Chapter 241

└ What the fuck just happened? Wasn’t the event already over?

└ I had THREE Rifts spawn right on top of my grind spot. What the actual shit?

└ Rifts are not even the main problem. There is a straight-up black hole where a Rift Dungeon used to be over here.

└ Yo watch out for the black holes. If you fall into that shit from inside a Rift, you insta-die.

The moment the Dimensional Link Event ended, Rifts erupted across the world in unprecedented numbers, with monsters pouring out nonstop. The most serious issue, however, was not the monsters themselves but the speed of dimensional erosion. Rifts that warped the surrounding environment were bad enough, but worse still were the ones that tore chunks out of Lostania and dragged everything caught inside screaming into the Void. It was happening at a terrifying pace.

└ Möbius has completely fucking lost it again.

└ They could have just wrapped the event up cleanly, but noooo. Of course they had to cook something stupid.

└ I don’t care what this is. If you go anywhere near a hunting zone right now, you are just asking to die.

└ Fuck it. I am playing safe until an announcement drops. I ran myself into the ground during the event anyway. I am taking a few days off.

When surviving the rapidly multiplying Rifts became harder than surviving the Dimensional Link Event itself, players naturally chose to turtle up. As a result, the newly formed Rifts were left completely unattended.

Left alone, they stabilized frighteningly fast and began reshaping Lostania however they pleased. The environment changed, the nature of mana changed, and the monsters that lived there changed. Black holes tore open in the landscape, turning those areas into places where monsters crawled out endlessly.

└ This is way too fucked up. Like, unacceptably fucked up. This has to be a glitch, right?

└ At this rate, Lostania is actually going to collapse, you assholes.

└ Yeah. We are absolutely fucked.

As the Rifts fully synchronized with the world, monsters that were supposed to stay confined inside them began roaming freely outside.

This put not only players but also the actual residents of Lostania in immediate danger. No matter which branch people checked, the Adventurers’ Guild boards were completely plastered with Rift-related requests that were stacked with ridiculous bonus rewards. And yet, almost no one was taking them. No amount of extra payout could offset the sheer level of risk involved.

Tragically, all of this happened while Do-Jin was asleep. While the world outside quietly slid toward catastrophe, he was completely unconscious, unaware that the real nightmare had only just begun.

***

After sleeping for fourteen hours straight, Do-Jin staggered out of his room. The moment he did, Chun Ji-Hyun grabbed him and shoved him into a chair at the dining table, where he promptly got his ass handed to him, though not verbally.

“Drink.”

Do-Jin was being threatened with post-meal green juice. After surviving for more than twenty-eight days on nothing but energy packs, Chun Ji-Hyun had been seriously worried about him, and this was her chosen form of revenge.

He stared down at the green juice in front of him. Bubbles rose to the surface of the thick and aggressively green liquid. At a closer glance, there even seemed to be a hint of purple mixed in. It looked way too healthy compared to what he usually drank.

“I asked the doctor who manages our agency’s celebrities and upgraded it a bit. Apparently this is what they give patients who wreck their health by living off nothing but energy packs. It replenishes all the nutrients they are missing.”

Do-Jin noticed a sharp edge hidden in her cheerful tone. He sighed and looked at Chun Ji-Hyun’s “sweet” smile before picking up the glass and gulping it down.

It was truly awful. The stuff he usually drank at least had fruit mixed in, but this one was pure vegetables blended into a crime against humanity. The celery content in particular was high to the point where it felt less like drinking vegetables and more like chugging industrial chemicals.

After finally finishing the drink, Do-Jin muttered bitterly, “This is probably what poison tasted like back in the old days.”

Chun Ji-Hyun snorted at that. “Things that taste bitter are good for your health. I dare you to keep living on energy packs. I will make you something even more delicious next time.”

“More delicious than this? That would be an actual crime, Chun Ji-Hyun.”

Indeed, that would constitute a crime. This green substance deserved an international arrest warrant.

“Here.” Chun Ji-Hyun held a hard candy out toward the grumbling Do-Jin.

He stared at it for a moment, then quietly popped it into his mouth. It was ridiculous, but the bitterness had been so bad that he needed this. Seeing that, Chun Ji-Hyun let out a small laugh, clearly finding the situation just as absurd.

Do-Jin stretched lazily as he spoke. “Though I guess being young really is nice. I pushed myself so fucking hard, but all I needed was one good day of sleep and I already feel fine.”

Chun Ji-Hyun looked at him like he was insane. “Dude, you sound like some unc in his forties with the way you talk.” ℯℯ𝘭.𝘤ℴ𝘮

“Well, close but I’m not exactly forty,” he answered halfheartedly before picking up his phone and checking Lotranet out of habit. “What the hell?”

The moment he saw what was on the screen, his expression hardened. Do-Jin rapidly skimmed through the boards and checked the videos people had uploaded. There were clips of monsters that had fully synchronized with the world and were roaming outside Rifts. There were places where Rifts had collapsed into pitch-black holes. There were even recordings of two Rifts spawning in the same location and merging in real time.

User-shot footage of live disasters filled the screen, one after the other.

Seeing the seriousness on his face, Chun Ji-Hyun asked in a worried tone, “What’s wrong?”

“Oh, it’s nothing.”

That was a total lie. It was absolutely not nothing and Do-Jin knew it. The Dimensional Link Event had ended, but the Rift phenomenon was getting worse instead of stabilizing.

Did the light of Laves get stronger? No, there was never any notice about that.

This was the kind of scene that usually only showed up after Dimensional Links had been repeated several times. Do-Jin dug through his memories. He dragged up every keyword related to Rifts and dimensions that he could think of.

Let me see... When was it that the Rift phenomenon spiked this violently so suddenly... What the hell happened back then?

Well, at least it wasn’t now. There was no way an event like a Dimensional Link was even scheduled for this period. He had to think far ahead, not the near future.

Sion...? he thought.

Lostania first began facing serious threats from beings of external dimensions during the incident known as the Dimensional Boundary Collapse, an event directly caused by Sion Grace, and that was when everything started going downhill.

No. There’s no fucking way.

When Do-Jin started rushing toward the capsule, Chun Ji-Hyun hurried after him, startled. “Do-Jin, are you seriously going back in already?”

He turned toward her and spoke quickly, “I’m sorry. There’s something I have to check right now.”

She had been about to stop him, but one look at his expression made her step back.

“Sorry.”

With another rushed apology, Do-Jin logged into LOST. He went straight to Elthomagia’s main tower, where Sion Grace was supposed to be.

This feels different.

The moment Do-Jin saw the Mage Tower, he knew something was off. More than half of the mystic aura that normally wrapped the towering structure had evaporated. On top of that, Elthomagia was completely sealed off from the outside world. That meant things were not just bad but were beyond catastrophic.

Even so, the sealed tower still didn’t block Do-Jin, who carried the token of Elthomagia that Sion herself had given him. The mage stationed in the lobby saw Do-Jin and shot to his feet in shock.

“The tower is sealed. How did you even get in?”

Mages who lived their entire lives inside the tower were painfully unprepared for situations like this. Do-Jin closed the distance in an instant and pressed his token directly against the terminal. At once, Do-Jin’s registered information flared into view in a brilliant display, pulled straight from Elthomagia’s records.

“Uh, what?”

The lobby guard, who had been about to resist half-heartedly, began to panic when he saw what was floating in midair. Do-Jin’s face appeared, and right beside it was the name Sion Grace. Then came the word “disciple,” which hit like a truck.

“I need to use the portal,” Do-Jin demanded.

“W-wait, hold on. I have to escort you. Where are you going?”

“To the top floor.”

The mage felt like his brain was actively melting. “Th-that Magic Circle cannot take you there!”

What Do-Jin did next wasn’t a reply. Holding Sion Grace’s token, he conveyed his will directly to the tower itself. He quickly vanished from the lobby.

The countless defensive measures protecting Elthomagia didn’t so much as twitch against the tower master’s disciple. Moments later, Do-Jin arrived in Sion’s domain. There were already people inside. All seven of Elthomagia’s Purple Rank elders were gathered in the space.

“Huh—?”

“Who the hell are you?”

“No, how did you even get in here?”

They flinched at the sudden appearance of an intruder and instinctively tried to cast spells, but the Archmage’s domain didn’t permit magic from anyone other than the Archmage herself. Three of the elders forgot that in the heat of the moment and cried out in pain as their Magic Circuits burned, as if they had been set ablaze from within.

“Hold on!” Albert Grace cut through the chaos, since he already knew who Do-Jin was. “He is Lady Sion’s disciple.”

Albert’s declaration landed like a bomb. Six of the elders froze on the spot. Only one of them managed to get a word out.

“What did you just say?”

The rest forgot how to speak entirely, their expressions doing all the talking instead.

“I apologize for barging in like this. I had something I needed to confirm, and I could not afford to wait.” Do-Jin revealed his token to the stunned group.

There was no one here who would fail to recognize it. The six elders’ expressions changed from agitation to bewilderment. They all had the same question on their faces: Why the hell does he have that?

“So you kept it secret,” Do-Jin said.

“Of course,” Albert replied. “If Lady Sion herself chose not to reveal it, I had no right to run my mouth first.”

Do-Jin looked past Albert. The space where Sion should have been standing was completely empty. The window she had created to look beyond the boundary was gone as well.

“I came here to confirm something, but it looks like the situation is even worse than I expected.”

Of course, Do-Jin wasn’t exaggerating. This was a disaster on the verge of exploding.

Albert’s expression hardened at his words. “So you knew that Lady Sion has disappeared. Do you happen to know where she went?”

The main tower of Elthomagia had always been protected by Sion’s mystic presence. Now, that presence was gone. That was why the Seven Masters of Elthomagia had entered Sion’s personal domain without permission. No, more precisely, it was why they had been able to enter at all. If Sion had been here, whole and unharmed, none of them could have set foot in this place without her consent. That much was obvious.

“If she left any kind of warning—”

“I wasn’t told anything in advance,” Do-Jin interrupted. “But I do have a pretty solid guess.”

Do-Jin’s gaze still lingered on the empty space behind Albert. At that, Albert shut his eyes tightly. Every single one of them had suspected it. It was just that they had desperately hoped they were wrong.

“So in the end...” Albert murmured.

Had Lady Sion gone beyond the world after all?

He already knew the answer. Elthomagia was too light to hold her. So were they. The tower, the Masters, everything they represented together still did not weigh enough to anchor her in place. That was why the existence of that boy had felt so reassuring.

Relief had outweighed jealousy, because for a moment, there had been hope. Maybe Do-Jin could become her new anchor. But that hope had turned out to be worthless.

So in the end, everything left behind in this world was lighter to her than the one thing drifting outside it.

When Do-Jin brushed past Albert, a few of the others moved on instinct to block him, but Albert stopped them with a sharp gesture.

Standing where Sion had once stood, he thought to himself, This is a far bigger gap than it should have been.

The divergence from his previous life was enormous. In his past life, Sion had never left this place. She had used him and this tower as anchors, trying to pull everything back toward this side. But now, Sion Grace had vanished without leaving behind so much as a trace. So did that mean the future simply wouldn’t happen?

It felt completely unfair. If this was true, Lostania wouldn’t already be choking on Rifts. There was no doubt the thing Sion would discover beyond the boundary, the thing she would latch onto and drag back with overwhelming force, was coming.

I need to find Sion, no... my master. Fast.

The question was how to locate someone who had gone beyond the world itself. And yet Do-Jin knew. He already had the answer in his hands.