The Stubborn Light of a Dying Flame [Isekai - LitRPG]

Present Day Lapis — Ashen's side of the boundary

Britt stumbled out of the crack, her skin still prickling from the Essence. She stood on a slab of white crystal that glowed faintly, illuminating the dense forest. It was difficult to tell if the darkness was from the time of day, or because of the thick canopy that blocked the light from above. The crack still pulsed at her back, so she moved away from it to avoid exacerbating her existing burns.

At least it's not a barren wasteland, Britt thought, surveying the surrounding trees. After six thousand years—presumably without Corvi—she was expecting Ashen to be in rougher shape, but the tall evergreens seemed to be thriving thanks to the nearly overwhelming amount of Miasma in the air. It seemed like there was even more Miasma than when Britt left Ashen.

Nathan and Andrea were sitting at the edge of the crystal, deep in some sort of discussion. They fell silent when she came through.

"Britt! Glad you made it!" Nathan said with a smile that didn't match the situation.

"Is Emma coming too?" Andrea asked glancing behind Britt at the crack. Judging by the way she stared right through it, Andrea couldn't actually see the crack, even on this side. She was just estimating its location based on where Britt had come out.

It seemed Britt's worries about the effect Miasma would have on humans were unfounded. They didn't seem to be affected at all. In fact, standing here, they seemed to be doing better than they had on Ember. Nathan was relaxed despite the situation and Andrea's forehead was free of the frequent worry lines that Britt had thought might just be a permanent feature of her face.

The Miasma was thick enough to kill a normal Lerian on contact. If they were sensitive to Miasma, they should have at least been burned to a crisp by now.

Britt shook her head. "I think she's going to wait for us on the other side," she said. "I gave her a communications disk I've been working on, so hopefully we can contact her when we get back."

Britt wasn't sure if she could actually keep her secret for much longer. She had a few books on the subject that might work as a cover, but the 'I read it in a book' excuse was getting old.

She resisted the urge to open her senses to see how they were taking the information. Britt had made the decision not to spy on her friends after all of them showed a strong dislike toward the idea of mind-readers. The conversation hadn't been directed at her, since they didn't know about her abilities, but from what she had gathered, a large portion of the human population would consider what Britt had done in the first days of the tutorial to be extremely violating and impolite.

Since she already had enough information to pretend to be human, she only opened her senses when absolutely necessary. Luckily, humans were quite expressive, so there was rarely any need to do so; they usually made their feelings known even before the questions formed in Britt's mind.

"Didn't expect her to abandon us like that. Damn," Nathan said, his voice only half-joking. "I'll have to tease her about it when we get back."

"Well, you can't expect everyone to go running into a portal after you," Andrea said. "I did it because I'm an idiot. You're lucky Britt came too."

Nathan snorted. "She's as stuck as we are. What about her presence makes it 'lucky'?"

"Well, she's read more than the rest of us, and her spells might actually work here. I haven't figured out how to open my System yet."

They looked to Britt expectantly and she blinked. "The System is down?" She tried opening her System as well, curious if Ashen's beacon was still active after all this time, but nothing happened. Either something was interfering with the signal or the beacon had been destroyed some time in the last six millennia.

"Yeah," Nathan said. "It's probably just out of range. It makes sense, I guess, being on another planet and all." He surveyed the forest in front of them. "Not gonna lie, the name Ashen is a disservice to this place. It's a lot more pleasant than I was expecting."

"And Ember is any better?" Andrea asked. "They're just names."

"Yeah, well Ember is going down in flames, so it seemed to fit the lore back when it was a game. This is just a forest…"

"Don't let your guard down," Britt said. "Ashen is beautiful, but it has many of the same dangers as Ember."

Britt wasn't actually sure what to expect from her home at this point. She had to assume that the anomaly was still active, right? Or had it degraded in the last six thousand years? Were there monsters like in Ember? Perhaps monsters in the sense that her Emurian was a monster. The baby was still tucked safely away in her Inventory. She had only managed to pull him out twice in the last month, both times when she had slipped away to do runes in secret in the forest.

Besides the strangely sentient creatures on Ember, monsters were System objects. Most of the ones that appeared in Ashen were from Dungeon breaks. If the System was offline, there should be no way for monsters to form.

This was unfortunately a bad thing. It meant that if there were pockets of Essence and Miasma coming together, there may be areas with unstable space, erratic weather, even small minefields where the wrong move would set off an explosion.

"I'm not letting my guard down," Nathan said. "Just appreciating the scenery. I'm always cautious."

Britt's irritation spiked. "Cautious? Like how you completely ignored my warnings and bumbled into the center of the cavern like a moron?" She hadn't meant for the words to be quite so caustic, but the only reason they were here was because he had ignored her warnings and tried to cut through the center of the cavern.

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Nathan crossed his arms. "Well, maybe if you had properly explained the problem instead of giving us vague warnings, this wouldn't have happened. Am I supposed to tiptoe around every situation that gives you the creeps?"

"No, but—"

"He's right," Andrea said, sounding a little guilty for siding with Nathan. "You obviously know more about this than we do. If you had been more specific, we would have listened to you."

Britt couldn't believe them. Now it was her fault? Because they ignored her warnings?

Because you lied to them, guilt accompanied the unwelcome reminder.

Britt ruthlessly squashed the line of thinking.

She had lied to everyone. Was she supposed to feel guilty because the gate guard didn't know she was a Corvi? The whole situation could have been avoided if they—the people who had been her party for over a month—had just shown her a little trust!

Like how they trusted you when you opened the door to the lab?

Britt growled in frustration and waved her hands in defeat. "Fine, I'm sorry. I'll try to be more specific in the future."

Nathan smiled, getting to his feet. . "Apology accepted. Now how do we go about getting back to Ember."

Andrea stood up as well, looking expectantly at Britt.

Britt frowned back, thrown off by the sudden tone shift. "You're forgiving me? Just like that?"

Andrea shook her head. "It's not really a forgiveness issue. You made a mistake. It happens to everyone."

Britt raised her eyebrows. "Yeah, but the mistake landed us in Ashen of all places."

Nathan shrugged. "Ember, Ashen, Alpha Centauri. They're all alien planets. What's the difference?"

"Alpha Centauri is a star system, not a planet," Andrea pointed out.

"Po-tay-to, po-tah-to."

Britt wasn't sure how to respond to that. Were they really moving past it this easily?

"So, is there a way to get back through the portal, or do we have to find another way back to Ember?" Nathan asked, taking her silence as conceding the point.

Britt shook her head. "It's not a portal."

"Right," Nathan said. "Well, you're the bookworm. What is it then?"

So, they were going with the book explanation? That made Britt's job easier. At least she could skip one more lie…

"It's called a boundary crack," she explained. "A tear in space between Ember and Ashen. Usually it just releases magic—Miasma or Essence—one way or the other, or sometimes both ways. That can already be dangerous, since the two energies have a tendency to explode when they meet. Some cracks, like the one we were just pulled through, can drag objects or living creatures through as well. They're called attractors."

Nathan nodded. "Okay, so this is a one way attractor from Ember to Ashen?"

Britt nodded. "That's what it looks like." She moved a little further away from the crack, joining them at the edge of the crystal. From the slight buzz in her feet, it was Essence crystal, but her Essence resistance, combined with her rune-enhanced shoes, was keeping her feet mostly safe.

"You can't force a crack to be two way," Britt said, examining the crack from a distance. "From what I've read, you wouldn't want to, anyway. Right now, this crack is only a problem for Ashen. If it were two way, it would be a problem for both sides."

There was crystal on both sides, meaning it was likely two-way when it came to the energy leak, but only one way for physical matter. That was pretty normal, from what Britt understood. To be fair, she actually had read most of this in the books from the researchers' library. She was hardly an expert in boundary cracks. They were usually taken care of on Ember's side.

"The first thing we need to do is—"

Britt was interrupted by a figure barreling through the crack. She jumped out of the way before she got run over by Emma's swift entrance.

Andrea rushed over to Emma, who had managed to check her momentum just before she ran head-first into a tree, and hugged her. "You came through! I thought you were going to wait for us on Ember."

"I knew Emma wouldn't abandon us!" Nathan said. "Though you sure took long enough."

Emma raised an eyebrow. "You were all just waiting by the crack this whole time?"

"Yes, we've been waiting for ages!" Nathan said with mock exasperation. "What took you so long? You missed a riveting conversation about the theory of boundary cracks."

Emma turned and locked eyes with Britt. This was it, she realized. Emma was going to out her to the rest of the humans. Britt had given her more than enough hints to figure out that she was a Corvi. The knowledge about Elementals, the boundary cracks…not to mention the communication device that was covered in Miasmic runes…

There was no reason for Emma to keep this information to herself.

"I think from now on, we trust Britt's gut," Emma said finally. "And we stick to the edge of caverns unless we know it's safe."

Britt opened her mouth to say something, but Nathan spoke first. "What had you running in here like a madwoman? Another cavern collapse?"

Emma shook her head. "Got into an argument with an Elemental. I didn't think I'd be on the winning side of that fight, so I bailed."

Nathan whistled. "Damn, that's cool. What did he look like?"

"She," Emma corrected. "It's kind of hard to describe. A walking volcano? Anyway, she wanted me to close the crack. Obviously, I can't. She took issue with that reply."

Why would the Elemental think that Emma could close the crack? Boundary cracks could only be closed by weaving the threads together via Essence manipulation. In theory, someone who could manipulate Miasma could do it as well, but it was more dangerous since there were less Corvi with natural Essence resistance. Even for someone like Britt, she wouldn't walk away from that unscathed.

But humans, being unable to even see the crack, would have absolutely no way to close it.

"So, now that we're all here, what's the plan?" Andrea asked, leaning against a tree. "Do we walk until we find an Ember-pointing attractor?"

"Are you kidding?" Nathan asked. "That could take years. Maybe there's something we can do with runes to make a portal back…"

"Not without causing irreparable damage to the boundary," Britt said. "What do you think caused the Cataclysm in the first place."

The group sobered.

"You have a plan, don't you?" Emma asked. "Or you wouldn't have given me this." She handed back the communications disk that Britt had given her. Britt took it, but without her Menu, she couldn't return it to her Inventory.

"We need to find a dungeon," Britt said. "They should have an entrance from both Ashen's and Ember's sides. We can pass through and come out somewhere in Ember."

"You mean like the Aeteraut dungeon?" Nathan asked. "There was a notification about it closing a couple weeks ago."

Britt nodded. "There was a book on dungeons in the library, since they were relevant to the project's research topic, but they didn't have anything about dungeons closing. They're supposed to be permanent structures around a crack that can't be closed. They control the energy that seeps through and channel it into monsters. That keeps the energy from exploding until it can be properly dealt with."

"Energy filters," Andrea said thoughtfully. "Then Aeteraut closing is a bad thing?"

"Yes and no," Britt said. "If the crack closed, there was no reason to keep the dungeon active. That was the point of sending players to mop up the remaining monsters. The System needed the area to be cleared of Miasma before it could properly patch up the hole."

"Still seems iffy," Nathan said. "Considering how many issues the System has had so far, I wouldn't bet my life on it closing the crack properly. Let's pick somewhere far away from Aeteraut."

"As if we even know where that is," Andrea said.

"Do we?" Nathan asked Britt.

Britt shook her head. "Don't look at me. I don't remember seeing any maps back in the library."

"That's because I have them," Emma said. "But they're currently locked in my Inventory."

Nathan shook his head. "See? Unreliable. This System needs help."

"Let's find the shoreline first," Britt said, placing the communications disk in her pocket. "I think I can get us back to the mainland using runes, which should work even without the System, but we need to know where we're going first."