About fifteen minutes later, Xier returned.
"Ready."
Dragon Spirit glanced at the more than three hundred Space Spirits. Some took beastly forms, some humanoid ones, while others lay somewhere in between—half-transparent, as if made of water.
"Come in."
He opened the entrance to his Inner World.
Taking the lead, Xier transformed into a streak of light and slipped inside.
The other Space Spirits followed close behind, entering one after another in an orderly procession.
Once they had all been taken in,
Dragon Spirit closed the entrance and sensed the state of his Inner World. More than three hundred Space Spirits, plus that palace, placed no small burden on it—but with his ten-billion Inner Worlds, he could still bear it.
All right. Now he had to figure out how to get out.
He returned to the spot of light where he had first entered and looked up.
He had followed Xier on the way in, so he roughly remembered the route. But in a spatial storm, the words "roughly remembered" were no different from not remembering at all. The turbulent currents inside changed every moment. A path open one second could become a wall the next.
Dragon Spirit did not force his way through.
He closed his eyes and sank his consciousness into the system.
"Deduce an escape route, including timing nodes and path changes."
Luck Value consumed—800 points.
Deduction began.
A torrent of data churned through his mind as countless routes were calculated, simulated, discarded, and optimized.
Three seconds later, a complete route appeared in his mind.
It was not a fixed path, but a "living" one—where to go at every moment, how fast to move, where to pause, all marked with absolute clarity.
Dragon Spirit opened his eyes and took his first step toward the direction from which he