After the unconscious youths were dragged away by a group of servants called by Monica, I could finally get back to my room, only to sense a strong magic fluctuation - strong by the standards of this place obviously - influencing the walls and the door. After giving it a simple try, I realised that I was completely locked in this place!

Realising the mistake that I made by relying on external help to be safe while preparing myself for the challenge, I ran to the window, my only possible exit point if I wanted to leave this city, only to realise that while it could still be open, a layer of energy was tightly covering it, making it impossible for me to get out of this place without actually breaking the entire barrier down!

I didn't even need to think about it or inspect the protective layer of energy closer to realise that doing so, even if I managed to come up with some way to only puncture the barrier while holding its remaining structure properly in place, a strand of the energy connected to the now departing mass of energy that seemed like Monica would instantly alert her if anything were to happen to this place!

Sitting down on the couch, I started thinking.

With no portal seeds, I was unable to just make the big leap towards my stronghold. While as soon as I realised what was happening, I hoped that digging through the floor or going by the roof might be a way to go, yet to my disappointment, the entirety of the chamber was covered in the bubble of energy, meaning that no matter what direction I would take for my escape, it would be blocked by the barrier anyway!

*Bonger, any ideas?*

With no option or idea appearing in my mind, I had no other choice than to turn to my trusty system. Even though since Eve filled the hole in my emotional self I felt the urge to work my way towards my own aims while basing on my strength alone, so that if something happened to Bonger I wouldn't suddenly lose all of my power, in this very moment, I was simply out of options!

"Sorry brother, I can't really help you out with this one. Or rather, I can't fix the situation for you, but you should be able to do it yourself. After all, I already explained how the fabric of this world works, didn't I?"

Hearing Bonger's answer, I realised that instead of looking for conventional ways out, or lamenting over the lack of the portal seed, I could make a small scale portal myself!

After all, I already managed to open the gate once, back when I didn't really know what I was supposed to expect from it! As long as I could shield myself from the chaos influencing me, wouldn't that work just fine as a small scale teleportation window?

With this thought in my mind, I moved from the couch to the floor, and focused on the space in front of me. Recalling how Bonger's explanation about how this entire world was constructed, I started by releasing the seal on my strength and amassing as much energy as I could in a single point.

In just a moment, I could feel that my magic was slowly wrestling itself out of my control as if something was eroding it from the inside. With just a single thought, I extracted all of the entropy from the ball of energy floating in front of me, storing it in form of a protective dome around the energy blob, just in case if something from the other side of the hole I was making decided to come to visit.

From this point on, the events only accelerated.

With more and more magical energy gathering in a single point, I felt the space twisting and turning, as if it was unable to hold as much content within such a small area. Before I could even notice, most of my energy suddenly evaporated, disappeared from this world, leaving only the insanely thick walls of energy around a three-dimensional hole coated with my magic all around.

Holding the entry point to my way out as closely as I could, I changed the flow of my magic so that rather than simply feeding it into the bottomless hole, it would infuse itself into the walls, giving me just enough grip to spread them a bit more for every bit of energy that reinforced them.

After continuing this process for a few minutes, the hole grew from a singularity in an undefined point, to the entire few centimetres! Yet obviously, I wasn't satisfied with this size, pushing even more magic onto the stakes.

*How am I doing so far?*

Seeking comfort in Bonger's words, I hoped that rather than bashing me as usual for how useless I was, he would for once praise the results of my hard work. At this point, seeing the portal slowly forming right in front of my eyes, I really wanted to hear for once that I did a good job!

"Awful. How could it be taking you so long? It's not some loli anus that you need to stretch to sate your wretched desire! Do you think this world is so fragile it won't mend itself if you get a little rough with it?"

Hearing those words, I realised that maybe due to the fact it was my first time when I was opening a portal while knowing what I was doing to some degree, I was incredibly scared of making any mistake, worried that all my hard work would just collapse, wasting quite a bit of my time that I could use elsewhere!

"Okay then, here goes nothing!"

Encouraged by Bonger's words, I suddenly applied quite a lot of force on the walls of my personal hole, instantly turning it from just a few centimeters wide to a sphere easily capable of fitting my entire self in it!

"Okay then, now comes the hardest part. You need to use the entropy to cut this sphere in half so that it could turn into a proper portal. You can do it with that entropy you extracted from the magic you used to reinforce its borders, but you need to keep in mind that you need to mend the cut with a layer of your magic that will block all the incoming influences from it. The easiest way to do so should be by simply painting in black, all black. Just like with light, black colour seems to absorb all sorts of information. Then, you just need to push one of the half-spheres outside the building. Since its magic is focused only at keeping the borders of the world at bay, something that magic does naturally by itself, no magical construct can obstruct it!"

Figuring out the meaning behind Bonger's words, I gathered all of my focus, before changing the sphere of entropy surrounding the entire hole and turning it into a thin blade, long enough to cut the entire thing in half. But instead of figuring my own way of painting the insides of the portal in black, I came up with another idea.

Swish!

Humming the sound of cutting with a katana in my mind, I dropped the entropy blade through the hole, while making sure that a part of this natural energy would remain in form of a thin barrier that blocked the insides of the portal from the rest of the world.

And just like that, I made my very first portal!