Markets and Multiverses (A Serial Transmigration LitRPG)
Chapter 292: Collapsing Reality

As my brain finally processed what was happening, I felt a flash of horror. The spacequake that had dragged us into the pocket dimension had resulted in Sallia's death. I couldn't imagine this leading to anything good.

I swapped between my soul sight and my spatial sight, hoping to get some more information on whatever had just broken on the world. I didn’t see anything interesting with my soul-sight. However, my spatial sight gave me a nasty eye-ache when I used it. It felt like someone had jammed a needle through my eye and into my brain whenever I tried to look northwest with it. When I tried to look more closely, I got the strangest feeling that I was looking through a blurry, cracked eyeball. The pain was bad enough that I quickly gave up. The pain in my eye made it too hard to focus on what I was seeing.

A few moments later, I glanced at the massive hole in the sky again. I realized that it was starting to vaccuum up the air in its surroundings - but it wasn't just pulling things in. At the same time, it also disgorged a huge pile of energy into our surroundings. The energy felt similar to the four essences, but not quite the same. Sort of like the difference between a mother and her children. They resembled each other, but they weren't quite the same.

The massive glob of energy fell to the ground just outside of the fort, where it melted through the grass like a bolt of lightning. Some of the blades of grass were killed instantly, while other blades of grass seemed perfectly fine. I watched in horror as the glob of energy simply sank deeper into the earth. It seemed as if it completely ignored physical objects - which made it even more dangerous than a worldstrtider raid.

Markus and the other soldiers also noticed the giant glob of energy, and seemed nearly as unnerved as I was.

I looked at the paltry shell of metal that Felix had constructed around us. I felt a glimmer of anxiety as I realized that it wouldn't defend us at all. Whatever was going on, Felix's abilities weren't capable of defending us from it.

“We need to go,” I said. I turned towards Markus and the other soldiers. "Are you guys... coming with us?"

“Coming where?” Markus asked, as he also looked at the skies. There was a hint of panic in his eyes, but he looked like he was trying to suppress it. "Where can we even go? What was that... glob of energy? It just fried half of the plants in front of the fort!"

“I don’t know what it is, but we need to get away!” I said, before I glanced back into the distance.

"Is there even anywhere we can go to get away?" Asked Markus dubiously, as he glanced at the sky again.

"Whatever broke seems to be in the Northwest. If we head southwest, we can get further away... I think," I said. "After that, maybe the layers of reality will stop collapsing into each other. Or maybe there's a range limitation, or... something." I shook my head. "We can try heading to one of the colonies if things keep breaking. They're further away, so they might be safer.”

“The Northwest is where the current battles between the enemy and humans are taking place. We were... just talking about how the enemy might have a final trick up their sleeve. Something to reverse the situation. Do you think this is it?” asked Markus. His expression of hazy confusion was morphing into an expression of dread. "What's going to happen to Damilius?"

“I don’t know. We can figure it out later, but we need to go now," I said, hoping to snap him out of his confusion.

Anise and Felix dropped their defenses and started running downstairs. <How much time do we have?> asked Felix as he disappeared from view.

<I don’t know,> I said. <The cracks in reality are spreading, but not very quickly. We have some time, but not very much.>

<Miria. Calm down, take a deep breath. Now, look to the Northwest. Neither Anise nor I can see things as clearly as you. Knowing how much time we have can change things a lot. If we have ten minutes, our evacuation plan looks very different from if we have ten days. Do you have any estimates?> Felix said. His mental voice was calm and reassuring, and helped me quell the anxiety that had started to warp my thoughts.

I closed my eyes, and took a few deep breaths, before I looked to the Northwest again. Every 10 seconds, I activated my spatial sight again, and tried to analyze how quickly the cracks in reality were spreading. It was an incredibly crude way of assessing damage to the two layers of reality, but it was all I had to go off of right now.

After a few seconds, I grimaced.

<I don't think any more huge cracks in reality will appear for a while,> I said. <I can see that the cracks are spreading, but not very fast. We should try to be far away from this fort within two hours though.>

I was mostly guessing here - I didn’t have very acute senses when it came to dimensional insight, or at least, not in comparison to what I needed right now. But I could at least tell that the barrier between the two layers of reality was deteriorating at a slow pace.

<All right. Two hours. Let’s take the time to pack our bags then. We can spend… ten minutes on it. Then, we need to be out of the fort.> Felix frowned. <We don’t have anything that will let us move as fast as we might like, but we should be able to grab a train. I know that one of the railroads stop near our fort at around this time every night. We can hitch a ride on it, with some luck.>

It was as good a plan as any, and I didn't have any better ideas. I nodded, before realizing Anise and Felix couldn't see me. <Got it.>

<We can take the railroad back to town, then grab Iselde, Vance, Dr. Trish, and Old Mo. Then, we can take a ship to the colonies, if we keep ahead of the collapse. Do you think that the ocean will pose any sort of barrier for the collapse of the two layers of reality?>

<I doubt it. I can think of no reason why the ocean would matter. We're just relying on pure distance and hoping things don't get worse.>

<Not the best plan.> Felix's mental voice was tinged with a layer of worry, although it was well-concealed. <But it's what we have to go off of.>

At the same time, I turned back towards Markus.

"We have ten minutes. Meet in front of the fort afterwards. There's a train we need to hitch a ride on, and then we need to get out of here. If the train doesn't show up, or if we're too late... we might be dead."

Markus and the other soldiers looked grim at my words, but they nodded. The four of us that had remained near the card table abandoned the game as we rushed towards our rooms. I just hoped we could move fast enough.