Every step I take closer to the light blue tear in space before me sends more high-pressure waves of gravity against my concealment barrier.
It makes me focus more and more of my physical and mental capacity on keeping the limiter stable, drowning everything out in the room.
The chatter of applicants behind me goes completely mute, even the two A-class guards by my sides fade out of my senses, and all I focus on is walking forward.
My foot hits the blue space, and it falls through as if there is nothing there.
My next step follows, and my full body falls through the rift.
Instead of the hard mana-shielded floor, my foot hits rock covered in moss and dirt.
My head comes through, and I take a deep breath of the cool, crisp air, feeling a large gust of wind hit my face.
As I walk further away from the rift, the waves of gravity start to cease, and reality around me hits my senses again.
A loud whistling sound hits my ears, and I turn my head to find myself on a cliff's edge.
Down below me, large white clouds drift by.
Looking off into the distance, even with all of my advanced perception upgrades, looking out into the horizon almost a full 70 km, there is nothing but open air and rolling clouds with a light blue sky backdrop.
To both my left and right, I see the cliff's edge go on further than I can see as well.
I'm on a triangular peninsula of land in the sky, with the bright blue rift at the very tip of it, and the only direction I can travel is further inland.
From the point where I stand, the land stretches outward for a few hundred meters before I see the dirt and moss grow much greener and lush trees, pools of crystal clear water, rock formations, and all kinds of shrubbery grow. Looking even further in the distance, even bright colored fruits grow on some of the trees.
Other than the whistling wind below me, everything is silent.
Some high-sailing clouds in the distance move over the edges of the land, but they clear away and dip back down beneath the cliff as it looks like the morning sun is revealing more and more land the more I internalize everything.
I take more steps forward and begin analyzing the air and my surroundings with my buffs and skills now.
The air is far less dense with mana than any environment I've ever been in. It feels like there's even less than being out in the isolated desert of the Dark Continent.
There are still small particles to absorb here and there, but it isn't enough to sustain me for any long-term battles like dungeons or the simulation rooms I practiced in earlier.
I'll have to use mana crystals and MP potions to re-up my MP bar occasionally.
My aura of enemy detection and all-seeing eye spreads out through the wilderness, making scans of anything moving or made of mana for many kilometers through the trees and clouds, and what I get back as readings is unclear.
There are small pockets of mana that my enemy detection picks up as living organisms, but there is no level nor visuals to support it. I only get rough location readings and relative strength levels based on how much mana control they're putting out.
I'm not too concerned, as the readings I detect have the mana control strength of a barely ranked-up hunter; but in using so many detection perks at once another realization hits me.
My Rising Emperor's Domain is deactivated.
I can't sense any of my links of loyalty at all, nor can I see their geo-locations.
I pull up the menu in a hurry, but this doesn't help my confusion at all either, as everything is still there, showing my teammates and citizens of the Crimson Cities' names, vitals, and level, but they're all greyed out and frozen in the positions they were when I was back in the exam site.
While looking down, scrolling through all of the inactive options, one of the masses of mana in the nearby forest shifts from its normal path and begins running my way.
It isn't fast, but it breaks me from my concentration on my status, and I pull my daggers from my item storage to get ready for a fight. The readings are not strong, but whatever this may be I'm not going to underestimate it.
My daggers are charged up, and static electricity courses through my body while my perception is focused on the single point of mass coming my way.
The bushes move, then a few tree branches above shake, and a jet-black jaguar comes running out covered in a white aura of wind magic.
Its sharp eyes stare me down as it doesn't hesitate to send half a dozen wind blades my way.
They're slow and weak, at least compared to the fights I was in during the tournament; however, I still use the speed and power I used to face Trax in the final round just in case there's energy in this monster I can't sense.
I dodge every one of its wind blades and send two lightning crescents back its way at speeds impossible to dodge.
The yellow crescents slice it to pieces in an instant, and its remains fall to the rocky floor in front of the forest.
A blue text box pops up above it.
[Use Absorption]
MCP: 52,596
[YES][NO]
It's not much at all, but it's more than the 0 I was expecting. The minimum 0.1% absorption rate of my skill activated.
Despite there being no level rating above this monster, it still has mana control to spare. This means it isn't a body double or mere hologram of manifested mana like the monsters in the simulations prior to this one.
My gaze tightens as I walk closer to the creature, and the waves of gravity, just like I felt near the barrier, begin to ripple off its corpse.
They're nowhere near as strong as the waves from the rift; I'm even able to touch the jaguar with my boot once I'm close enough, and it doesn't take much concentration to keep my limiter active.
I accept the MCP, and the status screen disappears. I'm even able to plunder the mana left in its body to bring my MP bar back up to full.
After about a minute, the remains start to dissolve away into the air. The waves of gravity don't stop until it's fully disappeared.
For a fraction of a second, it looks like a small clear crystal has dropped to the ground. However, it doesn't give off any readings, and dissolves into the air as well before I can get a closer look.
I was fully expecting one of those red gems to drop, but nothing is left behind. I'm left standing alone as the wind whistles, staring into the trees.
At the same time, I feel a new presence on my enemy detection radar with a level spawn in behind me and see Trax wander out with the same look of wonder I did just a few minutes earlier.
After he begins to piece together where he is, he immediately senses me, but I yell out first.
"We can either get this over with right now, or we can go our separate ways and battle it out once we have some artifacts to actually fight over..."
I point my daggers at him once he pulls out his sword and steps closer, glaring at me but not replying.
"What's it going to be? Your choice."
He keeps walking closer, eyeing me up and down, so I let a surge of lightning out to show that my ranked up buff is activated and I mean what I said.
Then, the lightning mage looks back toward the rift, then at me, and lets out a grunt through his gritted teeth while putting his sword down by his side.
"You're right... It would be a waste to fight now... I'll find you once you've farmed artifacts for me."
Then, he runs off into the woods with his feet covered in static.
I smirk and power down my lighting but continue to watch him on my enemy detection skill as he ventures off into the forest alone.
Every few minutes, more applicants come out, and I wait by the treeline.
Most of the Apex Region hunters confront me just like Trax did, but instead of instigating a fight and taking them out, I point them off in the direction their leader ran off to.
The other Vice and Veridian applicants that made it into the top 20 don't bother talking to me, they just run off into the forest and avoid eye contact.
Once Ember makes his way through the rift, he slowly walks over to me while his eyes wander the woods and look high up into the sky above us.
As soon as his reading pops up in my enemy detection skill, his vitals and geo-location reappear and update in my Rising Emperor's domain too.
His first words to me through our link once he gets near are, "This isn't what I was expecting... This is quite an old rift, it seems the Association has been forcefully keeping it open for a while. We're not in the Divine Realm, but we're not too far away from it either."
His gaze keeps looking up into the blue sky above us, but there's nothing up there to see.
I reply.
"Then where are we...? Is this another world? Like the Demonic Realm, or wherever that Void Creeper's Rift brought us to? My ranked-up buff isn't registering anyone's presence but yours."
Ember nods.
"Something like that. It makes sense that you wouldn't be able to contact anything outside this realm... I doubt teleportation crystals will work here either."
His eyes lock onto something far away in the trees.
"Don't worry, what Rodrigo said is true... no matter what happens in here, we'll be right back where we left once this realm rejects us. If we make it far enough in, we won't have to worry about our concealment barriers decaying either."
"Okay, but that still doesn't answer any of my questions. What is this place? Where are we really...?"
Ember grins, but his mind still looks preoccupied and his eyes are glossed over as he scans the horizon.
"To be honest, I'm not sure. It's a construct made by a Divine Beast. Kind of like a simulation, but really it's the half-finished creation of an entire Realm. I've never seen an artificial one this massive. I'm in the dark about the rules of this place, so you can ask as many questions as you want and the best I can answer with would be guesses. Every construct has its unique limits set by its creator. I just know we need to head that way to reach its center..."
More people start coming out of the rift one by one.
Nat walks over next, and her vitals and stats come rushing into my consciousness, then even Marcie wanders by soon after.
A few minutes after she does, another jaguar attacks, and she's able to defend and defeat it with ease. This one wields water magic instead of wind, and Marcie is equally as disappointed when nothing drops from its remains.
Ember speaks through our link once he sees my expression while looking at the dissolving monster.
"Monsters down here won't have what we're looking for."
He points off into the forest, but his finger is angled upward.
"If we want to find any of those so-called artifacts, we'll have to venture out in that direction and find stronger monsters with fully developed cores."
I nod and watch the woods as every few minutes more black jaguars attack the new applicants that come through the rift and enter the forest.
The large black cats all wield different elements, but share the same sharp eyes.
Some use earth, others use fire, and I even watch one of them use light magic to make illusions of itself while attacking.
Yet, they all fall and drop nothing when they die all the same.
Finally, Dane comes out of the rift and meets us. His vitals and geolocation update in my mind as well.
I nod as he approaches, then use lightning magic beneath my feet to levitate upward to try and get a better vantage point while coming up with some basic ground rules and a strategy to rely on if we're going to take this on as a team.
My first instinct is to go on ahead with Ember and reap the rewards of this construct all for myself, but an even better idea comes to mind.
While having lower levels tag along may hold me back at first, it doesn't mean they'll be weak for long. If I'm able to gain MCP from killing these monsters, that means anyone with a link of loyalty can use my skill and become stronger very quickly as well.
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Author's Note:
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