CHAPTER 314: INTERDIMEMSIONAL SPACE-TIME CONTINUUM

He gathered what he could of his Void Qi, causing the air around him to vibrating as a whitish aura coiled from his hands like liquid, wrapping around the incoming fiery whip.

The moment he had the fiery whip under his control, Victor swung it back the other way.

The fiery strip snapped like a serpent and smashed into Commander Aiz’s chest, exploding in a burst of molten shards.

The impact sent the giant tumbling backward through the clouds, roaring in fury.

Four feet wide...

Victor dove forward while stretching both arms out.

"Wind Glide!"

The invisible platform of wind appeared beneath him again and he proceeded to leap upwards with all the strength he could muster.

His figure propelled upwards like bullet toward the circle.

Three feet...

The runic circular gate rippled violently now as its edges folded inward, sucking in debris from the air.

The sky vibrated.

Just when the circle reduced to around two and the half feet in radius, Victor’s body managed to slip through.

"Gotcha—!"

The world inverted.

Space turned inside-out as Victor plunged through, weightless and spinning through an endless void of light and darkness.

Colors smeared together like liquid galaxies.

Up was down.

Forward didn’t exist.

He was inside the circle now... within the dimensional gate but the fabric of reality here was fracturing fast.

Fortunately, he could see the light in the distance.

The light that would lead back to sector k-22. And he was being pulled towards it.

Just when Victor thought he was finally safe, a familiar voice rang out again.

"You think you can escape me, mortal?"

Victor’s eyes snapped wide as he turned around.

Commander Aiz had followed him through.

The hulking Drakenar creature swam through the void like a shadowed leviathan.

His body twisted unnaturally under the warped gravity of the space, yet his single arm still burned with volcanic fury.

"Oh, come on!" Victor groaned. "You’re missing an arm and a brain. Stay down already!"

Aiz’s response was a punch to the face.

The blow connected with bone-shattering force, hurling Victor backward into the distorted edge of the rift.

The impact cracked space like a mirror causing shards of light to scatter outward.

Gravity shifted again, dragging both of them in spirals.

Victor coughed blood but retaliated instantly with an extended fist which slam into Aiz’s ribs.

Victor was much weaker at this point, so his punch barely caused any damage.

The beast roared as they collided again with fist and palm meeting each other.

With every strike, the rift bent further out of shape, shifting their trajectory as each impact rippled through the portal.

Aiz slammed Victor into the interdimemsional wall, pinning him by the neck. "This realm will be your tomb!"

Victor choked out a grin. "Man, your breath could kill a tomb."

With a desperate surge, he slammed his palm into Aiz’s right stump where his arm was cleaved off.

"Frost Bloom..." he muttered weakly as blue-white frost exploded outward, spreading across the Commander’s stump and right chest area.

Some of the frost infiltrated his body through the stump and pierced deep through, poking out of other parts of his flesh and chest region.

Aiz roared in pain and fury, releasing Victor just long enough for him to twist free.

They clashed again, over and over with their forms flickering like broken reflections.

The void rippled... and up ahead the light... the pathway to sector k-22 was gone...

At this point, Victor had ran out of qi.

Hos body was heavy as stone but every movement now came from raw instinct and stubbornness.

He blocked a multiple strikes before Aiz’s knuckles crashed into his jaw, spinning him around. The beast grabbed Victor by the throat and rammed him against the shimmering edge of this interdimemsional space.

The continuum cracked.

Energy spread like molten glass. Victor retaliated, head-butting Aiz square in the face and forcing him back, only to grab him by the neck in return and slam his skull into the same fractured edge.

But it didn’t matter anymore... the red runic circle was closed from both points now which meant, they were trapped and floating endlessly within an interdimemsional space time continuum.

Unfortunately, without a destination or magic manipulating the settings of the space time continuum, the stability of their surroundings wasn’t going to last long...

Thrrooommm~

The rift suddenly shuddered violently.

And then it broke.

Light devoured everything...

Space folded in on itself...

Gravity twisted into impossible knots...

Both their bodies were suddenly torn apart, reassembled, stretched thin across streaks of color.

Victor screamed but couldn’t hear himself. Commander Aiz’s armor peeled away like molten wax as his form dissolved.

Yet, strangely, Victor’s body began to stabilize.

His veins emitted a silver glow that was usually only present whenever he activated his Void Emperor Bloodline but his bloodline wasn’t activated presently.

Where Aiz’s body melted into nothing, Victor’s seemed to resonate with the rift itself.

Aiz reached out, roaring. "How... can you—"

Victor’s glowing eyes opened calmly amidst the chaos. He also didn’t know why this was happening but it didn’t change the fact that they were drifting endless into the unknown.

Everything twisted into pure white.

No ground, no sky, no sense of self... only the endless pull of the unknown.

Victor felt his consciousness drift as time shattered around him.

Soon the rift swallowed the last of the light and both Victor and Commander Aiz were gone.

...

...

~ Minutes Earlier ~

The sky over Sector K-22 rippled with red light, trembling under the heavy groan of unstable mana.

Massive runic glyphs glowed in the air like spinning blades, forming the fading shape of the transference circle that had connected the students to the Drakenar front.

Standing at the center of the chaos was Commander Draegon, the Berserker-class warrior whose fists alone had leveled fortresses in past campaigns. His long purple hair was soaked in sweat as he gazed up at the glowing circle hovering hundreds of meters above.

"Hmph!" With a grunt that echoed like thunder, he leapt.

The ground beneath him shattered like glass as his boots left the earth. A windstorm followed his ascent.

His fist was wrapped in streaks of crimson aura as he smashed into the hovering circle in the sky. The shockwave rippled across the entire district.

BOOOOOOM!

Mana wavered. The runic circle flickered violently. Cracks of light split across the air like a shattering mirror.

He hit it again and again, sending tremors across the barrier walls and causing trees below to sway.

Below him, terrified instructors and weary officers looked on. The air shimmered with heat from the energy discharge.

When Draegon finally landed, half-kneeling, the earth quaked from the impact.

He looked up briefly, noticing that the circle was still standing strong and huffed with an expression of disappointment.

At this moment, something unexpected happened...

One of his subordinate, rushed forward while pointing at the sky.

"Commander, you did it! The formation’s breaking apart!"

But Draegon raised his hand and said with a grim tone. "No... This isn’t my doing."

And he was right.

The circle suddenly began to glow brighter and then, figures began phasing out from the red light above.

At first, only a handful. Then dozens. Then hundreds.

Students with charred, bruised and bloody figures, fell through the sky like glowing embers.

"Catch them!" yelled one of the instructors.

Instantly, the area below erupted into a frenzy of spellcasting.

Mages raised their staffs and shouted, "Wind Cushion!" Thick waves of air coalesced below the falling bodies, slowing their descent.

Summoners rode their flying beasts, catching students mid-air and gliding them safely to the ground.

Other mages conjured bridges of pure light, letting the descending students slide down safely.

Within seconds, the entire area turned into an organized rescue operation.

Healers knelt beside collapsed students with their hands glowing green as restorative runes covered wounds and scorched flesh. Officers barked orders, coordinating the chaos.

All the while, Draegon stood silent, looking up.

Instructor Rukia appeared with her usual stoic face washed in disbelief. She sprinted toward a group of students being tended to.

"What happened in there!?" she demanded. "Where are the others?"

One of the younger boys who was barely seventeen, looked up, trembling. His uniform was singed and blood had crusted on his cheek.

"It was... awful, Instructor. There were too many of them—Drakenars everywhere. We were surrounded."

"Then how did you make it back?"

The boy swallowed hard as his voice broke. "It was because of them. Victor and Elyra. They... they held the line for us!"

Rukia’s brows furrowed. "Held the line?"

"Y-yes! They fought the powerful Drakenars themselves! Victor told us to retreat while they stayed behind. He—he used something... I’ve never seen power like that! It was like he was a Mage, Warrior, Berserker and Assassin all rolled into one."

Another female student, with short green hair and a broken arm, interjected tearfully. "They fought the Drakenar elite! The higher tiered ones with the power to level a city! If it weren’t for them, we’d all be dead!"