Yarra’s Adventure Notes
Chapter 286: Portal of the Past - Space Unable to Progress _1

Chapter 286: Portal of the Past - Space Unable to Progress _1

The Sighing Desert, the Wound of the Earth.

It’s the enduring marker signalling the end of the Third Epoch; a scar that can never be fully healed.

In the direst moment, the great Creator Yarra manifested, reassembling the shattered land and saving countless lives still clinging onto the ruined world. However, even Yarra’s vast power couldn’t perfectly restore the broken world, and hence, irrevocably, a deep mark was left at the center of the land.

The Wound of the Earth was in the heart of the Sighing Desert, a multi-pointed star-shaped theatre, each edge of which stretched for hundreds of meters. By all logic, such a fissure in the desert should have been filled with flowing sand, leaving no trace. However, not one grain of sand could fall into the Wound of the Earth. This gaping maw in the desert was a constant reminder of the apocalypse, filled with destructive energy that tears everything apart. No one knew how deep this cleft went or what lay at the center. Over thousands of years, no one had ever successfully made it to the heart of the Wound. The deeper you went, the more frightening the energy, until merely probing the outskirts required the combined energy of two demigods to maintain a safe radius of several square meters.

Among the teams bracing themselves for certain death, most had seen the Wound of the Earth. Still, they all discovered that their current sight differed entirely from their previous memories.

At a distance, the star-shaped Wound of the Earth remained the same; it was the space above it that had altered. Over the Earth’s Wound, a vast black sphere had appeared, its edges pulsating with glimmers of silver energy residue – the result of a collision between two spaces.

This black orb hovered above the Wound, nestled perfectly into the indents of the star-shaped points, as if held aloft by the Earth’s Wound. Uncountable undead souls emerged from the base of the orb and streamed out of the Wound, stepping foot onto the Sighing Desert. Without pause, they flowed into the distance.

"Roar~~~ Charge, little lion!" Maya and Tiya were poised atop the scorpion-tailed lion Dillie, clutching at his mane and shouting into the wind: "Onwards, to the big black ball. Charge!"

"Shut up, you idiots," Dillie, the giant scorpion-tailed lion, shook his head hard, flinging the two winged girls into the air. Amidst their laughter, they swung through the air like children on a swing.

"Lady Mina, I’m counting on you!." After taking a moment to measure the distance, Kyle gave the sign with a thumbs-up. Hovering above Dillie, Mina transformed into her colossal true form - several times larger than the giant scorpion-tailed lion. She lowered her height, folded her wings, and enveloped Dillie and his passengers with her body, forming a ball that plunged directly into the black space.

Mina, one of the two combat-type dragons amongst the Guardians, had an astonishingly thick hide and scales. Her powerful defensive armor, combined with an Aggression Shield, allowed her to bear all of them into the black space, sparks exploding where colliding energies met her hide, leaving no traces on her scales.

With a single flap of her wings, the team had already passed through the spherical black gate and entered an unknown world.

Earlier, since no one knew whether the world behind this gate contained enough energy for the nearly unlimited extraction and consumption required by the demigods, or how long it would take to cross through the gate, Kyle had proposed this plan: Mina, with the greatest defensive power, expended as little energy as possible to transport everyone through the gate. If all went well, great, but if the crossing took too long or consumed too much energy with insufficient recovery, Mina would transform into a human when she felt strained, and someone else would take over.

Fortunately, the contingency plan was never needed. The world beyond the gate still had vast energies to supply. The journey through the gate only took a few seconds, and all went smoothly without any surprises.

"We’re finally in," Klarke, wiping his thick beard, said gruffly: "But where are we, and why don’t we see any undead?"

Everyone was suspended in a sea of blackness, unable to feel anything in the dark void. Only on the far horizon, a multitude of lights could be seen. In the dark, they could only emit faint light through magic or aggression onto their surroundings, lightning the immediate area.

"Odd." Kyle stroked his chin, perplexed: "In theory, we should be in the same location as the undead preparing to leave since we moved against their flow to get here. How did we end up in this empty void? Is there an issue with the spatial gate?"