39 – Dangerous plan

A small very unstable portal opened at the base of the mountain. From it, three shapes emerged, accompanied by another smaller shape that flew in the air above the three. Ishrin was the last of the three to appear, and immediately rushed to the portal behind him to close it, as if in a hurry. And indeed, barely one second after he did, the whole mountain shook and rumbled, explosions going off one after the other in a chain reaction of ever stronger blasts. Chunks of rock and ice, technological parts and circuit debris were being shaken loose from the crumbling mountain as it lost structural integrity, threatening to bury the party whole.

Ishrin moved frantically, the portal to his inventory dimension opening in a flash here and there, swallowing entire chunks of debris before they could flatten them. Each time one of the larger chunks was swallowed in his inventory Ishrin flinched as if in pain, and sweat was dotting his forehead before even a handful of seconds had passed. The onslaught of falling matter didn’t seem to slow down at all, though.

It wasn’t all. The short trip through the unstable portal had been less than pleasant for all passengers.

For the first time maybe ever, Ishrin looked scared. Not in control. He checked his body, seeing that his energy armor was gone, fizzled out of existence. The two girls were also without their armor now but were otherwise unscathed. He, on the other hand, was not. His body was smoking, his hair singed and burnt, his leather armor stained and charred. He flexed his arms and let pieces of dead skin flake off of him and fall to the ground while the mountain behind him still shook and groaned, checking if he could walk fine and feeling the tips of his fingers. He was not surprised to learn that he couldn’t feel his ring and pinky fingers in both hands, and that he was limping. At least he was alive.

Another chunk of debris vanished into his inventory. “We need to move,” he muttered weakly, steadying himself against a shaking wall.

“Are you okay?” Asked Melina.

He gave her a sharp look. Then he drew breath, calming his mind before speaking.

“I will be. Thank fuck we got out of it with only minor injuries. What we just did was dangerous.”

It was the first time Ishrin showed serious negative emotions in response to something they did. In fact, it was the first time the girls had seen him genuinely scared.

“But it was the right thing to do,” argued Melina as the group broke into a run.

“I know,” he said, “I was the one who said the mountain had to be destroyed. In hindsight, perhaps I was a bit foolish.”

“If you hadn’t said it, I would have.”

“I would have too.” Lisette chimed in, to which Liù offered a chime of her own, “it just takes me longer than it takes you to process these things.”

“Good that you’re self-aware,” Ishrin chuckled weakly, “now run like your life depends on it, cause it does!”

The plan had gone off without a hitch. Apart from the portal part, which demonstrated unpredictable side effects of the very dangerous kind. The small cube, the ‘spawn’, was sitting in time stasis in Ishrin’s inventory with its small vat and powering pedestal still attached to it. The big cube was, hopefully, blowing up with the rest of the mountain or being buried forever inside of it. Now it was only a matter of putting some distance between the party and the mountain before it all collapsed on them. That was the plan at least.

But something new was now barring the way. Something unexpected.

Under a much brighter sky of magic so dense Ishrin had to squint to even be able to see, lit by the light of the twin stars that seemed as close as the planet used to be but a thousand times brighter, a herd of monsters had amassed in the small field in front of the adventurers. The planet above was close, so close that they could see with their naked eyes mountains and plains, trees and rivers, and it was getting closer. It was on a collision course, already creating earthquakes and destabilizing the land of this little astral realm. In the distance they could see the borders of the realm shrink in real time, swallowing land and monsters and consigning them to the oblivion of utter destruction.

“Shit.” Ishrin muttered.

Melina stared as if in a trance. Lisette was already drawing her weapons, the twin blades glinting under the magic light of the stars in the sky. Liù too seemed ready.

“I count 56,” Lisette said without a hint of fear in her voice.

“Fifty… six.” Ishrin echoed. “No, there’s more.” His voice was that of a defeated man, of someone who still didn’t have the time to recover from the last traumatic event and was being thrown right into another, worse yet situation.

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“W-we can’t fight them.” Melina said, voice unsteady. She was the leader, and yet she felt utterly incapable of leading in a moment like this. But then she steeled herself, reminding herself that there was a reason why she was the leader, and it was because the others trusted her.

Next to her, Ishrin was shaking his head mournfully. “I’m out of mana. Out of tricks.”

Two hands squeezed his shoulders and looking up he saw twin golden eyes staring right at his face, the dark pupils a thin vertical reptilian slit he never seemed to notice before. Melina stared right through him, into his soul, and for a moment the whole world around them seemed to fade.

“Hey,” she said. “Pull yourself together.”

Ishrin nodded. “Yes. I only need a moment.”

“Guys,” came Lisette’s voice. “We might not have a moment.”

The herd of monsters was moving. Having spotted them, or perhaps spurred by the ever faster shrinking of the realm, they had begun a stampede. They rushed towards them, all dozens of them, giant powerhouses of muscle and hide, the crystals attached to them shining and reflecting the bright light of the stars. Their feet stomped the frozen ground, and the rumble was that of an earthquake. Behind the party the mountain seemed to have calmed down, its shape forever changed from that of a mighty yet damaged pyramid to a deflated mound of rubble.

“The dust still hasn’t settled, but at least there’s no more falling concrete and rock. I say we go back in.” said Ishrin quickly. “I don’t see any other option.”

Melina inhaled. “Okay. Yes. We go back in and figure out what to do. I’ll watch the rear. Lisette, go in front.”

They retreated back into the tunnel they first walked on their way to the core of the mountain, hours or perhaps even several whole days ago. Time was hard to keep track of in this realm, and of the three only Lisette seemed to have some innate sense of it. Yet, nobody asked, and she didn’t say. She led the way, together with Liù, cutting through the collapsed walls and the dangling cables that were like a frozen jungle of plastic vines and glass leaves with her blades. Thrice she did have to fend off against rogue robots assailing her, but it was clear to all that without the central intelligence controlling them they were nothing more than zombies, attacking in a frenzy without rhyme or reason, sometimes even cutting off their own limbs or firing their weapons upon their kin.

Melina, closing the rear, was the last one to arrive in the room. She made sure that nothing was following them and used her strength to pull a large slab of stone, ice, and metal to bar the door. It might have been overkill, since the gigantic monsters could not fit in the small tunnel, but nobody seemed to mind the apparent extra layer of protection. It was for the mind just as much as it was for the body.

She saw the others sit around a small fire made from supplies pulled from Ishrin’s apparently endless stash of stuff in his inventory and joined them. Her face bore a pained expression.

“We are stuck.” She stated. “The monsters can’t follow us in here, they can’t fit but… we can’t leave either.”

“And this realm will vanish soon,” Ishrin said.

“The rate of shrinking suggests that we have roughly three hours, fifty-five minutes.” Lisette said.

Ishrin hummed in surprise. She looked away.

“Ehm,” Melina coughed to dissipate the strange air between the two, “this means that we have little under four hours to figure out a way out of here.” She said.

“There is one,” Ishrin said. “We can always do the inventory trick another time.”

Melina frowned. “Didn’t you say—”

“I did.” Ishrin got up and paced around the room, eventually coming to stop in front of a wall of ice and staring at his still singed face. He was still under the effect of one of the last spells he cast with his dwindling mana and his face was slowly healing, pink skin showing under the scabs.

“I did. But what other alternatives do we have? In four hours, I will have enough mana to perform again, except this time the ritual will be rushed, without most of the stabilizing catalysts, and the end point will have to be outside of the realm instead of inside. Not to mention the fact that we don’t have the energy of the mountain to power it anymore. We could very well die.”

“That’s not encouraging, Ishrin.” Said Melina.

“I can pull the energy from the Dirac Sea. You know what it is, don’t you?”

“Pretend I didn’t. My insights into magic turned out to be less…” she scratched her head, “substantial than I thought.”

“Let’s see… I call it Dirac Sea for a specific reason. In Mekano’s world, it was theorized a long time ago that reality was like a thin layer, beneath which lies a much deeper hidden span of something. Energetic particles popping in and out of existence, made of magic, they annihilate themselves in blips of time so small they might as well be zero—the particles never existing for any actual purpose and use. But they do exist, and the total energy of this noise of particles is so high, normal reality would be like the surface layer of a deep ocean compared to it. But, it’s also inscrutable. We do not know what lies in this ocean. At the same time, the universe we can see expands, stretching itself. Reality is like an oil spill resting upon a fathomless, deep, dark ocean, growing ever larger, yet ever thinner. And monsters lurk in the depths.”

“That’s… not reassuring at all.” She said, slightly pale.

“What else can we do? Look at the tunnel.” He said.

Melina got up and joined him. At the far end of the tunnel was a room she recognized. It was the monolith room, yet this time it was completely dark and lifeless, with none of the light and energy that trickled upwards to feed the rest of the mountain. Still, in the darkness she thought she could see a shadow lurking.

“Ah,” she said.

“We have no other option. Let’s just hope I can manage to keep the energies under control.” Ishrin said.

Lisette suddenly sprang up. “What if I helped?”

Ishrin narrowed his eyes. “You mean…”

“I can help you navigate the dimensional currents. Yes.”

“Like a co-pilot.” Ishrin said to himself. He paced around again. “Mmh, that could work. It could work.”

His face was brighter. “Okay, but we still need a source of power to access the Dirac Sea in the first place. If it was easier to access, you’d see people with virtually unlimited mana supplies flying spells around. Before you ask, no, you can’t use that energy to Tier up until you can make the energies truly yours, which happens when you reach a Tier so high, the process would drain the Dirac Sea in a region and destroy a portion of the universe in the process.”

“Will creature cores work for that?” Melina asked.

Ishrin nodded. Melina’s gaze sharpened, and she showed her sharp teeth. “Well then, let’s go hunting!”