“Sphynx what’s happening?” Lark reached out to onto hold something before the void sucked them in.

“You’re getting your ass wiped by these low-level guys, that’s what,” his annoying other-self announced.

“Say something useful, please.”

“Well, since you’re begging, if you had analyzed the hole in space, you would notice it’s not just sucking things in, it’s also expelling monsters out of it.”

“What—”

“I SAID—”

“Shut up!” Lark raised the revolver, shooting off a set of fiery spirals, which eliminated a moving yellow spider creature, but also grabbed the attention a pair of ice golems crawling out of what used to be the pink side of the platform. The blue side of the platform had already pulled in the (unconscious) Volarians to whatever fate awaited them.

The two heavy-set golems weren’t the average monster mobs Lark could face alone, normally golems of this magnitude required a party to defeat them. At least that’s what his prior gaming experience fed into his instincts.

“[Ice Golem] (monster)(ice)

They do not usually move unless disturbed from their earthly slumber.

STR: 1000

Dex: 10

INT: 10

MG: 1000

SPT: 10

Skills

[Ice Magic] - Frost breath, Ice grip, Misty death”

That last move for sure, he wasn’t planning on grappling with death again any time soon. However, his fiery bullets did little to nothing to their ice-solid bodies. Was fire actually suppose to be strong against ice affinities? Because each golem was like a walking blizzard with their bodies putting out the fires simply by walking around.

“Sphinx, any ideas?” Lark muttered under his breath. He was unwilling to lend an ear to his guide, however, a monster with these stat numbers yielded for a desperate call. Plus more of them were coming.

“You’re gonna die at this rate, so I’m going to lift the limiter,” Sphynx spoke softly into his ear, giving him goosebumps.

“Limiter?”

“Yep, so deal with the painful backlash later.”

“Huh—”

Suddenly, Lark stood transfixed into position as the golems stomped closer and closer to where he hid. It was like half his brain turned off and only his left side could sense his surroundings.

“Sphynx!”

“Cool your jets, I’m here.” Lark’s mouth moved on its own.

“No, you didn’t,” he gushed.

“But yes,” he gushed back.

His right arm swung back and forth as if getting testing out his current range of motions. However, Lark still retained some power over his left side as he was still able to pinch his cheek with his hand. Then he slapped himself with the pommel of the sword as Sphynx began speaking with his voice again.

“It’s better to stop resisting as I show you how to properly use magic…”

Heat radiated off his arms as the veins in his muscles bulged.

“Learn it with your body.”

Gushi jumped off his back as pulses of electricity carried him like a current into the fray of monsters pouring out of the void. Crests of red aura ran down the sides of the jian, embroiling with chaotic energy. If Lark had looked into its steely reflection, he would’ve noticed his eyes transformed into an unfamiliar hue.

Monsters, smaller than the golems, appeared from the rift. Creatures the size of rodents flitted through the stage. Some had fangs, horns, wings, and claws, but Sphynx made quick skewers out of them. His agility was imperceptibly fast. His body executed one movement after another, faster than the time it took Mishka to re-activate wind-walker. There were no cooldowns in between each movement.

If the monsters didn’t fall prey to Sphynx’s lightning-fast strokes, they froze to death by the ice golems’ battering strikes against the floor. One of which missed them by only inches.

As the floor became almost completely covered in ice, more and more creatures became frozen ice sculptures. Soon, the area was dominated by the giant ice humanoids as they focused their anger upon Lark.

“How to properly fight…also learn it with your body, young ward,” Sphynx said, using Lark’s body to dodge a hammering ice fist. He repelled off of its arm and jumped towards the neighboring golem, slicing through its thick neck with ease.

Hot moisture steamed through the clean-cut as the golem perished.

Spurred by the quick death of a formidable boss creature, Lark felt alive in a way that couldn’t be articulated. Sure, how baffling it was to see, to feel, or to even hear himself talk like this, but one thing was clear. After watching Sphynx battle, he realized he was strong and capable of so much destruction.

Magic was might.

“This is what you should’ve done from the beginning,” Sphynx announced, directing the jian in the same stance as Silvina’s Flame Tunnel sword art form, straight into the heart of the enemy. “Combine the two elements together, your natural affinity for fire and jian’s affinity for wind…and you get….”

The ice golem opened its cavernous mouth, drawing icicles all around its huge body and pronounced a sonorous roar. Lark clenched his teeth against the freezing gale sweeping through the room.

A dragon.

From the end of the jian, a swirl of fire and wind burst forward, traveling in the shape of a serpent. The cold air invaded by the brilliant, scarlet flames extinguished as the ice golem fell backward, crumbling into tiny, glacial rocks.

The spatial ring picked up some nevermelting-ice fragments and vacuumed the next section of littered monster corpses. However, more monsters continued coming in waves from the pink platform, as opposed to the blue platform which had sucked in everything and everyone.

A sharp pain gutted the side of Lark’s head. Feeling a cluster of throbbing aches, Lark reached up to feel his head to make sure an invisible hadn’t just pierced through his brain. “My head Sphynx, it’s about to burst.”

“Don’t pass out until we reach the blue platform,” he said, until Gushi suddenly hopped back onto his head, reactivating Patching.

“Good slime. Always knew you were smarter than your owner. ”

“Hey, don’t pet him. Only I get to do that,” Lark pouted as Sphynx vaulted his body into the air towards the opening of the rift.

“Wait, what are you planning?”

“COSMO, message the butler, we may not be returning.”

“Hey! Where’s my input—”

They fell into the rift.

As soon as the duo disappeared, the paper charms from earlier lit up in a shade of purple, trapping the beasts behind a barrier. Elli reappeared from under the ice with a humorous look on her petite face.

Jody lifted Carson over her shoulder. “That grandson of his is too generous.”

“It was an overwhelming situation for the kiddo,” said Carson who dusted off his clothes. “Besides, if he didn’t give me that potion, I would’ve seen the shadow realm.”

Jody squished his cheeks together. “Don’t be so dramatic. This is why people think you’re such a bad lawyer cause you ain’t a good liar. ”

“Why would I lie about it Jo, and why wasn’t that flame-mage on our list of Volarian anarchists? He got my hip bone good.”

Her grandmotherly act dropped as soon as she popped Carson’s hip back into its socket. “You tell me now, young man, what flame mage do you speak of?”

“The one who tossed Lark into the fire,” sputtered Carson, squinting in pain while waving his hand over the gallery, where Elli gathered together the surviving host and volunteers.

She laced her fingers together as she thought about this piece of information.

“Why wasn’t he on the list Jo?” Carson asked a bit stronger this time after noticing her nervousness.

“…It must have been Farrows.”

“Well, ain’t he a convincing actor,” mocked Carson as he shook out his boots.

“That’s just it Carson, I don’t know if he’s acting.”

“Is it because of Corn?” He dipped his eyes low and irate. “If Lark doesn’t make it because of some petty jealousy Jo…”

“You’ll what? It’s already too late, Mr. Wiscombe. The Towers even if we paid for them or not, inevitably would’ve made it here once the rifts made by the cultists were opened and you chose Lark. We all chose him. He needs to accomplish what Mr. Caskey’s son couldn’t. Cornelius will keep him alive until he passes through the gate.”

With that scathing remark, Elli came up to them. “My assistant is missing!”

“Who?” Jody asked puzzled.

“The…girl I work with!” said Elli exasperatedly, her hands shaking. “The one who took Lark to your office. She was supposed to ‘accidentally’ or ‘heroically’ push him into the rift once my golems chased him there, which I know that scene just now was ‘shocking’ right? But, more importantly, I don’t see her anywhere!”

Carson threw up behind the bar.

As they fell through the rift, Lark could tell his troubles were only beginning. He hadn’t seen Jody since their initial meeting, and what Carson had told him only partly made sense. Sure, if Soko’s could get their hands on more products they would invest in that belief, but what exactly were the Towers? Were they the same things as what the Volarians’ wanted to revive? The Demon Towers?

Even though such worries were important to think about, he had a hard time focusing when it felt like he entered another world. Literally.

The rift from the outside had looked like a formless mass of chaotic energy. Sure, it could’ve been a portal to another world like what you see in games that switch to a loading screen before entering the next stage, but when he fell, it was only for a second before they saw solid ground, and by then he was already standing upright as if he hadn’t moved at all.

However, the hole in space initially had felt deeper, or longer than a drop of one second, and Lark couldn’t shake the feeling that a part of his identity was missing. Whatever portal or world he jumped into looked like the second floor of the Auction House. But that couldn’t be right, could it?

Sphynx snapped a finger to his ear. “Focus. Look there’s an obelisk up ahead. Anything, it reminds you of?”

A similar standing shrine he recalled was guarded by Nympha’s old friend in Wangshi’s memories. “The world gate?” Scripts were etched into the stone like the one he saw before, however, this stone was in new condition like it was recently sculpted.

“Wait, Sphynx, why did you bring us here? I still have so many questions and I can’t just leave behind Wangshi—”

Lark poised the jian at the obelisk, sensing movement there.

“You said you wanted to know the truth, Lark Rune.” Cornelius finally revealed himself, sitting on the base like the previous gatekeeper he’d seen before. “There’s no going back.”

“You’ve turned into a spirit?” Lark lifted a brow, observing the faint outline of the Immortal, as though he could disappear at any moment.

“As of today, yes. I’ve anchored my soul here for the coming tides ahead. This world gate controls the access between all worlds, but like a small fishing boat in a storm, you can’t always control where anything ends up.”

“Stop. Just stop, first. You owe me an explanation about what happened up there, what’s happening ‘here,’ wherever ‘here’ is—argh!” Lark pressed down the side of his head. Gushi’s Patching skill couldn’t keep up with the effects of lifting the ‘limiter.’ More than that though, Lark felt like he was a walking ball of confusion, questioning the existence of everything he knew.

“If you begin to wonder about all these infinite possibilities, you fail to frame what only you can control,” Cornelius offered this wisdom to Lark’s chagrin.

“The cultists when they happened upon this world fifty years ago, cracks in this dimension appeared. Your father stumbled upon such a crack where he found the Immortal artifact, your caretaker, and the previous gatekeeper. He kept the latter a secret for many years until you were older.”

Lark had found a resting spot called ‘laying dead on the floor’ as Cornelius spoke. “So the world-gate is located somewhere in the desert, isn’t it? How were you able to summon it here?”

“Gates, portals, rifts appear when and where there happens to be a large collection of convulsing energy. Leylines, mana, spirit, and miasma, a combination of these energies is likely what causes them to appear and disappear. The Volarians figured out how to do instant-traveling with a combination of Leylines and miasma. Yet, prolonged uses of miasma can cause a summoning the old books call, ‘Towers.’

Sometimes they’re called ‘Dark’ or ‘Demonic’ Towers’ because miasma is the expulsion of negative energy, and they thrive on greed as the Volarian have found the Towers to be sources of great wealth.”

“There’s a risk involved isn’t there because these Towers are actually dungeons, aren’t they, with people risking their lives to gain resources,” said Lark, who was finding the floor to be very comfortable as Gushi acted as a water pillow for his head. Nympha had told him, dungeons were made from spirits haunting the same place over and over because the emotions were strongest there. The Dark Towers came to be in a similar way, how would they be any different?

“Yes,” conceded Cornelius. “Unlike dungeons, however, there isn’t a Tower Master, so to speak.”

“Why is Soko’s investing in these Towers?”

“There are ‘normal’ Towers that exist with the requirement of purifying the collection of miasma before it attracts dark matter and monsters. What you saw, before, in the giant structure, was purified miasma before it fell to the ground and opened the rifts.”

“Normal Towers facilitate instant-travel connecting the portals to each tower. Of course, it would be difficult for the average mana-user to figure out how to pick a tower and travel, so I helped design ‘Safe Points’ with my protege. Our second name for it would’ve been ‘shinsekai,’ meaning ‘new world’ because of his love for—”

“—Master, time is of the essence you said,” spoke a condescending voice.

Lark sat up.

“You should just sum it down to the cultists causing instability with their experiments, so we copped out to the reincarnated Volarians to create Towers to control the monsters coming from other dimensions. And you sacrificed your mortal body to become the pseudo Tower Master.”

Like Elli, the flame-mage, whom Lark had provoked earlier, levitated next to obelisk.

“In all honesty though, you should have chosen me for the second Immortal Artifact, Master, instead of leaving it to this sniveling kid who already misses his pseudo-father.”

“Where’d you come from?”

“See, he doesn’t even recognize when someone else is close by,” he remarked coldly. “Well, you got here in one piece, I suppose that’s all that matters. I’m Farrows, loyal apprentice to Master Cornelius Goodwing.”

He gave a curt nod.

“And I’m here to hunt down a rat,” Farrows said, frowning while drawing out his staff to redirect a hail of falling icicles. He cast a ring of floating fire orbs. They rose to the ceiling where Lark saw a woman wrapped in ice.

“Ellinor will be disappointed if she saw this. But a rat can’t change its smell, I knew you were one of them.”

Lark recognized her as the one he talked to earlier that night before stepping into Jody’s office and he raised the jian cautiously.

“Who? A cultist or a Volarian. Hmm?” she coyly said to Farrows, as she played with a purple disk in her hands.

“Cultist.” This time it was Lark who answered with a snarl. The headache was gone as he poised the jian close to the ground, drawing energy around him.

“Always scheming to be people who you aren’t. I don’t know what you want, but it’s not gonna go your way anymore!”

“Let’s see how far your words will take you this time,” she said as she dodged the scattering orbs.

Blocks of ice appeared in thin air and began moving towards him. Lark scanned them, discovering them to be part of the cultist’s movement skill, Frozen-steps. She jumped to and fro, like an agile cat where they materialized under her feet and hands, till she made it to the very top of the obelisk.

“It’s too early for the Towers, Immortal, humanity should have seen destruction before creation.”

“A waste of life that would have been,” Cornelius said but made no attempt to restrain her as she threw the purple disk into the air and shot it with her own revolver. The temperature in the room dropped drastically as the disk seemed to summon ice crystals in the room. A crazy amount of crystalline structures grew from where she shot the disk. Farrows barely moved back in time before the razor-sharp end of an ice-crystal drilled into the opposite wall.

“It’s going to take more than a ‘booster’ to destroy this shrine, Miss Cultist!”

Fire rained down all around her, but there wasn’t a hint of fear in her expression as she coolly met Farrows’ fire with ice. What she didn’t expect, however, was Lark to suddenly appear at her side with the edge of his sword up to her ear.

He grabbed the collar of her shirt-dress and face-planted her head into the ground.

“Gushi! Boiling Body!”

The slime hopped off his head for a moment when the splitting headache returned. Gushi transformed into its larger size and held the Miss Cultist captive until Lark could reach his bearings.

“How’s that for a change?” he said in front of the knocked out cultist in Gushi’s body.

“Lark, watch out! It’s a fake!”

His eyes widened as the body inside Gushi transformed into the identity of his mentor’s father. Mr. Caskey? But how?

“Careful, she’s still somewhere here. I’m going to take a look at his head wound…Lark?” Farrow’s face stiffened.

Too many things were happening at once, and without Gushi’s Patching skill, the splitting headache was wreaking havoc on his mind.

“Oh young ward, that’s what happens when you fight with an experienced opponent.”

Sphynx? Were they in his Mind Space?

“Did you already forget the skill Ice-body substitute? Never mind, what’s important is that you need to get rid of those crystals before they destroy the gate.”

“H-how do I do that when I can barely think right now? Also, why isn’t Cornelius doing anything about it? I thought you said the gatekeepers were strong?”

“He’s also a pseudo Tower Master meaning he’s spreading himself thin. He’ll only allow you to go through the gate, meanwhile, he’s holding back the cultist from leaving the rift to chase after you, understand?”

“No, I don’t understand!” he said. “Don’t tell me to understand when all these bombs feel like they’re just dropping on me!”

“You have to adapt, young ward, or you’ll die.”

Lark didn’t say anything more, feeling his skin burn.

“Use me,” Sphynx said finally. “Use me so you won’t die, Lark. So you won’t let the people you care about die either.”

…

Several black boxes popped up around Lark as he collected the surrounding information. He found her.

“Farrows, ignore him, how do we stop these crystals from growing?”

“Lark, the man needs medical attention!”

He took a swing to Farrow’s staff and the flame-mage scowled, “So you’ve decided your friend’s father is of no use to you?”

“Precisely, you deceiver.” Lark reached for his own revolver, scattering several shots at the flame-mage.

“Are you crazy?”

“Farrows ‘fire’ magic is stronger than ice. You didn’t want him stopping your plans so you switched appearances with him.”

The jian’s blade heated up as he sliced through an ice pillar aimed at him. The charade was over, as Farrows let a smile slip through the facade.

“You’re bad at acting, Miss Cultist, I just met Farrows. There’s no way he’d call me so casually or know that I’d know who Mr. Caskey is.”

“You’d be surprised,” she said, meeting Lark’s blow to her head with an ice staff.

“Careful, it’s about to heat up in here.” Flames scorched off the ends of the sword as Lark attempted to cut down her staff. It proved to be more resilient against fire than he thought. He bit the back of his teeth. Nevermelting-ice!

“What were you going to show me?” she taunted, as more pillars rocked the room.

He sliced through several more of the crystalline structures before facing off with her ice magic once more. Nimbly dodging them by a hairbreadth, he called out, “Farrows!”

“Is that why you were so busy, chasing me around the room? To find him? Tough luck—he’s trapped somewhere in one of these pillars.” She did a cartoonish, diabolical laugh.

“That’s what you think, Miss Cultist!” The real Farrows swung down on his staff from behind, knocking her flat out of the air. Gushi caught her before she could escape.

“Good job Gushi,” Lark took a breath on the side of the obelisk as Cornelius calmly patted him on the back.

Gushi had let out Mr. Caskey from its slime chamber and absorbed the damage so that Farrows didn’t have to burn the head wound later and climbed the walls to where Miss Cultist originally appeared and found Farrows wrapped in ice, which he promptly absorbed slowly till Farrows was freed.

“Master Cornelius said you were a unique slime,” Farrows remarked rather impressed with the creature. Miss Unconscious Cultist was now bound by a magic skill called Fire Ropes, courtesy of Farrows’ staff.

Then he looked at Lark with his cheeks as red as his hair. “You did well too, better than I did, anyway.”

“Um… Thanks. But what are you going to do with them?”

“Interrogate them when I get back to Friledaux—”

“So, we can go back you mean?”

“No, not you,” Cornelius interjected with his wispy floating form. “Well, unless you must, but I will not be able to maintain the World Gate when you please. I’m expending a lot of energy to maintain this feeble appearance.”

“Farrows, you are also presented this opportunity to travel through the gate to become a World-Traveler—”

“I refuse. I know where I am needed.”

Cornelius coughed into his thin robe.

“And you, Lark Rune, where are you needed?”

At this question, Lark couldn’t help but remember his grandfather’s will: But in my inventor’s heart of hearts, I believe you’ll figure out why the world has changed or how it’s always been…and when you’re ready, you’ll fight for humanity.

“Even when you’re not here and when we’re worlds apart, you still manage to haunt me,” thought Lark as he placed a hand over the obelisk. Gushi climbed back to its rightful place on his shoulder.

“I’m ready. Take care of Wangshi, please. He should’ve been the one here right now.”

Farrows nodded.

“I hope it will take me where my friends are.”

Cornelius didn’t agree or disagree, and only advised him. “Don’t always leave everything to fate.”

He thought, maybe he should be seeing the face of another old man gatekeeper if that’s how world transfers worked. Seeing how this was his first time, he wasn’t quite sure to expect. Before he could ask Cornelius anything else, a bell tolled in the recesses of his mind. It rang plainly, but the sound soothed him. For a moment, he could feel the sun on his face as he heard the feminine laughs of his mother and grandmother. An ocean breeze softly tickled his nose.

He woke to the sight of scorching, dry sand going above the ankles of his shoes.

This place felt familiar. Gushi hopped onto his head as they looked around. He dug his feet out from the sand, taking a few steps to the nearest tree, which was long and thin like a coconut tree. He didn’t touch it, deciding to scan first.

“Item: Kurian (tree) (common)

A tree native to the ‘New World’ village. It grows the Kurian fruit.

Found in the central wilderness of Celestia.”

He arrived in Wangshi’s home-world.