“You cannot go inside,” Folend said.

Rieren glared at him. “I am well aware.”

She had told her findings to the others. They had all reacted with a great deal of shock. Folend had looked skeptical of the whole thing, but he didn’t voice his doubts.

Rieren was struck with a horrible conundrum. Her heart was already quailing at the prospect of losing Elder Olg permanently. What sort of disciple would she be if she let her master simply die? He had helped her so much in the last timeline. His initial assistance and guidance were what had allowed her to reach the heights she had attained.

Yet, diving into the Abyss Rent would be nothing short of suicide. Rieren wished to live her new life, not suffer for it and end up dying.

Did that make her a selfish coward? If her father had been lost in the Abyss Rent, if Amalyse had, would she have made the same decision she was making now? Would she sit down and decide to cultivate with the others in an effort to close the Abyss Rent? Questions her frenzied mind couldn’t answer.

“We don’t have the right to close the Abyss Rent yet.” Amalyse the only one among them who hadn’t take a seat on the wet ground yet. “We should withhold from collapsing it for now.”

“Our order was to determine what had become of the missing Elder’s party and close the Abyss Rent,” Folend said again, his annoyance clear in his voice. “If you joined us, we could do it a little faster and be done with this.”

“And would you say the same thing if Rollo was lost within the Abyss Rent too? If your precious friend had gone inside?”

“Of course. Anybody stupid enough to go inside an Abyss Rent would be better off not coming out again.”

“Monkey’s blistered ballsack, Folend. You are an absolute refuse pit of a person.”

At any other time, Folend would have pulled out his mace to make Amalyse eat her own words. Now, he simply closed his eyes and concentrated on his cultivation, though a heavy frown did mar his thickset features.

“The Elder’s order came after assuming there would be no complications when we discovered the Abyss Rent,” Amalyse continued. “I don’t think they took into account that one of them might be inside.”

“And what in the world do you think is inside an Abyss Rent?” Folend asked back.

“Monsters. What else is there going to be?”

“And you want us to head inside a realm filled with monsters? After we could barely kill just three of them a while back?”

Rieren figured what really made Amalyse stop responding was less the line of reasoning Folend had said and more the fact that he was the one saying it. If Folend of all people was afraid to go into an Abyss Rent, if his fear had overcome all his arrogance and his inability to show anything but strength, then they had to stop and think for a minute.

Regardless, Rieren had come to her decision. Batcat meowed plaintively at the Abyss Rent, but she shushed it and tried to focus on her cultivation despite the feelings roiling through her.

This wasn’t any sort of betrayal. If their positions had been switched, she would have hoped that Elder Olg would close the Abyss Rent instead of trying to retrieve her.

And yet, he had gone in, hadn’t he?

Rieren quickly went through the System Shop and found the Purifying Eggs the others had used in the last session of collapsing an Abyss Rent. She put it in her mouth, though not before reminding the others to do the same. Then she began cultivating.

Folend joined her, and eventually, Amalyse did as well. She looked reluctant about it, but she seemed to recognize that informing the Elders would take too long and would involve too much effort. Unless they ventured out farther and tried to find a route that circled around back to the previous chamber, they wouldn’t be able to cross the chasm easily.

The guards looked a little hesitant too, though that was more likely due to the fact they had been called upon to cultivate. Rieren wasn’t sure how far any of them had progressed in their cultivation. Even Avalien, to whom she had personally impressed upon the importance of proper cultivation, couldn’t have had much experience.

But it never mattered. They got started, but they were forced to stop before long. Something was coming.

It started as a strange feeling at the back of Rieren’s head. She ignored for a moment, focusing on adding more of the pure Essence into her Aspect pillar. There was more of the Aspect she needed to create pillars of in this room, but since she had already begun with pure Essence, it was easier to continue with it.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Nevertheless, she did continue channelling some of the water-Aspected Essence through her meridians. It would help slowly convert the pure Essence in the Aspect pillar to water Aspect.

But more importantly, the prickling, creeping sensation she had felt earlier now started to grow. Rieren could no longer ignore it, especially not when Batcat roused itself as well. The winged kitten hissed low in its feline throat. She could feel its agitation through her skull.

“What’s going on?” Amalyse asked. Apparently, she could make out the sensation too. “Something’s going on with the Essence.”

Rieren focused on the Abyss Rent. “It is Abyss-Aspected Essence thickening and intensifying. We may have visitors soon.”

That alarmed the others. All the guards stood up quickly, baring their weapons in preparation for yet another battle, while Folend’s face grew taut with a similar expectation.

Rieren wasn’t so sure, however. The sensation wasn’t specific. All they were feeling at the moment was a change in the way Essence worked and came out of the Abyss Rent. None of them had any objective clue as to what might have caused that shift, though she was aware that this sort of change mostly occurred when the rent was being used.

When someone was travelling into or exiting out of the Abyss Rent.

“Take care,” Rieren said. “This may not be monsters that we assume.”

“What else is supposed to come out of—”

Folend shut his own mouth. It was a natural enough assumption that the only things that could be spit out of Abyss Rents were more Abyssals. But then, they had powerful proof that someone else had entered the rent too. Someone who wasn’t a monster by any means.

Besides the ones who had been captured, of course.

Captured.

“Monkey’s balls,” Rieren muttered, her heart suddenly spiking in alarm as the prickling feeling grew sharper at an incredibly fast rate.

“What?” Amalyse asked. “What is it?”

“We need—”

Whatever they might have needed, Rieren never got to say. She had been too slow in realizing that there was another strong possibility. Maybe the monsters didn’t intend to come out. Maybe they only wished to pull Rieren and the others in.

Which was exactly what proceeded to happen.

The Essence around the Abyss Rent flared. Rieren shouted at the others to prepare themselves, and they were all quite fast at holding themselves in defensive stances with their weapons out. Unfortunately, it mattered little. What emerged from the Abyss Rent wasn’t Abyssals themselves.

All they faced was a massive amount of webs. Rieren’s shock lasted just enough for the spray of silver threads to entangle her.

She recovered quickly enough, bringing her sword to bear upon the webs and slice through them. But they had been shot out with great proficiency. Movement became difficult. Resistance only made the thickening strands wrap around her faster.

The Gravemark Puppeteer was attacking them.

Rieren didn’t have the strength to pull herself free. These threads were far too strong. Even her Body stat couldn’t tear them apart. She had to remember that this Abyssal had likely progressed even beyond C-Grade.

The others couldn’t have had much more luck, but one of the guards was able to free himself. With a quick flick of his knife, the man with the teleportation powers disappeared, reappearing a few paces away, free from his silver binds.

Only problem was that he had appeared right next to the Abyss Rent. Before Rieren could shout, his death arrived.

The first bony spike burst out of his guts like a gory birth. Two more popped out of him, one pushing out of his chest and the other through his knee. One last spike punched through the back of his neck and emerged out of his mouth, cutting off his scream. A second later, the top of his head was torn clean off, leaving behind a punctured torso with only the lower jaw for a skull.

Blood fountained over them all. Avalien and the remaining guard screamed, even as the webs wound tighter around them.

Enough. Struggling was futile, but that didn’t mean Rieren had no options whatsoever. Stomping as hard as she could on the rising shock and horror of the guard’s gruesome death—she had seen worse, and it never became easier, but she had seen far worse—she jumped with all her might.

Even if the webs were mummifying her, they couldn’t stop her feet from launching her in the direction she needed to go. Fray Passage did enough to grant her the momentum she needed.

Rieren reached one of those already dead. She had already opened the selling section of the System Shop and she quickly sold the nearest corpse. A human corpse. Those tended to get more Credits than monstrous ones.

More webs were slung at Rieren. Even as she kept struggling to give herself what little rooms he could find, she felt herself being pulled towards the Abyss Rent. The body of the killed guard fell to the ground as the spikes pulled themselves free. Now they waited for her, dripping blood and ready to skewer her to death.

Not if she could help it. Rieren quickly browsed through the System Shop and found what she had been seeking. A firemine. Those things were expensive. Rieren had been right in doubting she had naturally acquired enough Credits to afford one. But selling the corpse had given her a flood of new Credits, and that had been just enough for the purchase.

There was no space on most of her body for the System to deposit her purchase to her, and it couldn’t put it nearby when she was moving. But the webs hadn’t covered one spot of her completely yet.

The firemine materialized just over her mouth and she quickly bit it to keep it in place.

Rieren grinned at the Abyss Rent. Once the monster pulled her in close enough, she was going to make the bastard pay.

Around her, the others were still struggling against the cage of webs. At least they weren’t being pulled forward yet. That meant Rieren didn’t have to worry about them being caught in the blast.

As Rieren reached the Abyss Rent, the spikes threatening to burst out and impale her, she acted. Her feet were mere paces away from the Abyss Rent. Just the position she needed.

She arched herself as much as she could. More threads came flying out to suppress her movement. Before they could wrap around her, she jerked backwards in the opposite direction, curling on herself at a rapid pace. The momentum wasn’t great. But it was still enough for the firemine she let loose from her jerking head to fly straight to the Abyss Rent.

It passed through the swirling darkness of the Abyss Rent with ease. The resultant explosion was more muted than Rieren had expected. There was the expected flash, boom, blast of heat, and even the monstrous scream from the other side, but none of them felt any of that. It seemed the Abyss Rent muffled the worst of it.

But it hadn’t killed the Puppeteer on the other side. The webs went slack for the tiny moment the explosion occurred.

Then they all were pulled forward.

Rieren cursed while some of the others screamed as they all fell. Then she plunged into the Abyss Rent.