(7 days later, Moltherak’s Island, Leo’s POV)
Over the next seven days, Leo made rapid progress in his mastery over space tunnelling, as not only did he refine the precision of his entry angles and strengthen the density of his aura dagger, he also learned to calculate and lock the ending vector with growing confidence, allowing him to appear within meters of where he intended rather than drifting into the vastness of the Stilled World like a lost shadow.
Day after day, leap after leap, he carved through the fourth dimension with anxious focus, as the slopes he created became cleaner, the tunnels he opened stretched farther, and the fear that once seized his chest slowly dissolved into a careful, disciplined excitement that only came when a warrior began to trust his own instincts.
By the fifth day, he was opening tunnels nearly ten thousand kilometers long.
By the sixth, he could land himself on specific reefs around the Stilled World’s broken ocean.
By the seventh, he began hitting targets smaller than Moltherak’s claw... three times in a row.
And that was when the confidence began to creep in.
"Good," Moltherak said on the morning of the eighth day, his tone proud yet cautious as Leo returned from another successful leap.
"Your technique has stabilized nicely, I think we are ready to jump between planets now, and once you master that too in a week or so, your training will finally be complete."
He instructed as Leo nodded in agreement.
Each successful tunnel made the next feel easier, smoother, almost natural to him, as though the fourth dimension was beginning to accept his presence rather than resisting it.
So when Moltherak suggested inter-planet travel, he felt no fear for it, just excitement.
"To calculate the precise exit vector for inter-planet travel, you need to learn how to read the universal chart.
It is a traveller’s guide created back when I was one of the rulers of the universe, which allowed the Dragon Army to raid enemy worlds.
It was auto-adjusting, so it should be precise even today, despite the planets having shifted from their original location."
Moltherak shared, as he gave Leo a copy of the universal chart, which clearly showed all the entry slopes and distance vectors one needed to follow to achieve precise inter-planet travel.
"Oh wow, this is really easy to read and follow..."
Leo shared, as surprisingly, since he was proficient in reading the ancient language, he did not struggle much at all in grasping how to use the universal chart, as he quickly chartered a course for Ixtal.
"Can you confirm I’m doing this correctly?"
He asked, as Moltherak looked at his calculations and nodded.
To travel from the Stilled World to Ixtal, he needed to slice into the fourth dimension at a 31.45° slope, and had to break through exactly 1788 barriers to reach the planet’s surface.
If he exited at 1787, he would find himself suspended in the upper atmosphere.
While 1789 would bury him inside the planet’s core.
Which meant that the room for error was next to none.
"Dont lose track of the mental count of how many barriers you passed through.
And remember, all temporal membranes need to be sliced exactly at a precise 31.45° slope.
A single mistake in space tunnelling can be deadly....."
Moltherak warned, as Leo took his warning to heart and nodded.
"I won’t make a mistake.... I’ve got this!"
He said confidently, as he shaped his aura shield, before then forming the aura dagger out of habit.
"28...29...30...31..31.45°"
He measured, before committing the angle to muscle memory, as he thrust at the same angle again and again without making even the slightest mistake.
"Focus fully, your hand is too relaxed, if you go about space tunnelling so casually, you’re bound to make a mistake somewhere!" Moltherak reminded from behind him, as–
"Dont worry old dragon, I am fully focused," Leo answered, as he tightened his grip—
*CRRRAACK*
He thrust forward, opening the space tunnel as practiced, before stepping into it with confidence, as he waved the old dragon goodbye.
For a while, everything seemed normal, as he began to slice through the temporal membranes one after another with absolute precision.
However, as he crossed what should have been the seventy-third membrane, his aura dagger surprisingly sliced forward and met no resistance at all, as the expected soft tremor simply failed to appear, as though the very fabric of the tunnel had thinned beneath his touch.
’Strange... maybe an irregular gap?’
He thought, as he took another step, expecting the next barrier to greet him with its usual faint ripple, yet once again his dagger struck nothing but open dimensional air, the slope beneath him smoothing out unnaturally as if wiped clean.
He frowned lightly and continued walking, counting in his mind with the same steady rhythm he had practiced a thousand times this week.
Seventy-four.
Seventy-five.
Seventy-six.
Still nothing.
A tight coil of unease twisted inside him, but he exhaled slowly, reassuring himself that anomalies could occur, since Moltherak had mentioned odd gaps that were rare but harmless.
So he stepped again.
Seventy-seven.
Seventy-eight.
Seventy-nine.
However, unfortunately for him, there was still no membrane, no tremor, no resistance, not even the faintest hum of the fourth dimension pushing back against him.
Just empty, smooth passage.
And that was when the cold truth began to slip into him like a blade through cloth.
’No... no, this spacing is wrong. The gaps are never this long. They cannot be this long.’
He pressed his aura forward, sweeping it through the tunnel in a wide arc, searching and almost begging for even a whisper of temporal friction, but all he felt was–
Nothing.
A perfect void.
Too perfect.
Too clean.
His pulse spiked as Moltherak’s warnings resurfaced with crushing clarity.
’If you sense no temporal walls, you are no longer in a tunnel.
You are drifting toward the endless void, a place with no exits, no cracks, no return.’
The old dragon had warned, as Leo froze, the slope under his feet shifting subtly, almost imperceptibly, tilting downward into a deeper curvature that was unmistakable to anyone who had studied the fourth dimension for weeks on end.
This was the pull he had been told to fear.
This was the current that swallowed wanderers whole.
’Damn it... I must have tilted the angle too deep... too sharp... something is wrong... this is not the vector I calculated...’
He thought, as his breath quickened as he spun around sharply, trying to catch even a faint echo of his last safe point, but the tunnel behind him had already begun to lose its structure, the walls dissolving into a pale, shifting haze.
’Fuck!’
He thought, as he took a step back, only for the ground beneath him to drop another fraction.
’Fuck... fuck... fuck!’
He thought, as a silent merciless suction began dragging him forward into a region where even time refused to exist.
"No... no, no... this is the void slope... this is the void..."
Leo whispered as his heartbeat thundered against the inside of his skull, the realization tearing through him with brutal finality as he realized that he had made a clinical mistake somewhere, and that at this moment, he was now barreling straight toward the endless void.