In a split-second, Robert thought about dragging the centifish with him to the liminal void but discarded the idea. The creature wasted energy scraping against the loose cavern soil, why give it a hard, immovable footing? And it was not as if he could escape contact with it biting on him.

That's why he reached up and touched the monster's tongue and cast a spell.

"Mind blackout!"

He went full throttle. His essence reserves dipped by more than half but he found the creature's mental resistances pitiful for one with three stars as he estimated. It had the brain of a goldfish but still a brain. He commanded the centifish to remain completely still.

Slippery mucus dripped from specialized glands inside the mouth all over him. He found these secretions were involuntary because he couldn't command the monster to stop. Robert found that his estimates were wrong. The centifish wasn't a three-star monster. It was a two-star with the Life affinity. That's why he thought it was stronger than it really was. The sense life spell measured the lifeforce of a creature. It stood to reason that a Life affinity would have more of it than the average.

He sensed it was in pain from the bamboo shooting out of its wound in all directions, especially up. But up, in this case, meant through the monster's flesh and up into the lake. The bamboo punctured its back and bloomed out in the open.

The centifish was weakened. The lost legs, the bamboo, and Robert's drain essence were sapping its life slowly. Robert ordered it to withdraw its head without biting down. Then he let the monster slump to the side as he tried to wipe the mucus off of his head. It wasn't acidic or anything, just a lubricant the monster used to keep its airways working out of the water.

"I'm okay!" Robert shouted.

He checked his essence reserves. Mind blackout would wear off soon if it wasn't for essence drain shouldering part of the upkeep costs. But should he stop draining the monster's essence, it wouldn't die. He could sense the creature using a process similar to digestion to dissolve the bamboo inside its body.

A crazy idea flashed in Robert's mind. Could he use beast bond on the centifish? He focused and used the absolute control granted by mind blackout to change the monster's memories. Not that it had many, to begin with. It was a creature of instinct but it had enough to let Robert make it believe Robert was its master, owner, and everything. That it should care for Robert, Amanda, Freddy, and Noah. That it should obey Robert out of a deep feeling of loyalty. That it grew and was fed by him since it was a larva.

Robert imagined himself riding the centifish. Fighting alongside it. He brought the shell of the beast bond spell and used the little essence he had left to create the link. Beast bond used the pathway mind blackout had already carved and reached the monster's mind. Robert felt the link form, ethereal chains of domination binding the monster to his will. A layer that would solidify mind blackout's domination but leave it in a dormant state, awakening only when he needed to issue an order to the monster.

The pieces of bamboo poking out of the centifish's body fell down. Those inside had already dissolved. Robert knew the wounds were already closing as the centifish spent its enormous pool of vitality, enough to fool Robert into thinking it was stronger than it really was.

A pulse of Ether rang out of nowhere. It washed over the entire cavern, dispelling all ongoing effects. Noah's iceberg melted. Robert's buffs and curses along with it. It shook Robert to the core.

The centifish wrapped itself around Robert, encasing him in a torus of scales fifteen feet in radius. It bellowed a challenge.

Beast bond wasn't complete. Only the mental changes Robert made remained.

"Easy, boy!" Robert shouted. He also sent silent messages to Noah and Amanda, letting them know he was fine but completely out of essence.

The cavern shook. Water splashed out of the lake as the waves reached ten feet up. Watching the way they spread, Robert estimated the source of the disturbance to be a quarter of a mile away from them. Exactly in the direction, the centifish was facing.

Without warning, the monster darted toward it. It uncoiled itself and went straight ahead, leaving Robert behind.

"Robert!" Amanda shouted as she approached, concerned despite his message. Freddy appeared between them, darting toward him.

"I'm okay!" He shouted back.

"We need to run away!" Noah urged as he too ran toward them. "Away from whatever is in that direction!"

Robert's danger sense was urging him to do exactly that.

"I almost tamed the centifish!" Robert complained. "But let's go."

"We should use the void!" Amanda suggested.

"Good call," Noah said with a nod. "Robert, get a hold of the two of us, Freddy, jump on my lap."

Noah grabbed Freddy as Robert held the teacher by the elbow and offered Amanda his left hand. he used his talent. Once in the liminal void, He had everyone hold onto him while he tied the silk rope tethers around their waists. They looked like medieval ribbon dancers but he didn't care.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

Looking back at where Centifish went, he saw nothing. Whatever it was, the threat had no presence in the liminal void.

"We will go to our camp and retrieve the tent," Noah said. "Then we will go out of this cave and into a tunnel that will lead us to our next passage. I'm sorry you'll miss out on the kill or obtain a new pet but the risk is too big."

*

*

They were near the mouth of the tunnel Noah said they should get when something felt wrong. Robert looked and he saw something he never thought he would. A shockwave was spreading from the point where the centifish met the threat, obliterating everything. All he saw was a cylindrical wall of debris and water being pushed away, moving slowly through the liminal void.

But it was moving. Travel in the liminal void wasn't instantaneous but it was the next damn best thing. Time didn't stop because otherwise, nobody would see a thing. Or maybe they would because of the semi-conceptual characteristic of the liminal void. But for something to spread like this, it meant the shockwave started the moment they entered the liminal void. It was fired as a reaction to them leaving the slime cavern realm.

They could outrun the shockwave but they had no guarantees it wouldn't catch up with them the moment they left the liminal void. In fact, he was pretty sure it would. The shockwave was moving at ridiculous speeds. Hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of feet per second.

"What should we do?" Robert asked.

"The shockwave slows down with the distance. We should keep moving away from it, and by the time it catches up with us, it will be weak enough to resist," Noah said. "Better if we can find a tunnel with a curve. Let's go!"

They ran toward the tunnel they needed, going around the slope of the cavern and shifting what was up or down for them. It was less disorienting than when they first arrived here but it was still disconcerting. Robert noticed that the shockwave was, in fact, a hemisphere. It was traveling through the lake just as it was traveling on the ground. The only difference was that they were on the same angle as the origin point before.

"Keep running," Noah said. "But don't dash. Keep the same speed as everyone else. Beware not to break the tethers."

They had to run at the speed of their slowest member, which was Amanda. Robert thought about scooping her up but he wasn't strong enough to run faster than he was while carrying her.

Robert checked his timepiece. They had five days before the inevitable return. He hoped it would be enough. The whole realm could be destroyed by that shockwave. Not to mention that all the displaced water would become slimes. With time, the water would evaporate and flow back into the rivers and lakes but how many years or decades would it take? Or maybe, if the shockwave also released heat, the water wouldn't be in a liquid state long enough for the slime cores to form. Regardless, it would be hell.

He felt bad for the centifish but even worse they lost the kill and the pet. But he didn't leave the fight empty-handed. The Ether shell for beast bond had advanced by a lot. He needed test subjects to train with and the slimes were no good. They were truly mindless. He only hoped the next realm would have something he could train the spell on.

They had already got a good enough haul from this place. Noah had a backpack of holding full of slime cores and antler cuttings. The loot was worth several hundred thousand dollars, for sure.

*

*

Physical exhaustion didn't exist in the liminal void. Only mental fatigue. Their rest stops were more for recreation and to unwind than to actually rest and recover their stamina. Robert would play popular songs on the guitar, they would share jokes, and stories, sleep, and then keep on walking. Until Noah told them to stop. Robert's clockwork timepiece told them they still had a full day before they would be ejected back to reality.

"I believe the passage to the next realm is around here. I can't say for sure because I can't sense the passage."

"They don't extend into the liminal void," Robert explained.

"Interesting." Noah rubbed the chin of his mask. The hand didn't go through like food usually did. But then again, he wasn't putting his finger in his mouth. It could very well be that the area over the mouth was the only part that could change states.

"We should move deeper into the tunnel," Amanda said. "I don't think we are far away enough from whatever that shockwave was."

"But if we do, we risk getting trapped in this realm," Noah said. "Look, at this distance, the shockwave will take at least a minute to reach us. As I said, it will slow down as it travels. I will place us at the closest spot to the passage as I can. Once we return, locate it and we cross before the shockwave gets here. It is our best bet. Staying here will only let whatever creature caused that shockwave come and hunt us."

For the first time, Robert sensed apprehension in Noah's voice. He had always been so much in control of everything, so sure of victory, that now it was the opposite... wait. No. It was not the inverse. It was just that Robert's assumptions were too narrow. Noah wasn't sure of victory, he was sure of the outcome. Somehow, he knew which fights they would win, and which they would lose. In this light, his reaction was completely justified. No sane person would stay if they were absolutely sure they would lose the fight. It was not apprehension Robert sensed, nor cowardice. It was the Joestar family's secret technique.

Noah found the most likely spot for the passage and they waited in front of it. Robert set an alarm for one minute before returning. When it rang, they got ready to return and cross.

Upon their return to reality, they found no passage in sight. Everything was calm, the river above was gurgling, and the wind gently swayed the tree leaves and the grass on the tunnel floor.

They looked up and down the tunnel. The passage was not there.

"What should we do?" Amanda bemoaned.

"The passage is two miles ahead," Noah said. "I can sense its energy."

"Then let's move!" Robert urged. He noticed they were still tethered. "Don't untie the tethers. We might need it."

They walked over the rough terrain toward the passage. No signs of the shockwave.

"What rank do you think the thing that created that shockwave is?" Amanda asked with a nervous titter.

"It's an eidolon and it's impossible to determine how powerful it is," Noah answered. "But I wouldn't trust a division of the Empress' knights would win against it."

Noah actually knew it would take the Empress herself with a small army of three and four-star Archs to defeat that thing.

They ran. Noah was the first to spot the passage, a hundred feet away from them. But Robert was the one to know they would never reach it in time. His danger sense flared like a spike through his brain and he shifted to the liminal void by instinct.

The shockwave had reached them, whether it had slowed down or not at all. It made no difference. It was upon them and they wouldn't have time to cross the passage.