Ank

Wait, but if the guy escaped to literally another dimension…

“Then, how will we get to him?”, I asked, tilting my head to the side, honestly wishing the 1stGuild Master was just saying his weird stuff, so we could actually complete the task Taffy gave us.

Taking a glimpse of the retired adventurer, she just stared at the distance, seriously. I didn’t want to disappoint her after all she did to Hunah and I.

“Hmphm!”, Kon covered his own face with his hand. “Muahahaha!”, he burst into overly exaggerated laughs. “I am the heir of the black flames himself! The prince of death and darkness!”, he spun, giving us his back, as Hunah and I had no choice but to wait for the 1st Guild Master to finish his own theater piece. “If those fools think they are safe in the depths of the kingdom of death, the house of shadows itself…”, He extended an empty hand to the side, and concluded: “They are wrong! This is precisely my domain!”, he concluded, and I felt a sudden surge of power emanating from his hand; an incredible quantity, maybe more energy than I possessed in my entirety; then, making the wind howl, the waves leap out, and shinning a cold blue light all around, a portal was opened.

“Wow~”, Hunah and I were actually impressed. Sometimes it was hard to keep in mind that Kon was [Level: 1619].

“Is this…?”, Hunah asked.

“Yes, a portal to the pocket dimension the 3rdGuild Master ran to”, the 1stGuild Master, sounding just a little tired, replied. “Now, let’s jump in already, before an army of undead block our way”, he concluded, gesticulating for the three of us to get in first.

Once Hunah and I jumped through the two-dimensional portal, the world around us changed completely; the skies were permanently covered by dark clouds, which constantly cracked with blue lightning, the earth was gray, and everything was… dead, the bushes, the trees, even the animals and insects crawling around; the only window to the world we came from was at our backs, as the oval, two dimensional portal just like the one Kon had summoned. Through it, I could see the sea and the iceberg we were resting over just a minute ago, and the 1stGuild Master and Taffy. Kon had to call for her to jump through the portal a second time, before she finally stopped looking absentmindedly to the horizon, and almost melancholic followed us. The 1stGuild Master was the last one to come through the portal, and once he did, the connections between the worlds were lost, and we all saw ourselves completely stuck in that other dimension of death.

“I thought your built was all about strength and killing everything with a single punch, but I guess even you have varied a little, hu?”, I commented, crouching and observing a line of white fungus-covered ants. “With all these portals and stuff.”

“No, I spent only a single point to get the [Pocket Dimension] spell”, the 1stGuild Master replied, and I notice his exhaustion from having opened the portal hadn’t given any signals of going away yet.

“How?”, Hunah asked, eagerly. “Is it the reward from some kind of [Title]?”

“Your [Inventory] skill isn’t enough?”, I turned to my twin sister.

“Don’t worry about it, you will definitely get the [Pocket Dimension] skill”, Kon replied, taking some kind of scroll from a pocket, and activating it, the thing burning away when his body shone for a moment, and he seemed just a little more re-invigorated. “The two of you.”

“Me too?”, I was a little surprised. Why would I get that skill too? Had it anything to do with killing [Gods]?

“Well, I think it’s better to tell you before than after”, as we all walked down a dirt path, and, slowly, away from the dead forest, Kon explained: “It is a generic [Spell], [Pocket Dimension]. The same way you become able to project your aura, and detect the aura of someone else when you become… [Level: 30] was it?”

“I think so”, Hunah and I replied in unison… And, if my twin sister was just like me, she also didn’t remember when we got that power.

“Anyway, when you get to [Level: 1000], you will finally understand a fraction of the pain of this world, and from the cries of the shadows, you will get the [Pocket Dimension] skill, and things will drastically change… More specifically, when you fight someone else who is also [Level: 1000] or more, things will change. For, when two awakened souls battle, death rejoices!”, well, Kon didn’t seem to have regained all the power he used to open the portal, but at least his vitality was still the same?

“Why would things change in a fight of people whose [Level] is over 1000?”, I asked.

“Because you two are forced to share a part of your power to create a pocket dimension to serve as your arena”, I was already opening my mouth, when the 1st Guild Master interrupted me: “And before you ask: you’re ‘forced’ to make an arena pocket dimension because the damage a fight between two or more individuals whose [Level] is over 1000 causes just too much devastation in the real world. Why would anyone care about the environment? …Well, maybe one day you will live to become strong enough to hear the reason. But until then, just be aware of this: do not follow this rule of creating an arena separated from the real world, and you and your enemies, and everyone around you will certainly die.”

“So, this is what you did? You shared your power to create this pocket dimension?”, Hunah asked.

“…Kind of. This place fits in the ‘Underworld’ category, a place made by a death [God]. Differently from other deities, death [Gods] are always in their own worlds, so I didn’t exactly help to create this place, but simply expanded it a little bit”, Kon explained, as we got to the top of a hill, ad finally got a good view from the surroundings.

There were rivers of mud running down mountains made of piles of o skulls, plains of cracked gray clay, and a myriad of huge, hundred meters tall towers that looked like rusted spikes pocking out of the ground everywhere. At the center of everything was an immense, but old and decrepit, black palace.

That pocket dimension was huge, about three times the size of Incute’s interior. And the scarier part was that, once, it clearly had been larger: it seemed we were in a mere fraction of what once was a small planet, and fragments of a shattered larger world floated beyond the precipices that made up the horizon, as well as flying islands pocking the skies here and there.

“Why don’t other [Gods] live in their own pocket dimensions too?”, Hunah asked again, as we looked around and searched for any signal of the 3rdGuild Master.

“Because of that”, the reply came quickly. But, this time, it wasn’t Kon answering, but a skeletal figure with transparent blue arms and parts, wearing only black pants. He displayed a lipless smile from the top of one of the towers. “Kakakaka!” He laughed. “To create, and to enter a pocket dimension with its own power is very taxing, isn’t it?”, The newcomer nodded to the 1stGuild Master. “I bet you can’t even tell if you can win against the 3rdGuild Master at your state, kakaka! But I am different. I am a death[God]! A Higher[God]! We are the only ones who can go against those emperors who think that they control the world, and win!”, Opening his arms wide, he called: “We are invincible in our death worlds because of this!”, and, from crevices in the rusted towers, thousands of undead were poured off. “Kill Kon, capture the trash. You may ignore the remaining… thing, kaka”, the death [God] ordered. “Now, if you excuse me, I have a guest that I shall send back to the real world, kakaka!”, he concluded, and, with a single jump, crossed the skies and returned back to his palace, his kick breaking the rusted tower in half.

Skeletons, zombies, and sewed together aberrations from small to huge sizes, from flying beasts to worms digging their way through the cracked clay, the army must have had, at least, fifteen thousand monsters composing it between long, medium, and short-ranged combatants.

“He may call whatever the fuck he wants, he’s another enemy in the end”, I said, frowning, and stepping forward, followed by my twin sister.

“Wait, shadowlings: he is strong. Even for me”, Kon warned, extending us his hand, concerned.

“Oh, we know~”, I replied, turning, apologetically, to the 1stGuild Master.

“We hate the [Gods], but we’re not suicidal~”, Hunah copied my body language.

“So, go ahead and bring that box back to-”

“Oh, my, ’our mommy’?”, Taffy interrupted me.

“To Taffy, our friend”, I concluded, slightly embarrassed. “Hunah and I will take of the minions.”

“…Okay”, Kon nodded and bypassed me. Soon, though, stopping on his tracks, he added, trying not to look back: “Try not to die.”

“This should be our words, man”, I laughed at him, and heard an amused chuckle coming back.

As the 1stGuild Master started to fly too, though in a way less elegant way when compared to the death [God], using his clones to push him around, Taffy hesitated for a moment, but then turned to Hunah and I with a wishful expression. She seemed to have a hard time to make her request, so Hunah told her:

“Go. You want that box no matter what, right? We can take care of ourselves.”

“…Thank you.”

Taffy followed Kon, and I cracked my knuckles and turned to the incoming ocean of enemies.

“Okay, shall we start too?”