As we walked, I constantly shifted from one type of vision to another, trying to keep an eye out for any dangers in our surroundings. To my surprise, when I tried to activate my spatial sight, I realized that it worked in this broken pocket dimension. Since my spatial sight relied on using water vapor, I hadn’t really expected it to work - but apparently there was enough water in the air for my spatial sight to work.

Not only did it work, but it felt… correct, somehow?

A long time ago, I had discovered that if I used all three of my rune abilities in conjunction with each other, I had a very odd, out of body experience, where it felt like every single drop of water in our surroundings constituted my real body. Furthermore, it felt almost as if I were a creature of mind and thought rather than flesh. Due to that strange experience, I usually didn’t use all three of my rune abilities at once - that sensation felt like it was trying to pull at my humanity, and while my Willpower resisted the negative effect on my mind, I still didn’t like the feeling.

But while I didn’t like the way this sensation ate at me, I also suspected that if I pursued it to a certain level, something interesting might happen. Perhaps I would get another keyword ability, or a regular ability, or I would just start to understand more about space and spatial manipulation as a whole.

But until now, I hadn’t been motivated enough to pursue this research project. I had been more invested in learning and experimenting with my shaping magic - learning to do illusions and shapeshifting would save me a lot of time and effort in future worlds, and it felt logical to focus on my primary essence type before focusing on less important objectives.

But in this broken pocket dimension, it easier than ever to tap into the strange, out of body sensation that I got when I used all three of my rune abilities at once.

This place just looked like an endless, lightless void when I looked at it with my regular human eyes, and through my soul sight, all I could see for kilometers in each direction was our group and occasional chunks of plants that had gotten teleported into this dimension with us. But through the eyes of my combined rune abilities, this place was fascinating.

This entire pocket dimension looked like a giant plane of fractured glass. I could see that this dimension was supposed to be whole - like a giant, unbroken table. But it was also obvious where things had gone wrong when creating this pocket dimension.

Instead of a large, unbroken landscape, the space in this dimension was littered with cracks. Some of those cracks were alarmingly close to our group, and I had the distinct feeling that falling into them would be disastrous. I couldn’t quite see what was on the other side of each crack in space, but I was pretty sure that the messed up space would turn our bodies into paste long before it mattered.

And within those messed up cracks in space, I could also see things. They looked like they had souls, but somehow, they were impossible to see if I used my soul-sight alone. I could only notice their presence if I used both my soul sight and my spatial sight in conjunction.

They actually looked surprisingly weak from the perspective of my soul-sight - there wasn’t much mana attached to their souls. They were a little stronger than a completely normal human, but not by much. What they lacked in power they made up for in quantity - there were hundreds of them sitting in each crevice, wriggling and writhing as they shuffled around each other. The way they moved made it look almost like they were swimming in midair - sort of like manta rays that swam through the broken space of this sub-dimension. I had no idea whether they were dangerous or not, but they were probably one of the more bizarre creatures I had seen so far across the past three lifetimes.

Luckily, they didn’t seem very interested in us. I wasn’t sure if that was because they were quite far away from us or because they weren’t hostile, but at least for now they seemed content to go about their lives.

<I noticed a couple odd creatures. They seem slightly stronger than humans, but not much. Biggest problem is that there’s a lot of them, and I can’t see them unless I use both my spatial sight and my soul sight. They’re very good at hiding. At least so far, they don’t seem hostile.> I said. <Also, there are a lot of strange spatial cracks in the area that might kill us if we fall into them. The space creatures only live inside of these spatial cracks. Felix, could you pretend that you can sense the minds of creatures near us, or something to that effect? I want to make sure nobody wanders off and gets killed.>

<Of course,> said Felix, as he started rapidly scribbling on his piece of paper. <How many of them are there?>

<A few hundred of them in each spatial crack. I think we should avoid them.>

Felix nodded, and quickly presented the results of his mental scanning with the rest of the group. The parents seemed a bit more on edge when they learned we weren’t alone, but seemed willing to follow Felix’s lead - and with the help of our communication bracelets, it would be very easy for me to direct him away from any of the weird spatial cracks or space manta-rays.

The final thing I noticed were the little tunnels in reality. Most of them looked scarred over, like old wounds in a warrior’s body - but they were still clearly evident. Unlike the weird fissures in space, these looked more like little peepholes that one might install in a door. I could even see through them, if I looked carefully at them. Most of them seemed to be looking at random sections of the mountain range that we had originally been traveling through - although the angle of these ‘peepholes’ often made it hard to see much through them. Several peepholes seemed to be staring straight at rocks, or random patches of the open sky. Several of these peepholes also had a lot of rocks, dirt, and random plant detritus in them, blocking any attempt I might have made to physically access them - they were covered in random gunk on our side.

From what I could see of the mountain range, it had seen better days. Several mountains had basically collapsed after most of their supporting rock had been teleported away, and landslides made the entire region look completely unstable. If we found a way back to the mountains, we would need to be very careful of landslides or unstable footing.

Out of curiosity, as well as a bit of hope that there was an easy way out of this place, I tried poking at one of the random peepholes with my own teleportation ability, just to see if it would respond. Unfortunately, whatever was required to reopen portals, I didn’t have it. Poking at it with alteration essence gave me a little bit of give, but not in the way I was hoping it would. It felt more like I was about to break the portal completely instead of like I was about to open it again. The problem was probably that I had no idea what I was doing, and even in the best of times, these portals were delicate. I was also afraid of poking too intensely at the peepholes in fear of burying us under a new mound of stones, dirt, and plants.

If we didn’t find a better way back to our original dimension, it might be worth trying to shovel away the rocks and plants that blocked these portals and then pushing really hard at a portal with alteration essence, to see if the portal did open back up, but I was pretty sure it would be a waste of time. Unless we had no better options, it probably wouldn’t be the way we got back home.

Once I finished scanning the area, I started sending messages to the rest of the group again, and after a few moments, we started moving, with Felix in the way so that he could pretend to check the area for spatial cracks.

About an hour passed as we carefully navigated through the area, avoiding spatial cracks and staying away from the space manta-ray things. As we traveled, I noticed that the spatial cracks in the area were starting to become more frequent. Oddly enough, the parts of space that weren’t cracked seemed more stable, and the peepholes back into reality also seemed less messed up - which made me hope that we would find a way back if we kept traveling in this dimension. but the excessive quantity of spatial cracks also meant that our group needed to take more detours than before.

<What do you think the shadowy fish-creatures are?> asked Sallia, as our group inched past a pair of spatial crevices. Now that we had built up some familiarity with this broken pocket dimension, our group was starting to settle into a more relaxed walking routine. The spatial peepholes into reality had also started to settle down - it looked like they were no longer activating and spewing random sections of stone and plants into this pocket dimension, which was a relief. I didn’t want to get buried or killed by several kilograms of rock flying out of a portal.

<Maybe they’re some sort of… creature that lives on the edges of the ocean of souls?> said Felix, after a moment. <I could see them showing up oddly if we were inside of a dimension, instead of the ocean of souls. When we were talking with the soul fragment earlier, we learned that there are a few species that live inside of the ocean of souls. It’s very uncommon, since the conflicting laws of reality inside of the ocean usually rip apart most life forms - even souls barely escape destruction. But if you can’t see what’s on the other side of each spatial crack, and it doesn’t lead back to the dimension we were born in this time, I figure it’s probably somehow connected to the ocean.>

<There are creatures that live inside of the ocean of souls? How does that even work? What do they eat?>

<Ocean water and souls, sometimes. And sometimes they instead invade other dimensions and act like infestations,> said Sallia. <Hmm… the way the soul fragment explained dimensions and the ocean of souls is that every single dimension is kind of like a cracked snow globe. Inside of each snow globe, there are certain laws of reality that take effect - but there are still cracks in each one. After all, souls and mana need to enter and exit each dimension. Some creatures can also enter and exit dimensions through those cracks, much like souls.>

<So, if we continue with the snow globe analogy, is the ocean of souls basically just a giant ocean that all of these snow globes float inside of?> I asked. I hadn’t asked much about the conversation the group had with the hologram after I learned about the Market’s more genocidal tendencies, but I was glad to know that we had still gotten some useful information out of it.

<Sort of. The ocean of souls doesn’t have anything like water pressure, so maybe it’s more like a cloud than an ocean in this analogy? But the general idea still holds up,> said Sallia.

I nodded to myself.

If these little manta-ray like creatures were extradimensional invaders, they certainly didn’t seem very interested in us, at least. I was glad that they were more interested in just… floating around instead of attacking us. I wasn’t sure if we could fight off a large colony of them.

And right as I was thinking that, I caught some movement out of the corner of my eye. One of the manta-ray like souls was drifting towards us. I wasn’t sure if this one was just overly curious, or aggressive, or if we had just wandered too close to one of the spatial crevices without noticing. But for the first time, one of the creatures was showing interest in us.

A moment later, the creature attached itself to a nearby hunk of rocks, almost as if it were putty filling a mold.

And then, a moment later, like a golem assembling itself out of the ruined chunks of mountain, the rocks began to move.

acaswell

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