Ronan stared intently at the orb of light in his hand, his eyes flickering with various colors.
Just as he had deduced countless times in the Ascetic Tower, the real exit of this Mysterious Garden wasn’t located in any corner of the garden.
The key to the next Secret Realm Space... was hidden within the transparent, distorted humanoid form guarding the entire garden!
"The Space Transmission Arrays scattered throughout the garden, moving and landing without any pattern, are just a smokescreen, a so-called maze of Space Magic Arrays? There’s no exit in the maze at all, every path is a dead end...
The real exit has been right under our noses all along, but it was always overlooked..."
This "hidden in plain sight" puzzle was not difficult to solve, the real challenge lay in how to defeat the transparent, distorted humanoid form that guarded the garden and obtain the "key" from within.
This creature, possibly a product of Spellcasting and Alchemy, or something else, possessed powerful space and mirror attributes, and its strength was extremely formidable. Fearsome and lethal, it was not something that even an ordinary Level 3 Wizard could subdue in direct combat.
Even if the answer was revealed, to break it and extract the "key" from its body was not something the average wizard could achieve.
Ronan managed to "smash" it in one go, mainly by leveraging the special effects of the upgraded [Silverization] Seal.
He spent three entire years in the Ascetic Tower, relying on the studies of over three thousand runes, he made a preliminary analysis of a few Space-related Seals on his hands, integrating the effects of "Space Transmission" and "Spatial Stasis" into the [Silverization] Seal.
Combined with the Metal Magic effects he understood from the Extraordinary Magic Realm—[Living Steel], as well as his own [Pure Body] and the formidable physical strength of the Ancient Frost Multi-Headed Snake Bloodline...
He briefly "froze" the transparent, distorted humanoid figure, directly extracting the "key" within its body.
This "key" was also the core of its strength, which is why it displayed such a relaxed and effortless visual effect.
Ronan pinched the silvery light orb and looked around.
If this was the "key"... then his next task was to find the "door" where the key was to be inserted.
Suddenly, Ronan felt the light orb he was clutching in his hand trying to break free.
He subconsciously tightened his grip, and to his surprise, he "popped" the orb, causing numerous silver streams of light to shoot out between his fingers.
Before Ronan could even frown, the next second he realized there was still something left in his hand—
It was a rune with the bright, mirror-like sheen, the most beautiful, most complex, and mysterious rune he had ever seen.
So the core was this...
Ronan blinked, slightly surprised.
He then saw the mysterious rune in his hand suddenly shatter, then reassemble, then shatter again...
Repeating this process over and over.
"A gif-format rune?!"
This rune in his hand, compared to others he had seen, was indeed like a dynamic image compared to a static one.
Obviously, it was much more advanced and unlike anything he had seen before.
However, before Ronan could marvel for long, he noticed that the Secret Realm Space beneath his feet, as well as the area around him, began to tremble, and the tranquility within the garden was disrupted.
Ronan stepped back a few paces to the spot where he first entered, then watched as the entire garden started to "collapse" at a visible rate.
Black cracks emerged in every corner of the garden’s Secret Realm Space, as if a beautiful mirror was suddenly and mercilessly smashed.
The black cracks became more numerous, and then chunks began to "fall" downward.
A piece of "debris" fell near Ronan, with invisible fluctuations dispersing, causing a slight twitch in his brow, subconsciously he moved further back, yet his cheek was already grazed by the ripple.
A stinging sensation came.
Ronan reached out, lightly touching his left cheek, his fingers coming away with traces of fresh blood.
His eyes flickered slightly, and once again he deployed the [Eye of Truth].
White lights intertwined, Ronan squinted and looked up.
The collapsing Secret Realm Space garden, in his vision, was suddenly revealed to be a completely different scene.
Countless arcs and lines peeled off from a cohesive whole, emitting esoteric fluctuations within the peeling process that contained terrifying power.
The slight brush that injured Ronan was just an incredibly insignificant part, some of which made Ronan’s heart skip a beat just looking at them from afar.
Now, Ronan lowered his gaze back to the "shattered" rune in his hand, his eyes filled with profound emotion.
"This is... the power of Space Shattering!"
Only shattered space could produce such terrifying might.
He was deeply aware of the extraordinary nature of the mysterious rune in his hand, then, the next second, a bold idea sprang from the bottom of his heart.
This idea made his heart beat wildly and his veins nearly burst with excitement.
It was as if, after a long and arduous pursuit in the darkness, he suddenly saw the dawn’s light.
Ronan spent the full three years in the Ascetic Tower of the Magic Ring doing one thing—trying to fuse the mysteries of space into Metal Attribute magic!
In the absence of the corresponding Space Magic inheritance, this was all but an impossible task.
But thanks to the Space Energy Seed left behind by the Dawn Rank Silver Cane, which naturally "nourished" him, his Soul Seals underwent a miraculous transformation, laying the foundation for a transformation towards space, making everything possible to execute.