The Menagerie was a marvel of contained wilderness, a series of vast, domed biomes nestled in a secluded quadrant of the Academy grounds. By day, it was a place of study for Beast-Tamers and Alchemists. By night, it was a fortress of silence and watchful enchantments. Or it was supposed to be.
**[SECURITY PROTOCOLS ARE TIER-TWO STANDARD. MOTION-SENSING WARDS, AUDITORY DAMPENING FIELDS, AND SIMPLE GLYPHIC ALARMS. YOUR CURRENT MANA-SENSE, COUPLED WITH MY ANALYSIS, CAN MAP THEIR PATTERNS. THE WEAKNESS IS MAINTENANCE. FOLLOW THE PATH.]**
Machina's blue overlay painted a dizzying, three-dimensional grid across my vision as I crouched in the shadow of a topiary hedge. I saw them now—not with my eyes, but with the new, synesthetic layer of perception. The motion wards were pale, shimmering curtains of intent, their trigger thresholds calibrated for creatures of significant mass or mana output. The auditory fields were bubbles of stillness, faint depressions in the ambient energy. The glyphs on doors and windows pulsed with a steady, low-grade light.
The 'weakness' was a section of the outer wall where a recent delivery of volcanic rock for the Magma Drake habitat had been unloaded. The wards there were patched, not replaced, their energy flow slightly frayed and asynchronous. A blind spot in the rhythm.
My heart was a cold, hard knot in my chest. This wasn't the passive forest or the forgotten sewers. This was trespassing on a guarded, high-value institution. Expulsion would be the least of my worries if caught.
But the specter of that expulsion—of being cast out, cut off from the library, the hidden spaces, any hope of growing strong enough to matter—was a sharper fear.
"Target?" I whispered, my breath fogging in the chill air.
**[TARGET: SPECTRAL BLADE MANTIS (SUB-ADULT). CONTAINMENT: BIOME 7, 'TWILIGHT GLADE.' CORE TRAIT/SKILL: [PHASE STEP]. RATIONALE: A LOW-TIER SPATIAL MOVEMENT ABILITY. DEMONSTRABLE, UTILITY-BASED, AND WITHIN THE THEORETICAL ACCEPTANCE RANGE OF AN 'AWAKENED' HUMAN. ITS MANIFESTATION WOULD CONSTITUTE 'POTENTIAL.' SECONDARY: THE PRINCIPLE OF LIMITED TELEPORTATION IS A FOUNDATIONAL COMBAT MULTIPLIER.]**
A teleport. Or a blink. A skill that could save a life, reposition in a fight, escape a trap. My mouth went dry. It was a thousand times more valuable than regeneration or mana-sense. And a thousand times more dangerous to acquire.
The Mantis, according to the bestiary I'd studied, was an E-rank predator, fragile but lethal. Its blades could pass through minor physical defenses. And its [Phase Step] allowed it to vanish and reappear within a three-meter radius, making it a nightmare to pin down.
**[ALTERED OBJECTIVE: YOU WILL NOT SUBDUE IT. YOU WILL OBSERVE. YOU WILL COMPREHEND THE MOMENT OF TRANSITION. ARCHIVAL WILL BE ATTEMPTED THROUGH ANALYSIS ALONE. PHYSICAL CONFRONTATION PROBABILITY OF SUCCESS: 3.2%.]**
Observation. Comprehension. The core of my power. It had to be enough.
I moved, a shadow guided by an alien intelligence. I slipped through the gap in the wards, feeling the distorted energy fields part around me like cold water. I was inside.
The Menagerie at night was an eerie symphony of breathing, rustling, and low, resonant calls. The air was thick with the smell of loam, ozone, and strange musks. My **[Mana-Sense]** was overloaded, painting a frantic, beautiful tapestry of sleeping and waking energies. The deep, molten pulse of the Magma Drake. The swirling, hypnotic patterns of a Dream Weavers' colony. The sharp, electric crackle of a Storm Jay.
I found Biome 7. The Twilight Glade was a dim, humid enclosure simulating a perpetual dusk. Luminescent fungi provided a soft, blue glow. The air hummed with the chirps of crystal crickets.
And there it was.
Perched on a broad, grey fern, the Spectral Blade Mantis was a masterpiece of lethal elegance. Two body-lengths of segmented, jade-green chitin, with forelimbs folded like praying hands that were, in fact, twin, wickedly serrated blades. Its head was a triangular wedge with large, compound eyes that caught the faint light. It was perfectly still, a statue of impending violence.
I found a hiding spot behind the thick root of a duskwood tree, my breathing shallow. For an hour, nothing happened. The Mantis was a predator of infinite patience.
Then, a crystal cricket, emboldened by the stillness, ventured too close.
The Mantis didn't *move* in the conventional sense. One moment it was on the fern. The next, there was a faint *shimmer* in the air, a barely-perceptible warping of the light and mana around it, and it was *elsewhere*, three meters to the left, its blade already sweeping down. The cricket was cleaved in two before its nervous system could register the displacement.
My **[Mana-Sense]** screamed. I had felt it. Not just the result, but the *process*. A local folding. The Mantis didn't travel through space; it made two points in space briefly adjacent and stepped across the seam. It required an immense, focused burst of spatial affinity mana, concentrated through its unique biology.
*Principle: Adjacency. Bridging the gap by denying the distance.*
The Mantis fed, then, with another barely-there shimmer, returned to its perch.
My mind raced. I could feel the echo of the mana pattern, the specific, elegant distortion. But to copy it? My body wasn't built for spatial manipulation. My F-rank core couldn't generate that kind of focused energy. I lacked the biological matrix.
**[ANALYSIS CONFIRMS: DIRECT PHYSIOLOGICAL REPLICATION IMPOSSIBLE. ALTERNATIVE APPROACH: PRINCIPLE ABSTRACTION. DO NOT COPY THE BIOLOGICAL ENGINE. COPY THE CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK. YOUR BODY CANNOT FOLD SPACE, BUT IT CAN, WITH GUIDANCE, SLIP THROUGH A FOLD MADE BY ANOTHER. ARCHIVE THE 'BLUEPRINT' OF THE ACTION, NOT THE POWER SOURCE.]**
It was a staggering idea. Don't steal the engine; steal the design and figure out a weaker fuel later.
For the rest of the night, I watched. The Mantis hunted three more times. Each [Phase Step] was a lesson. I focused not on the energy required, but on the *intent*, the geometric alignment, the feeling of *here* becoming *there*. I imagined the space between two points as a sheet of parchment, and the skill as a precise fold.
As the first hints of pre-dawn grey touched the high glass dome, I knew I had it. The comprehension was there, crystalline and complete in my mind. But my body was a dead weight, incapable of execution.
**[OPTIMAL WINDOW. INITIATE ARCHIVAL. TARGET: THE ACTION'S PATTERN, NOT ITS SOURCE.]**
I focused on the Mantis, on the perfect, lethal elegance of its spatial cheat. I poured my comprehension of adjacency, of folded space, of instant transition, into the **[Adaptive Mimicry]** function. I wasn't asking for its power. I was asking for its *method*.
The familiar warmth surged, but it was followed by a sudden, terrifying *tension* in my gut, as if my insides were being wrung like a wet cloth. My vision swam. A notification, edged in crimson, flashed.
**[WARNING: TARGET COMPLEXITY EXCEEDS CURRENT SOMATIC AND MANAIC PARAMETERS. FORCED DOWNSIZING IN PROGRESS.]**
**[ARCHIVAL PROCESS INITIATED…]**
**[TARGET: Spectral Blade Mantis. CORE SKILL PATTERN IDENTIFIED: [Phase Step].]**
**[DOWNSIZING: SPATIAL FOLDING PRINCIPLE ADAPTED TO KINETIC REDIRECTION. ENERGY REQUIREMENT REDUCED BY 99.7%. RANGE REDUCED. UTILITY PRESERVED.]**
**[COMPREHENSION CHECK: EXCELLENT (User achieved abstract principle mastery).]**
**[PHYSIOLOGICAL RESONANCE: SEVERE STRAIN (Biological systems protesting spatial manipulation).]**
**[ARCHIVAL SUCCESSFUL. SKILL: [Flicker Step] (System-Adjusted) integrated permanently. Mana cost: Low-Moderate. Effect: Instantaneous repositioning within a 1-meter radius along a visualized path. Cannot pass through solid matter. Cooldown: 5 seconds.]**
I doubled over, retching dryly onto the moss. A brutal headache spiked behind my eyes, and every muscle felt bruised, as if I'd been stretched on a rack. But in my status, it was there.
**3. [Flicker Step] (D-Rank Skill - Adjusted) - SYNCH: 22%**
A pathetic, gimped version of the Mantis's glorious ability. One meter. A toddler's hop. But it was instantaneous. It was magic. It was a *skill*.
The sound of a door hissing open echoed through the quiet Menagerie. The morning keepers. Time was up.
Gritting my teeth against the pain and dizziness, I activated my new, feeble skill for the first time. I focused on a spot one meter to my left, behind a larger root. I visualized the fold, the step across.
My body *twitched*. There was no light, no sound. One moment I was crouched, the next I was… still crouched, but in the new spot. The sensation was profoundly disorienting, like the world had snapped around me. My stomach lurched.
But I was hidden.
I used the skill twice more in short, sickening bursts, combined with frantic crawling, to reach the maintenance gap in the wards. I slipped out as the first keepers began their rounds, their cheerful chatter a world away from my silent, trembling agony.
Back in my room, as dawn painted the sky, I collapsed. The strain of integrating a spatial skill, even a bastardized one, had pushed my body to its absolute limit. My new regeneration trait worked overtime, a faint, comforting warmth battling the deep, systemic shock.
**[ACQUISITION SUCCESSFUL, THROUGH SUB-OPTIMAL. PHYSICAL STRESS: CRITICAL. REQUIRED RECOVERY TIME: 48 HOURS MINIMUM. HOWEVER, PRIMARY OBJECTIVE ACHIEVED. YOU NOW POSSESS A DEMONSTRABLE, UTILITY-CLASS SKILL.]**
I lay on the cold floor, spent. I had a teleport. A one-meter, nauseating, pathetic teleport. But it was mine. Stolen, understood, and integrated.
Six weeks. I had a skill to show. It wasn't much. But it was a start. A flicker in the dark, where once there had been only Blankness. The path of the thief-god was paved with compromised treasures and brutal exchange rates. I had paid in pain and risk. The currency of comprehension had bought me a single, shaky step. It would have to be enough.