Rynne's eyes swept the surroundings once more before she added,
"If I had been Rank Four already, and my mastery over spatial authority had deepened further, I wouldn't have left it behind at all."
Michael's eyes shifted back to her.
"What do you an?"
She smiled faintly.
"I an I would have taken the secret realm away with ."
Michael blinked.
"...Taken it?"
Rynne nodded casually, as if she had just spoken about sothing
common.
"Secret realms like this are anchored spaces," she explained. "If your spatial control is strong enough, you can sever that anchor and relocate the realm's core frawork."
Michael stared at her.
That... was not sothing he had known was even possible.
"You're saying soone could just move a secret realm?" he asked.
"Not soone," Rynne corrected lightly. "A Rank Four with deep spatial mastery at the very least."
She gestured loosely toward the ruin.
"It wouldn't be simple. You'd need to suppress the realm's internal resistance, stabilize its dinsional shell, and bind it to a new anchor."
Her smile widened slightly.
"But once done, the entire secret realm could be attached to anything."
Michael's silence deepened.
He thought back to his Damaged Coffin of the Forgotten and its internal space.
Looking at it from another angle, did this not an it was a secret realm contained within a coffin?
Michael had seen many treasures. Part of which was his own.
But an entire secret realm as a movable asset was an entirely different scale of value.
Rynne noticed the shift in his expression and chuckled softly.
"Don't look so surprised," she said. "High Rank spatial users are walking strategic assets for a reason."
Michael exhaled faintly.
"...I see."
He cast one last glance toward the ruin's depths.
Two thousand years of silence.
And now, once again, abandonnt.
Whether it would sleep for another era or open again tomorrow was
sothing neither of them could predict.
Michael turned back to the portal.
Without another word, he stepped forward.
Rynne followed beside him.
Together, they crossed the threshold of swirling light, leaving the
ancient secret realm behind as the portal folded inward and vanished
from existence once more.
The transition was instant.
One mont there was only the layered distortion of the portal swallowing their figures.
The next, the world reford around them.
Michael and Rynne stepped out onto cracked stone ground beneath an open sky.
Or what passed for a sky.
They had returned to the ruins.
But not the sa ruin they had just left behind.
This one was vast and sunken, half swallowed by swamp water that stretched endlessly in all directions. Broken pillars jutted out from the marsh like the bones of a dead civilization, their surfaces coated in thick moss that glowed faintly violet.
Everything was purple.
The sky above shimred in murky shades of athyst and black.
The swamp water below reflected the sa hue, bubbling faintly as if alive. Even the mist that hovered low across the marshlands carried a dim lavender tint that distorted distance and depth.
The Fifty Sixth Floor of Hell.
Michael recognized it imdiately.
Michael had just opened his mouth to speak.
He was about to bring up what Rynne had ntioned earlier. That she possessed a thod to carry them quickly back to the First Floor of Hell without traversing the intervening layers.
But before he could say anything, Rynne spoke first.
"Michael," she said quietly.
Her voice had changed.
It was no longer casual.
He glanced at her.
She was not looking at him.
Her gaze was fixed sowhere behind him.
"You should be ready to run."
Michael did not ask why.
He turned.
And then he saw them.
Flying insects.
Hundreds of them.
They hovered in the purple mist, their bodies elongated and segnted, wings thin like blades of glass that vibrated fast enough to produce a constant shrill hum across the swamp.
Their compound eyes glowed dim violet, reflecting the sa hue as
the environnt around them.
But what made Michael's gaze sharpen was not their number.
Every single one of them had locked onto their position the mont
they appeared.
A ripple moved through the swarm.
Then the sound began to rise.
A synchronized vibration of wings that stirred the swamp mist
violently.
They had been detected.
Without hesitation, Michael moved.
His aura shifted instantly.
The Spartan State receded.
In its place, spatial currents surged.
Wisdom State.
His perception expanded sharply.
He did not waste ti speaking.
Nor did he wait for the swarm to attack.
He stepped forward, wrapped an arm around Rynne's waist, and
vanished.
His figure blurred from existence.
The ground beneath where they had stood shattered from the recoil force of his acceleration.
Behind them, the swarm reacted instantly.
A violent screech filled the swamp as hundreds of insects lunged
forward in pursuit, their wingbeats slicing through the mist like
blades.
But Michael was already gone.
He moved across the ruined marshlands at terrifying speed, Rynne
secured firmly in his grasp as he navigated the hostile terrain without slowing even once.
Only the rippling mist marked the path they had taken across the Fifty Sixth Floor of Hell.
Wind tore past Rynne's ears.
The world around her had dissolved into streaks of violet and black,
the swamp below reduced to blurred sars of color that warped and twisted the longer she tried to focus on them.
She could feel the pressure of movent even without looking.
Air resistance parted unnaturally around them, spatial currents
folding and smoothing their path as Michael cut through the Fifty Sixth Floor like a living distortion.
Her body was secured firmly against him, one arm locked around her waist to stabilize her position as he moved.
Yet despite that, her heart felt strangely unsteady.
Not from fear of the swarm behind them.
But from sothing else entirely.
Helplessness.
Her fingers curled faintly.
This was not the first ti she had witnessed Michael's overwhelming
displays of power.
She had seen the suppression of the breathing tal.
She had seen the abyssal flas.
She had seen the way an enhancer had turned him into sothing
monstrous for a brief window.
But this...
This felt different.
Her gaze shifted slightly, studying his profile.
This speed...
It did not look like sothing a normal Rank Three should possess.
Even peak Rank Three specialists who focused purely on mobility
would struggle to reach this level of sustained acceleration.
And Michael...
Michael was not even Rank Three yet.
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