Chapter 17 : The Thing Beyond the Rift

In the southwestern reaches of the Caldar Continent, Maxwell, Master of the Mage Tower, flew through the sky , heading toward the Crimson Fortress that stood opposite the Mist Rift.

His expression was sour.

“Why did he have to send me here?” Maxwell muttered beneath his breath. “Couldn’t he have handled everything himself?”

It was not as though Rowan’s life had suddenly become free of work. If anything, Maxwell knew better than most that Rowan had a remarkable talent for making even the simplest matter someone else’s problem.

And Maxwell remembered exactly what had happened the last time he had been left to deal with the aftermath of that mysterious intruder.

For days upon days, he had been running from one disaster to another, repairing whatever that bastard had broken, cleaning up whatever mess he had created, and trying to prevent the next problem from appearing before he had even finished dealing with the previous one.

The thought alone made his jaw tighten.

“If I ever get my hands on you…” Maxwell muttered.

Whoever that man was, he had managed to stir Maxwell’s anger more effectively than almost anyone Maxwell had encountered in a very long time.

“I’ll remember your aura, you bastard.”

He exhaled through his nose.

“Though I sincerely hope I never find you.”

The thought was almost comforting.

By the time the Crimson Fortress came into view, Maxwell had already decided that he would do exactly what he had been told to do and nothing more.

He descended toward the fortress.

The moment he appeared before the fortress, General Alexander rose from his seat and immediately straightened.

“Master of the Tower. My greetings. If you had sent word ahead, we would have prepared properly for your arrival.”

Maxwell glanced at him.

There was no need to explain why Alexander was being so formal.

Maxwell was simply too famous.

Across the entire continent, there were few people who did not know the name of the Master of the Mage Tower.

He was the strongest mage.

Everyone knew it.

The world was far too connected for someone like him to move around unnoticed. With the spiritual network connecting the continent, information spread almost instantly. Images of famous figures could be found everywhere on the internet, and Maxwell had certainly accumulated more than enough of them.

Maxwell waved a hand dismissively.

“No, no. Don’t bother. Don’t tell anyone I’m here. I’m on a secret mission.”

Alexander immediately nodded.

“Understood, my lord.”

The two entered the command room.

Once inside, Maxwell dropped onto one of the sofas and crossed one leg over the other.

He leaned back.

Finally.

A little rest.

He opened the blue screen in front of him and retrieved several sandwiches from his storage.

He took one out and settled deeper into the sofa.

“This is much better.”

He took a bite.

For the first time since arriving at the fortress, the tension in his shoulders began to disappear.

Maybe this would not be so bad after all.

He had come here because Rowan had sent him.

That did not necessarily mean he had to spend every second working.

Rowan had already dealt with most of the troublesome matters himself. Maxwell was merely here as a precaution.

A warning bell.

That was all.

“I can just treat this as a vacation,” he murmured, taking another bite. “The old man cleaned everything up himself.”

Maxwell smiled faintly.

“Yes. I’ll consider myself an alarm bell and enjoy my vacation.”

He leaned back even farther.

“There’s no way something could suddenly go wrong, right?”

He paused.

Then chuckled.

“Right?”

Outside the Mist Rift, the mysterious young man sat quietly on a rock with a fishing rod in his hands.

The sea stretched endlessly around him.

For a while, nothing happened.

Then the fishing line suddenly trembled.

The young man's eyes shifted toward it.

The blood-red cube at the end of the line was moving violently beneath the water.

It was struggling.

Trying to break free.

The young man frowned.

“Easy. Easy.”

The line trembled again.

“Damn, this is annoying.”

His voice was low.

He was the same mysterious man who had caused Maxwell so much trouble.

The young man watched the line for another moment before suddenly raising his head.

Something had changed.

The atmosphere.

The sky.

The sea.

Far away on the horizon, the blue sky began to darken.

At first, it looked almost like an ordinary change in weather.

Then the darkness spread.

Black began crawling across the sky.

At the same time, the level of the water rose.

The waves grew larger.

More violent.

The young man's expression changed slightly.

The darkness continued spreading.

It moved across the sky and over the sea with terrifying speed, like shadows creeping over the world and swallowing everything they touched.

The young man immediately moved.

He accelerated.

The change in the surroundings was no longer something he could ignore.

Whatever was approaching was coming closer.

Closer.

And closer.

Like a disaster that had finally found its way here.

The young man sent his energy through the fishing rod and down the line, directly into the blood-red cube.

A cracking sound came from beneath the water.

Crack.

The surface of the cube split.

Something viscous moved inside.

The sticky crimson substance twisted violently, trying to force its way out.

Another crack appeared.

Then another.

The material inside struggled harder, violently battering against the prison that held it.

It was like a prisoner racing against time, desperately trying to escape before the thing coming for it arrived.

The young man stood.

He looked down toward the water.

The fishing rod was still trembling.

He released it.

The rod sank into the sea.

“Looks like I need to get out of here too.”

His eyes remained fixed on the bottom.

The blood-red cube was breaking apart.

More cracks spread across its surface.

The young man watched the imprisoned substance struggle.

“You should hurry too, my friend.”

A faint smile appeared on his face.

“Our big friend is coming from far away.”

His gaze shifted toward the dark horizon.

“And he’s getting closer.”

Without wasting another second, the young man turned and stepped directly into the Mist Rift.

His figure disappeared beyond the gray mist.

Behind him, the viscous crimson substance continued twisting desperately inside the increasingly damaged cube.

The cracks widened.

The prison was almost gone.

The sky and sea continued to turn black.

The darkness spread farther and farther until the boundary between ocean and sky seemed to disappear entirely.

And within that vast blackness, something moved.

A colossal creature nearly one hundred meters tall, its enormous body carrying an oppressive and terrifying presence. Its strength was obvious even from a distance. Its skin was gray and lifeless, almost completely devoid of warmth, while long black hair fell around its shoulders and down its back, swaying with the movement of the water. Its features were cold and harsh, but there was no ordinary human emotion in its expression. There was only madness. Hundreds of muscular arms surrounded its enormous body, giving it an appearance so utterly inhuman that it was difficult to think of it as a creature that had ever possessed anything resembling humanity.

At the exact moment the blood-red cube began to split apart, the creature's nose twitched.

Its eyes gleamed.

“GRAAAAAAAAA!”

A savage, animalistic roar erupted from its mouth, tearing through the darkness and rolling across the ocean. The creature began to move, its steps accelerating with astonishing speed. The seabed shook beneath its feet as it charged forward, each enormous step sending violent tremors through the ocean floor. Then, before long, its feet lifted away from the seabed entirely.

Hundreds of arms moved at once.

They pulled against the surrounding water, dragging the creature's enormous body forward with tremendous force while saliva spilled from its tooth-filled mouth. The water around it began to twist violently, and its movements quickly became something far more terrifying than simple swimming.

A black hurricane formed around its body.

Whirlpools erupted across the ocean as the creature tore through the water at an impossible speed, dragging an enormous vortex behind it. From a great distance, it looked as though a black hurricane had risen from the depths of the ocean and was now climbing toward the sky.

And it was approaching with terrifying speed.

“GIIIIIIII!”

The crimson mass sensed the creature's approach and immediately released a terrified shriek. It desperately pulled itself out of the broken cube, struggling to escape before the monster could reach it.

If the crimson mass had been capable of speech, it probably would have cursed the mysterious young man thousands of times over.

It had been trapped.

Used as bait.

And now the thing that had been waiting for it had finally arrived.

The crimson mass continued dragging itself free, gradually forming something vaguely resembling a human body. There were no proper features, but a rough shape was beginning to emerge, complete with two arms and two legs. It was almost completely out of the shattered cube.

Almost.

A small portion of one leg was still trapped inside.

Then a gigantic arm appeared above its head.

The enormous hand descended so quickly that the crimson mass barely had time to react. Its palm covered the entire body in a single movement, completely dwarfing the struggling creature beneath it.

But not even a fraction of a second passed before the crimson mass violently swung one of its arms.

The movement severed the remaining leg from its body.

“GIIIIII!”

The crimson mass released a cry of pain and desperation before its body suddenly exploded apart, scattering crimson fragments across the surface of the water.

At the same time, the creature's enormous palm slammed down onto the cube.

The shattered prison was crushed instantly.

The severed leg, however, had not escaped.

The creature's fingers closed around it before pulling it toward its tooth-filled mouth, which was already hanging open and dripping with saliva.

The crimson limb twisted desperately between its fingers.

“Chew. Chew.”

The creature bit down.

The leg continued writhing helplessly for a few moments, twisting in a desperate attempt to escape, but the struggle gradually weakened until it finally stopped moving.

The creature swallowed.

Its red eyes shifted toward the sea.

The scattered pieces of the crimson mass had already begun gathering again.

One fragment moved toward another.

Then another.

Slowly, the scattered substance drew itself together, forming a single body once more. It was humanoid in shape, but something was immediately wrong.

One of its legs was missing.

“GIIIIIII!”

The crimson mass screamed in fear as it looked at the place where its leg should have been. It immediately tried to regenerate the missing limb.

A new leg began to grow.

But when it finally finished regenerating, the crimson mass noticed something was wrong.

Its body was smaller than before.

Much smaller.

The crimson mass stared at its newly formed leg, then at the rest of its body, before finally understanding what had happened.

The creature had eaten a part of it.

The realization sent a wave of fear through the crimson mass, and it froze in place.

The crimson mass froze.

Then, slowly, it raised its head.

Its eyes met the creature's red eyes.

For a brief moment, the two stared at one another.

Then the crimson mass fled.

It tore across the surface of the sea at terrifying speed, using everything it had to put as much distance between itself and the monster as possible. It did not dare look back. There was no need to. It already knew exactly what was chasing it.

The Mist Rift appeared ahead.

The crimson mass rushed directly into the gray mist without hesitation.

It disappeared inside.

A moment later, the ocean behind it erupted.

A massive mountain of water rose into the air as the hundred-meter-tall monster emerged from the sea, its hundreds of arms stretching toward the Mist Rift. It slammed into the barrier with tremendous force, but the Rift was only a few dozen meters across.

The creature was simply too large.

Its enormous body could not pass through.

The monster let out another furious roar and reached for the gray mist with its massive hands. Black energy began pouring from its body and into the Rift, spreading through the gray barrier and contaminating it with darkness.

The creature grabbed the Mist Rift itself.

Then it pulled.

The entire Rift trembled.

At first, nothing seemed to happen. Then the opening began to stretch, almost imperceptibly at first, as though the gray mist itself were being pulled apart by the monster's enormous strength.

The opening widened.

Only slightly.

But it was expanding.

The creature pulled harder.

Hundreds of muscular arms moved at once, each one reaching into the Rift after the fleeing crimson mass. One arm forced its way inside, followed by another, and then another, until countless enormous limbs were plunging through the gray mist.

The Rift struggled beneath the pressure.

Black energy continued spreading across its surface, contaminating the gray mist as the creature forced its way deeper inside.

The opening continued expanding little by little.

And the hundreds of arms continued following the fleeing crimson mass into the Mist Rift, tearing through the gray mist and plunging deeper and deeper into the unknown beyond it.

Whatever was waiting on the other side would soon have to deal with them.

Chaos was coming with them.