"There's definitely something strange going on—but instead of guessing, I might as well go take a look myself."
After probing the trait interface several times with no change, Hel stopped wasting effort. With a single thought, she transferred her consciousness completely into Lyco's body.
Her main body went limp, nearly collapsing to the ground.
Thankfully, Niv—who had prepared for this—caught her from behind and gently settled her into a nearby chair.
In that brief moment, Hel's form within Lyco began to fade, as though someone were erasing her from the world bit by bit with an eraser.
The next instant, Hel's vision blurred—and everything before her changed.
This was a world of dazzling colors. There was no sky, no ground—only countless motes of multicolored light scattered everywhere.
Some gathered in small clusters of three or five; others drifted alone.
In this bizarre realm, time, space, and all the physical laws of the real world had lost their meaning.
At times, light motes that appeared distant were in fact right beside her, while others that seemed close were actually impossibly far away.
Here, sight, taste, hearing—indeed all senses rooted in a physical body—were completely useless. Every rule that applied in reality simply did not function.
This is troublesome, Hel thought as she observed the strange world before her.
She had entered subspace not far from the Flower Spirit Mother Tree, yet she could not see even a trace of it.
Even in her perception, the Mother Tree felt extremely distant—so distant that the connection had become faint and tenuous.
Looks like finding it is going to take quite some effort.
As Hel was thinking this, she suddenly noticed something utterly out of place in this world.
It was a silver-white sphere of light, not very large, emitting a soft silvery glow. Fine silver threads circled its surface in slow, flowing arcs.
Compared to the surrounding light motes—which felt loose and fragmented, even when clustered together—this sphere gave Hel a sense of stability.
A stability that did not belong here.
As though it were something that should never have existed in this world at all.
That's odd.
Hel used trait inspection on the silver sphere, and the result both surprised her and made perfect sense.
Storage Space? How is that a storage space? Can one even be this small?
She stared at the sphere, which was barely the size of her palm, utterly unable to associate it with a storage space.
What could you even store in something this size—loose change?
Yet the trait color displayed was purple quality.
So even size is completely random, huh.
Hel tried reaching out to touch the sphere—but her fingers passed straight through it.
When she attempted to sense its position with her spiritual perception, she was startled to find that although the sphere appeared right in front of her, it was actually separated from her by a vast distance.
So even something as close to physical as this storage space follows the same rules as the other light motes.
As her spiritual perception connected with the sphere, a sudden realization dawned on her.
She felt that with a single thought, she could instantly arrive near it.
And so she did.
In that instant, countless streaks of light rushed past her vision.
It was like being blasted by flashing lights nonstop, forcing her to squint and raise an arm to shield her eyes.
When she opened them again, she had arrived in a different region of space.
The same multicolored light motes. The same lack of sky or ground.
The silver sphere was no longer in front of her—but within her spiritual perception, she could clearly sense its location.
At last, Hel understood.
In this world, all physical perception was meaningless. Only spiritual perception revealed the truth.
She reached out again, this time guided by her spiritual sense, and touched the silver sphere.
Instantly, sharp pain shot through her finger.
That pain came from the friction between a stationary object and a continuously rotating stable space.
The chaotic spatial energy clinging to that stable space had turned into countless tiny blades, slicing relentlessly at everything around it.
Only Hel's current body—crafted from high-grade materials like orichalcum—could endure such spatial cutting with nothing more than mild pain.
Had this been an ordinary person, their fingers would have been shredded long ago.
It's tangible? Then…
With a thought, Hel pulled the Storage Space trait into her trait inventory.
The moment she removed it, the slowly rotating space abruptly vanished. In its place remained a faintly glowing rune.
And above that rune, a new trait appeared—
Space Node.
This was unlike any trait Hel had encountered before.
Its color was neither multicolored nor black, but a shimmering silver.
Even more strangely, as Hel stared at it, the trait began to fade, gradually becoming transparent. Yet when she looked away and observed it with her peripheral vision, it instantly returned to normal.
This trait is seriously weird.
Hel tested it with spiritual perception, then reached out and touched the rune.
The rune flickered more intensely—but caused her no harm at all.
Instead, her fingers felt as though they were touching a lump of cotton—soft and fluffy.
Then, with another thought, Hel placed the Storage Space trait back where it belonged.
The instant it returned, layers of spatial turbulence began to coil around the rune. Before long, it once again transformed into the familiar silver sphere.
Only now did Hel realize that the sphere she had first seen—no larger than her palm—was merely a projection.
In reality, it was a massive sphere with a volume of roughly a hundred cubic units.
And the moment the trait was restored, a tremendous repulsive force erupted from the space node, blasting Hel away at its center and hurling her an unknown distance.
By the time Hel finally came to a stop, she could no longer sense the silver sphere at all.
Yet the surrounding world remained just as bizarre and kaleidoscopic as ever.