed.”

Lyra melted into the corridor’s dim like a shadow remembering where it belongs; the door clicked shut.

Silence returned

Michael rubbed at his temple. Thornvale was rotten down to the studs. No use gnawing on the whole carcass again.

Do what you can do.

Step by step.

Michael’s attention drifted back to the Epic-grade weight in his soul.

He reached in and called it forth.

The palm-sized coffin settled into his hand. At a thought, his awareness slipped through the seam like mist.

The “inside” bloomed in his mind’s eye: a low, windless expanse under a ceiling of grey, sullen cloud.

Dark soil—fine as ash, heavier than loam—stretched about two kilometres in every direction, marked here and there by pale, half-buried sigils like old grave-stones worn flat.

No horizon. No sun. Just a steady, even gloom.

This was the storage space within the epic grade item, the damaged coffin of the forgotten.

Michael flicked a finger and pulled a potion from his own storag.

With a mental nudge, he “placed” it not in his palm but in the coffin’s field.

The bottle winked out of his hand and, in the inner landscape, simply… appeared.

It dropped the last half-inch and kissed the soil with a soft tap, settling upright.

Michael’s eyes narrowed.

He reached out picked the potion bottle back up from the coffin’s inner world—and when it reappeared in his real-world palm, his brows lifted slightly.

Dirt.

There was a faint dusting of black soil on the bottom of the bottle.

The texture was the same as what he’d seen in the coffin’s space.

Michael lips pressed into a line.

His gaze flicked toward the item in his hand as he wondered if the space in coffin was like a mini world.

Did it have air, though?

Michael exhaled, his mind drifting deeper into the bond he shared with it.

Michael knew he could go inside of he wanted.

The knowledge wasn’t taught—it was simply there, as if the coffin itself had whispered it into his soul when he refined it.

Michael hesitated.

A spatial world… that I can enter.

He stood from his chair, placed the coffin on the desk, and glanced once at the door. Silence.

His breath steadied.

Then he willed it.

Enter.

In an instant, his figure vanished—like smoke folding into smoke.

The palm-sized coffin slipped from the air and landed softly on the wooden floor of the study with a muffled thunk.