Chapter 1421 (Patreon)

Walking atop the dungeon was incredibly strange, especially when I bent down and touched the gravel with my bare hand. I couldn’t feel it as easily through my shoes, but with direct skin contact, the issue was immediately obvious. The roof, or at least the gravel, didn’t feel real. It was completely immobile; the individual chunks somehow stuck in place as if anchored to the fabric of reality itself, and while they looked like stone, they didn’t feel like it. They had a strange smoothness, and even in the relatively chilly night air, the rocks didn’t feel cold. They were just, well, stuck and unchanging, as if they weren’t part of reality any longer, as if I wasn’t actually touching rocks. That perception felt doubly true, as I couldn’t feel them with my Earth Magic at all. Or with any magic, really. Normally, the seemingly loose gravel should have been completely within the purview of my Earth Magic, and even a few other elements, but it wasn’t. I couldn’t move it, heat it, cool it or do anything with it; it was completely insulated from the reality around it. Untouchable, inviolable, and utterly insulated. 

But maybe that was the point: it was within the sphere, or maybe the shell, of the dungeon, and as such, it wasn’t really part of reality. It was part of the dungeon, and as such, it existed only within its context, making it impossible to interact with outside the designated openings and exits. I had no real idea how that worked, other than that it worked quite well. 

Frustratingly well, really. It was as if there was nothing beneath me, at least magically speaking. Now that I was expanding my magical perception beyond focusing on the stones that weren’t, I began to feel a little disoriented, which made me realise that some of the earlier strangeness I had noticed was due to this. My mind had trained itself, at least to some degree, to incorporate my magical perception of the world around me into a sort of proprioception for my environment, giving me an instinctive knowledge of my immediate surroundings. It worked whether I was up in the air, flying, or walking on the ground, and I had no doubt I could use this strange instinct in water, too. But here, standing atop the dungeon, there was nothing beneath me, at least magically speaking. Nothing but a gaping void, a place that wasn’t even empty, as I had felt the emptiness between materials, between atoms, with my Darkness Magic. 

Out of further curiosity, I prodded the stones with my magic, trying to find any gap. To somehow slither into the material, to find the gaps that even light couldn’t intrude on, but that the Shadows ruled. But even that was rebuffed, making me wonder if this was matter in the first place or simply magic made manifest, only a type of magic I had never seen before. 

Feeling the dungeon like this made my opinion of the Grandmother’s skills shoot up even further, as she had built her own dungeon. Unless the Barrow Den didn’t work like this, she would have had to create a space that wasn’t real, where the laws of magic as I understood them didn’t apply. Only the Grandmother’s own laws, overwriting the laws of reality itself. 

It was a rather daunting realisation, making me wonder where one would even begin such a project. Well, beyond creating the structure itself, just as I had built my towers. But how I could go from my current towers to perfectly indestructible spaces where my own laws reigned supreme even over the laws of physics and reality, I had no idea.

Still, it was a fascinating idea, and one I wanted to explore in the future, if only to learn about the dangers involved. After all, the wolves I had met on Mundus had pulled something similar off, too, but they had to sacrifice their identity for it. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to be eternally bound to a dungeon, even one of my own creation. 

Shaking my head for a moment, I sat down, directly on the strange stones that weren’t. While I couldn’t feel anything below me magically, the stones were physically real, or at least there was something in place that made the roof hold my weight.

Closing my eyes, I sent my mind into the Astral River, trying to draw up power from below. The moment I did, I instantly blinked my eyes back open in surprise. As soon as my mind touched the River’s currents, I felt as if I had been dropped into a strange storm. If the normal river was, well, a river, possibly flowing fast or slow, but always flowing along somewhat predictable paths, the river here was more akin to a storm. Instead of flowing along, the water was whipped up, pouring all around me like rain, only that the rain here wasn’t falling, at least not down. There was no pattern, no predictable behaviour that I could spot; it was as if I was stuck in a washing machine on spin cycle, trying to get my bearings, only for the cycle to reverse.

The phenomenon didn’t try to trap me, but it was certainly uncomfortable, and I was confident I was only experiencing it because I was above the dungeon. Otherwise, I could likely draw power as usual, but since I perceived it as drawing power from the ground into myself, that didn’t work here. Out of curiosity, I tried to do things the other way around, shifting my mental image in an attempt to convince myself I was flying. There was no magically perceivable ground directly below me, so the mental change wasn’t that big, but the effect was fascinating. I still felt the turbulence, but it was a lot less disorienting.

For a few seconds, I simply let myself, well, float. I wasn’t really floating, but given that I didn’t sense anything below me, it felt like it. In this strange state of not-floating, I focused my mind on Death Magic, trying to sense this peculiar element around me. I even went so far as to channel a bit of Soul Magic, doing my best to compare and contrast the two directly related and linked domains. It didn’t take long to notice the distinct but interwoven flow of magic, which let me centre my focus on them. 

Experience had taught me that interacting with Death Magic directly is a fairly bad idea. While I could channel the power, I couldn’t do so safely; it always took something from me. In my current state of disconnection from my physical body, I might just let the magic take too much of my vitality, leaving me greatly weakened, or maybe even killing me outright.

So, instead of working with Death Magic directly, I tried to touch only Soul Magic, perceiving and interacting with Death Magic indirectly. The two domains were linked, especially here, and if I pulled on the strands of one here, I also tugged on strands of the other. 

For a while, I had no real idea how long; I just floated there, pulling and tugging on the strands of magic, trying to unravel them into something I could perceive. Something I could turn into runes and use those runes to bind the souls of my enemies. I even pulled on my own Soul, trying to draw that slightly altered perception into the mix, despite knowing that it was a massive risk. Exposing my Soul to Death Magic was about the worst idea, so I had to be incredibly careful here, as any rash action might do just that. 

But letting my Soul poke and prod the strands of Soul Magic worked surprisingly well. There was a reaction, and I felt something touch back, though it might have been my imagination. Unwilling to leave things to chance, especially when it came to influence on my Soul, I immediately pulled back. First, I withdrew my Soul into my body entirely, even pushing down my Soul Sight; then I started to draw myself from the Astral River, feeling a little disoriented as I did. 

But not as disoriented as I felt when I realised that I had floated up at some point, literally leaving the slaughterhouse’s roof below me. For a second or two, I just hung there, my mind struggling to make sense of this altered reality, only for reality to stop ignoring me and enforce the laws of gravity strictly once more.

Luckily, I hadn’t floated up all that far, maybe fifty or sixty centimetres, so the only thing I suffered was a bruised backside. And some serious confusion, especially as a part of me wondered if I had really just experienced some sort of cartoon physics. 

Shaking my head once again, I used a bit of Blood Magic to heal my bruised bum, even if the bruising was likely only a psychosomatic reaction. I was convinced that landing on my backside like that was supposed to hurt, so I was aching.

Or maybe the strange not-stone of the roof was particularly painful to land on; I wasn’t sure. Regardless, after looking around for a moment and realising I had sat on the roof longer than planned, I hopped down and started looking around, searching for Lia and a place to set up another anchor.