Chapter 9 : Beyond the Veil

Well, then.

Shall we take a look at the heart of the problem?

The thought had barely formed in my mind before space folded around me, carrying me across the distance in an instant. There was no sensation of movement, no wind rushing past my body, and certainly no sense of traveling through the space that separated my previous location from the place I had chosen to reach. One moment I was elsewhere, and the next I was standing before the enormous phenomenon that had been drawing my attention for some time.

The Veil or the mist.

I raised my head and allowed my gaze to travel across its immense surface.

Even after seeing it countless times, the sight remained difficult to become accustomed to. A colossal wall of white mist stretched across the horizon, rising from the earth until it disappeared somewhere beyond the visible sky. Its upper reaches could not be seen, nor could its true boundaries be determined from any ordinary perspective. It seemed to extend endlessly in both directions, as though someone had taken an entire section of the world and wrapped it inside an immeasurable curtain.

At first glance, it resembled an enormous wall of fog.

That description, however, was misleading.

There was nothing natural about the mist.

It did not drift according to the wind, nor did it disperse beneath the warmth of the sun. The countless currents of air that passed through the surrounding land had no influence on it whatsoever. The mist remained where it was, motionless and absolute, separating the continent from the world beyond it with a certainty that made the boundary feel less like a physical structure and more like a law imposed upon reality itself.

I had always considered that distinction important.

The Veil was not something that had simply appeared between two locations. It was a temporal distortion, a phenomenon in which space and time had been manipulated so profoundly that the region occupied by the barrier no longer obeyed the same flow of time as the rest of the world. Exactly eight seconds separated the two sides of the Veil.

Eight seconds.

A seemingly insignificant amount of time to an ordinary person, yet the difference was enough to make the barrier something entirely different from a conventional wall.

If someone attempted to cross it without understanding its nature, they would not simply be moving from one place to another. They would be forcing themselves through a region where the relationship between cause and effect had been altered. It was one of the reasons why destroying the Veil through sheer strength had always been considered impossible. A mountain could be destroyed because a mountain was a physical object. A barrier made from magic could be broken because magic obeyed certain rules that could, under sufficient circumstances, be overwhelmed.

Time was different.

You could bend space.

You could distort matter.

You could even interfere with certain aspects of causality if you possessed enough power and the right abilities.

But trying to seize the flow of time itself and force it to behave according to your will was another matter entirely.

It was like trying to hold a river in your bare hands and ordering the water to stop flowing.

Impossible.

At least, it should have been.

My eyes eventually settled upon the center of the Veil, where something had changed.

A wound had appeared across its otherwise flawless surface.

The opening was impossible to miss. A jagged tear, several dozen meters in length, cut through the endless white mist like a black scar across an otherwise untouched sky. Unlike the rest of the barrier, the interior of the rift did not appear white or translucent. It was dark, almost impossibly dark, and the darkness seemed to move independently of the surrounding mist.

I studied it in silence.

There was something wrong with it.

Not merely because it existed. I already knew that the rift existed. The problem was that its shape was not the same as before.

Had it grown?

I narrowed my eyes.

The question seemed simple, but the longer I considered it, the more troublesome it became.

The original opening had been sufficiently narrow that only Fourth-Rank creatures could force their way through it. That limitation had been one of the few reassuring aspects of the situation. Fourth-Rank creatures were dangerous, but their presence did not represent an uncontrollable threat to the continent. There were still beings within this world capable of dealing with them, and even the strongest among those creatures would have found it difficult to cause irreversible damage if they managed to cross in small numbers.

Now, however, the situation had changed.

The opening had become larger.

Not dramatically larger, but enough to alter the balance.

Fifth-Rank creatures could now cross.

I remained silent for a long time as I considered the implications.

The difference between the Fourth and Fifth Rank was not something that could be measured merely by comparing the amount of magical power each possessed. The higher one climbed through the ranks, the more fundamental the difference between realms became. A Fifth-Rank existence was not simply a stronger version of a Fourth-Rank creature. Its body, its perception, its control over energy, and the destructive potential of its abilities all existed on an entirely different level.

Allowing Fifth-Rank creatures to enter the continent meant that the safety margin I had previously relied upon was beginning to disappear.

Still, there was one remaining limitation.

Sixth-Rank creatures could not yet pass through.

That fact was the only reason I was not treating the situation as an immediate catastrophe.

A Sixth-Rank creature was an entirely different matter. There were very few beings in this world capable of confronting one directly, and even fewer capable of defeating one without paying a tremendous price. If the rift were to expand to the point where such beings could cross freely, the consequences would no longer be something that could be handled by simply eliminating whatever happened to emerge.

I looked at the wound again.

The fact that it had expanded at all was what bothered me.

Something had changed.

And changes of this nature did not happen without a cause.

Very few beings possessed the ability to create or manipulate a distortion of this scale. If I excluded the entities that existed beyond the sky of this world—beings whose existence belonged to a realm that made even the strongest creatures within this world appear insignificant—then only two possibilities immediately came to mind.

One of them would never attempt something like this.

And the other...

I stopped.

For a moment, I said nothing.

The conclusion I had reached was not one I particularly liked.

…

…

What a troublesome matter.

I shifted my attention back to the wound in the barrier.

Very well.

Let us see what kind of game you are playing.

The moment my perception crossed the boundary, the atmosphere changed.

Beyond the Veil…

The sea beyond the mist was enormous, but the most striking thing about it was not its size.

It was the life within it.

The entire ocean seemed to have been transformed into a vast kingdom of monsters.

Creatures of every imaginable shape moved through the dark waters. Some possessed enormous jaws filled with rows of teeth, while others had long, serpentine bodies that disappeared into the depths. Tentacles emerged from beneath the surface before disappearing again, and enormous shadows occasionally passed beneath the water, their size suggesting that whatever created them was large enough to swallow an ordinary ship whole.

The sky above was no safer.

Winged creatures filled the heavens, their silhouettes blocking the light as they flew across the clouds. Some resembled enormous birds, others reptiles, and some were so strange that I could not immediately determine whether they belonged to any recognizable category of living creature.

Yet despite the chaos, there was an order to the madness.

A hierarchy.

The weaker creatures avoided the stronger ones. Predators controlled territories, while creatures even more powerful than the predators ruled over entire regions. The world beyond the Veil was not simply populated by monsters.

It was a world where strength determined everything.

Those who could not protect themselves became prey.

Those who were strong enough to dominate others became predators.

And those who stood at the very top became kings.

One such king was currently moving through the depths of the ocean.

The Abyssal Serpent.

Its enormous body stretched for nearly two kilometers from head to tail, while its thickest sections measured dozens of meters across. Layers of dark scales covered its body, each scale possessing a density that ordinary weapons would never have been capable of penetrating. The creature moved through the ocean with surprising grace despite its size, its body weaving through the water with an efficiency that demonstrated just how completely it had adapted to its environment.

It was not merely powerful.

It was intelligent.

That distinction mattered.

The lesser creatures surrounding it rushed toward the rift without hesitation, driven by instinct or the influence of something they did not understand. The Abyssal Serpent did not share their recklessness. It watched from a distance, allowing the weaker creatures to move first.

Their deaths meant nothing to it.

If they reached the continent, they would create chaos.

If they died while attempting to cross the Veil, the result was equally acceptable.

Either way, they served a purpose.

The serpent was patient because it understood that there was no reason for it to risk itself when countless lesser creatures could test the boundary on its behalf.

Eventually, the opening would become larger.

Eventually, the creatures capable of crossing would become stronger.

And eventually, it would cross itself.

When that happened, the serpent believed that nothing within the continent would be able to stop it.

Perhaps that confidence was justified.

The creature had survived countless battles, defeated powerful opponents, and established itself as one of the kings of the sea. It had no reason to believe that the world beyond the Veil would be fundamentally different.

It did not know that something had already noticed it.

The serpent's massive body suddenly stopped.

At first, it did not understand why.

Its muscles remained tense, ready to move, yet its body refused to respond. The creature attempted to propel itself forward, but the surrounding water merely shifted around its enormous form.

Nothing happened.

The serpent tried again.

Still nothing.

Then a strange sensation crawled through its mind.

It was being watched.

The realization came with such sudden force that every instinct within its body activated simultaneously.

It raised its enormous head and stared toward the Veil.

The mist concealed almost everything on the other side.

Almost.

Two golden eyes were visible through the white curtain.

They did not glow brightly.

They did not move.

They simply watched.

Yet the moment the serpent saw them, every thought in its mind was replaced by a single overwhelming realization.

Danger.

Not the ordinary danger of encountering another predator.

Not the instinctive caution a creature experienced when facing an opponent stronger than itself.

This was something deeper.

Something primordial.

The serpent's body reacted before its mind could understand the reason.

It turned.

The ocean exploded beneath the force of its acceleration as the enormous creature fled into the depths, covering kilometers in seconds. It did not care where it was going. It did not care what stood in its path. The only thought left in its mind was to put as much distance as possible between itself and those golden eyes.

But distance meant nothing.

The serpent did not know that yet.

Then…

A shadow moved beyond the Veil.

The next instant, a hand emerged.

Space distorted around it.

The white mist twisted violently as if reality itself were being forced aside to accommodate something that should not have been able to cross the boundary.

a blinding light erupted through the rift.

Reality folded inward, compressed into the unmistakable shape of a colossal palm.

For a brief moment, that enormous hand stopped at the boundary between the two worlds.

Then…

It crossed.

The hand was enormous, yet its size was not what made it terrifying.

It was the pressure surrounding it.

The instant that hand crossed through the Veil, the surrounding space seemed to lose its meaning.

The sky warped.

The ocean bent.

The boundary between near and far collapsed.

The Abyssal Serpent had been fleeing at tremendous speed, yet before it could even turn its head, the enormous hand was already there.

Its fingers closed around the serpent's body.

The creature reacted immediately.

Its muscles contracted with enough force to generate enormous waves across the ocean. Its tail struck against the surrounding water, producing a shockwave that sent lesser creatures tumbling through the depths. The serpent twisted its body and attempted to tear itself free, unleashing every ounce of strength accumulated throughout its existence.

Nothing happened.

The hand did not even shake.

For the first time in its life, the Abyssal Serpent experienced the terrifying realization that its strength was meaningless.

It was not being defeated.

It was being held.

There was a difference.

The creature was so completely outmatched that its resistance did not even qualify as resistance in the eyes of the one holding it.

The serpent roared.

Its roar shook the sea.

Then the world itself seemed to respond.

A strange metallic sound echoed through the surrounding space.

Was the world responding to its desperation?

Crack.

Crack.

Crack.

The serpent froze.

Golden chains appeared from nowhere.

They erupted around the enormous hand, winding themselves around its wrist and fingers with incredible speed. They were not ordinary chains, nor did they appear to have been created by any visible spell. Their very existence seemed connected to the laws governing the Veil.

The world was rejecting the hand.

The chains tightened.

The space around them distorted.

The enormous hand trembled once, and the serpent's eyes widened.

For the first time, it saw a possibility.

Perhaps the barrier itself would stop this existence.

Perhaps the world would reject whatever had crossed its boundary.

The chains tightened again.

The pressure became overwhelming.

Then, without warning, the hand vanished.

The serpent vanished with it.

For several seconds, the ocean remained completely silent.

The creatures that had been moving toward the rift stopped.

The winged monsters in the sky halted their movements.

Even the predators that had spent their entire existence fighting for territory seemed to understand that something had happened which they were not powerful enough to comprehend.

The kings that had been observing the rift were gone.

They had fled.

Not one remained.

And none of them dared return.

The serpent slowly opened its eyes.

…

Alive?

It had survived.

Its first sensation was confusion.

The second was relief.

It was alive.

The realization seemed impossible.

It had been certain that it was going to die.

Yet there was no ocean beneath its body now.

Instead, solid ground supported its enormous weight.

The serpent slowly lifted its head and looked around.

The environment was unfamiliar.

There was no endless sea.

No monsters.

No darkness.

No familiar scent of saltwater.

Where am I?

The question had barely formed when a voice reached its ears.

"Good."

The serpent froze.

Slowly, it turned its head.

A human stood before it.

He wore a long royal robe that moved gently with the wind, the fabric untouched by the chaos that had accompanied the serpent's arrival. His black hair framed a calm face, and his posture was relaxed enough to suggest that nothing particularly remarkable had happened.

Yet the serpent did not look at his clothes.

It did not look at his posture.

Its gaze went directly to his eyes.

Golden.

The same golden eyes.

The serpent's enormous body began to tremble.

Golden…

Eyes…

Eyes…

Ah…

Ah…

Ah…

Its thoughts scattered.

The abyssal serpent's mind shattered beneath the weight of terror.

And darkness claimed it forever.

A faint smile appeared on my face as I tightened my spatial grip around its enormous body.

Its enormous body hung motionless between my hands.

And now…

Shall we find out what exactly is going on?