For the next four days, Cluma and I trained against the white mambas of floor sixteen and the faster black mambas of floor seventeen in the Serpent Isle dungeon. We could learn from each fight, while the mambas could only build up experience within a single encounter, and we quickly came up with tactics to deal with their sensory abilities.

ding

Skill [Mighty Swing] advanced to level 9

Skill [Swift Strike] advanced to level 11

Skill [Shelter] advanced to level 8

Skill [Superimpose] advanced to level 7

Skill [Enlarged Health Pool] advanced to level 9

Skill [Rapid Healing] advanced to level 3

Class [Eldritch Mage] advanced to level 19

The mere possession of tactics did nothing to guarantee victory, of course, and both Cluma and I continued to take hits, burning through a slow but steady supply of healing potions and antidotes each day. Even the higher level monster cores didn't pay for the stream of consumables we were burning through, but thankfully, I had my institute savings to fall back on. The challenge meant skill gains, and I was more than happy to turn my money into levels.

We tried a very brief incursion onto floor eighteen, which was occupied by anaconda kings, but their lack of any sensory abilities that could pick up Cluma made the floor easier than seventeen. Once we were done with the mana anomaly investigation, perhaps we'd try a run with Cluma's [Stealth] banned.

And that was the elephant in the room, right there. More than one of my injuries had been caused by a lapse of concentration as my mind wandered back to the anomalies and the twins. The night before Krana was due to show up in the village, sleep eluded me once more.

Picking up Cluma before second bell, with the sky still dark and me very deliberately having not eaten any breakfast, we teleported back to the village. Mum was fussing around Darren, dressing him up in warm clothes. Right... Cluma and I had rings enchanted with ice resistance and feather fall. Darren didn't.

"Wear this while we're flying," I said, giving him my ring. The comfort enchantment would resize it to fit.

"What is it?" asked mum.

"Protection, in case he falls off."

"I'm not gonna fall!" he complained.

"What about you?" asked mum.

"I can use [Redistribute] in mid-air." Or I hoped I could, at least. I didn't think momentum followed me to my new location, but I'd never tried using it while falling from the sky before. Besides, Krana wouldn't let us fall, and would catch us even if we did.

True to his word, Krana turned up shortly before second bell, lifting the three of us to his back and departing for Synklisi. Once again, I quickly ended up too sick to enjoy the view, and was very thankful I'd had the foresight to not eat anything. Also as usual, Cluma was completely unaffected, and utterly unable to sit still.

"Wow, look at all the trees," she marvelled, staring down at what must have been the Emerald Sea. "It's so pretty."

Darren was, thankfully, not as extreme as either of us, not struggling to keep his insides inside, but also not feeling the need to stand up on the back of a dragon hundreds of metres up in the air. He simply sat patiently, a fact for which I was going to need to thank him once we were back on solid ground. He was still looking around with interest, though, and at one point giggled as he grabbed at empty air in front of him. That was... slightly odd, but no odder than I was, so I felt it would be hypocritical to complain.

"Oh, there's the Emerald Nest, too!" commented Cluma again, staring off into the distance.

The flight was short, thanks to Krana being ridiculously fast, and we touched down in the street outside of the great dungeon, sending teams of delvers scattering. Krana started to shrink down without even letting us off first, so I grabbed Darren and jumped, Cluma landing next to me a second later.

"We have arrived in good time," dryly commented a high-pitched Krana.

"Good. Plenty of time for me to recover," I muttered as I sat down on the ground, that one leap having exhausted my supplies of uprightness for the foreseeable future.

"If you require rest, do so later. We must meet up with the others."

Really? Maybe I could crawl. I really didn't feel like... "Eep!" I squeaked.

"Up you go," laughed Cluma, picking me up in a princess carry. What the heck?! "What's wrong? We're in a hurry, and you're looking far too ill to be walking. You didn't look this pale even when that black mamba bit you. With your recovery boosts, I'm sure you'll be fine in a few minutes. Just bear it until then."

Covering my face in shame, my poor fake ears twitching all over the place, Cluma carried me into the warehouse.

"What's wrong with that one?" came a female voice, every bit as high pitched as Krana. Still with my hands over my eyes, I glanced out with [Mana Sight] instead, picking up a pair of shrunken dragons, a four armed demon and a pair of elves.

"His journey was unpleasant, the beauty veiled by the body," answered one of the elves, and I didn't need to listen to the riddled words to recognise the voice as Tilyana.

"I'm not a good flyer," I admitted through my hands. "But please put me down now. This is embarrassing!"

"I know," giggled Cluma, obviously getting a kick out of my reactions. "At least now your face is red instead of white. You look far healthier!"

Thankfully, she did put me down, and I'd recovered enough to stand. As expected, the demon was Dru'hazzak, but I didn't recognise the others. No, I had seen the second elf before. He'd been one of the mages at the Emerald Caverns, repairing the portals after the fight.

Serlvrenalliacta, Dragon, Empress of Eternal Ice (141/291)

Bruleggiamlixanax, Dragon, Magic Incarnate (139/289)

Horail, Elf, Spatial Archmage (60/130)

ding

Skill [Analysis] advanced to level 15

All too high level for [Analysis] to give me their full status. Serlv-whatever was someone Krana had mentioned before, who Erryn had asked to protect the subsidiary core, and the third dragon was the one that held some ridiculous sounding skill that had nonetheless failed to achieve anything. The elf was my favourite already, simply on the grounds that he had a sensible name.

"We expect these... children to succeed where we have not?" squeaked Bruleggiam... something. I'd got halfway through, though, which I felt was a reasonable achievement.

"Success is unlikely, but possible," said Serlv. "You have not made any alternative suggestions."

Bruleg just rumbled with discontent, but didn't have a response to make.

"How much longer?" asked Krana.

"Thirteen minutes."

We stood around in awkward silence, prepared to bolt to the optimal portal the moment we knew where the next anomaly was opening up. All transport of goods through the portals had ceased, and they hadn't bothered with the bridges. We were all going to jump, with Krana carrying Darren, so I'd taken my ring back for the high jump enchantment. We only had nine minutes to potentially get anywhere on the planet, and while it only had a single continent, it was surrounded by a lot of ocean. There was the possibility it would open somewhere we couldn't get to quickly, and we'd have to retry in seven days' time.

"It begins," commented Tilyana, her head jerking upwards.

"2.140 by 18.891," said Serlv, moments later.

"Obsidian Spires, then Whitecliff!" exclaimed Krana, already moving towards one of the portals, scaled up to around horse size, with Darren clinging flat to his back.

The rest of the group followed, except for Dru'hazzak who seemed to only be here to orchestrate the portal use and wasn't part of the investigative team. I leapt through the portal myself, only getting a brief look at the structure beyond before jumping into the second. I'd had a glimpse of demons, as varied in form as they were in Synklisi, along with the usual containers and some incredibly alien looking monster corpses that didn't conform to the usual head, body and limbs layout. Another interesting dungeon to look into one day.

Whitecliff was, as the name suggested, a demon town built at the top of a tall cliff, the sea pounding against it below. This time my glimpse had been of giant fish in the warehouse, covered in large black scales, and I really hoped they were monsters from a local dungeon rather than something they'd fished from the sea. If not, I'd be a lot more careful the next time I went swimming.

The dragons swelled to full size, grabbed the five land-bound party members, and shot off over the ocean. I tried to distract myself from my second bout of travel-sickness of the morning by considering what had just happened. Serlv quoted coordinates. She knew exactly where the anomaly was occurring.

"You get administrative notifications about these things?" I queried, making a guess.

"I do," she answered, not turning to look at me, but keeping her eyes fixed on the horizon. "But how do you know of such things?"

"I get alerts about new reincarnates."

"That is logical. It would make sense for Erryn to divide her labours between those best suited to carry out each task."

So Erryn had entrusted this dragon not only with a core, but with... what? Protecting the world from existential threats? I checked with a quick burst of [Soul Perception], noting that Tilyana winced as I did so, but every dragon in this party was as bound as anyone else. Serlv didn't appear to have additional freedom, but it wasn't as if I knew exactly how the Law worked, and I had no idea how to map what my skill displayed to anything objective.

ding

Administrative notification: Foreign soul detected at coordinates

Administrative notification: Foreign soul detected at coordinates

Administrative notification: Foreign soul detected at coordinates

Damn... So the timing of the last one hadn't been a coincidence, and they really were related to the anomalies. But there were three of them this time? It was getting worse. Thank goodness we were doing something about it.

It took only a couple of minutes to reach the anomaly, the trio of dragons flying faster than I'd ever seen before. It didn't take Cluma's newfound sensitivity to pick up the currents of mana now. Not this close. I could have led the party to the rift with as much ease as Serlv.

When we reached it, I saw why Krana had described it as a hole in the world. A vertical crack had opened up, pinned in the air. About a metre long, and twenty centimetres wide in the centre, it was glowing a bright white.

"No! You can't take it! We need it!" shouted Darren, and I felt him reach out with his mana control, trying to still the surroundings. More than twenty metres from the rift, the flow of mana paused, but closer than that it merely slowed, Darren's strength insufficient to compete with the suction of the anomaly. The rift dragged in everything that remained available to it, leaving a sphere that was completely void of all mana.

"Can anyone perceive inside it, or divine its nature?" rumbled Serlv?

I certainly couldn't. My [Mana Sight] cut off at the edge. It didn't have any perceivable interior.

"Nu-uh," said Cluma. "I can feel that it wants to suck up mana, but I have no idea what it is."

"It's a portal!" said Darren. "But it's all mushy."

I tried to translate that from small-child speak to something sensible. "It's not stable?" I guessed.

"That much we can tell by looking," growled Bruleg.

"How does it work without any magic?" continued Darren. So it wasn't magical in nature?

"I don't think it's deliberately sucking up mana," I commented. "It's just that there's lots on this side and none on the other, so it flows naturally."

"An interesting point, but I do not believe it makes a practical difference."

"It implies that if this portal is deliberate, then those producing it are doing so without the aid of magic."

"Again, interesting information, but not something we can currently put to practical use."

With its mana supply exhausted, the crack had lost its blinding white glow, and now looked far more like a hole hanging in the air. In its depths, I could make out a faint blue haze, and was there an electrical whine I could hear? Was it really Earth on the other side?

The crack was too narrow to enter, even if someone was sufficiently insane to try. And it wasn't as if this world had remote drones we could fly in to take a look.

Or did it?

"Perhaps I can contribute something after all," I commented, staring into the fracture. "I have an idea for taking a look at the other side, but if this anomaly is deliberate, it'll likely let the responsible party know that we're here."

"Explain," demanded Krana.

"No, there is no time. If you have an idea, carry it out immediately," interrupted Serlv.

I nodded, taking a few healing potions out of [Item Box] and handing them to Cluma.

"What are these for?" she asked, tilting her head in confusion.

"For when this goes horribly wrong," I answered, not having time to explain myself fully before the rift closed. Besides, she'd only try to talk me out of it. I activated [Detach] to separate my left hand and eye, then used [Shelter] to render enough of my head intangible to uncomfortably grab my eyeball with my separated hand.

"Whu?!" exclaimed Cluma, as I tossed the hand-eye-spider into the rift.