NOVEL NEXT Chapter 219: System Glitch!
The power emanating from the formation was beyond description.
It was like standing next to a star while it was being born, like being in the presence of the fundamental forces that held reality together, like witnessing the moment when the laws of physics decided to rewrite themselves according to some higher and more terrible logic.
The energy pressed down on everything within its influence with crushing weight, making the air itself thick and difficult to breathe.
Creed could feel it in his bones, in his blood, in the very atoms that made up his body, a resonance that threatened to tear him apart at the molecular level.
And yet, for all its overwhelming power, the formation felt incomplete. Desperately, frustratingly incomplete.
It was like looking at a masterpiece painting that was missing ninety-nine percent of its brushstrokes, like hearing a symphony where only one instrument out of a hundred was playing, like reading a book where only every thousandth word was visible.
The formation that now covered the entire academy grounds was barely a shadow of what it could be, a fragment so small that it represented perhaps one-tenth of one percent of its true potential!
Students and instructors began pouring out of buildings across the academy, their faces masks of terror and confusion as they stared up at the blazing formation that had transformed their familiar campus into something from a fever dream.
Some of the more magically sensitive individuals collapsed to their knees, overwhelmed by the sheer intensity of the power washing over them.
Others stood transfixed, their minds struggling to process something that existed beyond the normal parameters of their understanding.
Instructor Varien was among the crowd of faculty members who had gathered in the main courtyard, his face pale with shock as he shouted orders that nobody could hear over the cosmic humming that had begun to emanate from the formation.
Creed could see him gesturing wildly, probably trying to organize some kind of response to what everyone must assume was an attack on the academy.
Other instructors were frantically casting diagnostic arts and protective barriers, their magic sparking and fizzling as it came into contact with the overwhelming energies of the formation.
Through his window, Creed could see Nicholas Grey standing in the crowd of evacuated students, his silver hair whipping around his face as wind began to swirl around the formation's center.
Even from this distance, Creed could see the recognition in his rival's eyes, the understanding that whatever was happening was somehow connected to their earlier conversation about their shared failures.
Nicholas was looking directly up at Creed's villa, his expression a mixture of curiosity and concern that made Creed's eyes uncontrollably furrow.
But before Creed could even begin to figure out how Nicholas was able to quickly get an idea of what was happening, or how to make it stop, or how to convince everyone that he hadn't intentionally unleashed some kind of cosmic catastrophe on the academy, his system interface suddenly blazed to life in front of his eyes.
The familiar blue screens that normally displayed his stats and abilities appeared without being called, but instead of showing his usual information, they were filled with cascading walls of error messages and warning symbols that scrolled past too quickly for him to read.
[ERROR: DIMENSIONAL BREACH DETECTED
WARNING: UNAUTHORIZED SUMMONING PROTOCOL ACTIVE
CRITICAL: PRIMORDIAL CIRCLE ACTIVATION BEYOND SAFE PARAMETERS
ERROR: REALITY MATRIX INSTABILITY INCREASING
WARNING: UNKNOWN ENTITIES ATTEMPTING BREACH
CRITICAL: SYSTEM INTEGRITY COMPROMISED
ERROR: TEMPORAL PARADOX DETECTED
WARNING: CAUSALITY VIOLATIONS IMMINENT]
The messages came faster and faster, overlapping and interfering with each other until the entire interface became a chaotic mess of flashing colors and incomprehensible symbols.
Creed tried to dismiss the screens, tried to access his normal system functions, tried to do anything that might give him some control over the situation, but nothing responded to his commands.
It was as if the system itself had become infected with some kind of virus that was slowly consuming all of its functions.
Then, without warning, the error messages stopped.
The sudden silence was somehow more terrifying than the chaos that had preceded it.
For a moment, the only sounds were the distant shouts of panicked students and the cosmic humming of the formation that continued to pulse with barely contained energy.
Creed's system interface hung in front of him, completely blank except for a single line of text that appeared in the center of the screen with the finality of a death sentence.
[PRIMORDIAL CIRCLE: EMERGENCY PROTOCOLS ACTIVATED
INITIATING DIMENSIONAL RECALL
STAND BY FOR TRANSPORT]
"Transport?" Creed said aloud, his voice cracking with strain and confusion. "Transport to where? What the hell is a dimensional recall?"
But even as the words left his mouth, he felt it beginning. The air in front of him began to shimmer and distort, like heat waves rising from summer pavement, but cold instead of warm.
The distortion grew larger and more pronounced, spinning slowly as it expanded into a perfect circle that hung in the air about three feet in front of where he stood pressed against the wall.
Through the circle, instead of seeing the continuation of his dormitory room, he could see something else entirely: a swirling vortex of colors that didn't have names, a tunnel that seemed to stretch into infinity, a passage that led to somewhere that definitely wasn't anywhere in his familiar world.
A portal. His system had somehow opened a portal to somewhere else, and based on the ominous humming sound that was beginning to emanate from its depths, that somewhere else was probably not a place where he wanted to go.
But as he stared at the portal with growing dread, Creed realized that his opinion on the matter was rapidly becoming irrelevant.
The circular opening was beginning to generate a suction force that tugged at his clothes, his hair, even the air in his lungs.
It started as a gentle pull, barely noticeable, but quickly grew stronger until he had to brace himself against the wall to avoid being dragged forward.
"Okay, this is bad," he muttered, his rational mind finally kicking into gear despite the cosmic insanity surrounding him.
"This is very, very bad. Mysterious portals that appear without warning are never good news.
"They're usually the kind of thing that leads to getting eaten by interdimensional monsters or trapped in hellish nightmare realms or transformed into some kind of cosmic aberration."
The suction grew stronger, and despite his best efforts to resist, Creed felt his feet beginning to slide across the floor toward the portal.
He grabbed onto his desk, then his bookshelf, then anything else he could reach, but the force pulling him forward was relentless and growing more powerful by the second.
Books and papers began flying through the air around him, disappearing into the swirling vortex with barely a whisper of sound.
"Think, Creed, think!" he commanded himself, his mind racing as he fought against the inexorable pull.
'There has to be a logical explanation for this. The system opened a portal, which means it's probably some kind of emergency function.
'Emergency functions are usually designed to help, not hurt, so maybe this is actually a good thing? Maybe it's trying to get me away from the formation before something worse happens?'
But even as he tried to convince himself that the portal might be benevolent, Creed couldn't shake the feeling that he was about to make a journey from which he might never return.
The formation covering the academy was still pulsing with that barely contained power, still emanating energies that made reality itself seem fragile and uncertain.
His summons were still somewhere in the space between dimensions, their conditions unknown and possibly damaged by whatever had gone wrong with his summoning attempt.
His reputation was already in ruins, and now he was apparently the cause of what looked like a campus-wide catastrophe that would probably result in his immediate expulsion if he survived whatever was about to happen to him.
"At least it can't get any worse," he said to himself, immediately regretting the words as soon as they left his mouth.
In his experience, saying things like "it can't get any worse" was usually the universe's cue to prove him spectacularly wrong.
The suction from the portal suddenly intensified, and despite his desperate grip on his bookshelf, Creed felt his fingers beginning to slip.
The sturdy furniture groaned under the strain, and he could hear the sound of bolts pulling loose from the wall as the entire structure began to lean toward the portal.
His rational mind was still trying to analyze the situation, still searching for some logical course of action that might save him from whatever fate awaited him on the other side of that swirling vortex, but his body was rapidly running out of options.
"Okay, new plan," he gasped, his voice strained from the effort of fighting against the portal's pull.
'If I'm going to get sucked into this thing anyway, I might as well try to control how it happens. Maybe if I go through feet first, I'll land better on the other side?'
'Or maybe if I try to activate my defensive abilities before I go through, I'll have a better chance of surviving whatever's waiting for me?'
But before he could implement any kind of strategy, his grip finally failed completely.
The bookshelf tore loose from the wall with a sound like thunder, and Creed found himself flying through the air toward the portal with all the grace and dignity of a sack of potatoes.
He had just enough time to think that this was probably the most undignified way possible for a hope candidate to begin what was likely to be his final adventure before the swirling colors of the portal swallowed him completely.
The sensation of traveling through the portal was unlike anything he had ever experienced before.
It wasn't like falling, because there was no sense of up or down, no gravity to give direction to his movement.
It wasn't like flying, because he had no control over his speed or trajectory. It was more like being dissolved and reconstituted simultaneously, like existing in multiple places at once while also existing nowhere at all.
Colors that had no names flashed past him in impossible patterns, and he could hear sounds that might have been music or might have been screaming or might have been the universe itself trying to communicate something vitally important that he couldn't quite understand.
The journey seemed to last both forever and no time at all, a paradox that his mind couldn't properly process but that somehow felt perfectly natural in the context of whatever impossible space he was traveling through.
He could feel his body stretching and compressing in ways that should have been agonizing but instead felt oddly peaceful, like being gently massaged by the fundamental forces of existence.
And then, as suddenly as it had begun, the journey was over.