---
title: "Chapter 976: Spatial Distortion"
slug: "ch-982"
novel: "Dimensional Keeper: All My Skills Are at Level 100"
number: 982
views: 0
likes: 0
wordCount: 1247
createdAt: "2026-04-15"
---

Fsssshh.

The rune flared. Not brightly, not violently, but with a subtle shimmer, as though the very air outside the cell had folded upon itself. The faintest ripple of spatial law pulsed outward, invisible to ordinary eyes, but to Max it was as clear as a lantern in the dark.

He straightened, heart steady. ’There it is. My thread.’

Closing his eyes, Max reached out with his soul, his Three Dimensional Body weaving itself into the lattice of space. His own comprehension of the Level 3 Concept resonated with the wisp outside, a bridge forming between prisoner and freedom. The walls, the runes, the locks—all meaningless. Only the space itself mattered.

A sharp breath.

A twist of will.

And Max vanished.

One moment he was inside the spiritglass cage, hidden by the illusion of a broken elf. The next, his form flickered and reassembled just outside, standing with his back pressed flat to the wall beside the glowing rune.

Max allowed himself a single nod, a small exhale of relief. ’Good. That part worked.’

But relief was fleeting. The rune releasing space concept and Max’s use of teleportation had caused a subtle mana fluctuation in the hall.

"What was that? I suddenly sensed mana just now?" one of them snapped, head jerking sharply toward Max’s direction. His eyes narrowed, scanning the corridor, pupils glowing faintly as his soul sense stretched.

Max froze, body pressed flush against the spiritsteel wall, his aura smothered to nothing by the Blue Soul. His heart didn’t race, his breath didn’t falter—he simply became stillness itself, a shadow within a shadow.

"Yeah, me too. It was subtle, almost negligible, but I also sensed it just now," another guard muttered, his tone uneasy. The second man’s gaze swept the floor, then the ceiling, pausing briefly on the cells lined down the corridor. His brows drew tight. "Something’s off."

The third guard’s voice was heavier, weighted with suspicion. "Could someone have sneaked all the way here?" His hand twitched toward the hilt at his side, veins throbbing across his temple as his instincts screamed.

The first man turned in a full circle, scanning every cell, every corner of the silent hallway. His steps carried him back toward Lenavira’s transparent cage. Max’s hand twitched instinctively toward his blade, ready to silence him if needed—yet the man leaned in close, staring at the curled projection inside the cell.

Nothing had changed.

"She’s still here." His voice was softer now, relief tugging at its edges. He pulled back, shaking his head. "No breach. Nothing missing."

Still, his unease lingered as he straightened and addressed the others. "I think it’s outside. A battle. That would explain the soul fluctuation earlier, why old Third reacted the way he did." His eyes flicked briefly toward the guard who had unknowingly opened the cell for Max earlier. "And why we felt that mana just now."

The second nodded slowly. "Hmm. That might be the case. The obelisk shakes whenever strong experts fight outside—disturbances seep in."

The third, the one whose hands had betrayed him under Max’s Monarch’s Authority, shifted uneasily. He could still hear that command whispering through his skull, the echo of fear-driven obedience. His gut twisted. His soul recoiled. He wanted to confess—wanted to spill what had happened, that something else had moved his will like a puppet. But he didn’t.

If he spoke, they would not believe him. If they doubted, they would drag him to the elders, to the inquisitors. And then they would rip open his mind with soul-searching arts, strip every secret bare, perhaps even brand him a spy.

And spies did not live long in the Void Soul Tower.

So he swallowed the dread, lips pressed thin, and forced himself to nod. "Yes... must be outside."

Max, still a breath away from discovery, watched every flicker of their expressions, every weight of their words. His eyes narrowed slightly. ’Good. They doubt, but they don’t know. The illusion holds.’

His mind shifted swiftly. ’But they’re shaken. I can’t linger here. Every second I remain is a blade over my neck. I need to move.’ With that he began making out of the obelisk. There was nothing left for him to do in here anymore.

Max’s steps were soundless, each movement measured, his body blending with the shadows cast by the cold, rune-lit walls of the obelisk. He slipped past the patrol post where three guards still murmured uneasily about the disturbance. Their voices faded behind him as he descended the spiral path that hugged the wall toward the lower floors.

His mind, however, was not on them. It was on the limitations he had just uncovered.

’I need to learn how to teleport to and out of closed spaces,’ Max thought grimly, his eyes narrowing as he paused on the landing, letting two armored wardens pass. He pressed into the hollow between two columns, invisible and smothered, until their heavy boots clanged down the stairs below. Only then did he slip out again, step after cautious step.

Inside Lenavira’s cell, he had felt it—like a barrier, an unseen wall pressing against his soul whenever he tried to summon the power of space. His teleportation would not answer him, as though the closed cube severed the tether.

He could tear through space in the open, bend it, slip between folds of reality itself—but not when locked inside sealed boundaries. That prison had mocked him, forced him to rely on trickery and patience instead of brute mastery.

He had already sensed this problem when he was outside the cell.

A faint sigh escaped him as his fingers brushed the wall. That was why he had to prepare the rune. A wisp of his own concept outside the cell, anchoring him. Without it, he would have been trapped, helpless, relying only on raw force to carve a path—and that would have doomed everything.

His thoughts spiraled inward, dissecting his own mastery.

The first level of Space Concept—Spatial Tear. The crude, primal use of space, ripping apart reality like cloth. Useful, destructive, but clumsy.

The second level of Space Concept—Spatial Stasis. A subtler thread, halting motion, freezing objects, attacks, even time-flow in brief fragments. More delicate, more refined.

And the third level of Space Concept—Spatial Distortion. Twisting space itself, bending it, stretching it, folding it until direction and distance lost meaning. It was this power he had leaned on tonight, laying a sliver of distortion outside the cell.

When his rune released it, he had tethered himself to that distortion and slipped out through its warped pathways.

Max’s eyes gleamed faintly in the dark, blue soul pulsing in rhythm with his steps. ’Spatial Distortion... I’ve only touched its skin. What I’ve used is nothing more than the edge of a blade still sheathed. Its true potential is far beyond this.’

He ducked low as a squad of Thunder Monarch Hall enforcers turned the corner above him, their halberds glowing faintly with lightning runes. He didn’t move. He didn’t breathe. Their steps thundered down past him, none the wiser.

Straightening, Max exhaled slowly, resuming his path down toward the second floor.

’If I don’t master teleportation in closed spaces, I will always be one misstep away from death. I can’t depend on tricks forever. One day the runes won’t be enough. One day, it will be me, locked in a sealed world, and only true understanding will open the door.’

His lips curved faintly, not in a smile but in resolve.