Chương 20: A Giant Gaping Hole in Reality

Scarlet was close to the tree line now. She'd finished up with the harvesting, and in a bid to avoid a third ambush the moment she left her bunker, she'd decided it would be prudent to take a gander around the perimeter of the yard considering just how useless the CCTV had been at spotting the murderous bat. In defence of her tech, the thing was literally built for stealth. Unfortunately, that meant she couldn't bank solely on the very numerous, very expensive detection measures she had in place.

That didn't mean her tech was completely useless. The only reason they hadn't alerted her of the roidcoons was because raccoons hadn't counted as 'threats' pre-integration. Pests? Certainly, but outside of maybe giving her rabies if she got too close, they were generally not something she would have specific danger or detection for. An oversight she'd changed once she was in her control centre.

Figuring she'd take a hybrid approach to security, after she'd cleaned up the mess in the yard, she'd gone to the garage and pulled out one of the aerial drones she'd purchased. With one eye on the drone footage, and the rest of her mind paying attention to her surroundings, the drone acted as an extra set of eyes that roamed past the range her senses could reach. And they could reach pretty far.

In fact, in the time she'd been outside she'd taken to spreading her senses out as far and wide as she could in a bid to 'feel' the world around her. It was a mental exercise she was quite enjoying, trying to make sense of what she was observing with these new senses, it was the only part of this perimeter sweep she was enjoying, in fact. The truth was she was exhausted.

She could feel the gnawing ache in her stomach reminding her she hadn't eaten since before she had established a digital knowledge hub, murdered a magical bat, and gained a quest. Maus had more than once wandered off to munch on an edible root, or Blink into the bunker to find a snack. Scarlet, on the other hand had been carefully dissecting mutated creatures. Then carefully cleaning her tools and yard. Now she was carefully doing a sweep of the yard.

She was truly fascinated by the different energy signatures and mana types she was observing. She didn't necessarily know what those signatures represented, but trying to work it out based on how they felt and where they appeared was distracting her from the fact that her hands were basically one big cramp, her legs were wooden, and she was pretty sure her body was starting to eat itself for fuel. At first everything had felt like a very loud indistinct mass of clashing, harmonizing, and coexisting energy.

She was unable to make out anything specific due to the sheer volume she was processing. As she focused, that began to change. The noise did not dim, or settle, but it did resolve itself into distinct sounds, or flavours of energy. She was beginning to recognize variations in the fluctuations. There were large consistent undercurrents. Energies that flowed like molasses where they didn't just pool. Other signatures were smaller. Faint, uneven disruptions that hinted at movement and intent.

As she walked, she tested the limits of what she could observe. The more she focused, the clearer the distinctions became. She couldn't yet isolate them or identify every unique signature. However, recognition would come with time and familiarity. For now, this was enough. She was halfway around the tree line when she brushed against something completely foreign. This energy wasn't new to her senses the way an animal or a plant she didn't recognize would be, but entirely alien, and it was loud.

It was the sensory equivalent of gliding along a frozen lake only for the ice to crack and drop her into freezing water. The assault on her senses threw her into a bout of vertigo, causing her to stumble. Her lungs seized, and she choked on air, clutching her cane like a lifeline as she doubled over, gasped for breath, and fought to stay on her feet.

Instinctively, she tried to pull her senses back, to shrink away from this wrongness in the middle of the forest, however she was only barely able to dampen her passive skills, not entirely withdraw them. She remembered musing earlier about people being able to turn off their senses, and promised herself in future, she'd be one of those people. For now, there was nothing to it, but to get through it. Thankfully, the sensation passed quickly as her mind acclimatized to what it was feeling.

Yay super brain, she supposed. It took her a moment to come back to herself and realize that Maus had climbed back onto her shoulder and was in full puffball alert mode, ready to target whatever was threatening her, which, considering his abilities, was a genuinely scary prospect. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

Once she'd gathered enough wherewithal to make sure the drone hadn't crashed in the few seconds she'd been out of it – it hadn't – she realised that there was a System notification waiting for her. She opened it, figuring it would have some answers, and she almost regretted being correct. [Spatial Anomaly Detected: Portal – Tier 1] She had to re-read the words, because the first time around her mind refused to register the words in front of her.

She looked again, hoping beyond hope that she had not seen what she thought she had. [Spatial Anomaly Detected: Portal – Tier 1] Nope, same words.

"For the love of–" Would this day never end? She checked the time and let out an incredulous laugh. [00: 13] The fatigue of the past several hours was catching up to her, and she took a moment to center herself before she asked the obvious question. Just what did the System mean by 'portal'? [A portal is a stabilized spatial aperture leading to a contained dimensional pocket. The aperture functions as the primary access point to the pocket world.] She just stared at the words for a while. A giant hole in space…

Just, there? All right, that was going to be a nope from her. Not today. She was hungry, and exhausted, and she hadn't checked her Status since before she murdered a magical bat and had knowledge of harvesting and scavenging 'assimilated' into her head. She had no clue how her website was doing, she'd made no headway on the super important and time sensitive quest she'd received, and she needed to get in touch with some of her contacts, because there was just no way she was doing all that alone.

Now there was a portal in her yard? Some sort of spatial distortion she'd no doubt have questions about with answers she'd have to wait to receive, and just. No. Only, there was a threat at her door. Literally right there, only a few meters away. It would be irresponsible not to at least make sure this 'portal' wasn't some gaping hole in reality, actively spewing monsters and causing mayhem.

The guide said it was an 'aperture' not an entrance, or a gate, or a reinforced containment mechanism because she had no guarantees that this portal didn't work both ways. She needed to at least check. It took a supreme act of will to cautiously make her way over to the place where she'd felt the disturbance. Instead of just rushing forward like she felt the need to, she was constantly scanning her surroundings, her movements making little noise as she went.

She'd long ago learned to be stealthy even when using her cane. She moved in the direction of the slightly-less-alien to her senses energy signature with measured steps. She'd sent the drone off to scout ahead, but while it did pick up that there was a clearing around the area she expected this portal to be, the camera wasn't picking up anything unusual at all. No glowing gates, no light-sucking singularities that radiated otherworldliness, no sinkholes into an endless abyss. Just an empty clearing.

Despite this, she could absolutely feel the portal. The closer she got, the more defined the fluctuations became, and instead of the wave of information she'd been overwhelmed with the first time, now she felt somewhat able to pick out patterns in the fluctuations. She was moving slowly enough that it was almost a surprise when the portal finally came into view.

'Seeing' it through her new and enhanced senses had not prepared her for what it would look like. The distortion in the air shimmered faintly and bent the world around it as though the space near by was more malleable. The 'reality' in the area around the portal was somehow different. Tendrils of colour spread from its edges in a way that she was sure formed a pattern along its border, just one she couldn't quite work out. Perhaps if she just focused on the colours, the way they shifted and flowed...

Focusing too hard on them brought back the nausea, and she was beginning to develop a terrible headache. The area around the portal felt strangely dense. The best way she could describe it was that the air here was thicker. Scarlet slowed as she approached, her steps measured as her overtaxed senses extended ahead of her, testing the space before she committed to closing the distance. On the bright side, it appeared that all forms of life that could move away from the portal, had done so quite thoroughly.

Scarlet didn't blame them. The whole area felt off. It wasn't that the portal felt unnatural, like something harmful or discordant. It was just that the distortion itself was so obviously outside of normal that she'd wonder for the sanity of any creature willingly remaining in its presence. Any creature but her, she supposed.

"More the fool me," she muttered as she shuffled close enough to properly observe the anomaly, but still far enough not to be within its range of influence. It didn't take long until she was just outside of that range. A now very alert Maus was observing the portal alongside her with a focus that mirrored her own. She felt it through the bond. Inspect.

[Portal – Tier 1 Primary Signatures: Water, Nature, Ice Status: Unclaimed Stability: 50%] Scarlet pressed her lips together and stared through the words at the iridescent distortion in the fabric of reality. For almost an entire minute, unblinking, she just looked at the thing. It was a prank, right? A sick cosmic joke? This on top of everything else, it had to be a joke. Right The descending hum of a falling drone brought Scarlet back to herself.

Righting it she thought over all the things she still had to do and gave herself exactly one minute to lament. Then she needed to figure out her next steps. She had a sinking feeling this would complicate her quest.