Slowly, carefully, I lowered myself into the golden bordered gap in reality, but as soon as my feet went through, I felt a powerful pull yanking me down. Even with my incredible strength, I couldn’t resist for long. The ground gave out around me, sending me crashing through the portal along with a cascade of dirt and grass.

The sensation was unlike anything I’d ever felt. It was almost like a rollercoaster combined with a slide, spinning me around while tumbling into the abyss. As soon as I was released from the spin cycle into hell, I realized just how accurate that description was.

I was deep underwater with no sign of the surface. Behind me was an enormous vortex, stretching as far into the, well not sky, but going further up than I could see. My reasonably high awareness gave me enough vision to see thanks to the golden light shimmering off the tornado of water behind me, and I really didn’t like what I saw. Everywhere, as far as I could see, was filled with nothing but water and monsters. Fortunately, I apparently didn’t need to breathe even if I did so by force of habit most of the time, since holding my breath didn’t cause my lungs to burn or anything. The real problem was that I was a human being without flippers or magic, and I was surrounded by sharks.

For the first time, I saw a variety of monsters in a dungeon. Just at a glance, I could identify at least five different species of underwater animal swimming about and looking for food while my body slowly began to scream at me.

I may not have needed to breathe anymore, but I still had air in my lungs. Combined with the fact that I was probably miles underwater, it didn’t take long before my still very human anatomy made its displeasure known. Unfortunately, the vortex only went one way.

I nearly acted without thinking, preparing to say my safe word to get out of my self created hell, but what would happen if I opened my mouth? That horrifying shark over there that was ten feet long and had a fucking sawblade attached to its jaw might be able to swim around with its teeth showing, but the pressure might very well kill me.

Focus, Law. You jab all the time without needing to say the word all because you practiced it enough. All we have to do is focus on ripping reality over and over again until we succeed and never come back. That should be easy enough.

I got to work immediately, trying to imitate the motions I’d used to great success in the past, grasping for the folds of space. As I did, I thought about how bullshit my circumstances were. To be fair, these sharks weren’t any faster than I was when I sprinted around. In a sick and twisted way, I got exactly what I’d asked for. Here I was, surrounded by presumably high leveled monsters that were weaker and slower than I was on land, but I was sadly in the middle of the ocean in some nightmare world. Meanwhile, what I could only describe as a cross between an otter and a whale with a maw filled with razor sharp teeth swam up to a nearby shark, eating it in just a couple of bites.

This was just great. I didn’t create a dungeon, obviously, I just brute forced my way into another world. Problem was, this place didn’t have their boss sitting in a corner and waiting for you. Instead, he just swam around looking for food like a normal animal. Just fucking fantastic. At least nothing wanted anything to do with my golden vortex of doom, spinning far into the distance both above and below me.

I mentally shouted my safe word over and over again, determined to make my escape. There was something there, some primal understanding of a skill that I’d used a handful of times. Similar to how mastering the unarmed combat skill had encouraged me to fix my form when punching and kicking, the need to tear dimensions gave me subtle hints on where to reach and how to pull. As it turned out though, it was way harder to do without saying the shortcut out loud, not to mention I was doing this all underwater.

It wasn’t going great, but I was gaining a sense of what I was looking at. In fact, I started to get an interesting idea. Just because I’d already torn a hole through this dimension didn’t mean I couldn’t continue to manipulate that same spot.

I reached into the vortex, determined not to move while activating my skill. It was agony, like sticking your hands into a white water rapid that was also boiling. The force of the flowing energy kept attempting to pull me in, trying to suck me under into the dark abyss where presumably even more terrifying monstrosities dwelled. I’d really rather not.

I shouted in my mind, reaching for the weakened fabric of space itself that sat inside the rift I’d created, determined to bend it to my will. All I had to do was invert it.

Why should the vortex be a whirlpool, sucking from the surface down into the abyss? Why not be a tornado, pulling the depths up into the light where the pressure was so much less and there was so much more space?

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With that in mind, I continued to tear at the swirling mass, willing it to turn around. It would be easier than trying to rip another hole in space right next to it. Similar to how a piece of paper would be easy enough to stab a hole in when it was held taut, but creating another hole right next to it would be almost impossible without extreme precision. Instead, you’re more likely to just make your earlier stab wound bigger.

Which is exactly what happened.

The vortex grew as I continued to scrabble for a foothold inside, determined to find the mechanism that encouraged the flow to be the way it was. I had no idea what I was doing beyond blindly following my instincts, but it just felt right. The vortex should be inverted, could be inverted. Eventually, I found what I was looking for, using all of my mental focus to push my skill into reality.

It wasn’t enough. My skill was powerful, but whatever criteria gate kept the abilities from being fully internalized just hadn’t been met yet. I literally could not fully activate the skill unless I said the shortcut out loud.

Time for a gamble then.

I’d either have to swim out into the ocean and try to fight whatever decided I looked like dinner all while my body suffered under unbelievable pressure, or I would need to try to talk miles underwater and see what happened. Both felt like suicide, honestly, but I was never a strong swimmer.

I began to force the air from my lungs, preparing to say the words in a hum before suddenly opening my mouth.

“Bana—!”

Water came crashing in, but my skill had already started to activate. The pain was overwhelming, preventing me from closing my mouth as the torrent forced itself down my throat. Still, my fists shone as I pulled on the vortex in front of me.

As quickly as it had the first time, I was sucked into the spinning mass of energy and thrown up through it, flying out of the split in reality I’d created and falling, suddenly dozens of feet above the ground.

I smacked into the grass, eating a mouthful while vomiting water at the same time. That was truly unpleasant and lasted a full minute before something smacked into my back, pulling me back to reality.

A giant shark was flailing on the ground, determined to spin around and eat me. It wasn’t going well for the aquatic monster. For a while, I just stared at the out of place apex predator, wondering how my life had ended up like this. It was the same creature I’d seen before, though its sawblade jaw was a lot less intimidating when it had to flop like a fish on land just to reach me.

“Uppercut.”

My fist crashed into its side, but the creature barely gave. What the hell? Just how tough were these things? I mounted it and began raining my combo down upon its unprotected belly, determined to get to the bottom of this. Forget that carapace I’d been lugging around, I needed some shark leather armor! This stuff could really take a beating!

Monsters continued to rain out of the sky, spinning off from the vortex of golden energy that spread far above the tree line and into the clouds above. That would probably attract some attention. I should probably leave.

Yep, it would be really stupid for me to just stick around, farming experience from these mostly defenseless monsters that were obviously much higher leveled than me. Still, it’d be such a waste to not kill any of them.

My combo continued, allowing me to reach the kinds of numbers that only the best fighting game pros could ever hope to achieve, and still the shark held on. Damn, I was really starting to worry about that.

It was just like the crab fight, I couldn’t kill the thing by attacking its armor. I had to hit the weak spot. According to TV, that meant it’s nose. Sadly, that was pretty well guarded by a fucking sawblade!

I adjusted my mount, even knowing how silly it must look. Yes, I was straddling a ten foot long shark on solid land, but it was still flopping around even after several minutes and I really needed to not die. My plan was to position myself so I could hit the top of its jaw-nose area without having to tangle with that dangerous lower jaw that stuck out with a carpenter's tool attached to it.

The maneuver took longer than I’d like, requiring me to let the creature flop just a little bit in controlled bursts to get into the proper position, but I did succeed. I sat just below its head with a beautiful line of sight to its supple nose, just begging to be punched. My combo restarted, and it didn’t take long before the results were in. The shark screamed in pain, or more like it grumbled and vibrated slightly before a somewhat risky uppercut made it go still.

Perfect! One down, and looking around there were only another—

Uh oh. As it turned out, not everything that deep underwater had the same restrictions as the sharks did. In fact, the creature I was most afraid of turned out to have legs more than capable of walking around, letting it eat defenseless sharks one after another. The giant otter-whale with razor sharp teeth was also pulled through the vortex, and it was definitely tougher than King Crab. My uppercut could at least slow the big crustacean while it did practically nothing to a shark. Meanwhile the underwater boss that turned out to be amphibious could literally one shot the oversized fish through their hides.

Fortunately, it seemed to land far enough away that it had plenty of food to distract itself with. Good. Perfect even. I’d let someone else deal with that. Slowly, carefully, I dragged my shark corpse back into the woods and towards the vortex. Once there, I grabbed my carapace carrying bag and got the fuck out of there.

Sorry, Woodsedge, but I really don’t have the skills to clean this one up. Best of luck to you all!

This time I’d just find a nice spot in the woods to store my shit and try random portals. It couldn’t go much worse than this.