Chapter 348 – Found One
“What do you think it is?” Elicia asked.
Now she could see the difference. Realm Breaches normally showed up as little circles, which appeared to just be dots until you zoomed in on the map. Even the cluster had eight of the little circles grouped together. What Damion had found was a dot, that when zoomed in on was a circle, with another dot inside.
“No idea. It could be there was something right by the Breach when the scan was taken. Or it might be a glitch in the scan. I’ll have to go out there to check it out.”
“Where was this scan taken?”
“The location is about 40 kilometers inside the Red Zone.”
“That is pretty deep. I don’t think you should go that deep in. You could run into A Rank Demonic Beasts that deep.”
Damion was taken by surprise when Elicia told him she did not want him to go. He had gone that far into a Red Zone before and been fine. He guessed she was just worried about him, but there was no way he could not go and check out the weird dot.
“I can fly pretty fast, and I can teleport myself to safety if I encounter anything strong.”
“I worry everyday you are out there. It is one thing when you are just mapping the Yellow Zone border. That isn’t too dangerous, there is always an outpost nearby. But that deep in…”
“I’ll be extra careful, I promise,” Damion said as he kissed her forehead and shut off his tablet.
Elicia seemed partially satisfied with his response. At least she did not raise any further objections and in the morning after breakfast, she went back to Levande without bringing up the topic again.
Once she was off, Damion used Portal to get himself and Phil as close to the location as possible. From there they would have to fly, but as he had told Elicia, he could fly pretty fast.
As he and Phil flew overhead, he spotted a few Ferocious Beasts wandering about, but he was not interested in them. His goal was the strange dot. Unless some beast forced him, Damion had no intention of pausing. The sooner he got there, the sooner he would be able to figure what the thing was and leave.
When Damion arrived at the location he was quite surprised by what he saw. From a distance, it looked to be just like any other Realm Breach he had seen before. There were no strange rock outcroppings or even another Breach somehow inside of it. Once Damion was close enough, True Sight filled him in on the specifics of the Realm Breach. Unstable Growth Breach.
This was something he had not expected. He had held out hope that the strange dot would be a labyrinth, but what was an Unstable Growth Breach. Did that mean the Labyrinth was unstable? Would it collapse like an Unstable Breach and spew its contents out into the world.
‘System, do you have any knowledge on what an Unstable Growth Breach is?’
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{Affirmative. An Unstable Growth Breach is a Growth Breach that has not been fully anchored to your world. Because it is not anchored properly it will collapse, resulting in a large beast wave.}
‘Is there a way for me to collapse it, so it does not cause a beast wave?’
{Affirmative. However, procedure is not recommended.}
‘Elaborate.’ Damion told the System. If there was a way to stop a catastrophe he needed to at least know what it was. Even if he could not accomplish it, he might be able to find others who could.
{To collapse an Unstable Growth Breach, one must locate the true core of the Breach, which could be located on any floor of the Breach.}
‘That explains why it is not recommended,’ Damion thought as he realized it could very well be impossible to collapse the Unstable Growth Breach. There was no telling how many floors the Breach had, no telling how long it would take to find the core.
‘System, is there a way to instead stabilize the Unstable Growth Breach?’
{Affirmative. Unstable Growth Breach can be stabilized by clearing a floor of the labyrinth and anchoring to this world.}
‘Well, that sounds easy,’ Damion told himself. Labyrinth floors started at F Rank and would grow stronger the deeper you went in. That meant, all he needed to do was clear an F Rank floor and he should be able to stabilize the Breach.
‘System, is there anything special I have to do, or do I just have to go in and defeat the floor guardian and destroy the core to open the way to the next floor?’
Ordinarily, new floors would be revealed after a guardian was killed and the core of the floor was destroyed. Once the next floor was revealed, the entrance would remain for anyone that came later. While the guardian and other Demonic Beast’s killed on the floor would eventually be repopulated by the labyrinth.
{Due to the unstable nature of the Breach, when host enters host could be deposited on any floor of the Breach. However, as long as that floor is cleared, the Breach will be stabilized, and the Breach will begin to behave as a standard Growth Breach.}
‘If I go in and the floor is too difficult for me, can I leave and renter to try and get a different floor?’ Damion asked the System.
He was hopeful this might be the case. After all, labyrinths supposedly had no limit to the strength of their floors. Which meant he could get an S Rank floor, or even an SS rank floor if he was unlucky.
{Insufficient data.}
‘Really?’ Damion wanted to curse the Magic System for being useless, but could he really fault it for not knowing the answer to when no one in all of Nerotath had ever recorded an Unstable Growth Breach before?
‘Will I at least be able to leave if I enter? Like any other Breach?’
{Affirmative.}
That was something at least. As long as he could retreat, if he could not clear the floor he ended up on, there was no reason he could not call Mage Teft for help. He did not know what she was off doing, but he was sure she would show up for the chance to get their hands on a labyrinth.
“Alright Phil. Let’s get this party started,” Damion said to his companion as he walked into the portal of the Realm Breach.
The Blizzard King followed right behind him and a moment later the pair found themselves in a dense forest. The entrance of the Breach was nestled between a group of trees, and there was a large amount of thick underbrush around the area. It looked like a forest untouched by any creature. There were no paths, no signs of Demonic Beasts, just pure nature.
Damion took out his tablet and pulled up the map his auto-mapper was creating as he stood there. For 50 kilometers around him he could see the terrain. The forest went on for quite a distance in every direction. Towards the northern end, at least north so far as Damion could determine from the map, was a mountain range jetting up from the forest. To the south the forest ran into a large lake, or possibly an ocean, he could not tell since the auto-mapper did not have the range to reach the other side.
East and west, the forest ran as far as the auto-mapper could detect. This told Damion the floor of the labyrinth he was in was enormous. Far larger any labyrinth floor he had been in before. Which meant it was likely a high Rank floor since the higher Rank the floor was, the larger they tended to be.