Spirit's Awakening: The Path of Lightning and Water-Chapter 330: Preparing for The Teleportation Device’s Creation

Lassim stepped to the edge of the East Grove, his halberd returned to his inner heart world, and the stormy nature of his spiritual pressure being lessened on purpose by his own efforts. He’d noticed that the change in mindset made his spiritual pressure constantly have that stormy nature and urge to absorb the surrounding storm, gathering it around himself. He had to purposefully control this to prevent it from happening, but he didn’t mind the change. It was equally as effortless as restraining the divine presence his mana naturally exuded when he fully released his cultivation, and he’d gotten quite good at that since first returning from the Drow lands nearly 3 years ago now.

With a faint exhale, Lassim looked toward the distant silhouette of Skybound Village that appeared in his Spirit Sense.

"Let’s head back," he murmured.

The faint glow of spatial energy ignited around his feet once more, hidden behind the coiling and tightly wound storms of water, and lightning that wrapped his boots. Beneath the ethereal whirlwinds, the engraved array plates etched into his boot’s soles shimmered faintly, invisible to anyone without the spatial element.

Lassim’s [Storm’s Dance] activated without sound or ceremony. With a single step, space folded between where he stood and the direction of the entrance to the village.

The world condensed and expanded all at once.

Lassim’s figure vanished instantly, traversing the spatial fold and leaving a trail from the flickering storm around his boots.

In the next heartbeat, he reappeared dozens of meters ahead, stepping next to a tree that was in his way before side stepping it slightly towards his forward position.

The wind rippled faintly where he’d been a moment before, a residual current of his passage.

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Another step followed, and then another, his feet gliding over the ground as though it were nonexistent. Each motion was seamless, carrying him further and faster than the human eye could comfortably follow.

The East Grove, the dense forests, even the distant outline of the village walls all seemed to freeze and pause in time in his periphery with each step he took. Bolts of lightning were paused for a nanosecond and rain that fell in between him and his destination were pushed aside by his spiritual pressure and elemental affinities.

Before anyone had a chance to fully register his approach, Lassim appeared at the edge of the village square, his feet hitting the cobbled path with barely a sound, a casual step.

The swirling storms around his boots dissipated like wisps of fog, leaving only the faint hum of residual mana in the air. The moment his figure came into view, heads turned, and conversations froze as if the wind itself had stolen everyone’s voices.

"Did you see that?" someone whispered in disbelief, the words carrying in the quiet.

"He’s… he’s faster than a bolt of lightning! I blinked and he was just there in my spirit sense! I didn’t even see him approach!"

"No," another murmured with awe. "He’s too fast. That’s not a normal movement technique. What even is that?"

"Do you think it’s his own creation or is it in the sect library? It’s like he just appeared out of thin air. I’d love to have a technique with that much speed, but I’m too shy to ask a Personal Disciple that kind of question. Hey, I’ll pay you 100 low-grade ESS, go see if you can bribe him to tell you the technique’s name." a third voice interjected uncertainly, and Lassim, already nearing his quarters, smirked faintly from overhearing the conversation.

Speed, huh? Not quite. The truth was far more complex, but no one else could see it.

Lassim pushed the door of his quarters open and stepped inside, shutting out the whispers and lingering stares behind him.

For a moment, the quiet of the room felt deafening compared to the roaring storm outside. He exhaled slowly, it was time to begin the next step. He pulled a stack of sheets from his magic pouch and laid them on the desk.

The spatial alphabet he’d painstakingly developed over the past months lay spread across it, the magically inked symbols etched into parchment with painstaking precision. Each rune hummed faintly with the memory of its creation, carrying the distilled essence of what Lassim had come to understand about the spatial element and embodied those concepts.

Solid. Thread. Lock. Bridge. Channel. Point. Link. Horizon. Fold. Focus. Compress. Shift.

The alphabet wasn’t complete—not yet and probably never would be. Space was too vast, too elusive to be encapsulated fully in a single language—but this was enough. Enough to begin the project he’d set out to create when this all began: a working teleportation device. With it, the world would shrink, just as much as happened during his [Storm’s Dance], but on a much larger scale. Visiting back home whenever he wanted and traveling for others would be a thing of the past once its use became widespread.

The world would become much easier to defend as well. Entire armies could instantly be summoned to a new abyssal portal location and the loss of life would be immensely reduced. This was a later realization he’d made when he’d thought about the other intangible benefits adding this device to society would have. He’d thought long and hard after his initial dream of the device and considered what the negatives might be, but that single difference in defending this planet was the key to moving forward despite any negatives that might occur.

Their survival as a collection of species would benefit far too greatly.

Lassim lowered himself into the chair, rolling up the sleeves of his robe and laying out a fresh sheet of array paper.

"Alright," he said. "Let’s see if we can finally combine these and officially finalize the actual shape and design of the device’s prototype."

The first step was designing the framework of the device itself. Lassim had already determined that it would need to be modular, composed of separate plates that could be forged, inscribed, and then assembled into a single cohesive structure.

Simplicity was the goal—something efficient enough to replicate with, hopefully, the mass production machine in Rlyis and Eno’s warehouse, stable enough to endure, and powerful enough to handle the immense strain of folding space.

He began with the base plate section that would attach to the ground or possibly be buried into it for stable footing. Taking up his quill, Lassim sketched the initial shape: a sturdy circular frame reinforced with curved etchings that radiated outward.

At the center, he drew the [Solid] rune—the foundational anchor of the device that would lock the spatial fabric in place and hold the weave steady when it connected to another device.

Around it, he added spiraling arcs, flowing like threads weaving outward from a central core. These were the mana channels, pathways that would guide the energy across the rest of the device.

The lines flowed naturally, his understanding of space guiding his hand intuitively that he’d gained through the last six months of working on the alphabet. Lassim could almost see how the energy would be moving through the design, flowing seamlessly along the etched runes.

"Stability first." He thought to himself. Without a solid foundation, the teleportation bridge would collapse under its own weight, and avoiding this was important.

Once the base plate was outlined, Lassim moved on to the connection plates or shafts that made up the ring and would house the internal pieces necessary to stabilize the portal from collapse, tearing its passengers into tiny shreds in the blink of an eye, or worse… into void beast food.

These smaller, rectangular components would serve as the device’s modular links, defining the spatial "bridge" itself and were drawn in neat sections that would make the "Arch" he intended to design.

At the heart of each plate, he sketched the [Thread] rune—symbolizing the delicate weave of space that connected two points. Along the edges, he placed smaller versions of the [Lock] rune to stabilize each plate and ensure the connections didn’t unravel mid-use.

The work required absolute focus, every line carefully measured to ensure harmony between the runes. One mistake, one misplaced curve or intersecting channel, and the entire array could fail catastrophically. This was just a drawing of the eventual designs, with no mana infused whatsoever, but it was just as important as the real deal in Lassim’s mind.

Next came the control module—a smaller circular plate that would house the activation sequence on the edge of one of the base plates.

Here, Lassim sketched the [Open] and [Close] runes on the terminal, placing them opposite one another with a sense of balance. Between them, he inscribed the [Channel] rune to guide the flow of energy seamlessly that then traveled through the entire rest of the design with such elegance, layering it directly on top of the work he’d done so far. The module would act as the brain of the device, triggering the connection and shutting it down when needed but also connecting it to the storage device that would fill with ambient mana and be converted to void energy necessary for the portal to jumpstart on command.

His mind raced as he worked, refining and adjusting the design with each stroke of the quill. The entire device was beginning to take shape on the page. The last bit added after the storage device with the runes [Gather], [Convert], [Hold], and [Transfer] was the heart of the device.

The heart was actually represented by a modular piece that was the Keystone of the arch, which would sit directly at the top of the half circle shape. This Keystone was elaborately sketched with a side-by-side set of symbols purely for artistic design. They were embellishments of feathers that looked like Zaphy’s wings and a pair of Mari’s Royal Dragon Koi horns that she’d grown back after the Spirit Transformation stage and their continued growth through the Spirit Ascension stage.

He even added some additional scale embellishments before moving to finalize it all with a copy of his own halberd’s silhouette. He wanted everyone to know and remember that it was their combined efforts that lead to this innovation and that he was also guiding and protecting their travels through the void, as well as against the Abyssal demons—as lofty as that goal of becoming a bastion for Nexaria’s people was.

Once the design for the framework and initial array lines was complete, Lassim leaned back slightly, studying the design with a critical eye. The array lines flowed together like he believed they should, and each rune placed where his mind thought best to ensure stability and function.

"It’s not perfect," he muttered to himself, the faint hum of energy still lingering in his mind. "But it’s close. Close enough to test—if I can get the plates forged."

That was the next problem. Lassim wasn’t a metal elementalist, and while he could engrave the runes with precision, he didn’t have the tools or skill to forge the plates themselves. Spirit-forged metal—strong enough to handle the strain of spatial energy—was not even something he’d considered yet.

"Eno and Rlyis," Lassim said aloud, the names coming to him with a sense of certainty. The Array Master mentors he’d worked with were the perfect choice. They already knew he was special, so what more was adding another revolutionary project that could change the history of the Array Master profession once more?

"Let’s make this happen," he murmured, reaching for another sheet of paper. He sketched out the specifications for the plates in greater detail, more on the technical side for the actual listing of the exact dimensions, thickness, and runic placements for each component. All designed to slot together seamlessly without the rune array lines getting in the way.

As he worked, Lassim considered the material itself. He was lost on where to even begin, but if anyone could help, it’d be those two.

Hours passed unnoticed as Lassim refined the design before finally reaching for his communication disc to see if they’d make a short trip to the Tempest’s Cradle just for him so he could continue his training for the remaining 6 months before the Elder’s Summit.