Part Sixty-Nine — Two Percent

　Ace and I set out at dawn, heading deeper into stretches of the domain neither of us had properly explored since the day it first became mine — territory that had simply existed, unremarked, while I'd been busy building a life on top of only a fraction of what I actually owned.

Two years of hunting, building, training, and I still only really know a fraction of this place. Probably past time I actually fixed that.

Agreed, Ace said, through the link, ranging ahead with the same alert, patient curiosity he brought to most things worth investigating. Though I confess some anticipation about what we might actually find. Your domain has a habit of containing more than it initially appears to.

Fair point. Aetherfang. Primordial— wait, no, we haven't actually found a primordial spirit yet in this version of events. Just you, so far, being unexpectedly full of surprises.

I choose to take that as a compliment.

　The terrain shifted the further we went — dense forest giving way to rockier ground, then to something stranger still, a stretch of twisted, ancient trees that seemed to grow at angles no ordinary forest would allow, bark dark and gnarled in ways that suggested considerable age even by a domain's already-strange standards.

　We encountered creatures I genuinely didn't recognize — a serpentine thing with too many eyes, coiled dormant around a rock formation that hummed faintly with residual mana; a pack of small, quick predators with chitinous plating unlike anything I'd catalogued in my earlier years of hunting closer to home; something large and slow-moving in the distance that neither of us approached closely enough to properly identify.

This is a lot more than I expected. I thought I had a decent handle on what actually lived here.

<You have explored approximately two percent of the domain's total area.>

　Anti-Subconsciousness reported, unprompted, somewhere around midday.

<Extrapolating from what remains unexplored, the probability of additional, potentially significant discoveries is extremely high.>

Two percent. After two whole years of living here.

This place really is the size of two kingdoms, isn't it. I keep forgetting that's not just a figure of speech.

　We pressed onward through the afternoon, the terrain growing steadily stranger, the air itself carrying a faint, unfamiliar charge that raised the hair on my arms without any clear source I could identify.

Ace? You feeling that?

I am, he confirmed, ears flattening slightly. Something ahead. Not hostile, precisely. Simply... wrong, in a way I don't have better words for.

　Anti-Subconsciousness said, and something in its tone — careful, deliberate — made me actually stop rather than simply consider stopping.

"Why?" I asked, out loud.

<You have explored approximately two percent of this domain,> it repeated. <Proceeding further, without additional preparation, carries a meaningful risk to your life.>

That's not a warning I hear often, coming from you.

　I felt something cold settle in my stomach at the specific gravity in its delivery.

"What is it," I said. "What's actually out there."

<Examine your own barrier closely,> it said, instead of answering directly.

　I reached out, carefully, feeling along the edges of my own Absolute Sanctuary the way I might trace a familiar wall in the dark — and found, unmistakably, something else woven into the barrier's own structure, older, different in texture, humming with a resonance that didn't match my own aura at all.

That's — that's true. There's something else here. Something that was already here before I even built this barrier over it.

"What is that," I asked, quiet.

<Based on my analysis,> Anti-Subconsciousness said, <it is a barrier constructed using dimensional magic — a school of working considerably beyond my current ability to fully parse. Its function appears defensive in nature, though not in the sense of protecting something from external harm. Rather, it appears configured to prevent something from leaving.>

Something's being kept in. Inside my own domain.

Something old enough, or dangerous enough, that someone thought a dimensional barrier was necessary to contain it.

"What are we waiting for," I said, already turning, pulling Ace along with a hand on his shoulder. "I'm not ready to die finding out what that actually is. Let's head back."

Not today. Not unprepared, not with only two percent of this place actually understood. Whatever's sealed in there — it's waited this long. It can wait until I'm actually ready to face it properly.

　Ace didn't argue, falling into step beside me without hesitation, the two of us retreating the way we'd come, the strange, charged air fading gradually behind us until it was simply forest again, ordinary and familiar, the ancient dimensional barrier keeping whatever secret it guarded exactly where it had apparently been keeping it for who knew how many years already.

Ninety-eight percent left to properly explore.

And now, apparently, at least one very good reason to be careful about how I go about it.

Filing this away too. Add it to the list.

That list never seems to get any shorter, does it.