Despite participating in hundreds of fracture fights, the trip through this artificial portal – not that any of the others were in any way or shape natural – was in many ways, different from those experiences.
While using the ‘natural’ fracture portals the experience was smooth and at most the players would be blasted with some swirling lights of the rainbow (though you could turn them off if you were prone to epilepsy) and then they would be standing inside the dimensionally isolated area, ready to demolish anything that showed up, like the good murderhobos they were…
After a moment of disorientation, Sam felt himself whisked along a pathway of pure light and darkness, high-speed winds whizzing by, and a low hum penetrating everywhere. All he could do was to hold on to the box for his life and hope he survived the journey.
His ‘abductor’ was still gripping his arm, but instead of being terrified, they were hooting and hollering, enjoying the ride as if it was an everyday amusement park contraption.
Then the sensation abruptly ended, sending them hurtling through proper air, landing without much dignity on the ground in a heap. By some miracle, the box was still in his hand.
Slowly, the two of them untangled themselves from each other and stood up. Sam made sure to keep hold of the box while he quickly cast two Clean spells at himself and the mad scientist, removing the dust that settled on them after their ignoble landing.
Not even slightly perturbed, the other man was already running around trying to take in everything. Which also allowed Sam to look around.
They arrived on some kind of platform, presumably made of dirt and dust with a few scattering of rocks and such to break the monotony. The background was pure black, only broken by flashes of rainbow light, behaving like meteors. They appeared brightly, then they fell or flew upwards on a parabolic path until they became a simple pinprick of light before they ultimately vanished.
The platform they landed on stretched out before them and Sam could see several platforms in the distance, weirdly illuminated by ‘something’ he couldn’t see or sense. The further he looked, the more the shadow of the area swallowed the platforms, obscuring their final destination.
“Sir?” he spoke up slightly hesitantly, eying the clearly unstable portal that brought them here. “Where are we?”
The other man, squatting on the ground and using a small shovel to move the dust into a small container, looked up at him, blinked a few times, as if surprised Sam was still there, then answered.
“I have no idea!” he said cheerfully.
“What?”
The mad scientist sprung up and walked over to Sam while depositing the container with the dust in it into the box Sam was holding.
“You see, young man, I was inspired by these fractures! I wished to create my own! And I did! And do you know why?” he spoke rapidly, staring squarely into Sam’s own eyes.
“No, sir,” he replied, swallowing slightly.
“Travel, young man! TRAVEL! Imagine, just a portal away from ANY city!” he exclaimed with a crazed look in his eyes.
‘What? Travel?’ Sam was rather surprised. In his memories there were portals, but they were giant round artifacts made after years of effort, and most were used to move between capitals and the continents. It took such an effort to build one that even after years, none of the guilds had the resources to own one.
The amount of money made by the countries owning these rings was ridiculous. They had to hire more soldiers just to protect it from the greedy players.
But the most important thing was that the inventor of the devices was a think tank supported by a coalition of countries – probably at the instigation of the game system – and not one random mad scientist.
‘Could be that he died and then later somebody used his research as the base for those?’ he mused as he stared back into the man’s eyes, noting the sheer madness and brilliance in them. ‘Then the question becomes: how did he die?”
“Travel, sir? Where?” he asked, playing up his naivete.
“EVERYWHERE!” Fitzgerald yelled while thrusting his arms up in the air. “Imagine! Portals in the middle of the cities! You just step through and you are in the next country or on the other side of the continent! The possibilities are endless!” Then, as if a switch was flipped he calmed down and began looking around. “If we can get out of here…”
Sam glanced back at the unstable portal but before he could voice his confusion, the mad scientist spoke up while awkwardly scratching his face while refusing to look into Sam’s eyes. “Hehehehe…That might have been a one-way portal. If we try to go back, it would implode and scatter our constituent parts across several dimensions.”
Sam sent a withering glare at the sheepish rune master then began to look around while straining his senses to make sure nothing could sneak upon them.
“Anyway… who are you, young man, and why did you visit me?” the older man asked with a bright expression as if he didn’t just endanger both of their lives.
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Sam wanted to yell ‘You are just asking that now?’ but he reined in his rage, put the damn box into his inventory, and retrieved the letter he was given.
“I was about to deliver this letter, sir,” he said while handing it over.
“Oh, goodie! I love getting letters!” the man celebrated while ripping the flimsy paper envelope apart like a kid on a sugar rush on Boxing Day.
There was a little humming as he read the letter, occasionally glancing at Sam, and when finished, he simply folded up the paper and put it in one of his pockets, but instead of commenting on it, he just turned around and began marching toward the darkness covering the land.
“Come, my young friend! Adventure awaits us, and it behooves us not to make our flighty temptress wait!” he exclaimed while pointing towards the darkness.
Sam sighed and unsheathed his sword.
‘I just know this is some kind of punishment from the game…’
In the end, however, he simply began walking after the excitable man.
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At first, there was nothing, just the dusty gray ground, dotted with scattered rocks made from the most mundane materials to the disappointment of Fitzgerald.
Still, Sam didn’t relax his vigilance as they were technically in a fracture, even if he didn’t get any system screen telling him about it.
As they went forward, the shadows and darkness began to lift in front of them, revealing even more dusty ground while behind them, the same darkness swallowed the sight of the portal they used.
Soon, they just walked forward, endless darkness on all sides, with only the chattering of the excited Lauren Fitzgerald filling the suffocating silence.
“Look at that rock! What an ordinary rock! How extraordinary!”
“My… what a view! What do you think about this view, young man?”
“Ahh, nothing beats exploring the unknown!”
Sam mostly answered in grunts and mumbles as most of his attention was on keeping an eye on monsters or other hazards. But aside from when he had to pull the other man back from the edge of the platform when he ventured too far to sate his curiosity, Sam couldn’t find anything.
However, to his surprise, after almost an hour of walking, they reached the end of the platform.
They stood there, shoulder to shoulder, staring into the darkness, occasionally illuminated with brief flares of light.
“Now what?” Sam asked, maybe a little sarcastically.
The other man, instead of replying, simply reached out with his hand and eyes closed.
Sam instantly felt the mana around them swell and watched, fascinated as hundreds upon hundreds of runes appeared in the air, before they disappeared, only to be replaced by new ones. It reminded him of the visual effect that was used on television when the character was doing math and the audience saw all those equations and numbers fly around.
Fascinated, Sam took a small step back to be able to observe better and just watched as the master worked.
He tried to figure out what the man was doing but the runes appeared and disappeared too fast. Still, he managed to recognize a few sequences that were similar to some runic circles he had seen in books, but more elegant and refined. Truly the work of a master…
He was broken out of his admiration by a yell of triumph.
“Aha! I found it!” exclaimed Fitzgerald as several runes, looking more substantial than the previous ones, flew around, shining blue, before settling in a circular pattern. “I knew there was something here!” The runes flashed and a blue line appeared between them, connecting all of them together.
Which, in turn, resulted in another portal appearing in front of them.
Less glitchy and unstable than the one they used to enter, but it was still…wonky.
“These dimensional bubbles, despite being circular with no end, always have two endpoints or poles, young man. Make sure to remember that.”
Ignoring how the geometry didn’t make much sense, Sam just nodded.
The man looked back at him and grinned.
“Trust me! I know what I’m doing!” And then jumped into the portal headfirst, like an Olympic diver.
Sam shook his head in exasperation.
“Lucky, make sure to watch his back on the other side…” He waited until he received a faint wuff of confirmation and he also jumped into the portal.
Though he did it feet first.
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He landed next to the mad scientist as he was on all fours spitting out dust from when he landed straight on his face.
While he may be a magical genius, his body wasn’t in the best shape. Sam reached down and helped the older man up and hit him with a few cleaning spells.
“Everything all right?” he asked gently.
“Perfect! Everything is perfect,” the man answered. “Thank you, young man.”
“No problem, sir.”
While Fitzgerald made sure he was presentable, Sam looked around.
Unsurprisingly, they found themselves in a lightless void where the area was still illuminated.
However, this time, the rocks dotting the gray platforms weren’t the size of footballs, but menhir-sized, obscuring what lay behind them.
‘Say ambush without saying ambush…’ Sam mused, as his grip tightened on his sword.
As soon as his hopefully future teacher was presentable, he was striding forward, ready to embrace whatever came next.
Sam sighed and followed a few steps back to be able to react better in case of an ambush.
The older man reached the first menhir, when what Sam expected actually happened. Something sitting in the shadow of the giant rock shot forward, no doubt intent on consuming the master of runes.
However, before it could reach the man, Lucky shot forward from the man’s shadow and clamped his giant jaws on the monster, shook it once, and sent it flying against another menhir. The monster slammed against the menhir, where the monster let out a squeal mixed with a yip and fell on the ground, breathing heavily.
Sam watched as the monster, an odd mixture of liquid shadow with lights for eyes and gray dust, in the shape of a cat-like body, stood once again and snarled at them.
“AAAAAIEEEEE! Save me!” screamed the older man abruptly, finally realizing he was in danger and running behind Sam with all the haste he could.
Sam sighed, again, then raised his sword and cast a singular wind blade, while Lucky prowled around them, loyally following Sam’s order and watching out for the other man.
The wind blade slammed into the liquid cat and cut it into two before it could even react.
Sadly, the two halves of the monster didn’t fall away…
Instead, there was a swell of magic around it and the two halves became two smaller cat-like monsters, snarling at Sam and the others.
Instantly, two more wind blades slammed into them as Sam wanted to see how long the division would go on. Surprisingly, these two wind blades managed to destroy the monsters, leaving behind nothing but rainbow-colored pixels rapidly vanishing.
As soon as the monster vanished, the scared look on Fitzgerald’s face vanished and he was curiously looking at the spot where the monster stood.
“What a fascinating being…” he murmured excitedly. Then he turned to Sam and grabbed his hand once again. “Come, my friend! We must see more…”
Walking forward, dragging Sam with him, they stepped around the menhir, only for Lucky to jump forward and grab another of those monsters while Fitzgerald screamed like a pansy.
Sam just let out a bone-weary sigh.
“I hate escort missions…”