Afterlife Dream

The two girls were equally surprised to see me.

"Antares!" Cecilia shouted, beaming with a smile at me. "What are you doing here???"

"Hey, you two. I just want to take a little look around here."

My eyes wandered to the pair of Angel Wings on Aurendiria's back. "Auren, you finally got yourself the wings!"

Aurendiria smiled. "Yeah, after knowing what they can do, of course I just have to get them if only to come here and have a look."

I did not need to ask what exactly she was looking for. Although we had all agreed that BlackPuma was not lost in the universe but somewhere else, a part of Aurendiria still wanted to believe that he was somewhere close. She might be hoping to find him chained up between portals to explain why he was unable to come back, but safe and sound.

"How is it? Have you guys found anything?" I asked gingerly.

"Nope," Cecilia answered. "But we have been working to tag the portals one by one."

The portals were diffuse, two-dimensional vortexes of bluish-white light. There was no place to pin a tag on, so the two girls pasted metal tags on bricks that were closest to the portal. The metal tags bore the name of the map that the portal led to.

"This is indeed very convenient," I praised. "This way people would not get lost anymore."

"That is one reason," Cecilia said with a wink. "The other reason is to get sneak into portals illegally."

"Huh?"

"The unique thing about the Angel Wings is that you can enter through any portal from the universe. There is no level limitation. If we want, we can march right into the Dimensional Sphere map now or even get into the raid portals without any key or completing any precursor raids!"

That was quite an intriguing idea. " So I do not have to wait until I level up to join the raids. I can just sneak into the respective maps and even ambush anyone's raid."

Cecilia laughed. "Easy there, tiger. But yes that is the gist of it. Isn't it exciting??"

"It totally is. So... are you girls expecting to run into the Dimensional Sphere map eventually?"

Aurendiria nodded in response. "Not only that. We are trying to find the level 150 raid map, the lair of the Dimensional Master."

It was the map that swallowed BlackPuma without leaving a trace.

"No," I objected. "You are being too rash. What if you two also disappear just like BlackPuma? We need to have a proper plan."

Aurendiria and Cecilia both shook their heads. "We do have a plan. Look, the raids are only open at 10.00 and 16.00 for two hours. That means that from 12.00 to 15.59 we should be able to wander without any risk."

That was not wrong. I started to waver.

"What do you say, Antares? Comeee, don't be boring. Let's sneak to the restricted maps. You paid a lot to get those Angel Feathers, right? What is so wrong with utilizing them fully?"

After much persuasion, I finally agreed. Even if we could not find the specific map, we would still end up with a bunch of tagged portals. That was good enough, I believed.

Although we could technically split up to work faster around the universe, we decided not to because it was, after all, still a foreign realm. The portals were spread randomly all over the space. Without any sense of direction, it was not easy to find our way.

We decided to methodically move in one direction while we traveled from portal to portal, but miraculously we still bumped into the Paradise Island portal many times. Cecilia even threw a joke, "If I am paranoid, I would think that the portal is stalking us."

"Hmm..."

I landed on a bridge while Cecilia and Aurendiria were still floating in the air.

"Antares, what are you doing?"

"Wait a second," I said. "Don't move."

The two girls exchanged a confused glance, but they just shrugged and complied with my request.

I stared at a dot in front of me, which was just located precisely between Aurendiria and Cecilia. Without moving a single muscle on my neck, my sight slowly shifted closer to Cecilia. I held my breath in sudden realization.

No, no portal was stalking us. The portals were just not affixed in their position. They moved around, albeit slowly and in pairs due to the bridges. And when I said they moved around, they did not just move horizontally or vertically. They moved in all directions. The movement was just too small to detect with naked eyes. Besides, we were moving around as well. The Paradise Island portal just happened to be moving in the same direction we did.

Cecilia and Aurendiria seemed to have come to the same conclusion when they found me shifting with the bridge somewhere to their right side.

"Antares? You... the bridge is moving," Aurendiria stuttered.

"No, the bridges and the portals are moving," Cecilia corrected her. "No wonder we keep bumping into the Paradise Island portal."

"We can just move in the opposite direction," I suggested.

"That does make more sense."

Just then, Aurendiria caught sight of something.

"Hey you two, look at those."

Aurendiria pointed in a direction and we turned our heads to look. Some distance away from us, two portals were sealed with thick iron chains. We stepped on a bridge leading to one of them and moved closer to take a look.

"I bet these two are the portals to the level 50 and level 70 raids," I muttered. The girls agreed with me. "Looks very much like it. I wonder if we will have some kind of event to break the chains."

"Or maybe we can even do it by ourselves," Cecilia suggested. "I mean, these are normal chains. An Axe Master can just come over and try to break the chains."

I pulled a grimace. "Let's not. We don't know what will happen."

After BlackPuma's disappearance, there was an unsettling feeling at the bottom of my stomach. The Afterlife Dream realm no longer appeared as simple as it was. There was a bigger, invisible mechanism behind it, and I didn't know what to make of it. We were all just chess pieces on someone else's chessboard, moving forward mindlessly to reach 150, and then what? What would happen once thirty players reached the highest level and go to face the Dimensional Master? Would all of them disappear too? The next batch of thirty would follow and go down a similar route.

No.

I refused to follow the same path as BlackPuma. I had to find a way out of the game safely.

"Hey, you two... I am wondering. We have been exploring the portals up here but have you guys thought about what lies beneath us?"

All three of us looked down at the infinite darkness that spread beneath our feet at the same time.

"Ehm... no."

Cecilia hugged herself. "Auren, I don't think it is a good idea to even go down there."

Aurendiria turned to me. "Antares, you fell down before right? When you first came down here?"

"Yes," I confirmed, "But I never landed at the bottom so I don't know what's there."

Thankfully I remembered that I had a set of working wings to save my life. But if I had not, what would happen? Would I eventually hit the ground?

"I know this is a crazy idea, but would you guys want to search the bottom of the universe with me?" Aurendiria asked, throwing uncertain glances at both of us.

"Auren, do you really think that BlackPuma is down there?" Cecilia asked with a sigh.

It was so easy to guess why Aurendiria wanted to go down there.

"I just... He's not out in any maps. He has to be here. If not somehow chained between the portals then maybe down there? Maybe he needs our help."

Aurendiria was not the only one who wanted BlackPuma to come back. Many of us did. But then how risky was it to just go down there without informing anyone?

"What about this," I said. "Let's go back first, and fix a good time to search the bottom of the universe together. We need to at least inform Ingenious and ArrowRain so they know what is happening. If worst came to worst and we also disappeared into somewhere mysterious, then they would know when and where we disappeared."

Aurendiria nodded.

"Agree."

"Fine," Cecilia said. "Good one, Antares. Why don't we go back for now then? The raid time is approaching."

We flew up to the Paradise Island portal. Before I went through the portal, I cast one last glance at the darkness underneath the bridges. I wondered if somewhere down there, BlackPuma was truly trapped and waiting for us to rescue him. If he was, then would we even be able to rescue him?