Nihility [ Isekai • Dragon Evolution ]

Everything was white all around me. There was no sense of direction and even gravity felt weird, almost as if whatever I decided was down would be down. There was no sense of direction or distance as not even shadows existed in that space. Time seemed to be in flux around me. The best explanation I could come up with was that all of time was happening at the same time. Past, present and future in a giant ball of wibbly wobbly, timey wimey stuff.

As I looked around, a small butterfly with green patterns on its wings floated into my vision before landing on my snout.

"Who are you?" A weird voice sounding a mixture of male and female echoed from around me. I tried looking around trying to find the source of the voice but couldn't find anything, then I focused my attention on the butterfly that landed on me. "Yes. I am talking to you"

"Are you the butterfly?" I asked. I was pretty sure it was, but I wanted to confirm it.

"Is this what you call me? But yes. I am the 'butterfly' right in front of you" It answered. "I'll ask again. Who are you and what have you done to me?"

"I'm Denaru, and I have no idea what do you mean 'done to you'"

"You entered my first floor and now time seems weird. It's like when I first woke up as a dungeon"

"You're the dungeon?" I asked, a little suspiciously.

"Yes" It answered. "And you are the one who broke time"

"No I didn't"

"Yes, you did. My unstable spider bit you and now we are here. You broke time"

A glitching spider appeared in the distance and started advancing towards me, fangs dripping with unstable time that seemed to burn reality itself.

"Huh. I didn't create that one. But it's mine" The butterfly spoke

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"I mean what I said. It just appeared. Well. I'm talking now, so…" It paused. "Hm? I can't deconstruct it, but it's mine?"

The spider was starting to pick up speed, and another one glitched in this white space before starting to advance towards me again.

"Are you trying to do something? If yes, I recommend you do it fast" I said to the butterfly, already preparing a fireball spell.

"This is my domain, but I can't use my skills here. Whatever you did blocked me out somehow" It said.

"Figures" I said, rolling my eyes as I casted the fireball spell I had prepared.

The fireball formed in front of me, growing until it was 30 centimeters in diameter and then shot towards the spider, hitting it right on its face. The spider screeched in agony, but resisted the flames and kept running towards me.

Accelerating my mind, I changed the spell, giving it more explosive force instead of pure flames, and casted it. The new spell hit the spider and exploded, sending spider chunks flying everywhere before glitching out of reality.

Just as I turned my focus to the other spider, it jumped over where its dead brethren was, flying directly towards me, but I shot it out of the air by using another fireball.

"That was easy…" Just as I said it, another spider glitched in and started running towards me.

As I casted the spell in its direction, I saw another spider appearing, and another, and another, and another. In less than a second I was surrounded by glitching spiders that began running in my direction.

"They all seem from different points in time. Fascinating" The butterfly, which was still on my snout, said.

I didn't answer as I was occupied by dividing my focus into the same numbers of spiders for just enough time to pull [Magical Programming Language] and cast the fireball spell I was using. That amount of parallel thought process was way more taxing than I expected, tacking around 10% of my magicule reserves just on its own.

The fireballs exploded on contact, a grey glitching mist covered the area for a moment before just vanishing into thin air. I was about to sigh in relief when double the number of spiders appeared around me.

"Oh, c'mon!" I exclaimed. "It's an infinite wave mode?"

"What is 'infinite wave mode'?"

"Later" I said. I couldn't just continually divide my mind into whatever quantity of spiders there was. I would run out of magicules way too fast, so I needed another approach.

As they approached me, I tried something else. I jumped upwards flapping my wings to give me more impulse. The gravity in this place felt weird, almost as my own perception of down was what mattered, and I was about to put this to the test.

Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

As I flew upwards, I flipped myself in the vertical axis, concentrating on how what I was seeing was the floor. I felt my feet and hands touch something and before I fell I managed to start a sprint for a few meters before stopping and looking behind me.

I saw the spiders closing on where I was, stuck in the new wall. My gambit had paid off. Whatever I imagined as the floor would be the floor in this nonsense space, and I was about to use this to my advantage.

Running forwards a few more dozen meters, I programmed a new type of spell to attack the spiders that were starting to jump into the new plane of ground.

"Let's test this magic napalm version 1" I said as I turned around and casted the spell.

Liquid fire flew out of the magic circle that appeared in front of my face. It somehow ignored gravity, or gravity didn't exist for it, as it kept flowing in a straight line until it hit the first spider that screeched and spasmed as the fire burned it into a charred dust that glitched out of existence.

The spell didn't end there as it kept flowing. I moved the circle around, spreading the flames into a large area and hitting various spiders. It hit the first ground and stuck there, burning anything that got too close. I managed to kill a few spiders from that, but even more glitched back into reality on the new XYZ plane I was currently on.

"This will be a pain in the ass if they keep appearing indefinitely," I said.

"It's your fault. You broke time" The butterfly, who was still on my snout said.

"It's not my fault. It was your spider that caused this!" I half-shouted as I jumped into a new plane, running and repeating my napalm spell as the first one started to burn out. The remaining spiders from the first plane jumped directly into the one I was in and started running towards me again.

I couldn't keep burning magicules casting magic napalm forever. I wasn't as much of a magicule hog as dividing my mind into a lot of parallel thoughts, but it was still pricey. I created a highly pressurized air bullet spell and started casting it aiming at the spiders.

The spiders weren't that resistant and the bullets hit them like a truck, creating huge holes as the air casing of the spell dispelled and all the pressure inside exploded outwards, killing each spider it hit instantly.

The more I killed, the more appeared around me, with increasing numbers each time. The situation was looking more and more like fighting against a hydra. I was cutting the head and two were appearing in its place.

"How many spiders this place will throw at me. Really?" I said as I jumped into another plane as the quantity of spiders closing in on me became too much.

"I don't know, All of them?" The butterfly answered.

"Not helping!"

I kept running, taking a look behind me once in a while as I did so as I saw the now approaching 500s spiders running behind me. If I stopped, they would swarm me but if I didn't I would eventually tire and then they would swarm me. I could kill them, but everything that would accomplish was summon more spiders.

I tried to grab the temporal energy around me with [Temporal Manipulation], but it was too unstable for me to do anything. The moment I grabbed a handful of it, the part of reality the temporal energy was simply vanished into nothingness.

I kept running and casting an air bullet once in a while. New spiders appeared around me every time I did so, but then I noticed that one of the spiders near one I killed stumbled to the side because of the pressure of the air bullet exploding and fell into the nothingness I had created, but no new spider appeared in its place.

"I'll take it" I said.

"Take what?"

Ignoring the butterfly on my snout, I stopped and waited as the swarm of spiders closed in on me. I waited until they were just a couple meters away from me before I activated [Time Manipulation] and, putting all my will on the skill, yanked the unstable temporal energy right in front of the spiders.

Reality tore open as my skill worked its way through it, leaving an emptiness that threatened to erase me if I dared to pass the threshold of the tear on reality. The spiders, unable to stop or change direction, fell into it and I saw as they slowly just disintegrated into the nothingness.

The quantity of spiders meant that those a little back were able to change direction to avoid the rift. I jumped into a new plane and began running again.

"You do know that those holes in reality you just opened aren't closing, right? At least not while I'm unable to use my skills" The butterfly said.

"Don't care. If it kills the spiders without more appearing I'm happy"

"And what will you do with the fact that they are increasing in size?"

"What?"

"I might not be able to use my skills, but this is still my domain. I can feel the rifts cracking reality ever so slightly"

"Fuck!" I shouted and casted another air bullet at a spider, making it explode and a few more appear in its place.

If this white space was going to break into nothingness I couldn't open more rifts unless I wanted to accelerate the process, which I did not. I didn't want to die by being erased.

"Any suggestion, then?" I said, focusing on the butterfly.

"Yes. Jump" It said.

"What?" I asked, but before it could respond to me, something hit my face hard.

I was stopped and thrown backwards a few meters. My face hurt and I was a little dizzy from the impact.

"Good job, Max!" I heard a female voice coming from where I was hit. "Lindy, do you know where we are?"

"No, Amanda. We were in the dungeon a moment ago! I never heard about dungeon traps like these ones" another female voice said.

I looked in the direction of the voices and saw a human man with a tower shield looking at me behind the shield. Behind him there was an elf woman with a wooden staff with a red crystal floating on top of it. Next to her was a lion woman with a sword on her hands that crackled with electricity.

"It seems it's a trap that brought us right in front of a wyvern" The man said.

"Let's kill it, guys!" Amanda said.

"Roger" The other two answered. Before I could say anything to them, the man hit his shield on the ground, snapping my attention to him.

I couldn't look away, and I knew the other two were preparing to fight me.

"Hey, stop. I'm not here to fight!" I shouted, but I didn't know if they didn't hear of that they just didn't care, because the next thing I know was a fireball exploding on my face, blinding me temporarily.