Chapter 1546: Just Tearing My Way Through The Rooms

I looked at the tear in space in front of me like it was a curious puzzle piece.

Then I remembered that my current power level was temporary so I shouldn’t waste time and ripped that space apart with all my strength, especially since the tear was trying to repair itself at the moment.

With the space torn open, I found myself looking at what was another corridor except it was a place I had never seen before.

So without hesitation, I gathered all of my Shadow Guards and jumped through the tear before it could repair itself.

This time, it seemed like it had placed me in an office building and I was standing in an empty corridor with one side being the glass windows looking out to a modernesque street from my old World.

I could tell immediately that this was not my old World because the signs on the buildings outside were filled with weird gibberish symbols and the people displayed on them were faceless humanoids.

Well... I was speedrunning here so... I called out as many of my Shadow Guards as I could again and they began the process of breaking down the walls and floor of the building.

As they were doing that however, a scream suddenly came from somewhere inside the building.

I turned to one of my Shadow Guards, tilting my head at her quizzically.

"We have found more survivors, Master. They seem to have set up a safezone in one of the offices which we have just broken into through the wall."

I blinked at her, "A safezone?"

"That is correct, Master. They have sleeping bags, food, water and even weapons that are being stored there. They seem to be getting ready to fight us."

"Eh? Wait... Did they even try to talk?"

"They believe we are also entities, Master. Should we attempt to speak to them?"

I thought about it for a moment before shrugging, "Yeah, sure. I’ll make my way there too. See if you can get them to calm down a little and assure them that we’re on the same side."

"I will attempt to do so, Master."

I then started to move towards where those survivors were supposed to be, guided by my Shadow Guards as they paused their destruction of this floor in favour of dealing with the new group of survivors.

Even before I got there, I could already hear shouting and screaming coming from down the corridor and I had to step over broken walls and cubicles which my Shadow Guards had demolished in the short time I got them to start thrashing the place.

At the far end of the hall was a room that had its wall busted in and the shouting was clearly coming from inside that room.

There were a few of my Shadow Guards standing by outside the hole but one of them was already inside, presumably the one that had made the hole to begin with and was now trying to talk to the survivors within.

"Back off! Back off, you hear me?! This is a safe zone!" A male voice came from within.

Huh... Would that even work? I mean... Assuming that there was an entity here, could you really just get it to back off after claiming that place was a safe zone?

I went over to the hole and peeked inside, seeing a bunch of people huddled together all dressed in modern clothes staring fearfully at my Shadow Guard. The one standing at the front waving what looked like a metal pipe that he had scavenged from somewhere.

I climbed through the hole and gave him a wave, "Hello there."

He immediately shifted to pointing his pipe at me, his brows furrowing while waving the improvised weapon in between us.

"You! Back off! What are you?!"

I cleared my throat, "Ahem... I’m also a survi--"

He tossed the pipe at me and it would have smacked me in the face if my Shadow Guard hadn’t stepped in to snatch it out of the air before it could reach me.

I paused for a moment before clearing my throat again, "Ahem... As I was saying... I am a survi--"

"It can talk... Fuck! Everyone cover your ears! Don’t listen to it!"

What...

Come on... Really?

Oh wait... How convenient... It seems like that triggered my crown’s effects and I didn’t even need to fight my own Shadow Guard to activate it.

I tried to call out to them again but all of them were covering their ears and the leader went ahead to try and throw another metal pipe at me, clearly having no interest to listen to what I have to say.

Tsk... Fine then. Have it your way.

I retreated from their little ’safe zone’ and climbed back out of the hole with my Shadow Guards following me.

They did the same thing where they healed me once again and I felt the effects of the crown shift and my stats increased exponentially once again.

I had initially thought about going through this floor ’legitimately’ by finding the exit but... I guess I might as well just do another tear in reality again.

This time, the tear seemed to open up into an open field with rolling hills and... What looked like suburban houses scattered on top of the hills.

There was even a winding road passing in between the hills and this particular floor looked pretty endless.

I jumped through the tear after storing all of my Shadow Guards back in my shadow again, leaving those guys behind to deal with the half destroyed office.

I looked around the place as the tear behind me restored itself and wondered if there were survivors on this floor as well.

Either way, I gave the same order to my Shadow Guards and they started their work by tearing into those houses and flattening them.

There was quite a lot of space in between each house so I called out even more of my Shadow Guards since there was enough space for them anyway.

I watched as each of the houses got flattened one by one. But when the tenth house got destroyed, the entire area suddenly got dark, like daytime had turned into night time.

I looked around, expecting there to be changes to the floor and I was not disappointed.

From the furthest corner of the level, a dark, humanoid shaped entity with long arms and a weirdly disproportionate body was rushing straight towards me.

I’m assuming that was supposed to be the entity of this floor or something... And it’s coming over to attack me right now...

Well... It didn’t really get very far considering I had a literal army of Shadow Guards right now and it was quite literally stopped by one of my Shadow Guards.

She had moved in the way of where it was trying to go and simply stuck out her foot and kicked at its abdomen the moment it got close.

The shadowy figure got launched all the way back and smashed into one of the houses, knocking it down as well.

There was an inhuman shriek coming from the creature as it quickly leapt back up on its feet again before scrambling back to rush in my direction again.

It didn’t even care that it was kicked all the way there, huh?

This time, I got my Shadow Guards to step aside and allow it to get closer to me, though I had no plans to let it attack me without a fight so I lowered myself into a combat stance the moment it got past my Shadow Guards.

It was still shrieking and making a lot of noise as it ran towards me so I went ahead to give it a punch after my Shadow Guards healed me to be ’involved’ in this fight again.

My fist connected with the entity’s chest and... There was a moment of silence before the air in front of me was pushed out so fast that the entity got sucked into the vacuum in front of my fist first before it basically just disintegrated, leaving no trace of its existence behind.

And as if chased away by my punch, the darkness that covered this floor also miraculously receded in the direction of my punch, like I had just shoved the darkness back to whence it came without needing for me to actually figure out what was the ’trick’ of this floor.

But things didn’t end there as a face suddenly appeared above all of us, its eyes shifting around as though looking for something before settling on me.

The figure’s eyes widened and a beam of light shone down on me specifically, like someone was shining a spotlight just to illuminate me.

I half expected the light to burn me but nothing of that sort happened.

Then, a very deep rumbling noise came from the eye in the sky itself.

"It’s you... You’re finally here..."

Eh?