All tall ones in the party left through a waygate to join Grace in the pigmen settlement. Damian, Sulthar in humanoid form, Mindseer, Sam, Lucian, and Veltrax remained. T'korran needed time to regenerate his lava.

Six people, back-to-back, weapons in hand, slowly walked forward in the dark land. While the small white orb circled them continuously. So six people and one annoying orb, seven in total.

Sulthar in front, holding an obsidian sword. Sam and Lucian kept an eye on their sides, armed with their respective sacrium sword. Veltrax and Mindseer, walking in the middle, kept their focus on above and below. Damian walked at the last, guarding the rear.

Since they had no idea if they were going in the right direction or not, keep moving to figure out was the only option. Every ten meters, they had to line up together and hold hands before passing into the next square with space distortion. Then go back to their positions to stay alert against any incoming monsters that might come out from anywhere.

If they did not cross the distortion wall together, they all just transported to their own parallel square. Where no one could follow.

This was one insidious trap for normal pathfinders.

Suddenly, Damian noticed a slight unrest in the mana near the left wall of the square. A second later, a huge shadow jumped out that had over six hairy, slimy legs and two dozen burning, pure white flaming eyes. A low-legendary rank creature.

Before it was barely a meter out of the distortion wall, a thick milky white disgusting-looking tennisball-sized, sticky-rope thing shot out from the monster's mouth, directly aimed at the Mindseer. She was right in the middle of the group with her back slightly turned to the other side.

It was insanely fast for its size. Even Damian's mana sense only sensed the thing after it was centimeters out of the invisible distortion wall. And its sticky thread was meters away from Mindseer.

However, it could not reach the target.

A giant wormhole activated inches from the party on the left side and swallowed the whole monster in and spat it out near the right distortion wall, just a centimeter apart.

It came and left in less than a full second.

Veltrax, Mindseer, and Sam did not even sense the monster till it was inside the wormhole entrance. Lucian saw the thing with her own eyes as she was guarding the left side. Damian also activated a barrier spell just in time, so Lucian and Sulthar's hurried attacks, swallowed by the left side of the wormhole, did not hit them from the right.

"What the hell was that!?" Veltrax shuddered.

The guy had barely seen anything, just a mana sense picking up something dangerous and a black wall of wormhole.

"A legendary rank at level 81?" Sulthar murmured.

"I believe from here on, those are the most common ones.." Mindseer guessed.

"That's insane speed for a creature that big," Sam added.

"As I said, we are not alone here. Stay alert. I am placing glowing spehers that make this sound everywhere around us." Damian demonstrated activating one spell that conjured a glowing yellow sphere and made a high-pitched ring noise.

"Next time one activates, it's the monster warning."

"That is ridiculously fast senses, are you people sure this guy is a transcendent?" Veltrix asked the party members.

No one answered the red demon. Some awkwardly smiled, though.

They continued walking aimlessly, occasionally meeting the creepy spider monsters. Fortunately, they always came super fast and tried to get one of them using their steel-like web. Their speed was used against them, and they were lost in the different-dimensional squares.

But this was not working.

No one had complained yet, but they had already walked for over seventy kilometers. It was like finding a needle in a haystack. And that was just this one floor; if it was not a one-time thing and continued on for tens of levels, they wouldn't return in months.

Damian knew it from the very beginning and was thinking of solutions constantly, but nothing good had yet come to his mind. Their options were limited. The only connection through the squares was a person and a waygate.

It was too dangerous to send people in different directions on their own. Even Sulthar's dragon form experienced excruciating pain when his size increased from the ten-meter square and passed through multiple distortion walls.

Through their eyes, they could see moving ahead. Hills after hills of ash-like dirt had been crossed by them, some dried-up river-bed, and even a dark stone formation had passed. All of which were real and not an illusion. Damian's Dust to Iron skill worked, which meant the land they were walking on was new and different, and yet there was no key point in sight.

At last, Damian asked everyone to stop moving.

This wasn't working anyway, and he was curious to see what would happen if they stayed in one square for long.

"I can fly at my fastest speed to check things out," Sulthar offered.

They were all seated atop a rock formation, fire burning in the middle. The high places were the only places where the spider monsters had not attacked them yet.

Damian looked at him, and his mind went wandering again. A few moments of zoning out, he grabbed his sacrium sword that had no runic spell on it and started inscribing a runic spell on it. Sulthar knew he was thinking something, so he did not disturb him and waited for his reply.

Damian activated the same spell that he had just inscribed on the sacrium sword with his wave of golden mana and his own focus. A small coin-sized waygate opened, connecting to Sulthar, blue lightning was zapping around it, and the air looked bent unnaturally. Waygate was not a spell that accepted modifications kindly. It was extremely unstable, and Damian preferred not messing around with it.

But the situation called for it, and this could be their only chance to get through this place.

Several thin mana threads were going inside the coin-sized waygate opened near Damian's palm and exiting near Sulthar.

"Hold this," Damian said and handed his sacrium sword to Sulthar.

His thin mana threads extended and connected with the sacrium sword in Sulthar's hand, activating a spell inscribed in that, which displayed golden floating words. It read,

'Is this working?'

It was the same thought projection spell he had added to Asher and Jacob's golem body. However, having no idea of how to speak, Jacob could not use it to communicate and ended up relying on receivers to talk.

Damian pulled out a pure blazur ingot and shaped it into a sword etched with the same spell. Then, looking towards Sulthar, he said,

"I will deactivate the spell now. My sword has the same waygate spell; it's locked onto me, so you just have to pour mana into it to activate the coin-sized portal. Use the thinnest mana threads you can to send them across the waygate and connect to this sword of mine. Careful with the writing spell, though, it reads what you actively say in your mind."

The resting party sat upright, hearing the weird explanation. All eyes focused on the blue blazur sword.

Damian cancelled the waygate spell from his end. Sulthar's eyes widened as well, but he nodded anyway. The ancient dragon had enough mana in him to activate a normal waygate spell seven times. His active mana-regeneration rate in his dragon form was a third of what his one sacrium cube could produce at full speed. He could easily activate it and keep it open, especially this small waygate, that costed 65% of a normal mana cost for a waygate.

"Wouldn't it be better to check after passing the wall, to not waste mana?" Veltrax asked suddenly.

That made sense.

Damian nodded, and Sulthar stood up with his sacrium sword in hand. The dragon could handle himself against the spiders. Damian would use a waygate in the next minute to get him back if it didn't work.

Sulthar prepared himself and walked into the distortion wall. All eyes instantly changed target from his back to the blazur sword.

It took a few long, silent seconds. But soon, there was a small coin-sized waygate near Damian. It opened right above his right palm. Damian could sense Sulthar's thin mana threads coming through and going in all directions before one of them found the blazur sword, and the rest followed.

Mana flowed in the blazur sword's open runic spell, and golden words showed up,

'How would I know if this works, human?'

Damian let his own mana threads pass through the coin-sized waygate and connected with his own sacrium sword, replying with,

'This is how you know!'

The golden floating words changed, 'Oh! Finally! We have something to work with.'

Damian smiled and sent a message, 'Fly as far as you can. Be careful of the monsters and your own manapool. Report back every ten minutes, even if nothing happens.'

A reply came, 'Okay, I will do this again when I have something or in ten minutes, whichever is first.'

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