Sadly, he had not yet mastered the elusive method or hidden way to achieve such a feat. He had once attempted to harness the strange mode of movement to evade an attack from Diego earlier, but his effort had ended in miserable failure — a failure that left behind a subtle yet lingering trauma.
That memory clung to him like a shadow, sending a faint chill crawling across his bare spine as he tried once more to manipulate the fabric of space. His mind trembled with both dread and determination, hoping desperately that the teleportation would finally succeed this time.
Yet now, unlike before, he understood with piercing clarity that he could not afford another mistake; for if he faltered again, it would not simply be defeat, but the absolute end of his existence, a vanishing into nothingness that even memory would refuse to hold.
Immediately, Sebastian realized that any attempt to escape by ordinary means would be futile. Instinctively, he called upon his space ability and began fulfilling the intricate conditions required for successful teleportation.
He started by aligning himself with the pulse of the world, attuning to its rhythm, feeling the subtle breath of every living being, and establishing a faint yet pervasive presence that stretched across the globe. From that ethereal presence, he forged a delicate connection back to himself.
This time, he did not recklessly accelerate the world's axis or slow its rotation as he had done before, playing dangerously with cosmic balance. Instead, he focused intently on the resonance of the presence he had woven into the world's fabric.
Through that resonance, he sought out his own essence, tracking the unique signature of his energy and binding it to the coordinates of his body within the vast expanse of existence. Every heartbeat echoed like a drum of inevitability, reminding him that failure would mean obliteration, while success would carve a fragile path toward survival.
Now he was not merely the world, but also himself. In the past, Sebastian had been able to move his body with remarkable skill even though his presence was scattered across the vast expanse when he used his space ability to align with the world. Yet this time, as he reversed the process and used the world itself to align back to his body, the sensation was profoundly different.
He felt a deeper, almost sovereign control over his form, as though his essence had been sharpened into clarity. His vision of himself grew luminous; he could perceive his bones, his sinews, and the intricate pathways of energy flowing within him more vividly than ever before. It was as if the veil between spirit and flesh had thinned, granting him a rare intimacy with his own existence.
This was not simply power — it was revelation, an entirely new experience that demanded reflection, discipline, and eventual mastery before he could confront the next obstacle in his relentless quest to command the art of teleportation..
As Sebastian played the role of an obedient hostage — an individual who appeared to have surrendered to fate and accepted that escape was impossible — his mind was far from passive. Beneath the mask of resignation, he was peering into the intricate inner workings of teleportation, dissecting possibilities and wondering how space itself could be bent to achieve such a daring feat.
The first step, aligning himself with the world, was a process he had repeated countless times before, a ritual that had become second nature. This alignment granted him a multitude of options, pathways that shimmered like hidden doors in reality's fabric, though he had only mastered a few techniques that he believed could serve him in battle.
Now, with danger pressing closer and the illusion of surrender buying him precious moments, he sought to refine those fragments of mastery into something greater, something that could turn the tide in his relentless desire for survival.
He had also executed the next process only a few hours ago, and it was no less fascinating than the first. This stage involved drawing upon one of the options granted by the initial alignment — presence — and using it to anchor the world back onto himself.
While this reversal was intriguing in its own right, it did not bestow the coveted boon of teleportation. It was a step, a necessary foundation, but not the destination. For Sebastian to truly teleport, he would need to go beyond mere alignment; he would have to inscribe a law into existence itself, a binding principle born of his mastery over spatial manipulation.
Only by shaping such a law could he compel reality to obey, bending the fabric of space to grant him the impossible passage. The thought alone carried both exhilaration and dread, for laws were not easily forged, and failure would mean unraveling the fragile balance he had worked so hard to maintain.
It was somewhat akin to the way a lich forged a chaos element and ascended into the terrifying state of a chaos lich. The transformation demanded that the lich convert the energy within into a chaos element — not a crude or ordinary fragment of chaos, but one uniquely attuned to their essence, an element they could truly master and manipulate.
Only through this intimate resonance could the lich wield it with precision. With such a chaos element, they could accomplish a multitude of feats: shaping constructs from raw entropy, animating puppets that moved with eerie autonomy, forging armor or equipment infused with dread, each creation amplifying their menace.
These manifestations did not merely serve as tools; they were extensions of the lich's will, granting a formidable power boost and elevating them to stand toe‑to‑toe against even the most daunting foes, their presence magnified into something both dreadful and awe‑inspiring.
For Sebastian, what he was about to attempt was both similar to the ritual of the chaos lich and yet profoundly dissimilar. Unlike the lich, he was not manipulating the energy within his structure, but instead bending the very fabric of space — his unique ability.
He did not need to obey the intricate laws of energy; rather, to manipulate space he had to submit himself wholly to the laws of space, a discipline he had practiced countless times before. At first, this new way of reasoning had been excruciating, forcing him to abandon familiar patterns and embrace alien principles.
Through repeated trials, failures, and battles where his ability proved a decisive boon against enemy after enemy, he had learned not only to follow the laws of space but to understand why they existed, why they were woven into reality's foundation. Yet now, he was preparing to go beyond obedience. He would not merely follow the laws of space — he would create his own law, a sovereign principle carved from his mastery, one that would grant him the forbidden gift of teleportation and elevate him to a new threshold of power.