My eyes slowly open, and seeing the stone built ceiling that looks 150-190 meters above me, I jolt up.

  Where am I and more importantly I’m.. alive?!

  There’re stone walks everywhere with some openings that show more pathways with more stone walls leading on; They look about two and a half meters tall.

  “Where the living fuck am I?”

  So, I somehow survived the god damn black hole and now I’m here?

  *Sigh*

  A gust of wind brushes past me and I get shivers down my spine from the cold. I can’t really see much here because of the walls, but I catch a glimpse of what looks like a man lying on the ground in a pathway to my left.

  “…”

  My whole body still feels sluggish after waking up, so I slowly make my way towards him step by step until I feel my strength coming back.

  “Anyone in there? If you don’t mind me asking, any idea where we are?”

  The man doesn’t respond and I approach him. Is he asleep or something? Weird to think someone would be sleeping here. Should I poke him or something?

  “You ok si-”

  His body topples and his lifeless husk falls to his face. What the fuck. I’ve seen my fair share of dead bodies, but the atmosphere is throwing me off. There’s something off I feel about this place; I just can’t put my finger on it. There’s no mana in the air, like At All. Not even the slightest hint of mana and the pathways just keep going on-and-on with no end in sight.

  With the flick of a wrist, I use silent activation on soul walker which doesn’t require any mana, and separate my physical body with my soul so I can get a better view.

  The physical and astral planes split as time freezes, and my soul becomes a separate entity. Time returns as space returns to its normal, and I move up closer to the ceiling and try to pass through the wall; I’m getting blocked?

  Should’ve known, guess there’s a barrier up here preventing even my astral form from leaving. Wouldn’t be of much use either because my actual body is still down there.

  I look down and I can just feel my heart thumping just a tiny bit louder even though my body is down there in this maze.

  How the hell did I even end up here? Could I possibly rift out of here? I have to at least try, but I have a feeling this barrier won’t let me create a link with a different world, plane or possibly even a separate location within this maze.

  My senses suddenly run rampant; Something’s making contact with my body.

  I quickly kill the skill, my soul and body converge. Am I getting attacked already? Was that man alive somehow or is there something more here? Fuck I don’t have time to contemplate.

  My eyes jerk open and my body thrust’s away from there source of the stimuli.

  My heart’s thumping so loud, I can barely see through my body shaking, but I can make out an image of- wait is that a child?

  My senses are still a bit dull, but judging from my vision, that definitely is a child, I’m sure of it. Looks to be a girl around 8, 9 or maybe 10, I can’t really tell.

  What the hell is a child doing in this god forbid place, and why did it come to me?

  The girl in tears sprints towards me, debris on the ground start to jump a bit, Spatial Awareness triggers and I can feel something heading towards us.

  Thought Perception wants to jump start, but nothing happens. I lose precious seconds thinking and without a single option, I run towards the girl, but I miss my timing.

  A monster I don’t recognize with dis-morphed human faces jolts in through a pathway to the right and crashes right in front of me throwing me a few meters back hitting a wall back first. My strengthened spine crackles and I can tell my brain wobble. Blood pools in my eyes but my vision remains clear. Blood drains into my mouth and, Fuck, that hurts like hell.

  The monster jumps between the walls and reaches the back of the girl. Gulping down the blood that came up, I yell out,

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  “Don’t You Fucking Dare!”

  The monster pulls its arms back like it’s going to sling-shot it. Shit, That thing’s going to kill the girl! Think damn it, I don’t have time to be screaming pointlessly.

  Though Perception finally decides to activate, and I use it to my advantage.

  Since there’s no mana here, I can’t use any attack skills or do any spells here, But didn’t I get the ability to create matter? Wait I can create fucking matter? Anyways, If memory serves me right, it doesn’t use any mana to work. And if it can create anything, it’s likely I can create a magic circles and activate them then and there with pre-activated circles. Yes that’s it!

  I flip my body through the slowed time so my legs are on the wall.

  Time returns and magic circles that glow a light green spawn underneath my feet, bouncing off of each other and creating an air pressure difference that lunges me through the monster’s sternum. I crack through the bones and manifest a pair of swords in the hole I made that slices the thing in half. YASSSS!!

  I land on the ground covered in blood and God do I smell bad. I spawn a circle with Aquant Magic implemented that floods water over me. It tastes like water with mana in it which genuinely tastes like absolute dog water. Most of the blood covering me is washed away and I rush over to the girl.

  “Are you ok? How did you end up here?”

  Calm down Aarius, we’re both stressed from what just happened and she looks mortified. The girl takes a few steps back as I get close, but with blood still pooling in my eye’s, I’m about to pass out. There’s an internal bleed in my head and blood is pooling, I have to act fast. Hurriedly I create a circle of instant healing layered with a hint of what I understand from regeneration. My head hits the ground and the circle activates.

  My ribs move into position and the bone connects together. It feels like something is getting welded in my chest, and this burning sensation is so fucking awful. I bite my lips so hard, they start bleeding. I might just pass out from the pain itself.

  My broken ribs and bones are healed, but the remaining blood still lingers in my head putting pressure on my brain. How the hell do I get that out? I think, and an idea surfaces, but It’s a risky one.

  I create a demon summoning circle under me, but change it in the slightest so it definitely doesn’t link with anything. I change the structures enough, so it doesn’t take blood from the arteries and veins, only the blood I bled out. The blood pooled in my eye flow out and into the circle, the blood that was in my skull passes through my head and into the circle, the healing circle clears any remaining infections, contamination and dissipates.

  I break the demon summoning circle by overlapping it with another circle.

  I don’t feel any pain or anything more wrong, I did a check with Spacial Awareness and Analysis, but I don’t see anything wrong with no one or anything near us.

  I manage to sit up and curl my legs to a more comfortable position and take a deep breath. My rib cages move normally, and I finally get a fresh breath.

  “I’m Aarius, what’s your name?”

  The girl with her brown eyes, walks closer and lies her head on my shoulder and her long black hair brushes by my face. Not to judge, but judging by the smell coming from her, I can assume she hasn’t washed for about 2-3 months. Putting it simply, I’m not even sure, but the smell is very heavily concentrated. But I’m assuming that’s about when she got here.

  “Lyanna” She says holding back her sniffling.

  “Any idea where you parents are?”

  Her expression goes blank and the girl, Lyanna responds,

  “…They, They…”

  Oh. I think I have a feeling what she’s talking about. I feel like shit for even asking now.

  “If it’s fine, can I come with you?” The girl says still avoiding my contact.

  “I don’t mind, do what you feel like”

  She breaks down into a silent cry as tears trickle onto the shoulder of my shirt, and I decide to rest here for a bit before leaving.

  Two hours pass, and I learned that I could create a lot of things using that skill and among those things, I could create a vessel for me and link my consciousness with it to create a sensory field. I also tried to create more complex things, but my head overloads itself every time I try to create an object with a lot of details. But one thing is the vessels aren’t that effective, because for one, it’s really hard to maintain stability and not break the link, second the vessel can’t sense too much, only changes that happen in the air, smell, and sensitivity up to 2.5 meter’s. That’s negligible though, because I can just create more vessels and link them together to create a network, increase my range.

  Lyanna’s body moves in her sleep and the links I made break. Nothing I can do about that now, not like I’m going to wake her up either. While she was asleep, I took the time and mapped the maze onto a sheet of paper and started marking our path out.

  Soul walker wasn’t a skill I used very much but luckily enough I still remember me using it for the first time. I got the skill to separate too, I’m not too familiar with its main use, but I was able to create a vessel of me, put it up on the top ceiling and by using separation partially split my soul core into half with the smaller half active in that vessel.

  I made some changes to that vessel during creation so now it has eyes that can see with distortion under spacial magic. Basically, the eyes on it can now zoom into wherever I want it to. There’s some blurriness on the edges, but I can see clearly in the center. I feed what the vessel can see directly into my left optical nerve so I can see properly on my right and a CCTV view on my left. It’s a bit disorienting the first time, but I’ll get used to it.

  We’re somewhere close to the entrance of this maze and I can see an exit at the opposite corner of the entire map. Due to the enormous fucking size of this damn maze, it’ll take us at least an entire month and a half to make it out.

  Yeah no, we’ll take our time.

  Besides, I tried jumping over the walls but there’s a barrier of some sort right above every wall and they just keep regenerating if you try breaking them. I tried every circle I know imbued with my most powerful spells. Since teleportation won’t work because the circle wont link with anywhere in this place, that’s not an option. Who ever the hell made this place thought of everything, I can tell that much.