Goblin King: My Innate Skill Is OP

"Damnit!"

I yelled and punched the wall of the spatial bubble.

My fist slammed into the strange surface with enough force to send a dull impact through my arm, but apart from the bluish lines running through the walls flickering like they always did whenever I attacked, nothing else happened.

There was no crack. No distortion. Not even the slightest sign that I had weakened it.

I pulled my fist back and sighed, my heart still beating rapidly in my chest.

I needed to calm down.

Getting desperate and frustrated wasn’t going to produce any results. If anything, losing my composure would only make it harder for me to think clearly, and right now, thinking was more important than throwing attacks at something that had already proven it could withstand them.

I had to try other alternatives.

And I think I had an idea.

The idea lay in how I thought the barrier itself worked.

The more I tested it, the more obvious the pattern became. It didn’t seem to care about most of my abilities. Offensive skills could be used normally, even if they were completely incapable of damaging the walls, and my other abilities didn’t trigger the same kind of violent rejection.

But the moment I used a skill that dealt with movement or space distortion, the result was different.

[Warp] activated, yet the spatial distortion was reversed almost instantly.

[Leap] was denied before it could move me.

Even when I tried to swap positions with something inside the prison, nothing happened.

It wasn’t simply blocking my skills.

It was specifically rejecting the part of those skills that attempted to alter my position within space.

That pointed me in the direction I should go.

I stared at the strange walls again, my thoughts beginning to connect.

If the prison’s rules were specifically designed to prevent movement through space, then maybe trying to escape by breaking those rules was exactly the answer. Crazy as that may sound.

I decided to test something out.

I used [Warp] multiple times, but instead of trying to travel somewhere, I used it the same way I normally did whenever I wanted to float in the air. Normally, I could keep myself suspended by repeatedly using [Warp] to return to the exact same position before gravity had the chance to pull me down.

This time, however, I changed the distance.

I only moved a few inches forward, then a few inches backward, repeatedly keeping the displacement so small that, from the outside, it would almost look as if I wasn’t moving at all.

At first, nothing happened.

The prison reacted exactly as it had before, instantly reversing each spatial distortion and forcing me back toward my original position.

So I kept going.

Again. And again. And again.

I continued using [Warp] until I had done it hundreds of times, never giving the prison enough time to settle completely before creating another tiny displacement.

Then, after what felt like the thousandth use, I noticed something.

My eyes widened slightly.

I could see it.

The space around me was actively working to reverse my movement and return me to my original position. The process was still incredibly fast, almost instantaneous, but there was a difference now.

I could actually see the correction happening.

Before, the prison had simply cancelled my movement so quickly that I couldn’t perceive what was happening. Now, after forcing it to correct my position over and over again, there was a slight delay between my displacement and the prison’s response.

It was tiny. Barely noticeable. But it was there. And that was the important part.

The constant displacement was putting a strain on the [Folded Prison].

I grinned.

"Got you."

Now, I couldn’t be completely sure, because the prison was still reversing my movement incredibly quickly, but there was no denying that the constant displacement was putting some kind of strain on it.

And that gave me a plan to work with. A simple one.

And that was...to continuously keep using [Warp].

If the prison had a limit to how much spatial correction it could perform at once, then I just needed to keep forcing it to work until I reached that limit.

Would that actually happen? Would the prison eventually reach the point where it could no longer reverse my movement?

Or would the accumulated strain cause the space around me to destabilize and break apart?

I didn’t know.

There was no guarantee that either would happen, and for all I knew, the prison could simply continue correcting my position forever.

But it was likely.

At the very least, I had finally found something that produced a reaction.

So I continued the process.

Again. And again. And again.

I kept warping forward and backward by tiny amounts, forcing the prison to correct my position every single time, refusing to give it enough time to settle before creating another spatial displacement.

The strain was still subtle, but I could feel something changing.

And as I continued, a grin slowly spread across my face.

There was one reason why my abilities were SSS rank, and that was because using [Warp] literally cost me nothing.

No mana. No stamina. Nothing.

So what did that mean?

That meant I could use [Warp] forever if I wanted to.

Which meant that if this method actually worked and it eventually became a battle of endurance--Eli versus an SSS Rank [Folded Prison]--Then the result would be simple.

I would win the exchange one hundred percent.

The prison could keep reversing my movements, but every time it did, it had to spend its own power to enforce that rule. Meanwhile, I could continue using [Warp] without draining myself, creating one spatial displacement after another without having to worry about running out of mana.

The only question now was how long the barrier would take to break down under the constant overload.

Hopefully, not too long.

I didn’t want to return to a ruined clan.

I had no idea what was happening outside, and the thought of the fact that Zarah was in danger while I remained trapped here made my chest feel tight.

I knew how proud Zarah was.

She wouldn’t use the sigil unless it was absolutely necessary.

I had to hurry.

So I increased the rate at which I warped.

Instead of giving the prison even a fraction of a second to settle between each displacement, I began chaining [Warp] together as quickly as possible, moving a few inches forward and immediately being forced back before shifting again.

Forward. Backward. Forward. Backward.

The space around me began responding faster and faster, the bluish lines embedded within the walls flickering with every repeated distortion.

"Come on."

I pushed the pace even further.

"If you want to keep me here, then you gotta keep up."