31 - No Clues

The portal to the Chiral Prism Dimension, of which there was only 1, had various restrictions on it. Because of this, it wasn't a straight shot type of portal. That is to say, it didn't lead directly from one place to another. There was long passageway in the middle.

This was called a spatial tunnel.

There was no spatial tunnel for the portal Syrakel had gone through. This meant there was also no travel time.

On the other side of the portal, Syrakel's bare right foot landed lightly on the ground, before vanishing.

Along with it, so did her entire body.

There was only a very slight breeze that was created for a slight second.

The guards knew from the moment of aura let out who it was, so they didn't make a fuss about it.

Aura was a multipurpose thing. It referred to many different things all with similar effects.

Syrakel's aura wasn't the same as a knight's aura, but it was aura nonetheless.

In an opulent hallway a long distance away, a left foot appeared and lightly stepped on the ground just as the right foot had previously.

Syrakel's hands and feet were entirely black. The black striped markings grew shorted in distance the further out they got on a limb, until eventually the distance became nonexistent, forming a solid black for the rest of the limb, ie the hand or foot.

Taking a few steps forward, no longer using a movement technique, in front of her was a large pair of double doors.

Large was relative to normal doors. Compared to other things at her level, it was nothing too big. It was just 4 meters high.

The hallway had a tall ceiling, and the door at 4 meters didn't reach it.

Opening the door, she stepped inside without asking for permission.

She was 1 of just 100 Abyssal Gods among the abyssal seraphim. She didn't have to be too courteous.

Inside, the room was filled with dark colors. Not dark lighting, but dark colors. However, the lighting was also dark, and for lighting there was only a blue light coming from both the far wall and the middle of the room.

The far wall had a group of monitors with a large desk console in front of it, with all sorts of buttons and technical components.

By the console was a chair with a person sitting in it.

It was another abyssal seraphim, of course.

There were three people in the room, all abyssal seraphim, all Abyssal Gods.

The one at the monitor was named Desirel and the other two, Norakel and Syfel, were near the middle of the room where the other blue light was.

It was a hologram table, and it was showing some region nearby.

"Syra! You're finally back. Me and Syfel were making bets on which one of these ants is gonna make it back to their antnest first. It's a race."

"...Do you two have nothing better to do?"

"(In unison) No."

"..."

Speachless, Syrakel ignored them and walked up to Desirel by the monitors.

Taking out the vial of black fluid Arachne had given her, she shook it in front of Desirel.

Looking at it, Desirel had an introspective look as she got lost in thought.

After a while, she opened her mouth.

"Ummm. Syrakel, what am I supposed to be looking at?"

Syrakel responded, "What do you think this is?"

"Isn't it just Abyss Fluid? What, are you giving me your essence or something? Is this a new way of proposing?"

Abyssal seraphim didn't reproduce sexually, and of course they didn't get married either. Still, they knew of the tradition in certain other species.

"Where do you think I found this?"

"Where did you....well, you just came back from visiting Arachne, so-wait. No way. Did you...?"

"That's right. Arachne said she found this randomly spawning in the Chiral Prism Dimension. And last time I checked, Desirel, there's no way for her to get her hands on this, so she can't be lying."

Abyss Fluid was something that started appearing below the 50th floor of the Abyss. Since they had been trapped down there for so long, they knew that noone had come down there who could've given Arachne Abyss Fluid in all the years they spent there.

Of course, there was a chance she had gotten it by personally going down to the Abyss in the time between the abyssal seraphim's attack on Heaven and Arachne's entrapment, but for her to have been so fast acting, and all for what? Because she had planned this far ahead in that short a time and acted on it?

That seemed too much...right?

Desirel thought so tol, so she immediately became serious.

"If Abyss Fluid is showing up in the 9th Sky, does that mean...they're coming?"

"I don't know. Why would they have waited this long? Maybe it's part of the event? Whatever it is, we have to make adequate preparations."

Abyss Fluid would only appear in places where Abyssal element was high. Much higher than the residue casually produced by the presence of the abyssal seraphim. The only way it could appear in the Chiral Prism Dimension was if abyssal energy leaked into the dimension from somewhere else.

Somewhere like, say, a portal to the Abyss.

When she had arrived, Syrakel had spread out her sense in the Chiral Prism Dimension and checked it before she went to talk to Arachne. The so called sense referred to a way of seeing the surroundings with mana, called mana sense, or just sense.

She hadn't found anything amiss. No portal to the Abyss or anything. Her best guess was that the beings pursuing them from the 90th floor had opened a spatial crack between the Abyss and the Chiral Prism Dimension, but closed it for whatever reason instead of passing through.

Through just that small crack, small enough that Arachne didn't immediately recognize it, or maybe she had and had omitted that information, enough abyssal energy came through to cause the growth of Abyssal Fluid in some of the nearby crystals.

But, that was just her guess after all. She had no way to be sure.

"By the way, would Arachne be kind enough to just give this to you?"

"...Ah...umm, She, umm...she said she wanted a Sanctum Septica-"

"She WHAT?!"

"-for creating new silk types to make beds with."

"...It'd have to be heavily sealed."

"That's what I told her."

"...We...can just delay giving it to her, right?"

"Of course."

"Do we do that?"

"Definitely."

***

On a cliff edge.

It was in the desert. The cliff was barren and overlooked even more barren desert sands.

There were two kinds of deserts, the ones with sparse vegetation, and the ones with literally none.

Most fell into the first category. This region of the Telladon Desert, inside which was where the Axel Kingdom was located, was the latter.

The cliff was far away from Axel, to the west.

The Telladon Desert encompassed far more than just the Axel Kingdom.

Sitting on the cliff edge was me, Merca.

My legs dangling over the sides, kicking to and fro, I boredly stared with a hunched back into the yellow and bronze sheet that stretched into the distance.

You'd think the sand would harden, conjoin, form sediment, form rock, form a basic floor for vegetation to grow on, and that would be the start of a proper inhabitable biome.

I mean, I didn't know how deserts became plains but it was probably something like that?

But no. The sand here just stayed sand. For as long as anyone could remember, there had only ever been sand.

Tired of my quest for a way to get a warp drive, I had gotten curious and come here to take a look at the unique sight of what I thought would be mystical sand.

I was really bored to think any sand would be mystical.

When I got here, I found out the sand was really just normal sand, and whatever the reason was for it continuing to utterly blanket the expanse of this part of the desert so that not even a single weed, bush, or plant could be seen, it clearly didn't change the fact that it was, indeed, just normal sand.

The only difference was it was more yellow than normal sand, making the desert look even more yellow than normal from a distance.

A distance, like what I was viewing from the cliffside.

'Ironic. The sand looks normal but has a secret, but I can't find it. I know the secret of realm traversal, a warp drive, but I can't find it either.

Maybe one day I'll be unable to find my own consciousness and drift awaaaay. Awaaaaay, into the nothingness. Like specks of sand in the desert air."

I started having some silly thoughts as I despaired the longer I sat.

I really had no idea what to do.

Well, that wasn't true. I had the option of adventuring around and finding more people like Sylvia to help me out, since she wasn't helping me anymore for whatever reason.

The only problem was the risk.

However, with no clues and no other road presenting itself in front of me, it seemed that was the only choice I had left.

But, I really didn't want to.

Listen, call me a scaredycat, but I had heard enough horror stories by now. And sphinxes and bloody f*cking dragons were real, I had seen them with my own eyes, so who was to say there weren't more dangerous myths that were real?

For now, I'd just...look around some more. Yeah.

***

It's been a year.

I have found nothing. After. A . Whole. Year!!!

I had even gone down to the kingdom to the south, still in the desert, the Rekka Kingdom, but they also had nothing. I didn't mean no warp drive. Of course they wouldn't have that.

What I mean is there wasn't even a clue. Hell, noone even knew what I was talking about. I had underestimated the boon Sylvia gave me with the Void Magic stage technique, because noone in all the two kingdoms had one of their own.

They didn't even have a technique for the void magic stage, let alone an understanding of clues to some warp drive thingy.

In the end, I ventured around everywhere in the east of the continent and found nothing.

I had tried going to the west, but there was a tough sandstorm there, raging on for who knows how far into the west. That wasn't that bad, I was at the void magic stage, but the bad part was that my mana lost its potency the further out I went.

Void mana didn't work either.

Eventually, I stopped and turned back.

This is not ok.

I am not ok.

Today, to relieve my pent up frustrations, I was facing the sea in the east.

I was at the location where Jackal's lab had been. There was still a huge dent in the ground from where I had ported the whole place into the treasury.

When I say I was here to relieve my frustrations, I didn't mean I would stand here and do nothing.

That'd be ridiculous. I'd look silly, doing that.

Although, that was exactly what I had been doing for the past hour now.

I was debating in my head whether or not to go through with this.

'Do I really want to hunt a dragon? I mean, am I that mad? Am I really that mad? I don't think I'm that mad. Actually, all of a sudden I feel like I can handle a little more searching for clues.

Another year. Yeah, let's come back after another year. By then, I'll definitely be mad enough to fight a dragon. Definitely...'

Turning around, I tried starting to walk back, but after taking just merely one step:

'No, this isn't right. I can't be like this. I'm going to become someone great, someone who can go as he pleases between universes. I can't be scared of a mere dragon...Plus, technically I should be stronger than it now...technically...'

Dragon scales were ridiculously hard, much harder than mythril. However, I could slash through them fairly well if I used a less compressed version of [Void Severance Slash].

[Void Severance Slash] compressed aura and mana into an attack. The exact way it did so was more complicated, but that was the essence of it.

The max strength I could unleash, which was also the level of power that opened a void rift, was 1000x compression.

In other words, in the narrow space of that slash was an attack 1000x stronger than a normal peak class blood stage.

Of course, others at the peak class blood stage might also be able to use such attacks, but not to the same level. Otherwise, they'd break the void barrier and enter the void magic stage.

Dragon scales were strong, but not enough to withstand that attack at 1000x compression. Of course, I could only use that attack once every 5 hours, but I could use 500x compression after that, since I could reach 500x compression without [Adrenal Moment].

Moreover, that one strongest attack would open a void rift right on the dragons body, causing major damage, albeit in a small area of effect.

In other words, I could do this. I was strong enough.

Still, the stories about dragons really made it hard to turn around.

But I did, and I stepped off the cliff edge and dashed out into the air above the sea.

It was time to fight a dragon.