Vivi actually had to drink a mana potion.

Sure, she hadn’t been as efficient with her killing methods as possible, particularly at the start of this whole debacle. Even so, expending enough of her magical stamina that she had to draw a potion out and quaff it surprised her. Considering the sheer number of corpses she’d created, maybe it shouldn’t have. Even a bucket could empty a lake eventually.

Thanks to her experiments, her spells had grown remarkably more effective at penetrating and interacting with the void-material, though she was running up against a wall, progress slowing drastically. She’d squeezed out the easy revelations. Further adaptations would require more effort, and for less return. Or some revolutionary breakthrough. Progress often came quickest at the start, and this was no exception.

The extra-dimensional incursion lasted all of fifteen minutes. But extremely powerful skill- and magic-resistant monsters by the thousands could wreak a lot of havoc in a quarter of an hour. The Adventurer’s District nearest the breach had been reduced to rubble. Only the guildhall doors and entryways remained standing, presumably preventing the spatially-expanded interiors from collapsing. Guildhalls were apparently durable…though some of them had been flattened nevertheless. She hoped no one had been inside when that happened—she wasn’t even sure what that would do, how those System-governed spaces worked.

The rest of the Adventurer’s District wasn’t uniformly rubble, though nearly the entire division had suffered damage ranging from mild to extreme. Corpses littered the streets, the vast majority void-creatures, but also plenty of adventurers. Vivi had far from been able to save everyone. She tried to take solace in the fact that if she hadn’t been there, the entire city would’ve died, and maybe the rest of the continent, but it simply wasn’t a comforting thought. Couldn’t she have done more, somehow?

As the flow of monsters slowed to a trickle, Vivi [Blinked] around, cleaning up stragglers—locating them using [Detect Presence], which worked far more reliably now—casting healing spells, and, when finally done, teleporting back to ground zero. The monsters coming out were so scattered and weak that she threw up a newly-modified barrier around the hole, sealing it off from the rest of the world. Including the rest of the Titled and other heroes. A vision-blocking spell followed, and an ongoing [Animus of Gaia] killed whatever came out of the pit without her having to pay attention.

She teleported to the platform she’d left everyone, grabbed them, and brought them down near the pit.

“It’s nearly scabbed over,” Vivi told Rafael bluntly. “Nothing will be able to get in or out, soon.”

“In?” Rafael said mildly, his eyes calm and appraising. By how easily he addressed that slip-up, Vivi could tell he already knew what she had planned. “Who, I wonder, would try to jump into that eldritch membrane?”

The subtext-laden exchange was cut off by a figure suddenly rushing past them, sprinting as fast as her legs could carry her. Vivi’s heart squeezed.

“[Telekinesis].”

She magically dragged the suicidal catgirl away from the mouth leading into hell. Vivi was both immensely unsurprised at what Saffra had just tried to do, and greatly saddened by it.

“Let me go!” Saffra cried out, thrashing wildly against Vivi’s spell. “She’s in there! She’s in there!”

Vivi floated her closer. “Saffra.

Calm down.”

“Someone needs to help her!”

“Someone will,” Vivi emphasized.

That startled the girl out of her struggling. A sigh—more resigned than disapproving—came from Vanguard’s steward, and she tried not to grimace. She knew Rafael would disapprove. Would tell her it might get even her killed. And that there might be no point; Isabella Caldimore had probably died in the ritual.

Especially since Vivi had already emptied her mana pool once, and was now relying on potions to stay topped off, it was a huge risk, and for a very small chance of actually rescuing the probably-dead girl.

Saffra stared wide-eyed at Vivi. The shock on her face might have offended her in another scenario, but it was clear that Saffra simply never expected help. Vivi would eventually disabuse her of that notion. She did have people to rely on. She would drill that into the girl.

Setting Saffra down, Vivi told her, “Of course I’m not leaving Isabella to her fate. I’ll go in and bring her back.”

Rather than seeming assured, Saffra just seemed more panicked. “But that’s dangerous.”

Says the teenager who just tried to do the same, she almost pointed out. She barely stopped herself from bonking the girl with her staff.

Instead, she stepped forward and did something she had wanted to for a while. She dropped a hand on top of the girl’s head, between two cat ears, and ruffled her hair.

“Not to me,” she said simply. “It’ll be easy. I promise.”

Saffra stayed frozen for a second, then tears welled in her eyes. She surged forward and hugged Vivi, which maybe shouldn’t have caught her by surprise, but for some reason did. Vivi was about as touchy as Saffra herself, she suspected, so she stiffened before, later than she should have, tentatively returning the hug with her free arm.

“Take me with,” Saffra’s voice came, muffled by Vivi’s robes.

“You know that’s not going to happen.”

“Then…don’t die.”

“I won’t.”

As much as she wished she could reassure the girl more, they were pressed for time. Her gaze drifted to Rafael, who was watching the exchange with calm eyes.

“I need to find out what we’re in for, regardless,” she tried, picking the one somewhat rational reason for throwing herself into a dimensional abyss.

Rafael snorted. “Yes, my lady, I suppose you do. I know the futility of convincing you otherwise; I’m not sure I could in good conscience. I will manage your affairs while you are gone.” Dryly, he added, “There will be much to manage.”

“Thank you.” She turned to Winston, Saffra still clinging to her. “Please watch over her. I’ll be back as quickly as I can.”

“I shall, Mistress Vivisari.”

“I still want to meet your family, and everything,” she apologized. “I’ve just been very busy.”

The butler glanced at the gaping wound in reality. His eyebrow quirked, and he smoothed it out. “The delay is reasonable. I am aware of who I serve.”

Gently, Vivi peeled Saffra off of her. “It’s sealing. I might be able to get in and out in time, but…I don’t think that’s likely.” She had absolutely no idea what she was in for, and didn’t want to give anyone false hope for this being an overly quick endeavor. She fully expected at least a minor detour, delving past the dimensional horizon. “I have to go now.”

Saffra squeezed her one more time, then stepped back. To say she looked distraught would be a massive understatement. An image Vivi had seen too often, these past twenty-four hours.

Vivi’s resolve doubled. She wasn’t particularly wanting to get herself killed to begin with, but considering what it would do to Saffra if she never showed up with Isabella in tow—well, failure wasn’t an option.

She crouched down next to Duke Caldimore, who had watched the exchange with various expressions—anger, confusion, disdain, among others—hidden poorly beneath an attempted neutral face. Vivi had listened in on his and Rafael’s conversation.

“You think what you know will save you,” Vivi said. “It won’t. I’ll decipher the secrets of that material myself. And I will do so better than you have. At which point you will have no leverage…as if that leverage would have saved you from me, regardless. You will get the justice you deserve, Damon Caldimore.”

She stood and sealed his mouth, not wanting to hear his reply. Walking up to the edge of the pit and gazing in, she saw that the aperture at the bottom did, indeed, seem much smaller to her magical senses than before—and looking through was as nauseating as always. Monsters were only tricking out, now, and all were voidlings, non-Titled threats. The various adventurers of Meridian would handle them easily once she dropped the shield surrounding the pit, containing the flow and hiding her party.

“I’ll be back soon,” she promised everyone.

She teleported the four individuals to her estate and returned a moment later, floating over the dimensional hole.

In a way, she was almost relieved she needed to handle this first. When she got back to Meridian, there were going to be a lot of consequences to sort through. The total destruction of the Wardens, the largest and most influential human guild. The magic she’d displayed, throwing out tier-twenty spells in rapid succession, seen by half the city’s adventurers. And most of all, proof that an Eighth Cataclysm—one more fearsome than all the others combined, perhaps—was always one thin dimensional boundary away. Her brief stint getting to be the Sorceress without truly picking up her mantle had clearly come to an end.

That was going to be complicated. This was straightforward. A girl needed saving—her apprentice’s friend—and so, she would do just that.

What else was this power good for, if she couldn’t manage something so simple?

She took a breath.

Then flew in.