Chapter 22: Ch 22 Where is the Gate?
Klaus opened his eyes, the strange, disorienting dizziness from the spatial fluctuation slowly fading. He blinked, trying to clear his vision, and took in his surroundings.
The cold feeling of the Gate was gone, replaced by the familiar, slightly humid air of the capital city’s outskirts. He was no longer in the frigid depths of the dungeon,
Instead, he found himself back at the entrance area of the gate, the very spot he had entered from just a few days ago.
But he wasn’t alone. Almost every person who had been inside the now-vanished dungeon seemed to have been ejected, standing bewildered in the open.
However, that wasn’t even the weirdest part of the equation. The most unsettling thing was that he couldn’t see the shimmering, swirling portal of the Ice Golem’s Lair anymore.
It was simply gone. Where the gate had once stood, a vibrant, ethereal vortex leading to another dimension, there was now only a solid rock face, undisturbed and utterly mundane.
It was as if the gate had never existed.
"Oh god, don’t tell me I ate up the whole dungeon,"
Klaus muttered under his breath, a cold knot forming in his stomach. The thought was absurd, yet terrifyingly plausible given the system’s bizarre abilities.
A few notifications had appeared in front of him, but he couldn’t focus on them. The commotion was too huge.
The air was full of panicked shouts and confused exclamations. Hunters, still clad in their battle gear, pointed frantically at the space, their faces etched with disbelief and outright terror.