Chapter 130 – Dungeon – XXXVIII
I’ve been pondering... What is a rift, really?
Not just a rupture or tear. Not a simple dimensional doorway from old stories. Rifts are... vectors. Broken lines in the continuity of space. A rift connects two points not by distance, but by intention.
When the ring cast me here, when the clock swallowed me for the first time, it wasn’t time that changed—it was direction. Logic. The vector of my being was distorted. The ring folds the world not to test me... but to teach me to fold the world.
So what if the same mechanism that threw me into these twisted realities is the same one that lets me leave them?
The ground gave way beneath me and I was hurled downhill, rolling among corroded corpses and electric thorns whipping the air like demonic serpents. A worm the size of a horse spat a green lightning bolt that blasted half the slope away, sending me crashing into a pile of bones.
I’m at my limit.
Eleven days to climb four damned steps. My body is broken, my mind in fragments. But this thought... this is the key.
"The staircase leads nowhere," I growled, spitting blood. "The test isn’t climbing. It’s understanding."
I staggered to my feet.
Another worm lunged.
Thirty feet of pulsating flesh covered in chitinous plates that crackled like dry thunder. Its maw bloomed open; multiple sharp tongues writhed like snakes.