Strawberry Devil in a Fantasy World

"Now, the demon. I wonder who it is this time? Slisthe or Slizerine, I know you're listening. Don't get in my way and I won't have to hunt you down. Now let's get the show on the road!"

As much as I would love to rid of these shadow clones hiding in my shadows, I had no idea how their ability worked. It was simply too illogical for someone who came from a technology or science based world.  

Five low level demons hovered at fixed points surrounding the sealing barrier. After leaving the temple, I could only see two of them, while the other three could only be sensed with my radar. Also, if it wasn't for my celestial eyes, I doubted I could actually spot them under such gloomy environment.

Now, just to get a perspective, the sealing barrier was covering an area the size of at least ten cities the size of Rotask, capital of the human country, Kingdom of Appallia. It was humongous.

As if rehearsed prior, those five demons were constructing a glowing seven layered magic circle above the region with perfect coordination. Frankly, I was lacking in the magic theory department because I had no idea what those magic circles were for.

"I'm guessing it's for cracking the barrier? Slizerine, what are they planning to do exactly?" I asked the shadow under me while remotely searching for the core of the Abyssal Gate. However, the shadow clone remained silent.

Fine, be that way! I'll just snipe those demons out of the sky before they finish their preparations.

I raised one arm, my index finger pointed at the nearest demon and my thumb pointed up.

"Bang!"

The next instance, a chaos bullet infused with corrosive energy penetrated the head of a dog faced demon. Following that was a freefall.  

"No scope! One down, four to go."

Strictly speaking, that dog faced demon wasn't dead. I didn't aim for its core because it was just a minion.

Next up is the fox demon.

"Bang!"

However, this time I wasn't able to hit where I intended. Three of its tails became sentient and blocked my shot with a chaos barrier. Even so, I had the evolved version of |chaos| trait whereas they had the demo version of the special trait. Because of that difference, two of its tails went limp and was slowly being eaten away by corrosive energy.

"At least try to dodge? Oh wait, if I don't hurry up, it could get messy."

My goal wasn't to simply kill off demons. That wasn't my intent at all. At best, I just wanted to test my new skills like chaos bullets and such on a live target. Toying around with demons was just for fun since they had caused me nothing but trouble.

With no time to waste, I cloaked myself in my void barrier and bypassed the sealing barrier. Once I was out of the visible range of the snake guardians hiding in the shadows, I decided to erase the shadow clone with whatever method I could come up with.

Removing the shadow clone from my shadow should be easy. I just had to douse myself with such brilliance that it could no longer stick around. That was exactly what I did. With nowhere to hide, a tiny black snake popped out scurrying around.

"What a cute little thing..."

I grabbed it with my hand as it tried to writhe its way out. Though, as hard as it tried, with a squeeze, it went poof.

"Oh, so I can kill it that easily? And here I thought it would hide inside me if I shone some light on it. I guess it couldn't... How very disappointing!"

On the bright side, Kanoko shouldn't be in any danger with such a harmless shadow stuck with her.

I rapidly descended penetrating layers upon layers of eerie fog that seemed be the background for the colorful mists playing as actors narrating untold tales. With the name giving to this place by the locals, it made me wonder if someone had actually descended into this pit and made it back to tell the tale. "Abyssal Gate" truly was a fitting name.

Minutes went by even with my current speed yet I had not reached the bottom of this pit. My goal wasn't to reach the bottom but rather as deep as I could.

Another demon had showed up to cover for the one that went out of service. The moment one of them supposedly died, another would show up a short while after. With some demons being capable of using fake bodies, unless I rid of the true body, it could keep creating false bodies much like how I could keep creating clones.

If not for my celestial eyes and my enhanced void barrier, I would have probably lost my way down. It wasn't just the strange mists and whatnot, with no gravity around here, even my directionality was getting a little fuzzy.

Though, seriously, I had not anticipated the mana here to be this dense. It certainly didn't seem that terrible from outside of the barrier. That itself proved just how powerful this sealing barrier was. Moreover, even demons when left unattended still couldn't break it given this much time.

I wonder who created this barrier? Surely... It couldn't have been just one person? Echo, do you know? I mean, can you tell me?

[This unique sealing barrier was erected by five heroes from the generation of the first Hero King.]

No one bothered to upgrade it since then?

[The knowledge was lost and the required traits were not passed on.]

That's just sad. Is there another way to stop the mana from flowing out?

[Fill this crater via artificial construct.]

Normally that would make sense. But seriously, this place is too big and the mana here too volatile. I can't just fill it up with a single command.

[Your subspace is an asset.]

Cryptic aren't you? Fine, in the worst case scenario, I'll just swallow as much of it as possible into my subspace. Then I can just take my time converting it.

While I descended, I did not forget to absorb and convert as much of these delicious mana as possible. However, no matter how much mana I absorbed, it hardly made a dent in the amount of mana gushing out.

Feeling a bit unease, I picked up my pace to the fastest speed I could muster which was close to hypersonic speed. With the way things were going, the demons would eventually break the sealing barrier. Other guardians wouldn't show up now that the snake guardian likely had communicated with them not to interfere.

Eventually, at a certain depth, the density of mana outside was approximately the density of my own mana. If I accidentally released my void barrier, there was a good chance my body would dissolve in merely seconds. That was just how dangerous this place was.

I think this is a good stopping point.

I opened a portal within my barrier and connected it to my outer layer subspace. I had a feeling if I just went into my subspace, I wouldn't be able to come back to this same spot. The space and time here was distorted by the unstable and volatile mana to that extent.

The second layer of my subspace was still mainly my storage space. The soul library and the workshop was only a tiny part of it, both completely isolated from the rest of that layer. Unallocated mana I had collected via ability or trait was stored somewhere outside of my subspace to which I had yet to find its location. The system likely managed it somewhere. But, it was a different matter if I directly transferred mana through a portal into my subspace.

A second portal was opened outside of my void barrier that protected me. Though, as expected, maintaining it was rather difficult. The unstable mana was tearing at my portal at unprecedented rate while it flooded my subspace. By tearing, I meant some part of the portal was being stretched out while other parts were collapsing. It was seriously an arduous task.

Also, since I had excess mana, I was slowly testing my limits. To date, this was the biggest portal I had created that linked to my subspace. It was thirty kilometers in radius, truly gigantic. Yet, compared to the actual size of my subspace, the portal was quite small. If I tried to expand the portal any further, there was a good chance I might lose control of it. In the worst case scenario, it might accidentally connect with another world.

There was also another method to rid of the mana but much slower. Lightsplitter was still in my possession. I could technically send all these volatile mana into the Netherworld as a temporary measure but that might end up causing irreversible damage to that world.

Anyway, with the mana I was actively gathering from the Abyssal Gate, I decided to level up a bit more and if possible, receive some upgrades. I really needed another upgrade to |void| trait to be able to convert energy faster.

Once my second layer subspace was fully saturated with the mana I had collected, I closed the portal outside. Just this alone should have alleviated some of the intense pressure felt the sealing barrier above. Notably, the mana pressure here had dropped to a fair degree, perhaps only half of what it used to be.

Alright, let's go level up. I should be able to return to this place from my subspace after.