Chương 495: Chapter 496: Retreat

What greeted me on the other side of the portal was an endless, warped expanse of nothingness. There was no air, no light, no ocean of souls, and no distant stars in the sky. I had originally thought that we might end up stranded in the middle of space if the portal partially worked but rerouting it failed, but I had no idea what had actually happened. All I knew was that there was absolutely nothing here. The other thing that I rapidly became aware of was the fact that I had no oxygen.

I needed to breathe, and there was no air to breathe. I reflexively hit myself with a bit of healing magic, which removed the damage lack of oxygen was already starting to cause my body. My healing restored damage - but our situation was dire. We hadn't arranged for any sort of 'the portal is unsafe' signal, because we didn't have enough time before the universal tree's forces hit us and wiped us out, and we had been rushing.

I had about ten seconds to figure out how to get us to a destination where we could survive. After that, people would start flooding this area, suffocate to death en masse, and end our final hope of survival. I could heal a few people, but my essence reserves were ultimately limited. I started to panic. My understanding of space and dimensionalism were nowhere near the level they needed to be. That much was already obvious from the fact that we had landed in this mess.

I couldn't get us out of this mess, and I had no way to deal with an emergency. However, failing to deal with this emergency meant everyone would die. I struggled, thrashed, and flailed, all to no effect. I felt helpless as I tried to find a way forward, and failed. There wasn't enough essence left to try making another gate, and I couldn't rely entirely on the concept of hope to save us, either. Hope still needed some kind of basis to operate, and right now, I had no foundation to build off of.

Hope was an amplifier, not a magic wand that could solve all of my problems. Then, I realized that while I didn't have a way to communicate with the other members of the tribe, I could still send a message back. <Sallia! Anise! Felix! Something went wrong with the destination! Stop anyone else from entering the portal! We need to figure out where the gate dropped us, and then figure out how to get to a real plane where we can survive! > I shouted into the mental bracelet. <Got it! Stopping people! > Said Sallia.

The fact that Sallia would receive messages directly from me would reveal that we had some kind of method of mental communication - but I was long past the point of caring about exposing a few smaller secrets like this. We had bigger problems to address. A few more moments passed, before Felix gave me an update. <The Spatial Mages working with us think that maybe the attempt to reroute the destination of your gate failed. You're probably trapped in the middle of…

whatever was left of our old dimension after the universal tree tore the planet away, plucked the stars out of the sky, and slurped up everything like it was a bowl of noodles. One of them says he might be able to address the problem, but he can't survive in an airless, lightless void. He's coming through. Keep him alive. > <Got it. > I said. I was relieved that the townsfolk had believed my friend's word about communicating with me so quickly - otherwise, this could have ended in a disaster.

A few moments later, I felt someone slip through the portal. I had no idea what they were doing, but I did my part, and started blasting them with healing magic as well. They barely had enough contact with water for my healing magic to still work - but luckily, a few spots in their clothing were still damp from the snow. A few seconds later, I felt the other spatial mage send out several pulses of mana and essence into our surroundings.

The pulses of mana continued for several seconds, as my essence continued to drain away at a ridiculous pace. Finally, the spatial mage used some kind of spell to drag me and them back through the gate I had opened. Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings. We collapsed on the other side of the portal, and I took in a few gulps of air before I sighed in relief.

As much as healing magic could alleviate the problems with not breathing, it couldn't fix the feeling of suffocation and desperation that accompanied the lack of air in my lungs. After a few moments of deep breaths, I finally got ahold of myself.

"The target for the gate is wrong. Our attempts to connect to one of the other planes and use that as a destination didn't work," I said. The other spatial mages in our surroundings grimaced. Something had gone wrong.

"How much essence do you have left?"

"I can hold this kind of gate open for about five minutes, I think. Past that point, the whole evacuation project will probably collapse."

"Not enough time for extensive testing, then." The spatial mage eyed the tree root in the distance, and then grimaced.

"Though we were already on a desperate enough timer."

"Let's try our best. I have one other idea that I think will work. I suspect that our first modification attempt worked exactly as intended - but the tree here likely didn't stop at invading one plane. It's quite obvious that this tree has consumed trillions of planes - I see no reason why it wouldn't have ripped away more than one of the planes attached to our old home. So we probably rerouted from one empty space right into another." I paled. The mage's words made sense.

How much of our previous dimensional cluster had been lost? A few dimensions? Dozens of dimensions? More? I shook my head. Now wasn't the time to think about that. We could assess the damage and the tragedy once we were safe.

"So we just try to make another redirect spell, and hope for the best?" Asked a third dimensional mage, an old lady with a grandmotherly face.

"We don't have much time to research or try anything else. Time is ticking," said the first mage. The grandmotherly lady sighed, before she grunted in acknowledgement. With a final decision made, the mages got back to work. They used their mana and spells to create a deep, communal connection to my gate spell. They didn't have the same level of solidity to their spells that I did - it felt more like they were working with piecemeal, patchwork abilities.

I burned a little bit more hope to help them, and felt my essence reserves dip even lower. I bit my lip in frustration. Every second the portal remained open was another few people we could evacuate. Spending my essence felt wrong. But without the concept of hope to guide their actions, there was no way our messy, cluttered spellwork would integrate the way it was supposed to. Moments later, the portal rippled.

This time, since I had integrated the concept of hope more thoroughly into the spellwork, I saw something. It was like a giant web, connected to the other end of my gate. This giant web wasn't physical in nature, but entirely magical. It spanned every direction, and right near the other end of my portal there was a giant, gaping hole that had been torn into this web. I could feel several other gaping holes in the giant web as well. It only took me a few seconds to realize what I was looking at.

It was the dimensional cluster that we had been part of. The previous mage's speculation had been right - we had successfully redirected the gate, but we had blindly swapped from one missing dimension to another one, which was why I had been dumped into the middle of a lightless, soundless void. I grunted in pain, and then did my best to look at every connection in the 'web.' It only took me a few seconds to find a dimension that wasn't missing. There was no time to hesitate.

I reached out towards that dimension, and then anchored the spell to it. A moment later, my gate twitched and spasmed, before it shuddered. The mages around me grunted in pain and exhaustion. I could tell just how much they were pushing themselves, and I hoped that I had picked a good destination. If this dimension also turned out to be problematic, I didn't think we had enough juice left in us for a third reroute of the portal. Without a moment of hesitation, I leapt back through it.

Time was ticking, and the faster we moved, the more people we would save. When I came to, I did a quick check, and sighed in relief. I wasn't in the middle of a gaping, lightless, soundless void anymore. However, my relief was short-lived. On the other side of the portal, I was in what appeared to be a massive jungle. Tall, towering ferns, grasses, and other leaves stretched in every direction, as far as the eye could see. Unfortunately, the jungle was on fire.