My Talent's Name Is Generator

Chapter 1221: Challenge

I stared at the humanoid figure, and my eyes widened when I noticed what was embedded in the center of its forehead. A single golden thread ran through its silver body, almost impossible to notice beneath the overwhelming spatial fluctuations surrounding it.

Yet the moment I saw it, I knew exactly what I was looking at. My heart began to beat faster, and a surge of excitement spread through me. The Origin of Space. After everything I had done to reach this point, I had finally found what I had been searching for.

I barely had time to process that thought before the figure moved. It took a single step forward and thrust its spear toward me.

There was nothing particularly impressive about the movement. No explosion, no overwhelming display of power, not even a visible technique.

It was simply a spear thrust, yet the moment the weapon moved, the Space surrounding it cracked. A thin black fracture appeared at the tip of the spear and shot toward me in a straight line.

The instant I saw it, every instinct in my body screamed danger. A terrifying sensation of death washed over me, and I immediately understood that I could not allow that crack to touch me and at the same time the only way to fight it was to use my comprehension of space laws.

I clenched my fist and punched forward. The surrounding Space twisted violently as a storm of spatial energy erupted from my fist.

Countless layers of distorted Space folded into one another, forming a destructive vortex that swept toward the approaching crack. The two collided, and for a brief moment, the spatial storm seemed to hold its ground.

Then my expression changed. The black crack simply passed through it. It tore through the entire storm with such ease that it looked like a blade cutting through vegetables. The spatial energy collapsed behind it, and the crack continued toward me without losing even the slightest bit of momentum.

"What?"

There was no time to think about it. I summoned my staff and gripped it with both hands before bringing it down with all the strength I could muster. At the same time, I pushed my comprehension of Space to its absolute limit.

The Space surrounding the staff folded in on itself. One layer became two, two became four, and soon countless layers were overlapping and compressing together, forming a dense spiral of spatial power around the weapon.

The staff descended just as the black crack reached me.

The outermost spatial layer shattered the moment they collided. The next layer broke immediately after it, followed by another and another. Two layers disappeared almost simultaneously, then another two, and then several more.

My expression grew increasingly grim as I watched the crack tear through every layer I had created. I was already using everything I understood about Space, yet the attack continued advancing as if my defenses barely existed.

Finally, the black crack reached my staff.

The impact exploded through my arms. An immense force surged through the weapon and slammed directly into my body, ripping through my defenses before I could react. My feet left the ground, and my body was thrown backward like a stone. At almost the exact same moment, the black crack disappeared.

I crashed into the silver ocean with enough force to send waves of spatial energy rolling in every direction. Pain erupted throughout my body, and for several seconds I could do nothing but lie there.

Blood flowed from multiple wounds, my flesh had been torn open in several places, and deep fractures spread through my muscles. Even my physical foundation had been damaged. Countless tiny cracks ran through my flesh, giving me the sensation that an invisible blade had passed through my entire body.

I slowly pushed myself upright, breathing heavily as I looked toward the humanoid figure in the distance. It had not moved from its original position. The spear was still in its hand, and the golden thread remained embedded in the center of its forehead, quietly glowing within its silver body.

As I looked at it, the realization finally settled in.

That attack had never been meant to kill me.

It had been a test.

And judging from the wounds covering my body, I had only barely passed the first exchange.

I barely had time to steady myself before the humanoid figure moved again.

The spear pierced through the air, and that same black crack appeared once more. This time, however, I did not immediately defend against it. I watched. My eyes followed the crack as it formed, studying the way Space behaved around it, the way it separated from everything else without actually disappearing. There was something fundamentally different about it compared to the spatial techniques I had used until now. My attacks manipulated Space. This crack seemed to represent something deeper.

I twisted my body at the last moment, allowing the crack to pass beside me, but even the slightest contact with its edge tore open a wound across my shoulder.

Blood sprayed into the silver ocean as I countered with a spatial blade that formed beside me and swept toward the figure. It raised its spear and blocked the attack, but the collision sent ripples through the surrounding Space.

Before I could pursue, another black crack appeared.

This time I saw more.

The crack was not simply cutting Space. It was separating one position from another, creating a boundary that should not have existed and forcing everything caught along that boundary apart. It was not destruction. It was isolation.

The realization struck me with such clarity that I almost forgot the incoming attack.

Almost.

I twisted sideways, but the crack still grazed my legs. My flesh split open, and I was thrown backward once again. I gritted my teeth and stabilized myself above the silver ocean, refusing to look away from the figure.

So that was it.

I had spent countless years thinking of Space as distance, position, movement and separation, but those were only the most obvious manifestations. Space existed because things could be apart. It defined boundaries. It created the difference between here and there, between one existence and another. And the more I watched that black crack, the more clearly I began to understand that its true power came from one simple principle.

To isolate.