Chương 227: (222) 4.1. The Void

Vin could do nothing but stare at the empty void that stood where the sprawling, insect-filled forest of the infernals had once been. The heavy foliage and large insects that had made traveling through the forest both so interesting and mildly unnerving were no more. Replaced by absolutely nothing.

"What… what is this?" he asked, leaning closer to the void despite himself. Currently, he and Lumel stood on the edge of the trogums' fragment, having quickly journeyed through the Underside and exited here via the dungeon before making their way over to the fragment border. When Lumel had informed him that the infernals' fragment was gone, he hadn't understood just how literal she'd been.

It was a tad risky returning to the trogums' fragment when the Rebel Queen was still at large somewhere, but with Lumel's ability to teleport them directly from the dungeon entrance to the surface, their odds of running into any trogums that lived within the underground tunnels were remarkably low.

"Don't touch it," she warned him, the Dimensional Mage still staring wide-eyed at the black void in front of them.

"I've never seen anything like this before, but I can tell it's a void in the truest sense of the word. It's an absence of dimension. Anything that crosses the fragment border into it will simply cease to exist, if I'm understanding this right."

"How is that possible?" he asked, yanking his hand back before he could get too close. He wouldn't have thought there was anything capable of truly damaging his golem prosthetic besides the Crater dwarves' adamantine, but that didn't mean he was willing to go against Lumel's sage advice. She was the expert when it came to dimensional magic.

"I'd say it wasn't, if we weren't standing here looking right at it," she admitted.

"Dimensions layer over one another like a complex weave of fabric. I had no idea there could be a portion of reality that just… didn't have even a single layer."

"Do you think this is connected to the epic monster that attacked earlier with the battle for the fourth wave? Or how a chunk of the Earthers that came over are missing this time around?" Only a few hours ago, the town of Terra had fought a grueling battle against wave after wave of monsters summoned as a result of the Gods' ritual that would bring a new thousand people from Earth over to Edregon.

Unlike the previous three battles they'd been forced to fight, however, this one ended with the appearance of an epic monster. One that wasn't fully in this dimension and required the joint efforts of Vin and Alka to take down. It was only because of his Isolate Dimension spell, his magical prosthetic arm that could survive being plunged into the strange monster's body, and Alka's mithral-darthsteel sword, that they'd been able to defeat it in the first place.

And if that hadn't been strange enough, the one thousand Earthers that were supposed to appear in the center of their fragment like normal were missing some people. They'd run off immediately after Lumel had delivered her strange news and missed the official headcount, but from what he'd heard, it sounded as if at least a hundred or so Earthers hadn't ended up making the journey over to Edregon. What happened to them was anyone's guess, but Vin had a bad feeling in his gut that it hadn't been good.

"It's too early to tell at this point," Lumel admitted, finally taking a step back from the void and shaking her head.

"And to be honest, I'm good, but I have no idea how to glean anything from this. I study dimensional magic, but there are no dimensions in that void. I can't really learn anything from an absence of dimensions."

"Well, there's the obvious," Vin shrugged, reaching down and snagging a random rock off the ground. Tossing it toward the boundary between fragments, the two of them blinked in unison as the rock hit the divide between fragments. And simply vanished into the void as though it never existed.

"Huh… That's probably not good."

"We need to make sure nobody touches it," Lumel nodded, taking his hand in her own and pulling him away from the deadly void.

"Not that I think any Earthers will end up over here anyway."

"That's true," he agreed, going over his map of Edregon in his head.

"You couldn't really ask for a better natural barrier between Terra and this fragment. They'd have to go through either the death fragment or the swamp if they were traveling in a straight line." While the infernals' fragment getting turned into some sort of all-consuming void was of course a travesty, this strange phenomenon couldn't have happened in a better location.

Of the five fragments he currently knew that bordered where the infernals' village once stood, none of them were truly at risk of having people simply wandering into the void. The flower fields, the death fragment, and the swamp were all basically empty of life other than monsters, and the trogums' fragment and the dwarves' Crater both contained races that didn't have any interest in leaving their own homes.

There was one more fragment bordering the void that they'd never been to, so he could only hope it wasn't filled with an extremely curious race of people that were about to be in for a horrifying surprise. Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings. The two of them slowly made their way across the surface of the trogums' fragment back to the location of the dungeon. Vin led the way with his Mental Map passive, but his mind was elsewhere as they walked.

Life on Edregon was a chaotic one filled with constant surprises and unknown horizons, but until now, there had always been a few constants that they'd been able to rely upon. For example, the waves of a thousand Earthers being deposited in the center of their fragment every so often. Or knowing that when one hit the end of a fragment, there would be another one waiting for them. Sure, it would be an entirely different world with its own rules, monsters, and most likely people, but something would be there.

Having both of these pillars shaken, and at the same time no less… Once they were in the right location, Lumel squeezed his hand before casting Mass Dimensional Shift and teleporting them nearly eighty feet straight down to the dungeon entrance. One more cast later, and they were standing before the seemingly endless corridor leading from the dungeon into the Underside.

"After you," he said, earning a small smile from Lumel as they headed into the corridor. A few minutes later, they were within the Underside once more. Normally, the massive, empty, hexagonal room that stretched out in all directions was almost comforting in a way. But today, it just seemed depressing.

"Are you ready?" Lumel asked, sounding more as if she were asking herself than him.

"No, but when has that ever stopped me before?" he asked, trying to sound more cheerful than he felt. He hadn't even had a chance to recover from the deadly battle, or the time he'd spent in Frank's hospital helping heal the wounded before coming here. Even with his remarkable endurance attribute, he could feel the fatigue beginning to settle in.

"Lead the way." Doing just that, Lumel led them over to the corridor connecting the giant room dimensionally parallel of the trogums' fragment to the one mirroring the infernals'. The Underside was a strange place that allowed those with the Dungeoneering skill or thoroughly skilled in dimensional magic to make their way across Edregon in a fraction of the time traveling across the surface would take.

Vin had always thought it was a rather strange setup and couldn't help but wonder why the massive rooms existed in the first place. Now they knew why. Stepping out into the room mirroring the infernals' fragment, Vin's breath caught as he took in the scene before him a second time. Lumel had briefly shown him this before they headed over to take a look at what had happened to their fragment, but they hadn't gone in to talk to any of the Underside's newest visitors just yet.

Huddled together near the center of the large room were what had to be at least a thousand infernals. The poor people looked as though they had absolutely no idea what was going on, and many of them were holding one another, quietly talking among themselves. As far as Vin could tell, it appeared as though the entire population of the infernals' fragment had been teleported down here somehow, as he recognized a handful of faces. As they approached, it wasn't long before some of them recognized his own in turn.

"Vin!" Agne shouted, the kind, older infernal spotting him and Lumel before jogging over to them. Seeing as each area in the Underside was nearly half a mile wide, Lumel warped them both closer, before adjusting her hood to ensure nobody would be able to see her face and taking a hesitant step back.

"Hi Agne," Vin said, grunting as the woman who seemed to act almost like an adoptive mother to everyone she met finally reached him and pulled him into a tight hug.

"What happened? Are you guys okay?"

"I was going to ask you that!" she said, doing her best to crack a few of his ribs before finally releasing him and taking a step back. The infernal's black and silver eyes were narrowed as if hunting for answers, but the annoyance wasn't directed at him by any means.

"There I was, working in my garden, when there was this flash of light, without any warning. The next thing I knew, I was standing here, in this big empty room. None of us seem to have any idea what happened!"

"None of you?" Vin asked, pointedly glancing around for the one infernal who he had a rather strong suspicion might know something.

"Where's Madam Trebella?"

"That's the strangest thing," Agne said, throwing up her clawed hands with a shrug.

"Everyone from the village seems to be present, except for her. We tried talking to her students, but most of them remain adamant that they don't know where she could be. The only ones who seem to know anything are Malzar and Xaril, and both are refusing to talk."

"Malzar wouldn't say anything? To you?" Vin repeated, easily recalling how the older infernal would yank the boy around by his horns when he dared do anything to displease her. From what he understood of infernal hierarchy, Malzar technically outranked his aunt due to his golden eyes and his status as a Warlock, but that didn't stop his aunt from acting like he was a small child whenever she wanted.

"He refuses to talk to anyone," Agne nodded, looking more concerned than he'd ever seen her before.

"Do you think you could check in on him? Make sure he's okay? I've never seen him like this before and I'm worried."

"I'll see what I can do," he promised, giving the infernal one more hug before watching her run back to her friends. The fact that Agne hadn't immediately jumped into grilling him about Lumel showed just how worried she truly was, and his heart sank as he finally spotted the small form of Malzar sitting with his knees tucked under his arms off to the side. The poor Warlock was staring off into the distance with a blank expression, as if looking for something that wasn't actually there.

"This can't be good," he muttered, nodding toward him and leading Lumel over there. Just like before, Lumel hung back, letting him approach Malzar on his own.

"Malzar?" he said softly, crouching down in front of the infernal and looking into his golden eyes.

"Are you alright?"

"... Vin?" Malzar asked after a moment, slowly blinking as though the world was coming back into focus once more. As his golden eyes landed on him, the infernal grew confused.

"... What are you doing here? What happened?"

"I was kinda hoping you could tell me that," he admitted, glad to see at the very least Malzar didn't look like he'd been injured.

"Do you know what happened to Madam Trebella? It sounds like everyone is present and accounted for, other than her."

"Madam Trebella…" Malzar repeated, her name seeming to snap him out of his strange fugue state. Swallowing hard, he nodded, his gaze sending a chill through Vin that was made only worse by the next words out of his mouth.

"Madam Trebella… is gone."