Chapter 35 (cont)

A\N

These 1200 words were added to the end of c35

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[System Error: Connection to Ludus Arbor Overridden]

The portal swelled outward and over me. But I wasn’t instantly teleported away. My breath hitched for a moment as I took in the sight. The warbling material that made up the dungeon’s portal doors replaced the air all around me. Poppy’s party vanished. Then the world around me seemed to dissolve. Earth floated upwards, breaking into minuscule pieces of dust, turning into streams of black. Trees collapsed, compressed, and flowed. Rivers of power raced toward where the Gale Titan of the Core Chamber had died.

[Attempting to establish connection with local World Tree]

[World Seed Identified: ♫ ♪ ♩]

The text slammed into my mind with the noise of bird song. I instinctively knew that it was the name of the Gale Titan — a name it had never shared before.

But the System connected to a World Seed, not a tree. The Anti-Light playback mentioned that the trees were supposed to fall,

A spark of power rose up out of where the Gale Titan fell, floating toward me. I opened my hands. It floated there, sparking and glittering. Rivers of black power flowed into it.

The walls of this pocket world slipped away. Beyond, I saw the forest of World Trees, white pillars bigger than the sky. It was the same place that had given me the revelation necessary to learn the Anti-Lightning Sword Art and cultivation path.

A Dao from beyond the world.

“You were on your way to becoming a whole world.” I said to the spark of light in my hands. Instinctively, I knew it was what remained of the Gale Titan. Not just the part of it that had composed Littlebird — that was but a tiny piece of its naive youth.

The spark floating over my hands was all of it.

I felt connected to it; I could feel resentment, grief, anger. But also the tiniest spark of happiness.

Its name appeared in system prompts over and over, a longer and longer melody of bird song. It had never shared it with anyone. Littlebird had died having never met a member of its family; it hatched alone in an empty nest.

The chambers of the dungeon collapsed around me, flowing into this tiny spark.

Horror filled me for a moment as I saw other Trailblazers stop in midair, dozens around me simply floating in the void. They hadn’t escaped the dungeon before it collapsed. The spark of power in my hands responded to that feeling.

Trailblazers vanished as they were teleported out of the dungeon. Every time the teleportation wave reached them, a little power drained from the spark. It was burning its own power to teleport them away.

A tiny spark of grief for the bird’s life rose in me to match it.

[System Error: Rewards hijacked.]

“Hey — ” I said, that grief turning to alarm.

[System Error: Connection to World Seed Lost. World Seed Collapsed.]

The spark in my hands took the shape of an egg before falling into my open hands. The warping colors around me disappeared. I stood on a single platform of floating earth, dust falling away into the void. Behind me, a world tree stretched so unimaginably large it looked like an infinite wall; it looked like the edge of reality. Before me, the forest of trees stretched out.

The Titanfall dungeon had been on the edge of the world. I realized what I was seeing. This was the Way Between Worlds.

A distinct feeling of dread and horror slowly built above me. Clouds rose above the forest, flashing with lightning the size of worlds. They writhed like living things. Below, an ocean of sick black turned with formless flesh that rose until it stained the trunks of world trees. The trees were sick. They were wrong. There was something distinctly wrong about each of them, like blotches of rotting flesh stretching up where the dark ocean corrupted them.

It was wrong. It was all wrong.

“It has to burn.”

The voice wasn’t mine. It floated next to me in the void. A horrible instinct overtook me. It told me not to look. My body went rigid.

 A chill passed through my body. There was no qi here, and now that I looked, I could see that my own was boiling off of me, spilling out into the void and rapidly becoming so disparate that I couldn’t even identify it.

[Connection Successful]

[Processing Rewards…]

[Error: Insufficient Change]

Then the Way Between Worlds was gone, and I stood in a clearing of grass.

My chest was heaving. A silver egg with black stripes, bigger than both of my fists together, rested in my open hands.

“Feng Sai!” Poppy shouted.

Her voice boomed in the clearing, only a few feet away from me. She attracted attention from the dozens — the hundreds of people around me. The Gale Titan’s corpse had collapsed into a pile of glittering bones.

One of my hands rushed to touch my ear.

“Where did you go?” Eros asked, walking up a half second after Poppy.

Poppy was no longer wearing metal armor. Eros, too, had changed. His bow was notably missing. My eyes must have hovered on his back for too long.

“Do you know how long I had that bow? More than a year! The one before that I sold. You’re cursed.”

“I’m sorry?” I asked, stepping back.

Poppy’s eyes hovered on the egg in my hands.

I belatedly realized that it was dawn. The sun painted the world in red hues as it crested distant mountains.

[Dimensional Rebound in 53 Hours]

My eyes widened at the alert.

“Yeah, that’s right.” Eros said. “You got my bow broken. Again. With that explosion! What was that?”

Eros misinterpreted my eyes widening as being about losing his bow. I had lost more than twelve hours of time.

“Ah… apologies.” I said. “If I may ask… how long ago did you exit the dungeon?”

“Six hours ago!” Poppy said. “Anna is already back in town, asleep. The loss of so many [Shades] in one day took it out of her.”

I paused. I looked at the egg in my hand.

[Anti-Light Roc Egg]

[A spirit bound egg tied to Feng Sai. It contains the remnant consciousness of a Titan level entity with an embryonic perfected body. This egg is feeding off of its connection to Feng Sai’s power. Time until hatching: 15 days.]

I checked my qi. There was a hole in my dantian. A needle thin string exited out of it. I tried to follow it with my perception, but struggled to. I could sense that the other end was at the egg, though. A tiny trickle of qi and something else bled into it.

The egg was heavy. It must have weighed ten pounds. I could save investigating it more for later, though.

“You offered drinks earlier?” I asked.

“You’re paying this time.” Eros said.

“Ah… Apologies. I lost all my silver in the dungeon.”

Eros groaned.

“How about you tell us a bit about…” Poppy paused. She looked around the clearing. Dozens of people suddenly busied themselves, pretending they weren’t paying attention. “About your homeland.”

I paused to consider. If all of them were using Qi Techniques, they needed education in them. Otherwise they were liable to injure themselves eventually. Just possessing Qi inside of you would subtly push you towards progression. It was a miracle none of them had damaged themselves opening their meridians — though maybe the system substituted for them, somehow.

“That’s agreeable. In exchange I have some questions about your own House.”

Mostly how much she knew about their hunt of the Anti-Light Order whose power I inherited.

“Why don’t we get him some bandages first?” Eros interrupted.