[Minutes earlier in The Great Plains.]
I watch from the perspective of one of my body doubles as my main body falls into the Titan's domain.
My last thoughts before creating these clones were to notify myself at the halfway mark, and another 2-3 minutes before it looks like the Titan will leave through the rift.
Both body doubles wait patiently, airstepping high in the sky to watch from above as the Titan slowly makes its way across the 2km stretch of rolling grasslands toward the closing rift.
I stand in silence as minutes pass, and I know weeks and months are going by within the creature below us. In just under 13 minutes, it reaches the halfway point between where it started and the rift at the back of the dungeon.
The body double to my right side looks over to me and speaks using telepathy. I hear my own voice ring in my head.
"I'm off, I'll use my self-destruct Unique Buff in another dungeon as to not make too much noise here. Wouldn't want it changing speed with another mana disturbance in the area."
I nod back, and in the blink of an eye, my other double Dungeon Walks away to send the first halfway mark signal to my original body.
I'm still unsure if the signals are getting through, but as a double, I'll do my job to send the second message. I cross my arms and activate stealth, floating high in the sky above the great plains and watching the massive creature silently trudge along below me.
My eyes keep darting back and forth from the monster to the rift, and can't help but realize the rate at which it's closing seems to have slowed down...
This is the opposite of what I assumed would happen, but the fact that I'm in full stealth mode and my other double just Dungeon Walked away may have put less stress on the rift itself to collapse.
Even the approaching Titan's swinging arms are slowing, and its footsteps are becoming less rushed and constant.
This is a good thing because my main body will have more time in the domain, but a bad thing because I may not know if the 2nd message got interrupted for some odd reason. Thinking in the shoes of my main body, I'd most likely leave early just to be on the safe side.
All I can do is wait and watch, then send the signal once it's actually time to leave.
More minutes pass and the rate at which the rift is closing and the Titan approaches it slows even more, but comes to a steady pace once it's about 400-500 meters away. Just about 25 minutes has passed since my real body entered, so this was the perceived time of impact when I left.
Now there seems to still be about 3 to 5 minutes remaining before it will begin to get close.
I take a deep breath and watch for a full extra minute as the Titan slowly walks over the final rolling hill to get within a proper line of sight to the rift and begin to activate my dungeon walker skill to blip away, planning to use the same self-destruct feature as my other double.
However, I stop myself as I see a faint red glow growing inside the black abyss of the Titan.
It's only a matter of seconds before the crimson light begins to shine bright enough that it envelops the entire Titan. The black blob of mass is now blood red, and I recognize the skill being used very easily.
"That's Ember's Plunderer skill, I guess there's no need for me to send the signal after all."
My main body waited quite a long time but still played it safe and left before I sent a message. If my calculations are correct, I spent just over 5 months in there.
A thin and dense blade of flames tears the red Titan in half, and a bright white release of light dissipates the creature into the air like it was never even there.
The bright glow allows an incredible amount of excess MP into the dungeon, but it is quickly dissipated as the silhouette of a massive black-scaled dragon and a hunter in a black cloak and flaming sword remain in the wake of the defeated Titan.
The only thing that throws me off is the eerie sense of there being no mana at all in this hunter. As the debris of the explosion disperses, I definitely see my main body standing next to Ember, but there's no mana signature coming off me at all.
I even activate my All-Seeing Eye, and nothing comes up... It's like I'm an unawakened hunter...
As the body double, I'm unable to use Qi so it's impossible for me to sense what is really going on here, but it seems as though Ember taught me well, I really learned Mana Suppression in 5 months and mastered it...
I whisper under my breath.
"I wonder how much stronger I've really become."
With a grin on my face, I start air-stepping over, but a wave of telepathy hits me from my main body as I see myself pointing toward the rift.
"Enter it, I'd like to see what's inside before it closes."
I don't slow down for a moment and continue air-stepping over my real body and Ember to soar toward the rift.
"Good idea."
As I fall closer, the rate at which the rift is closing speeds back up again. The fall of the last Titan just moments before it made it back has accelerated the closing speed, and by the time I plunge through into the deep black darkness, the rift is less than 2 meters in diameter and seems to have only tens of seconds left until it finally closes.
With no fear at all, I step through the black Abyss into another world; the place where these Titans spawned from.
The world around me becomes dark, so I activate my buffs and light my hands with dim flames as my feet hit a hard smooth floor.
In the same moment as I squint my eyes and try to look around, the rift behind me closes and fully disappears, leaving me here trapped for good.
I take a cautious breath, stepping forward and exploring the range of my light source. My initial surprise is that I'm not floating in an endless void of darkness like I assumed, but the mana in the air here is quite dense...
As my light finally gets bright enough, I can see the walls and ceiling of an incredibly tall and long hallway. It's over 30 meters high and 10 meters wide, made of dark grey stone polished until glossy.
When I activate my enemy detection skill, I don't get a single reading, my entire sensory system is screwed up and seems like a massive blotch of mana is scrambling everything.
Even so, I walk forward full of curiosity, wondering what this hallway leads to and what hidden information I could unlock by venturing further in.
Constantly absorbing mana from the atmosphere to keep my dim light going, I walk down the hall at a steady pace. Soon, I start running, airstepping, and even using extreme speed to push myself further into the endless hall of darkness.
Over half an hour passes, and multiple kilometers have been trekked before the faintest glow of another light source is visible to me in the distance.
My eyes widen at the sight of it, and I deactivate all my flashy skills, turning stealth on, and continuing my march through the darkness with newfound vigor. It takes another 10 minutes to finally make it down the hall far enough to see the light expand into a dim archway. It looks as if it opens up into a much more well-lit setting.
Maybe this was just a hidden entrance to a rift, and there's a colorful new world outside.
As I get closer and closer, the dim white light source grows, but my enemy detection senses still give off the same scrambled reading. Now it may be even stronger than before, but it's hard to tell.
Once I finally make it close enough to step outside, the sight before me is like nothing I ever would have imagined...
I step out into an impossibly large circle-shaped room.
The other side of the room is dark, and it's impossible to see. The only light source is 2 massive glowing white orbs easily 3 kilometers above me, creating a dim glow to light up a dome-shaped room. It would be easy to fit a small mountain inside here.
The walls and ceiling are all made of the same glossy dark grey stone.
When I look left and right, all I see is more archways, leading down more dark hallways just like the one I left. There are hundreds of them, maybe thousands; they go on further than my eyes can see all around.
My eyes widen even more when I see dozens of black Titans slowly walking into various dark walkways, all coming from the pitch-black center of the room.
I try to wrap my mind around what I'm seeing here, but many things aren't making sense. If this place is what I think it is, then every one of these halls has its own rift at the end of it, and these Titans are draining mana from dungeons systematically.
Just as my gaze points back to the center of the room, wondering how they're possibly all walking in from the center, I freeze with awe and terror.
The two white orbs of light kilometers above in the sky turn toward me, and stare straight through me even with my stealth skill fully activated.
I feel an immense, mana-imbued pressure crushing me from above, and the outline of a jet-black humanoid monster too massive to fathom entirely fills my senses. I don't hear, see, or think about anything else as it stares through me. The mountain sized creature has no defining features other than its glowing white eyes and the overwhelming aura that exudes the feeling of endless greed for energy.
My body double is killed instantly by its presence alone.
All the memories of this experience come surging back to my main body in The Great Plains fractions of a second after the rift closes.
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