Alex wished he could mull over the details a bit longer, but ti wasn't so forgiving.
Now that Mikhail, the sole being keeping the dinsional pocket together, had died, its deterioration jumped up a notch and was rapidly breaking apart.
Alex knew that if he wasn't quick enough to leave the place, he'd end up the sa as Mikhail!
The mont the last line of Mikhail's ssage left his mind, the air shifted again.
A low rumble coursed through the sealed fragnt of space.
The ground cracked beneath him and the grass had lost all its lusture.
The once beautiful light that surrounded him began to fracture, as the fabric of space holding the dinsion together were beginning to fall apart.
The entire dinsion was soon going to collapse entirely.
Alex's head whipped up as chunks of sky began to crumble, folding into themselves and vanishing, reducing the size of the space in the dinsion by a large margin.
Alex could already see the future if he stayed.
The space would keep getting smaller and smaller until there wasn't even enough space left to contain his body.
And when that happened…
He didn't even want to imagine it!
He had to act fast.
He sucked in a sharp breath, then gripped the hilt of System Breaker tightly, with the reborn blade humming with power far beyond his capabilities to understand. It no longer trembled, no longer sought for his guidance.
It simply waited, ready for the singular purpose it had been created for.
To break the system's chains.
But he couldn't activate it here.
Mikhail's final ssage had been clear.
He needed to reestablish his connection with the system in order for it to work.
But he had to act fast in order to make sure that he even made it back alive before doing so!
Unfortunately, his spatial abilities were nowhere near powerful enough to teleport across dinsions to try and escape back to the dead realm, so he was out of options in that departnt.
But he knew that Mikhail wouldn't just leave him out to dry like this after creating and seeing through such an elaborate plan to the end, even involving his own sacrifice in it, just to have him die before even having a chance to fulfill it.
Mikhail must have known that the dinsion was going to collapse after his death, so he must have left so sort of thod for Alex to leave.
Virtue's Edge was no more, becoming System Breaker now, so he couldn't attempt to use the sa thod he used to enter, and the fact that the impossibly powerful sword didn't even respond to any of the changes in the environnt, or trembled like it had when he heard the entrance to the dinsion back in the dead realm, confird his suspicions.
Hence, he sohow had to find the way out himself…
'He said follow my instincts with Soulforge… Did he an to do so more than just with the creation of System Breaker?' Alex inquired internally.
He could see this being the case, though he just wished that Mikhail was more open about what he had to do!
Being so ambiguous with his words only made Alex hesitant, and unsure on what the correct choice to make was.
After all, with the speed that the dinsion was deteriorating, he doubted that he'd have enough ti to co up with another option.
'Mikhail himself kept this dinsion together and had full control over who entered and exited it. Maybe… just maybe, since I've interacted with his soul directly, and fused it with Virtue's Edge…'
An idea quickly started to form in his mind.
Just as Mikhail had guided him, he activated his Soulforge once again, despite its obvious flaw of being incredibly weakened after fusing the soul of a Universal God.
It only activated for just a fraction of a second before losing all strength and energy again and becoming dormant.
But that fraction of a second was all that was needed!
He sensed an extrely apparent anomaly in that short span where Soulforge was active.
As the talent stemd directly from his soul, Alex's soul and Mikhail's soul had briefly interacted with each other during the fusion process, which Mikhail must have used to transfer his ownership of the dinsion to Alex!
Allowing Alex to see exactly what he needed to escape.
The escape route – the tether that Mikhail had used to bring him here – was still faintly open, leading to the dead realm on the other side.
Thankfully, it was still unsealed after using Virtue's Edge to unseal it, so he wasn't going to be trapped regardless of finding it.
Without hesitation, Alex willed himself towards it.
A great pull gripped his core at once, dragging him up, out, and through.
He didn't know how long it took – a century could have passed in the blink of an eye for all he knew, but in the next mont.
He was back.
***
The dreadful landscape of the basin in the Dead Realm was the first thing to greet Alex's eyes.
But this ti, Alex didn't take a second to admire the scenery.
He felt it the instant he landed.
A cold, suffocating pressure creeping down from above as his connection to the System was reestablished.
Alex swore he could feel a looming, unfathomable gaze start to lock its eyes on him.
And he knew that he had only seconds before it noticed the anomaly that was his sword.
'Three seconds!' Alex reminded himself.
He raised System Breaker.
He could feel the blade's excitent as it was just seconds away from fulfilling its lifelong purpose; its very reason for being created in the first place.
But to Alex, he felt nothing.
No build up of energy.
No unfathomable amount of power dwelling within the sword.
It was as if the sword contained no power at all, like an ordinary, unawakened blade.
But he wouldn't let his blindness deceive him.
He swung at the open air.
"..."
Silence.
'Two seconds!'
"..."
Still silence.
'One second!!!!'
Even after the three second limit Mikhail had given, Alex still noticed nothing changing about… well, anything.
'Wait!... that gaze, it's no longer there…'
But he was quick to notice the biggest change of them all.
He rushed to check and see if he could access his status.
Surprisingly, he still could.
"What the fu—"
But there was one, big, glaring difference.
Reviews
All reviews (0)