The rest of my marathon through the night was fairly uneventful. A few more monsters tried to get their pound of flesh from me but I managed to evade them all with a combination of speed, stealth and superior mobility. Occasionally, I had to block the odd attack with a bit of conjured Ice but I had prepared a few shards of Ice I could use to anchor conjurations at a distance, letting me create shields with ease.

But while the monsters weren’t a problem, one arose on the last stretch. As I got closer to the crater, I noticed a strange scent in the air, it was oddly prickly and stung my nose. When I flicked my tongue out to get a better read, I almost gagged from the burning sensation, it reminded me of chemistry class and the odour of some of the more caustic acids we had been shown. Nothing you wanted anywhere near your body and when I translated the sensation into an Astral equivalent, I realised it was some sort of Poison with some Fire, Death, Decay and general disease mixed in. Something that would kill somebody incredibly fast, almost as fast as pure Death Magic, but with a few extras mixed in that allowed this particular combination to spread further and, for lack of a better word, act more pervasive. Death just was, it didn’t feel malicious or hungry in any way, it was a simple ending, without emotion or desire. This combination of energies felt strangely hungry in a way that made me a little uncomfortable.

Still, I continued on, driven by my curiosity. The scent in the air got slowly stronger, allowing me to get used to it, otherwise, I’d likely have puked out what little I had in my stomach, slowly me down further and using up valuable time. When I reached the general area where my scrying constructs had generally failed, the odour got palpably worse and even stronger than it had before. Now, I was no longer limited to smelling the disturbing scent, I could feel my skin prickle from the power in the air, a part of me instantly pushing to turn around and get the Hel out of this area. Similarly, I noticed that the number of monsters had gone down and in turn, they had gotten a lot stranger than before.

Where near the outskirts, the monsters had mostly been shaped like animals, just with a clear elemental bias and influence, that was no longer the case near the centre. Instead, the monsters were just disturbing, malformed things with some remaining animal features but the rest was purely alien. Some of it made me think of strange, modern arts, caricatures of living beings thrown together haphazardly, somewhat reminiscent of the way the outer parts of the Charland seemed to have been put together by pressing ‘random’ while duplicating what buildings had been in the area before. Other parts were even weirder, where the modern arts parts at least appeared to be organic, those bits were clearly not. Some of them looked crystalline, others metallic and some even had a glossy sheen that made me think of plastic. Almost like somebody had gone diving in a landfill and collected whatever came to mind before sprinkling it into the creature template. The poor monsters didn’t look like there was any rhyme or reason to their existence, only pain.

Granted, it might be that I projected my own expectations onto the malformed beings, trying to imagine how I’d feel with a body like theirs, coming away with the realisation that even imagining was painful. These poor beasts were simply wrong and the only reason I didn’t stop to put as many down as I could was that I was already pressed for time. Still, I made the effort to put a few out of their misery, even if it cost me a little more Astral Power than I’d have liked. I was pleasantly surprised when the EXP they provided was accumulating quickly, pushing me to level seventy-eight before I reached the centre and the strange, glowing crater I wanted to inspect.

Just before I reached that crater, the air changed once more. The stinging sensation I had experienced for the last bit intensified even further and now, it was getting painful. Painful enough that a quick glance at my health bar told me I was actually losing HP, my condition slowly deteriorating despite my passive regeneration and, at least for a spellcaster, excellent endurance and vitality. If I brought Luna here, she’d be in grave danger of dying from nothing but the magic in the air, a realisation that sent a shiver down my spine despite the blistering heat in the air around me. This was getting worse and worse, the sensation almost bad enough to push me back.

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Instead, I decided to try something else and paused, quickly drawing a runic formation in the air before me. It was something amusingly familiar, conjured mist with a little extra, my favourite weapon of mass destruction. Only, instead of the mist being imbued with the power to devour the vitality of my foes, I imbued it with the power to devour magic, trying to make something to absorb as much of the power in the air as possible, turning it into something less hazardous to my health. Simple Cold would be wonderful but even pure magic, Hel, even harmless heat would be preferable.

And it worked, at least to the point that I no longer lost health. Instead, I had to keep a bit of focus on the magic I was channelling, slowing me down a little, but I felt it was worth it. I only had a few hundred metres to go, maybe a kilometre, but that was okay. Slow and steady would win me this race, to say nothing of the comfort that came with resting my exhausted legs. Running for hours was not quite what I considered enjoyable, even with my excellent attributes.

It didn’t take me long to cover the last stretch, the mist and my cloak meant I was comfortable and well-hidden until I stepped out of the industrial devastation I had travelled through the last few hours and onto a short stretch of empty land. Ahead, I could see the hole and the opposite side, the strangely steep slopes and even the odd, almost vertical cut-off. As if the hole ahead was half of a sphere where the matter had been removed and the Earth had yet to compensate and form the usual slopes and angles. It was, almost certainly, unnatural formed though I wasn’t sure if I wanted to know what could carve a hole hundreds of metres across into the earth as if they were scoping out ice cream.

Carefully making my way forward, I finally got to the edge, noticing that I needed more and more power to keep the misty shroud around me going. Looking down, I felt almost disappointed for a moment, only for the disappointment to vanish and be replaced with worried wonder.

Looking down into the crater revealed an incredibly odd sight. There was water gathering at the bottom of the bowl-shaped hole, something to be expected given that there had been some rain the last few days, but what was not expected was that the water was boiling. Boiling, without steam rising from it. The only reasons I thought it was boiling were the constantly rising bubbles and the visible heat haze I could see even from a distance.

In the middle of the strangely boiling pool was the source of my worry. A large, crystalline formation, jagged shards of multicoloured crystal sticking out of the water like some gigantic gemstone, each shard multiple metres in length and ranging in thickness from a few centimetres to a diameter similar to my torso. Even from afar, without engaging my magical sight, I could see the air distorting around those crystals, they were radiating magic with an intensity I could barely imagine. I could command great power but this, this was nature’s fury, condensed into a space just a few metres across. I had no delusions about my ability to contest with that kind of power, even from afar I had to struggle to hold onto the shroud protecting me from the passive effect of those crystals.

I briefly considered trying to launch a few projectiles at them, just to see what might happen but I quickly decided against it. At best, I would get no reaction, other than maybe the projectiles breaking apart in some interesting way. Sure, I might learn something but given that the worst case was something I didn’t really want to contemplate, I knew better than to try. At least for now, I might come back in the future, do a few tests, find out more, that kind of thing, but I’d need more power for that.

A lot more power, enough to control that kind of energy if the worst case occurred and my experiments turned the crystals unstable and unleashed the entire power contained within them. Just thinking about it was enough to make me shiver as I retreated from the crater.

Maybe, I would be back. Eventually.