Chapter 248: I Never Knew Steve Can Twerk

I had to think fast—before our body parts drifted out of the domain entirely. What I feared most was Grandmaster Hugh showing up in the middle of this mess.

I gave the command.

“Freeze.”

Though I had sacrificed spatial continuity within the domain, its structure still held—and with that, all our scattered pieces froze in place.

I stared at Ana’s floating hand as it was slowly drifting past Steve’s left ear. My own foot continued rotating in place like it was still considering escape.

This was getting out of hand. Literally.

Ana’s wings, her torso, Steve’s arms, my leg—everything was just… floating in slightly confused directions, suspended in the domain I’d forcibly severed from real space. I couldn’t undo it now, not if I wanted to stay hidden.

A rope had failed. and Anchoring had failed.

I sighed and said.

“Okay… fine. If elegance won’t work…”

I commanded and started shifting the violet Essence in the domain into wind.

A soft rumble started at the center of the domain. Particles vibrated, then spun. A breeze picked up—gentle at first, like a lazy Sunday gust—and then twisted into a small, perfectly controlled cyclone.

The domain howled quietly as the vortex formed—a tight, focused wind tunnel that began pulling everything toward its center.

I unfreeze our body parts.

Ana’s arm jerked backward and spun into orbit. Steve’s head followed, bobbing slightly as it circled around mine.

“Okay… okay. Stay together. Stay together…”

My torso rotated once, then slotted into a more upright angle. My disobedient foot whipped around the windstream and reattached to my leg with a faint thunk, albeit backward.

“I’ll fix that later.”

Ana’s pieces joined in, her wings circling elegantly like oversized feathers in a washing machine. Steve’s entire body was now orbiting me in pieces like a very confused planetary system.

He groaned. “Dude… what the hell kind of twisted blender am I in right now?”

“You’re in the Juicer of Spatial Disrespect,” I said solemnly.

“This is illegal. This feels illegal.”

“Survival first. Dignity later.”

Using the vortex’s rotational axis as a spatial anchor, I fed Essence into it steadily. The bodies stayed suspended, spinning safely within the eye of the storm.

And I forced the domain to move toward the ruins.

The entire domain moved—sliding forward like a gliding orb across space. From the outside, it probably would have looked like a floating, distorted blender full of limbs.

Inside?

Steve’s leg bounced off my shoulder. Ana’s wing brushed my neck.

“I swear,” Steve muttered, “if I lose a toe to centrifugal force—”

“Don’t worry,” I said, deadpan. “Your toes are in excellent orbit.”

And with that, the vortex churned gently, carrying us as a mismatched swirl of body parts into the ruins ahead—completely invisible to the outside world, highly unstable, and very possibly the stupidest genius idea I’ve ever had.

But hey.

It was working.

The moment we entered the ruins, I went on high alert. I held my breath, trying to sense if the corruption could detect us now that we were inside.

To my relief, it couldn’t.

My ridiculous—but surprisingly brilliant—idea of creating a separate space pocket inside the domain actually worked. The black smoke drifted past us like we didn’t exist, as if it couldn’t sense anything inside the vortex. It was strange, watching it just roll by without reacting.

I didn’t waste time. I spread my perception outward, scanning the ruins for safe spots and checking how far the corruption had spread.

Most of the ruins were flooded with that foul black smoke. It clung to the walls and slithered across the broken ground like it was alive. But as I probed deeper, I noticed something odd.

The central part of the castle—the largest structure in the ruins—was completely clear. Not a single trace of corruption touched it. It looked like the heart of the ruins, but it was surrounded on all sides by thick, churning smoke.

Reaching it would be risky, maybe even impossible without giving up the domain’s independence.

Still, that wasn’t the only place.

I could sense three more areas where the corruption wasn’t spreading. They were smaller, scattered around the outer parts of the ruins. I focused on the closest one and moved us toward it, keeping the vortex spinning steadily around our floating body parts.

We arrived in front of what looked like a broken-down residential room. One of its walls was missing entirely, giving me a clear view of the dusty interior. A collapsed bed lay in the corner, its sheets eaten by time. Broken furniture was scattered around like it had been thrown in a fit of rage years ago.

Ana’s head rotated past me slowly, eyes scanning the room as she drifted in the wind current.

“Looks like a woman’s room,” she commented.

I gave her a sideways glance. Her arm floated past me just as she said it. “How can you even tell?”

She didn’t answer. Maybe she saw something I missed. Or maybe she was just guessing to pass the time while spinning like a floating doll.

I turned my attention to the floor. In the far corner of the room, something caught my eye—no, my perception. The space there wasn’t normal. It bent slightly, warping around itself. Through the veil of Essence around me, I could see the fluctuations. Space was thinner there.

And then I saw it—clear and unmistakable.

A space pocket. Hidden, but real.

My lips curled into a grin. “Jackpot.”

I shifted the domain carefully, guiding it until it covered the area where space was fluctuating. The moment the edge of the domain touched that unstable spot, the runes inside my space lit up.

They pulsed to life like they had been waiting for this very moment.

A pattern emerged—not on the floor, not drawn with chalk or carved into stone, but hanging in the air itself.

A teleportation circle.

It wasn’t something you could see with the naked eye. There were no physical marks. It existed purely in space, hidden from sight unless you had the perception and understanding to sense it.

Someone who wasn’t attuned to spatial manipulation would walk right past and never know anything was there.

I stared at it, appreciating the craftsmanship. The way the lines curved and layered, the way it interacted with my domain’s structure—it was beautiful in a way only someone like me could appreciate.

“Genius,” I murmured under my breath, almost in awe.

Steve, whose left arm was still orbiting me like a lazy satellite, perked up.

“What’d you say?”

I glanced at him with a straight face.

“Your ability to twerk. Absolute genius,” I said, trying to keep my expression serious.

There was a pause.

His floating head squinted at me. “I’m gonna kill you when I’m whole again.”

I grinned and kept my focus on the circle, suppressing a laugh.

Inside, though, I was excited. This teleportation circle was old, complex, and hidden in the folds of space. That meant someone powerful had created it. Maybe it led deeper into the ruins. Maybe it led to answers.

Or maybe it led to trouble.

But trouble was better than floating in circles with my friend’s limbs bouncing off me.

I took a deep breath and focused.

The vortex still spun around us, keeping everyone’s body parts floating in rhythm like fruit chunks in a blender.

I carefully guided each piece, matching them back into place—Ana’s legs, Steve’s arms, my own wandering foot that had nearly drifted out of range. Bit by bit, I adjusted them, aligning every joint with pinpoint precision.

When I was sure everything was where it should be, I deactivated the domain.

The spinning stopped. The sacrifice—spatial discontinuity—was lifted. In an instant, our bodies reconnected. I stumbled slightly, suddenly whole again, and heard Steve let out a breath of relief.

Then I felt it.

The air shifted. The black smoke outside jerked like it had just noticed something and then surged toward us in a wave of hate.

“Billion.” Steve muttered.

Without wasting a second, I waved my hand toward the floating teleportation circle and pumped Essence into it. The runes flared to life, spinning faster than before.

The smoke was almost on us when the space around the circle cracked and we vanished in a blink, swallowed by the light just before corruption could reach us.

Help the book with GTs and Powerstones.

Creation is hard, cheer me up!