Chapter 1231 (1/2)

As soon as he walked through the portal, Heiffal winced and straightened. His hand went instinctively up to his chest, despite the fact that the pain was just a general ache that seeped out from every inch of Heiffal’s body. Every breath he took of the air of Earth made his lungs spasm painfully. His muscles tightened like leaves dying and curling inward in fall and his bones felt hollow and rotten.

Even though his body desperately begged him to stop taking the deep breaths that exposed him to such pain, Heiffal mastered that impulse and continued to breathe. The rejection steadily escalated. The ache worsened. Although it was difficult, Heiffal managed to keep his breaths even. The physical pain was falling away, gradually being replaced by something even more intimidating.

He could feel the very Aether of his existence responding strangely to the Aether present in the surrounding world; he never should be allowed to descend to this place according to the Nexus.

Per the Ghosthound’s orders, Heiffal ignored that certainty and mechanically took several steps forward. He refused to simply seize up and topple over as the agony ran rampant across the surface of his body. After all, if he were incapacitated, no one would be able to move the other inevitable victims of the pain. Which would force the Ghosthound to keep the portal open for longer than he had expected to wait for them to recover. And that would certainly not create a good first impression on the Ghosthound.

You already died once, Heiffal bared his teeth toward the clear blue sky that was so different than the terrible orange and black vista of the frontlines. Compared to that, this is nothing.

Heiffal took one step and then another. As the hammer strikes of pain against Heiffal’s psyche continued, he hobbled out of the threshold of the portal. The pain continued to grow as the Aether in Heiffal’s body slowly seemed to awaken to what was occurring. But then the connection that the Ghosthound had established in Heiffal’s chest stirred. It was slow at first, but as the pain became an all-consuming thunder, the flow of energy accelerated. Aether swirled in Heiffal’s chest.

From what he had heard from the Ghosthound, there were protections in place to prevent individuals from higher Cohorts descending to lower ones. The Aether constructs of the System were equipped with certain mechanisms that recorded the initial level in the Nexus where an individual started and monitored the surrounding Aether at every moment to determine where the individual was now.

Heiffal didn’t understand the details, but in essence, the Ghosthound planned to fool the mechanism by providing a constant flow of Aether past the sensor that would hide their current location. Aether began to rotate silently in Heiffal’s body, stalling the terrible pain out. Gasping, Heiffal could only wait and press his eyes closed.

Everything ached as that horrible sensor signaled that his entire spiritual existence should come to pieces for daring to step here. His heart pounded with the pain. But as that energy flowed out of the Ghosthound’s connection it gradually confused the mechanism. The pain began slowly to recede. The Aether in Heiffal’s body gradually righted itself.

It took about a minute for Heiffal to recover enough to move, but by that time almost a dozen other people had dutifully marched out through the portal. But the reason that so few had been able to make it was that about half of those first dozen had collapsed almost immediately, gradually creating a roadblock of bodies.

Still weak as his body gradually adjusted to the weird current of Aether that now sustained him, Heiffal began to shift the shivering soldiers and allow more to proceed through.

Shifloo, his second in command and the individual who followed Heiffal first through the portal, seemed to stay upright purely out of spite. She gritted her teeth hard enough to grind stones to dust and hunched her shoulders like she had a heavy bucket of water in each hand. About a minute after Heiffal recovered, she began to move with him and sort through the weakened bodies.

“The price of reaching the promised land, eh?” Shifloo coughed and shivered. From her low and raspy voice, Heiffal could sense that she had been much closer to completely collapsing that he had been. Her hands were still trembling from the strain.

It was only after the entirety of the group who had decided to follow the Ghosthound passed through the portal that Heiffal allowed himself to relax. Yet he couldn’t let his guard down all the way. Despite the fact that the Ghosthound’s Aether continued to flow and confuse the constructs in his body, there was a constant low beat of discomfort that ran through Heiffal with every heartbeat.

“It will be worth it,” Heiffal said simply as he clapped Shifloo on the back. Yet as she opened her mouth to respond, both froze. As one, their gazes shifted toward the Northeast.

“...by the way Heiffal, I’ve been meaning to ask you,” Shifloo said casually. She moved her jaw a little bit, as though trying to dislodge the scratchiness in her throat. “What does it mean that we are only supposed to intervene in fights where something more powerful than should be on a world before the Calamity is involved? ...Does whatever is making that image count?”

Frowning, Heiffal continued to use his senses to best gauge the limits of the echoing image that spread across the world. Certainly, he would have originally assumed that the source of this was one that was more powerful than should be present on Earth; the image he felt was almost as powerful as Heiffal’s own image, if a little murky in the details.

Heiffal considered carefully for two reasons. First, because this was the world that birthed Randidly Ghosthound. It would be foolish to judge the Earth using normal metrics. But also, there were currently two images nearby to that echoing image that were close to it in strength. And it was clear that the duo was intent on destroying the more powerful image.

“It means we judge it situation by situation. This… seems fine.” Heiffal turned away from the distant image and surveyed the surrounding area. They appeared to be standing on a low hill above a dense and humid jungle. Level 56 Flesh-Eating Macaws sat on the branches of nearby trees and watched the new arrivals curiously.

But a little to the West, Heiffal could see a large area where the trees had been leveled, as though some vast vehicle had recently passed that way. “Anyway, we don’t understand the forces at play in this world. Best to first find Kharon and then make any necessary decisions.”

“You’re the boss,” Shifloo said with obvious relish. She spat out a large wad of phlegm and finally seemed to find her voice again. Then she began urging the surrounding soldiers to their feet.

*****

Hank Howard’s eyes narrowed as President Greyman and her entourage screamed and leapt back away from the molten slag that rained down from the bloodbeast’s artillery. Despite the fact that one of the group appeared to have had their foot melted earlier, the whole group scrambled a safe distance away from the Orchard’s barrier.