When I saw the horde of shadow creatures flying towards us, I immediately realized something.

There were way too many of them to handle.

Worse, Felix’s regular attacks had passed through the first creature’s body. My lightning bolt had done nothing to it. Anise and Felix wouldn't be able to hurt them. With two of our four combatants out of the picture, contending with a horde of dozens of enemies was a pipe dream.

So I grabbed my mother and ran for my life. The rest followed suit.

Even the parents seemed to realize the situation was urgent, even if they didn't have all the details.

As we fled, I saw o that several of the manta rays were still investigating their fallen comrade. Only a few of them focused on our group.

Based on the first creature’s contempt for our actions, I surmised that most of the manta-ray creatures felt we weren't threats. They didn't believe we could hurt them at all.

I hoped that they were afraid of us, instead of enraged.

That hope was short-lived, as I saw the first few glow with manifestation essence. Black strings of essence tore out of their bodies and snaked towards the nearby rocks. A moment later, airborne missiles started flying towards us.

The horde was not afraid of us. Instead, they were hellbent on vengeance.

I teleported the first few rocks back into the horde. I hoped that I could slip them into the same sublayer of reality the creatures existed in. It didn’t work - the creatures shifted their body shapes and let the rocks sail right through them. Without the tarot card guiding my aim, hitting the creatures was nearly impossible.

<There are several of them chasing after us,> I said.

<How many?> asked Felix.

I opened my spatial sight again, before I winced. <Thirty are close enough to attack us. And several dozen more are behind them. Too many to fight unless you have any bright ideas.>

<I don’t think our essence pools will hold out for that long. Trying to hit these things is difficult> said Felix.

<Miria, do you have any good ideas for how my attacks could hit them? Or Anise’s? If both of us could contribute to the fight, it would help,> asked Sallia.

<I have no idea!> I yelled into the friendship bracelet. A moment later, I ducked to the ground as a boulder crashed into the ground near me. Since my essence was nowhere near enough already, I needed to dodge some attacks instead of teleporting everything away.

In desperation, I popped open the System messages I had pushed to the side earlier, and hoped that somehow one of them would fix this mess.

The first thing I saw was a regular kill notification. My actions counted for a kill rather than an assist, even though Felix struck the final blow.

Slaughter: Kill a Worldstrider for the first time

Achievement +80

I resisted the urge to throw something when I saw that the kill had only been worth 80 Achievement. That was barely any better than a skeleton foot soldier in the Market. I felt that the creature was far more frustrating to fight against than the Skeleton. Only getting 80 Achievement didn’t feel fair.

I took a deep breath and looked at the other System notification. This was the one I had been hoping to see, and would hopefully provide us a way out of this mess.

Endless Hunger of the Ocean has devoured a Worldstrider for the first time. New Skill created.

Fragmented Space: Your body gains the ability to step in and out of a certain sublayer of space. One may think of this as something like a ‘pocket dimension’ that layered on top of the surface world. It takes a moderate amount of any type of essence to step into this sublayer of space. Interacting with items in the ‘surface world’ while within this sublayer of space will require other abilities.

I looked at the ability, and immediately accepted it. A few moments later, I felt as if something was calling to me. It was almost like a door or a window that I could step through, but had never been aware of until now.

<I’m going to try a new skill that I got from Endless Hunger of the Ocean. Let me see what it does,> I said, before activating the ability.

I felt some of my absorption essence disappear. Immediately, my vision went black. I felt like I had fallen even deeper into an endless void - and it was slowly ripping away at my body. The laws of this reality weren't wholly compatible with my biology. It was nowhere near as dangerous as the living galaxy had been, but it hurt. I tried not to grimace in pain - it still felt like I had jumped into a vat of acid.

But if I wanted us to have any chance at all against the horde of creatures, I needed to hit them in their home territory. Attacks from the surface layer of reality didn't even hurt them without a lot of extra steps. I scanned the area, looking for some sort of weakness I could seize to finish off our attackers.

I didn’t see anything. This sublayer of space was even more void-like than the first one. I could feel the ground I was standing on, and see a few ripples of essence in the distance. The only other thing I could find were the worldstriders flying towards us.

I couldn’t even see the rest of the group unless I used my spatial manipulation/soul sight combination. To the rest of our group it must have looked like I had disappeared into thin air.

The sounds the worldstriders made were also much louder in this sublayer of space.

They spoke to each other in strange, chittering sounds that I couldn't interpret at all. The first one we had met had clearly only spoken Zelyrian for our benefit.

But they definitely noticed the fact that I had traveled to their ‘home layer’ of reality.

Several of the flying blobs started zooming towards me. I gritted my teeth and held {Breath of the Storm} in front of me, before I activated the lighting attack.

This time, the lightning didn’t pass through the creature - it slammed directly into the worldstrider. For once, my attack had been fast enough that the blasted creature couldn’t shapeshift out of the way. It collapsed into a burnt, foul-smelling pile of charcoal a moment later.

<Miria?> asked Sallia. <Where did you go?> She sounded panicked.

<Busy. Fighting!> I sent back as I started moving to keep up with the group. <Got into the same sub-layer of space as them. Lots of enemies to handle!>

<Can you bring me there?> asked Sallia.

I blinked.

That was a good idea, if it worked.

I spent some more absorption essence to reappear in the ‘main’ layer of reality. I grabbed onto Sallia’s hand and tried activating my new Fragmented Space Skill again.

A moment later, the real world disappeared, and I was standing back in the other layer of reality. Sallia was with me.

I grinned.

I was pretty reliant on my essence to fight, and I had started this battle at less than half of my reserves.

Sallia was not low on essence at all.

Sallia grinned at the worldstriders. Her grin was the stuff of nightmares - it was savage, feral, and conveyed how very, very pissed off she was. I wasn’t the only one upset that something was trying to kill Anise.

Then Sallia leapt towards them. The creatures chittered and screeched at her, and few of them launched strings of black manifestation essence at Sallia.

She ducked out of the way, but one of the strings latched onto her skin - where it left a shallow cut and then collapsed.

<My Fortitude Stat seems to resist whatever their essence is doing. It feels like some sort of kinetic manipulation attempt,> said Sallia as her grin widened.

I also grinned. We could fight the worldstriders on even ground here.

A few of the creatures swapped to launching fist-sized globs of darkness at Sallia instead. These gave me a bad feeling - but it seemed like projectiles travelled slower in this sub-dimension. This had thrown my extinguish off-course when I first tried to use it. Now, it worked to our benefit, since Sallia could dodge the attacks with ease. The few blobs of darkness that did make past Sallia’s defensive maneuvering sank into her {Robe of the Wandering Swordsman}... and then did nothing.

Sallia hit the first worldstrider like a billion ton asteroid. Her first swing divided one of the worldstriders in half before it could respond. The creature fell and stopped moving, as Sallia’s grin grew even wider.

With another worldstrider dead, the worldstriders finally stopped paying attention to the group. Sallia and I had their full, undivided attention. They had realized we were the real threats, and they weren’t happy about it. I was glad to see their attacks no longer falling on Anise, our parents, and the others.

I fell back, and concentrated on supporting Sallia. I needed to preserve my essence, but I could still hit worldstriders with lightning bolts at opportune moments. I reserved my alteration essence for emergencies, since it was hard to hit the creatures with extinguishes.

Meanwhile, Sallia was like a hurricane. She took occasional wounds, but they were minor in comparison to the devastation she wrought. Every time one fell, she sprinted towards another one and stuck to it like glue. The creatures tried to float out of her range, but it didn't work. Sallia used her metal manipulation to create platforms for herself, and somehow managed to keep herself airborne using her muscles and rune ability.

I watched in awe as Sallia killed her sixth worldstrider. Many of them started to try to shapeshift out of the way of Sallia's blade. Sallia adapted to this trick equally quickly through her swordsmanship expertise. For a few moments, Sallia dominated the battlefield on her own. Against a horde of enemies, the two of us stood like mountains holding back the ocean. We made them aware of just how big of a mistake they had made in picking a fight with us.

Then the moment ended.

The horde of worldstriders seemed endless, and they were approaching faster than we could kill them. We could kill one every few seconds, but there were dozens of enemies. And the laws of this sublayer of reality were still corroding our bodies. That did more damage than the worldstriders, and I didn't have enough alteration essence to heal us. After a minute, I picked up Sallia and dragged us back in the original dimension. The corrosion of the other sublayer of reality disappeared.

The others had made good use of the time we bought and had booked it.

Sallia grabbed me, burned some absorption essence, and then ran at a speed that made my neck hurt from whiplash. We caught up to our group in moments.

We had held off the horde of black blobs and gained a small lead - but we were now sprinting blindly through a massive, empty dimension that we still hadn’t figured out a way to leave.