The Tower of Growth’s interior is so vast and varied that it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to call it a world unto itself.

During their four-year stint at Shio-ram, cadets can safely undergo various trials through The Tower of Growth.

The first ascent that freshmen face is almost too mild to be called a trial.

It’s an environment reminiscent of the forests from the age of dinosaurs, common in online searches. The air inhaled is heavy, and the trees are thick.

The leaves splayed across the branches are so expansive that they could make a garment for a person to wear.

…Though not visible to my eyes, it’s probably the case.

The plan was this.

The concentration of mana here is immensely dense. It is incomparable to the outside world and even to the dungeons entered before.

The trees and grass, which grew year-round on such mana, are the same.

The weeds that are abundant here are magical herbs, difficult to find outside because they contain mana.

The goal was to collect everything necessary. For others, it might be challenging, but with my spatial perception, it was a simple task.

Positive growth obtained within the tower applies outside as well, and one can take out items gained here.

I roamed around collecting herbs and also sought out the location of Hidden Pieces. If it’s like the original work, there should be a chance of finding Hidden Pieces around here.

The herbs were to be sold or used by me if I decided to delve into alchemy later on.

I planned to survive the five days like this. Intending to hide my presence and avoid other students, occasionally dealing with magic casually.

I’ve been told I have a faint presence, making it hard for others to find me. Additionally, I have spatial perception, allowing me to detect others’ approaches and traces beforehand. I believed this plan to be feasible.

The foundation of the plan, my spatial perception, has disappeared.

Cramped between large rocks, I blankly operated my spatial perception.

It felt like my mind was breaking. I truly hated the world.

Part of me just wanted to lie down and rest, but that would be the worst choice of all.

I mustered my will and did my best to restore my spatial perception.

It felt like hours had passed. My spatial perception remained crushed, unable to exert much power, akin to my current plight.

‘Haah…’

Looking at my condition, it seemed impossible to easily regain my spatial perception.

‘…What about food?’

Surviving five days naturally meant emergency rations were not allowed. I had to find food and water directly from the forest.

Without spatial perception, it’s… difficult.

I could somehow manage water with magic.

To obtain food here, I could either catch edible monsters or chew on tree fruits or the roots of herbs.

Even if I managed to find tree fruits while groping around in hiding, it’s hard to tell if they are poisonous or edible.

Invisible to the eye. Indiscernible by smell or taste. Ultimately, I’d have to try eating something and see how my body reacts.

I couldn’t just sit still and do nothing.

I carefully stood up. Pushing aside the leaves skillfully obscuring the crevices, I cautiously emerged.

Taking careful steps, wary of laying myself open to attack, I felt around.

– Thud

‘Ugh!’

I banged my head several times against thick branches.

– Crack

‘Woah, woah…’

I tripped over protruding tree roots and almost fell, roughly four times.

– Plunk

‘Ouch.’

While feeling the tree, I was pricked dozens of times by something sharp. If spatial perception is restored, I’ll likely find numerous marks on my palms.

Hearing is the only remaining sense I could call functional. A myriad of sounds seeped into my ears.

The sound of footsteps. My own steps as I walked. Sometimes, I heard movements that weren’t mine.

Whenever that happened, I swiftly hid in some place suitable, or if there was nowhere to hide, I would lie flat and kill my presence.

I hid my presence until the others’ moved away. Once they were far enough, I slowly got up and began to feel around again.

This process repeated several times. Hours hiding in the rock crevices, then hours feeling around, trying to find something, anything.

I managed to gather a few tree fruits (presumably) and found a large clearing and a riverside.

During that time, I tried to stimulate my spatial perception. There was no good news.

I’m not sure if this is the right analogy, but the space around here is too heavy. I couldn’t push it back to widen my range.

‘There’s no answer.’

Struggling with the tree fruits I had found, I pondered my next move.

I hadn’t yet determined if they were poisonous. I mashed up one fruit and applied it to my wrist, as I remembered reading somewhere.

If a stinging sensation occurs, it’s poison, so the saying goes. Luckily, no reaction came with time.

I cautiously held a piece of the fruit in my mouth. No pain ensued. So I ate the fruit slowly, giving time between each bite.

Much of the first day had already slipped away.

‘Sheesh…’

It was time to make a decision. Continuing like this would achieve nothing. Spatial perception had become useless, and I, its owner, had become a blind fool.

There was no benefit in continuing to struggle through life like this.

I couldn’t gather herbs, and finding Hidden Pieces was out of the question. Thanks to the enhanced blessings of growth, I could feel myself continuing to grow just by breathing.

But in this case, it might be better to fail the test and get disqualified early, ending up in the training room.

After returning to the rock crevice without any significant achievements, I absent-mindedly tapped on spatial perception, and once again, numerous sounds reached my ears.

‘…Sounds.’

With the curse of sensory sealing, I had lost sight, taste, and smell. More than half of my five senses had vanished, leaving only hearing and touch.

Since I was cursed, I’ve felt my hearing and touch improve. I was now picking up subtle noises that I wouldn’t have heard normally.

The sound of the wind blowing, the rustle of grass bending under its force, the swaying of branches, the flow of water, the chirping of small birds…

Barely holding onto my crumbling mental state, I simply felt the sounds. My sharply improved hearing caught all kinds of noise.

My hearing had improved. I hadn’t paid it much attention. I heard that if you close your eyes, the energy that goes into sight spreads to other organs.

Whether that’s true or not, I felt it, so I believed it.

‘…It’s too clear.’

But now, I could hear too well.

More and more sounds entered my ears. I could hear almost all the noises from the forest.

Maybe it’s because the energy that would have gone into spatial perception is now spreading to other senses.

Come to think of it, my hearing was always good. Even in the previous world.

While my body was weak overall, with my sight blurry, my ears were the only organ that functioned normally.

Feeling gazes with touch. It was odd to sense such things not with intuition but with touch, but my hearing was keen, and I sensed gazes even better here than on Earth.

‘Mana.’

I could feel mana. Although it was difficult to distinguish in detail due to the abundance of mana around me, various forms of mana transmitted through my skin and senses.

The vibrant mana lingering in trees, the evident mana in weeds, the flow of mana coursing through the soil, the mana flowing even in the air.

Primarily, the mana was blue and clear, emanating life and the essence of nature…

I felt it even without spatial perception.

Thinking about it.

I had always sensed mana through spatial perception.

Since when? No, I had always felt mana through spatial perception.

Even as a child, when my vision was blurry and poor, I eventually saw.

After being cursed, the world completely engulfed by darkness was terrifying.

So I depended on the unstable spatial perception, which was similar to the blurry world I was used to seeing, and relied even more on it once spatial perception normalized.

Spatial perception was all-encompassing.

I figured out a lot about spatial perception.

The reason I could recognize a book without opening it was because I received all the information from the space within range.

I didn’t need to open the book because it exists in that space. Ultimately, by recognizing the entire space, the contents of the book come with it.

I also perceived mana that way. Mana exists on top of space after all.

Hearing and touch strangely improved after I lost sight, taste, and smell. I hadn’t paid proper attention to them because I relied on spatial perception.

I relied on spatial perception. That might be an understatement. Like people see the world with their eyes, I felt the world with spatial perception instead of eyes.

Humans depend on sight, I depended on spatial perception.

But I had more than just that.

Affinity to mana, versatility, enhanced physical abilities from becoming a superhuman, and oddly improved hearing and touch…

I had many things to use, perhaps I had been too fixated on spatial perception.

‘…..’

It was an odd thought.

Now that I had already failed, I thought of giving it a proper try.

With a deep breath, I momentarily set aside my thoughts on spatial perception.

I retracted the frantically struggling spatial perception.

A sensation sprung up as if that energy spread in all directions.

– Whoosh

The wind blew in. It seeped through the gaps not covered by leaves and brushed my skin.

I heard the wind before it entered the gap. I felt it on my skin before the wind touched it.

I also felt the mana that followed the wind. Mana was abundant on the ground where I sat, on the rock I leaned against, and on the surrounding plants.

I opened my senses. Most superhumans do. They use enhanced vision, hearing, and touch to read attacks and fit their own in.

Until now, I had been doing that with spatial perception. With my sight gone, I trusted spatial perception more than hearing and touch.

I recognized the world through sounds. I understood my surroundings through touch. I read the form and nature of mana.

Spatial perception may have become useless, but the proficiency gained from using it hadn’t disappeared.

I drew a map in my head. I gathered various pieces of information to sketch a crude map, even though it was now empty.

Before I knew it, I had forgotten hunger. Thirst was tackled long ago, so there was no threat to my life.

The remnants of the elixir still clumped somewhere in my body. The energy, yet to be fully absorbed, squirmed in response.

Continuously, I opened my senses and felt around. I drew a map with the information I had gathered.

…

…

…

– Thump

Footsteps.

That sound pierced through my concentration.

Especially that set of footsteps approached quite distinctly. Right now, I’m sitting quietly in the rock crevice. It’s not my presence.

Many other presences could be heard. My increasingly intense hearing captured more sounds than I could have imagined.

– Thump, thump, thump
– …Huh? …there

Those footsteps… no, now footsteps were coming this way. Faint voices also reached me.

Just like during the last swordsmanship lecture, when Aidan’s footsteps came straight towards me among many, it was the same now.

‘Did I get caught?’

I thought I had been hiding my presence well. Occasionally, I even employed magic to move around.

But in the end, with my sight like this, I couldn’t properly check what traces I had left.

The approaching presences seemed to be roughly three. Among them could be someone with sensory abilities or a student trained in tracking.

Either way, it seemed I had been caught.

Should I run?

For a moment, I considered it, but then shook my head immediately.

Realistically, it’s difficult to escape. If I tried now, they’d already have a lock on my location. It wouldn’t be long before they caught up.

Even if I did run, not just them but many other students were targeting me. There was no telling how long I could keep running, and there was nothing to gain from it anyway.

‘……’

There was no particular resolve.

I stood up. I didn’t bother hiding my presence anymore. The movements I heard grew more urgent.

This wasn’t a good place for a fight. I moved towards a clearing I remembered.

Unlike the wary steps I had been taking so far,

My stride was now surprisingly stable.