The inverted sensor did not explode. Nor did it implode. Whether or not they would be able to extract useful readings from it later was another question. No doubt it would have a phenomenal amount of information to record if it was functional.

Simply figuring out how to move around in the space was more complicated than it seemed. Occasionally the group would run into each other where someone had just been… or, seemingly, was about to be.

Traveling in a particular direction was more difficult than it seemed, as walls and the like seemed to move. From certain perspectives, they appeared to be surrounded on all sides- but just a slight movement and they might seem free to travel in all directions.

Alva furrowed her brow. “I think I’m beginning to figure it out.”

“Yeah?” Velvet asked. “It’s not really clicking.”

“Just give me ten years and I’ll have a decent explanation of how this works,” Alva said. “Maybe.”

So far, they had been cautious about damaging any walls. That was because of the break Alva had detected at the edge. Catarina also had something to say about the dimension’s stability as well.

“I think… something happened to this location,” Catarina said. “Or it’s a very convincing disaster. First evidence- no bodies. Second evidence- no guardians. Third, no treasures.”

“Just poison,” Fuzz growled.

“I don’t know if it is poison,” Velvet commented. “Though I guess I don’t have a better word for it? It’s certainly not something we want in or around us. But it might not have that purpose. It could be a coincidence.”

“What is it, then?” Fuzz asked.

“It feels like…” Velvet frowned. “I don’t really want to say-”

“Distortion beast,” Alva concluded. “Not because I recognized this particular thing, though. Instead, it’s… that.” Alva waved her arm vaguely in an arc. Even that wasn’t sufficient for what she was pointing out.

Her senses had been freaking out for a while. Expanding and contracting, revealing everything and nothing. Now, they were expanded again- and she figured something out. “I don’t mean to panic anyone, but I think the space is being eaten by a distortion beast. This time, I’d say it’s a worm. The good news is we’re surrounded by walls and we’re not going to have teeth from all directions.”

“What’s the bad news?” Timothy asked, holding his shield at the ready.

“It’s still gonna be a full cylinder of teeth. And this thing might eat our ship. Or Metenin.”

“Well we can’t allow that,” Catarina said. “It would be quite difficult to dig our way back out to realspace if it eats the intervening stable zones.”

“Should we hurry…?” Velvet asked.

“I think it’s been here for a while,” Alva said. “So we’d better try to avoid startling it. It’s weird, though. I can see… most of it?”

“That’s because we’re in one of the layers they hide their vital organs,” Catarina said. “We might be able to ambush it instead of the other way around.”

“If you can ambush a moon, sure,” Alva said.

“I’ll minimize our energy signatures,” Velvet said. “Follow my lead on that, and Alva for navigation. We’ll want to keep everything else to a minimum.”

Alva really hoped her estimation for distance was towards the lower end. This space was weird, and she didn’t really want to travel something like ten thousand kilometers at a human movement pace. That would be like three months. They could obviously go way faster than that, and they would have to, but each amount increased the chance of them being noticed by something very large.

They moved at a pace where their energy was manageable. The very same members were used to working together for stealth formation in the past, and Velvet’s control should be enough to hide them among the formations keeping the place together.

Alva realized that the ‘poison’ was part of the distortion beast. Whether it was intentionally deadly was another question. It might be some sort of digestive thing. If Alva looked carefully, she could potentially pick out a way it was slowly dissolving the walls. Very slowly, like on the order of years. And that might be caused by something else. Either way, the effects on their energy were greater.

It was difficult for Alva to comprehend a creature as big as the distortion beast. She’d fought some before, but usually they were kilometers across. Anton had mentioned one he fought on Aipra that covered about a third of the planet. Maybe that one was exceptionally big, or maybe… the majority of distortion beasts they’d fought didn’t put much of their body into the physical realm that humans dwelled in.

Aipra was closer to where distortion beasts just lived, though with some parts of them still being hidden. This place might be a step closer. Would they be more vulnerable here? Maybe, but they would have to be able to defend themselves from others like them. There were the teeth, after all. Could teeth be sharp if the points were nearly a hundred meters wide? Maybe so, as that seemed to change as they moved as well.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Time was… difficult in a place like this. They move forward, up, down, left, right, backwards and every direction in between to make their way towards the crack Alva had sensed. That should have been the edge of the space. But of course, it was just the stable space.

Alva was uncertain of there being an edge to the universe- she didn’t even know what was at the edge of the galaxy but knew there was a lot more beyond that- but she was quite aware that subspaces having an edge was more of a human construct. That was a necessity of function, so that they could interact with them at all. So a break in the edge meant… something.

Fortunately, the distance was on the short side. Or they skipped some. Either way, there were a tense few hours approaching, but not so many that they had to figure out some way to stop and rest.

Alva gestured to the crack in space. It was like looking out into the night sky… if stars were dancing around randomly, changing in brightness chaotically. Or… like looking at technology receiving random data for images. She was fairly certain there wasn’t any actual light there. That might even be her eyeballs dying slowly. What a pleasant thought. Her energy senses weren’t any better about it, though she was currently trying to only use her passive senses. Now that they were close, there was a constant flow outward towards the distortion beast she’d noticed. Or maybe the beast was flowing inward. Either way, everything here would be a part of it in some time frame.

Timothy held the tip of his sword out into the chaos for a moment, protecting it with a small portion of his energy- but clearly leaving it somewhat vulnerable. When he withdrew it and lowered his energy, there were miniscule cracks as well as tiny pockets of material were missing- not something that could be noticed with normal senses. However, what was slightly more noticeable were places where the grain had shifted, seemingly in random directions leaving odd protrusions. Once again on a very small scale, but that was likely to build upon itself.

“Guard yourselves well,” Timothy said carefully. “We’re not going to want to remain long. Or, we leave this place to its demise.”

Catarina shook her head. “This place is too valuable to just give up. As long as the distortion beast doesn’t feel too strong?”

With another group? Alva might not have been so certain they could handle it. She was a bit on the fence for her own part, but it felt like it had a power Augmentation cultivators could match. Certainly, it lacked the oppression she would have expected from a Domination equivalent. Its size could be a boon or bane depending on how that worked out with its total energy, but it shouldn’t be able to bring unreasonable amounts of it to bear on them all at once.

Alva nodded. “I think… we can do it.” She was still at the peak of Integration… though perhaps this was her opportunity. Not the battle, exactly, but the sense of space. She had technically learned to shoot into subspace like Anton could… but her personal insights now were far different. This was something she could make use of. She just wasn’t quite sure how or on what timescale.

“I’ll go for its liver,” Fuzz growled lightly.

“Which is…?” Catarina asked in a whisper. Though that likely wouldn’t change whether it was aware of them.

“The bad part. I smell it.”

“I think it’s best for me to remain on this side of things,” Alva said.

“If we remain together, I can shield us from chaos,” Timothy said, mainly to the others.

Fuzz shook his head. “I’m splitting off.”

“Me as well,” Velvet said. “I’m hoping… to find some soft spots.” She held up her voidsteel blade. Some parts of distortion beasts were incredibly durable, but just like everything else there were weak points. And they might actually have access to them here.

-----

Smashing golems was fun. Durff didn’t care that space was a bit weird, and he honestly found it quite useful because he sometimes smashed things from the inside. Other times his hammer got stuck inside the fist of a golem or inside his own hands, but he managed to carefully extract it with a bit of effort from the more important of those things. His hands, obviously. Though maybe if he messed them up he could take some golem hands?

There had been a half dozen big ones guarding some sort of vault, and then the vault had tried to smash them when they entered it. Durff had something like three broken arms, and he’d never had more than two of those before. Oh, that was a golem arm kinda stuck in him.

But the inside of the vault was pretty cool. It had a bunch of shiny metal that was probably good for making stuff out of, and a glowing rock.

“Nice,” Durff said. He turned to look at everyone else. Jyotsana had blood trickling down her forehead, and her eyes were literally on fire. He waved his arm in front of her, but they were focused on the glowing rock. “Hey you alright?”

“Is that…?” Juli whispered towards her brother.

“I have no idea,” Misi admitted. “But… it might be.”

“Might be what?” Durff asked.

“A fragment of… starheart…” Misi said, as if it was difficult somehow.

Durff tilted his head. “Can you make a good hammer out of it?”

“I think you can make anything out of it,” Misi frowned.

“It would be a pretty small hammer,” Durff said, reaching forward to pick it up, a small object the size of a pebble. It was… heavy. He had to really put his back into it. The floor cracked as he held it up.

Space cracked. It was probably unrelated, but that was when the snake showed up. At least Durff thought it was a snake. What else was that long and had spiky things?

One moment, it wasn’t there. A moment later, and it was everywhere. Durff wasn’t what people called ‘highly perceptive’, but even he could feel the snake as it suddenly surrounded them, intruding spikes into their little dimension. Well, pretty big dimension. They’d been walking around for what, days, weeks? Either way, they were trying to figure out how to get out. There wasn’t much point in their cool cultivation advancements if they couldn’t.

One of the fangs- that was what snakes had, right?- one of the fangs tried to stab either Durff or the glowing rock. Personally, he didn’t like either result, so he yanked himself away. When it did, the fragment starheart went somewhere. Or stopped being somewhere? It was gone.

“That’s a big snake,” Durff commented.

“Distortion beast!” Misi cried out. “Planet devouring class!”

“Oh, good,” Durff said. “I was worried it would try to eat us.”