Investing in My Crippled Wife: Every Return Makes Me Stronger

’Damn it.’

Soren cursed inwardly as his body plummeted like a meteor, dragged down by the staggering pull of gravity.

Waiting for him in the dark below were the iron chains, shooting upward to tear him apart. He instantly manifested Winter’s Barrier, a thick wall of dense ice forming beneath him.

BOOM!

The chains shattered right through the ice barrier and tore through his re-formed frost armor. Soren managed to twist his torso away at the last millisecond to avoid a fatal blow, but the jagged iron still sliced deep into his thigh and left arm. The wounds stung viciously, his flesh burning as if doused in molten acid.

He also felt a foreign substance instantly invading his body, probably poison, but ignored it as Core Refinement activated simultaneously. Besides, he didn’t have time to worry about it as the space directly beneath him twisted, and four spatial arrows tore through his back, bursting cleanly out of his chest, spraying his blood into the void.

’...Urgh.’

Soren spat out a mouthful of blood. The crushing gravity paired with the continuous mental compulsion made every movement feel like dragging heavy lead, forcing him to fight his own body with every breath.

Then, the floor vanished entirely.

Soren fell even again, even faster this time, dropping helplessly into the endless abyss while the chains struck again. One wrapped tightly around his neck, while the other shot straight for his heart.

Gritting his teeth against the suffocating grip on his throat, Soren twisted his body mid-fall. He clamped his left hand around the chain aiming for his heart, while his right hand grabbed the chain strangling his neck.

With a brutal surge of amplified strength, he yanked both chains down, pulling the hidden attacker straight toward him. The figure on the other end of the chains surged through the pitch-black void, dragged by his sheer force. Soren braced himself, ready to finish them the moment they were in range.

But as they approached, the figure exhaled. A cloud of strange, greenish gas erupted from their mouth and shot straight into his face.

Soren recognized the poisonous nature of the gas immediately and acted without hesitation, covering his face and head in a solid helmet of frost armor while shooting ice arrows at the target.

The arrows pierced through the space where the figure had been, but they had already vanished, snatched away by the spatial user before the ice could reach them. The greenish gas lingered for a moment, then ignited with a sudden burst of flame that slammed into him, cracking the frost helmet and sending him spinning through the void.

Thud-!

Soren slammed hard into a massive, jagged boulder that materialized out of nowhere in the darkness. The impact shattered the stone into fragmenting debris, sending him tumbling as the pocket dimension’s geography warped and twisted around him.

The void was no longer an empty abyss. Rocky crags, suspended cliffside ledges, and sheer stone faces shifted into existence around him, shifting coordinates in real time.

As he fell, the assault never stopped.

The dark iron chains whipped out from the newly formed terrain, coiling around his limbs and slamming him against the rock faces. Spatial blades carved through the stone cliffs, slicing cleanly through his frost armor and leaving deep, bleeding gashes across his chest and legs. Gravity shifted violently every few seconds, one moment dragging him down like a meteor, the next hurling him sideways into jagged outcroppings.

THUD! THUD!

Soren bounced off stone ledges and tumbled through collapsing terrain, his body taking the full force of the shifting domain while spatial attacks and chemical explosions repeatedly detonated around him in the dark.

”Gah!”

Soren grunted in agony as a spatial blade cleaved straight through his thigh. Seconds later, a heavy iron chain whipped from the shadows, shattering against his ribs and sending an agonizing scream tearing from his throat. He hit another jagged rock face, coughing up a mixture of dark blood and pulverized frost.

His face twisted in desperation. His eyes widened in panic, his movements growing frantic, sloppy, and weak. He flailed against the shifting gravity, taking hit after hit. Then, after a particularly violent blow from a stone spire, his head snapped back. His eyes rolled back in his head and closed, his limbs going completely limp.

The attackers didn’t stop immediately. A few more spatial blades sliced across his torso, and an iron chain slammed into his back, but Soren’s body absorbed the impacts like a ragdoll, his breathing thinning to near nothing.

”...”

Seeing no further signs of life, the barrage gradually ceased.

CLANG! CLANG!

The chains wrapped tightly around his arms, torso, and legs, binding his blood-soaked, motionless body in place in just a few seconds. Soren hung there suspended in the dark, entirely unresponsive.

”...”

A few moments passed in silence.

Then, silently and cautiously, a figure approached. They nudged his body with their foot, testing for any reaction. When none came, they moved closer and started to sit, only to vanish into thin air mid-motion.

”...”

Then the surrounding darkness gradually warped. The pitch-black void thinned as the isolated coordinate re-anchored itself. Light trickled back in, color and sound returning to the world as the surroundings transformed into a simple, small arena.

...Thud.

The spatial caster hit the stone floor, exhaling raggedly as he wiped a thick sheen of sweat from his brow. ”Huff... Huff...”

Across from him, the other figure, a woman with slit eyes and short red hair, moved toward Soren, sat down beside him, and reached out to check his pulse and vitals.

”Huff... How is he?” the spatial user asked between breaths.

The woman tilted her head, her fingers lingering on Soren’s neck. Then she smiled, a cheerful expression crossing her face. ”He’s fainted, hehe.”

”F*ck, finally.” The spatial user slumped back against the stone floor. ”I am out of mana again.”

The woman chuckled, her slit eyes trailing over Soren’s bloodied face with something close to fascination. She traced a finger along his jaw, tilting his head slightly to get a better look.

”Hehe~ He was indeed as strong as they said.” Her lips curled into a playful smile. ”Alas, he offended the young master and enraged the leader. Or else... I would have made him my new toy~”