Chapter 46: Dead World
The sensation of crossing the gate was far worse than being dragged into the Origin Realm. Rather than the strange pull of another realm reaching out to pull him in, this felt more like being forcefully shoved through a narrow crack in reality.
Rohan’s vision blurred, his stomach lurched, and for a split second it felt as if every bone in his body had been stretched in different directions.
Then it ended.
"Ugh... that was a horrible feeling."
Elane landed right beside him with a similar expression, on the verge of keeling over to vomit the contents of her guts.
Their boots touched solid ground.
A dry, brittle crunch echoed beneath them, alerting them to remain cautious of their surroundings from that instant onwards.
This was nothing like adventuring into the wilderness in the Origin Realm; death here was as real as it came.
Rohan opened his eyes, expecting to have to adjust to the light, but found the space around him was darker than expected. The whole landscape looked as if caked in moonlight, the sky blanketed in a black sheet with stars and a faint aurora glittering above.
Usually Rohan wasn’t too keen on darkness, but this place had him feeling serene.
He tightened his grip on Elane’s wrist, making sure they made it through together.
’Wow...’
Compared to the Origin Realm and how earth-like it was, this place looked truly alien to him. The world beyond the gate was eerily... dead.
That was the first word that came to mind when Rohan recovered his bearings.
Dark, gloomy, and barren.
The sky above truly seemed to be the gate’s only source of vibrance and beauty, yet everything below it looked as though the light from above had been filtered through dust and decay before reaching the ground, not allowing any life to fester.
The land stretched out in all directions as a vast wasteland of cracked earth, jagged hills and dried-out remnants of what might have been vegetation at some point in history.
’Are these dimensions inside the gates real places in the universe, or simple imitations of them?’
Rohan couldn’t help but wonder. The mechanism behind these gates was so far beyond his thought process that it baffled him just thinking about it.
Here and there stood the blackened skeletons of trees, branches warped and twisting like clawed fingers reaching up for the beautiful sky above.
"This place looks like it has a deep story behind it."
Elane commented from the side, looking just as awed at the scenery they were witnessing.
It had a story to tell for sure. The world this gate imitated, or led them to, was clearly one that harboured life in the past, just like Earth. Now it looked stripped of most of its atmosphere and turned into a lifeless rock like Mars.
The only strange part was that they could still breathe normally, but Rohan just chalked that down to the Origin Realm doing Origin Realm things. This was too far past his level of knowledge to question.
"At least with an environment like this it won’t be too hard for us to locate beasts, and it makes it easier for us to spot other Awakened and avoid them."
Rohan swept his gaze across the horizon.
Low ridges of broken stone rose in the distance, while farther out he could make out cliffs or maybe elevated plateaus cutting jagged black lines across the hue of the sky.
Clusters of boulders large enough to provide cover were dotted about, but on the whole the terrain was very open.
"But not ideal against beasts with ranged attacks..."
Elane had a slight grimace on her face. The openness would be good for her, as she’d always have a clear shot at her enemies, but that went both ways. She was fine if facing off against a solo beast, or a duo. But should they encounter a whole group of Spike Beasts, trying to dodge a barrage of Spikes being launched at them would be damn near impossible at her current speed.
Turning to Rohan, she hoped he’d have a solution for this.
"So?" Elane asked, pulling him out of his own observations. "What was the surprise?"
Rohan smiled.
He gave her a once-over before finally letting go of her wrist. Subconsciously he’d been gripping onto it ever since they arrived.
"Remember that first Elite Soldier Ant we faced and took down?"
His question raised a lot of questions in Elane’s mind, and her expression mirrored her confusion.
"Yeah?"
This time Rohan didn’t respond with words. He activated his Firestone Skin and let Elane bask in the sight of his transformation. His skin transformed from pale white to ash coloured and flakey, hardening in areas all over his body. Elane’s jaw slackened and fell the to floor.
Even after the transformation was over, she was too speechless to maintain constant awareness of her surroundings.
Click!
"Hey, snap out of it already!"
Rohan snapped his fingers in front of her eyes to pull her out of her daze.
"W-what!?"
"I had to keep it a secret until I returned back to Earth and it was safe to absorb it, but that Soldier Ant actually dropped a Gene if you can believe it! Do you realise how hard it was for me to hide my shock and excitement from you the moment I found it? That took more energy from me than the actual fight did..."
At his words, Elane’s brows rose to the highest they could reach. Originally she thought that his transformation was the result of a Normal Tier gene he’d purchased, as it wasn’t a gene she recognised.
But hearing him say it came from the Elite Soldier Ant he killed blew her mind.
"Wait, it’s a defensive gene!!?"
Rohan nodded. His smugness was practically off the charts.
"Oh my god... Doesn’t this mean you have the defensive capability of the Soldier Ant whenever your gene is active!!"
Elane’s swallowed hard. Her lack of certainty on whether they could survive an encounter with a group of Spike Beasts disappeared entirely at this realisation.
The 100% defence his armour provided him would let him tank any number of shots from the Spike Beasts and come out the other side almost completely uninjured!