I muttered in shock as I stared at the swirling portal. Despite the fact that it was right before me, a part of me didn't want to believe it was there. In some reality-defying way, there was a wormhole or a portal in my lab, and absurdly enough, I was the one who conjured it here.
Strangely, I could feel it. I could feel it at the back of my mind, like it was a part of my body that had always been there but had just been discovered.
It felt like some kind of extra limb—one unattached to my body, but equally a part of it—a limb I could only control with my mind. And the longer I stared at it, the deeper this feeling became, until I could hear its call.
It was beckoning me, whispering to me to draw closer and enter it. The sight of this portal would've made anyone, even the most curious of scientists, wary or even scared, but there was nothing like that in me.
All I felt was calm. Not the kind of calm I felt when I saw that thing many years ago, but the kind of calm you feel when you look at a clear evening sky on a chilly night. Even my inherent primal instincts, which had been honed for years as a Death Dealer, didn't sense any danger from it.
This alone made me frown as I rose to my feet, glancing at my blood-stained, short, sharp claws that slowly receded and morphed into my regular nails, delving into my thoughts upon feeling my wounds had already healed.
I may not have felt any danger, discomfort, or hostility from the portal, but that didn't mean I was comfortable and okay with it.
I didn't know why or how I was able to do this, but I had a clue as to where it came from, and that didn't make me happy. This was clearly the work of that thing.
It seemed that apart from killing me and reincarnating me into another universe, it did something else to me—something that allowed me to casually break the laws of physics and reality.
Till now, I didn't know what that thing was. I had theories—a lot of them, actually—but there was one that I leaned toward the most.
Which was that the thing was an alien construct, an extradimensional entity, that existed in multiple dimensions—higher ones than the regular three to four dimensions—allowing it to control or manipulate them in ways that modern twenty-first-century scientists wouldn't even be able to imagine.
This was what allowed it to send my consciousness to a whole other universe to be reborn. Why did it do this? I had no idea. I could waste time speculating on it for a thousand years, and I probably wouldn't even come close to the truth.
It had happened, and I'd moved on, thinking that was the end of my connection or involvement with that entity, but it seemed fate had other plans in store. That entity had apparently left me with another parting gift.
A gift that I received the moment I evolved into something greater. Why did it wait until now to appear? Did the entity know or plan this whole thing, manipulating cause and effect even across dimensions?
Was it just waiting for me to get strong and capable enough to use it?
Was it a matter of worth? Was I now worthy in its eyes to unlock this? Had it been watching me this whole time?
Endless questions like this raced through my mind, filling me with countless doubts and worries, but I shook my head and cleared my mind of all these troublesome thoughts with an exhale.
It didn't matter how many questions I had. I wouldn't be getting any answers to them anytime soon, so it was better to ignore them, leave them for another time, and focus on the immediate issue humming in front of me.
Whatever answers I sought would come eventually with time, a quality I had in abundance in this life...
"Hmmm, now what do I do with you?" I asked no one in particular, squinting slightly at the portal.
There was no denying this thing was a portal or a wormhole of some kind. Where it led to, I didn't have the faintest clue. What I did know, however, was that if I entered it, I'd be transported somewhere—probably far away—in relatively and probably an instant.
I couldn't help the excitement that bubbled up within me at that thought. Teleportation was a phenomenon that was only theoretical at this point in time.
Wormholes, or Einstein-Rosen Bridges, were established concepts created by Einstein and Rosen, that described structures capable of connecting two distant points in spacetime and would enable near instantaneous travel between these two points.
There was no proof that man could one day achieve this feat, but just the thought of its applications was enough to make anyone dream in wonder. From space, time, and multiversal travel to military and defense, its applications were almost endless.
If this portal I created was an actual wormhole or even anything remotely similar, there was no way, I wouldn't exploit or use it. Despite my mistrust and apprehension, I wasn't going to throw this chance away. No matter what.
I might not have had positive feelings for that entity, but I was a practical man, and so far, whatever it had done to me had been to my benefit.
I was a sickly young man who probably would've died before I even reached my thirties in my past life, but now I was a powerful and unnaturally strong vampire with an unlimited lifespan and perfect health.
The difference was staggering, and no matter how much I hated admitting it, I was grateful for what the entity did, even if I still had mental scars from that experience.
So, even though there was a chance that whatever lay at the end of the portal could be dangerous and life-threatening, I still wanted to go.
I was going to bet on the chance that the entity wouldn't go through all this trouble of reincarnating me in another dimension and giving me the ability to conjure up portals, only for me to die the first time I stepped through one.
It was simply a bad investment—something not even I would do, not to mention a being of such magnitude. Nonetheless, there was no way I would go through that thing unarmed and in a bloody lab coat no less.
No matter how much I believed in that thing, I was going through the portal strapped and fully loaded for action. It was always better to be safe rather than sorry, especially when it came to the unknown...
With a determined gaze, I nodded and turned away from it, striding to the coat rack at the entrance of the lab, glancing behind me momentarily to notice the rear side of the portal blank and empty like a black wall.
Slipping out of my blood-stained lab coat, I hung it, wore my trench coat, and checked my weapons, making sure they were all in perfect condition.
Two clicks sounded as I turned the safeties of my guns off, and with their familiar weight resting in my palms, my grip on their handles strong, and my trigger fingers poised, I walked to the front side of the portal and paused just a step away from its swirling dark red depths.
I took a deep breath of the cold air, purified of the iron scent of my blood, and exhaled deeply, calming my nerves as I became battle-ready, adrenaline racing through my veins. My eyes glowed a bright electric blue.
"Here goes nothing," I whispered as I raised my twin Baers to eye level and stepped into the portal.
Instantly, my vision warped into a kaleidoscopic mess of colors, and I felt myself getting sucked gently through a narrow tunnel at barely comprehensible speeds, my mind and thoughts an incoherent jumbled mess.
The next moment, my vision cleared and returned to normalcy as I came out of the tunnel, and I found myself falling from the sky toward a forest. My eyes widened, and quickly, just as I reached the canopy of the tall trees, I raised my hands to block my face.
I fell into the canopy and crashed through several thick branches with my feet, cracking and breaking them into pieces as I descended sharply, my eyes closed with my face guarded by my arms that took the brunt of the chips of broken wood and leaves.
It didn't take long until I finally landed softly onto the ground with a barely audible thud, thick wood branches and bits thudding loudly as they fell all around me.
When the sounds ceased as the falling stopped, I opened my eyes and crouched, my hands and the guns shifting to point at my sides as my eyes quickly scanned the place for any sign of danger.
I was in a evergreen forest with incredibly thick and tall trees all around me that formed a dense canopy and made the place dim as it blocked a majority of the sunlight streaming down.
Focusing on my other senses to complement my sight, my eyes widened as I realized how sharp they'd all become.
I could see the smallest dust particles in the air and the tiniest insects, hear the sounds of animals and insects chittering or chattering all around me and even farther away as if they were right next to my ears, and smell the richness of the forest and its inhabitants so clearly that I could pinpoint the exact locations of those I couldn't see.
I could even feel the slightest touch of the wind or air and the particles it carried on my skin. It was incredible and utterly amazing. It was as if I'd now developed or gotten my senses and was now experiencing the world for the very first time.
As a vampire, I'd always had senses far superior to any human and almost comparable to a transformed Lycan's, but this was something else.
I knew and expected the strain to enhance and evolve every part of my being to new levels, but expectation could never fully describe or match reality. It was almost surreal.
"...Wait, the sun!" I exclaimed in fear as I finally remembered it was daytime upon realizing I was currently being bathed in sunlight and looked up at the hole I created in the canopy.
I saw the clear blue sky littered with white puffy clouds that swam aimlessly across it, illuminated brightly by the sun, and gradually, as I gazed upon its beauty, my fear extinguished and was replaced with joy. My hands fell weakly to my sides.
After all these years of hiding in the dark, afraid of the sun, not being able to feel its warmth and see the morning or afternoon sky without risking a complete and very painful death, I could now see and feel it all once again.
And just as I remembered, it was absolutely breathtaking.
"...I really did it," I whispered and chuckled, bursting into joyous laughter that echoed all around. I wiped the tears that gathered at the corners of my eyes with my dusty and tattered right sleeve.
"I'm finally free."