Chapter 971 - Thinking with portals

Reappearing inside of the thing, just above the destroyed diaphragm-like flesh ‘doors’ she had just crashed through, Sofia did not dare to just fly through. Since the rules were unclear, she would not take her chances with ‘doors’. Instead she directly let Pareth out of the halls on the other side, letting him go ahead first while she carved herself a new opening through the fleshy walls around the ‘door’ with her plasma-covered staff.

She joined Pareth a few seconds later in what her mana senses read as a massive open cavity, but she couldn’t see much of anything with the fog.

Pareth was flying near the ceiling, busy fighting enemies she could hardly perceive.

Since there was space now, Sofia summoned the skull choir, ordering the five giant destroyer skulls to go help Pareth while she channeled two explosive bolts.

Just five seconds later, she slammed the first thirty-million mana explosive archangel bolt into the fleshy ceiling above.

After a brief and intense flash of light pierced through the fog, everyone was engulfed by a massive ball of blue fire. This quick cast already produced a fireball several kilometers in diameter, turning the already injured tumor-like things Pareth was fighting to charred husks, singeing the flesh walls and fully washing away the fog from the immense cavernous space with the shockwaves that bounced back and forth between its walls.

Pareth and Sofia both looked down, the burning air gave them a clear what exactly they were up against. It was a huge misshapen white thing, hanging in the center of the cavity held there by thick flesh tendrils and giant pulsating veins. All over its indescribable shape, flat white rectangular flaps, like thousands of doors, constantly opened and closed, giving short glimpses of many foggy realms hidden inside.

The white thing trembled, and quickly it spewed out more fog to conceal itself. The explosion had not harmed it in the slightest.

Strange thing. And it barely has any mana.

More of the tumor-like things Pareth and the choir were fighting were constantly spewing out of the walls and the ceiling. Sofia wanted to go attack the white thing, so she flew through the rain of tumors while approaching the white thing, they attacked her but their attack power was limited, so she was fine even if thousands of them rained on her from above.

Only for all of those things to suddenly and violently flatten mid-air. Sofia was fully surrounded and couldn’t stop in time. She flew through one of them, and suddenly found herself in a boiling hot desert, covered in green fog under a purple sky, while a fleshy door slammed shut and disappeared behind her.

You can’t be serious!

[Regret]!

Sofia reappeared inside of the beast, but she was still surrounded, completely boxed-in by countless flesh-carved doors. Worse yet, Pareth’s Inquisitor’s mark was now located a few million light-years away.

This situation was an emergency. With Sorrow’s divine item, [Regret] only had a two seconds cooldown, but it also only had a one second scope. If she was sent to another place again during the first second of the cooldown, she would be stuck there with no way back.

The flesh doors collapsed together to send Sofia away.

The second bolt was still only at a measly sixty million mana, but Sofia felt she had no choice. She slammed against her helmet to detonate it, the blast pushing all the flesh doors away. It burned thousands of them to a crisp, but there were countless more. Sofia barely made any progress toward the fog core before she was boxed-in again.

Suddenly she felt a shift in Pareth’s position, he was back in the cavity near the ceiling for just a second before being gone again, this time just a few lightyears away.

This was the last thing Sofia had time to process before the flesh doors collapsed on her. She’d cut through a few before getting caught but it was pointless, as the entire space beyond was only more of them.

This time she appeared upside-down in a thick plume of smoke, plunging head first into a deep pool of bubbling magma.

[Regret]!

Like a hunting hound refusing to stop biting its prey, Sofia came back again. This time as she reappeared, she grabbed the frame of a fleshy door to prevent it from engulfing her and tried to immediately summon the graveyard Nymphs, hoping that she could escape the doors through the spirit plane, but she was too slow. An even larger fleshy door engulfed both herself and the door she was fighting against, sending her away again.

The creature seemed immune to its own strange magic, as Sofia appeared alone in a glacial environment, in the middle of a snowstorm. She tried grasping up at the closing fleshy door above her, but it really was too quick to close and disappear. If the door creature’s attack capabilities were weak, its speed and resilience were certainly enough to contend with Sofia’s level.

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Shit!

With [Regret] still at the beginning of its cooldown, Sofia was stuck in this unknown place, wherever it was. Still, she had some ways back, but they were limited.

She checked her position on the transposition star map. She was so far away from her effigy left outside of the ECA facility that she had to zoom out multiple times and even then it barely just appeared in a corner.

Similarly, Pareth’s mark was an incredible distance away.

I can still return to Pareth but that’s not helping, it’s just pulling me farther away from the target…

That being said he managed to come back after being sent away. And it wasn’t by teleporting to me, so how…

He must have found another door!

The bone door I made at the start connected! Is that thing not able to properly limit its powers?

Sofia hurriedly made a small bone door, and against all logic, it resisted her when she tried opening it.

Oh isn’t that cute?!

With a shoulder bash, Sofia forced the door open. She only reappeared in the belly of the beast for the briefest instant before falling right into another open door and finding herself inhaling poisonous mist in a swamp that was strong enough to corrode her bone armor.

Fine, you want to play this game?

Let’s play.

Casting another explosive bolt and channeling it for a few seconds, Sofia created another bone door, and slammed the explosive bolt against her chest as she burst through.

Sofia couldn’t even see the explosion. Before she knew it, she was sent flying out of a wooden structure’s door at the peak of a mountain, in the middle of a thunderstorm cloud. Instead of closing, this time the structure’s real door burned to ashes behind her.

The architecture was completely foreign.

Some kind of shrine?

Lightning continuously struck the top of the strange wooden structure, inflicting no visible harm.

Sofia did the same bolt trick again. However this time even that was too slow. The bolt was sent with her to another place, and exploded that unknown environment to bits before Sofia could even see what it was.

This time she tried to [Regret] out again, but all it did was sending her back to the mountain peak in front of her open bone door.

She closed it and rammed through again. She couldn’t tell if there was even a transition through the belly of the beast anymore, as she ended up directly inside of the bolt’s fireball in the other place, which was still actively expanding.

So the locations aren’t random at all, each door leads to its own place…

Sofia had an idea.

She made another bone door, appeared in another foggy realm, again, and again, and again. Waiting for the door monster to mess up.

And eventually, it did. Barging through a bone door, Sofia arrived directly on the rooftop of a small building in the smoggy bottom layer of a gigantic mega-city. Buildings thousands of meters tall pierced through the sky and flying vehicles zoomed by in disorderly lines.

But Sofia could hardly afford to spend time taking in the sights. She directly flew through the traffic, finding another door surrounded by thick plumes of pollution smoke, and kicked it in.

She reappeared in the massive cavity of the monster, closer to the white core than ever. The millions of door-shaped tumors waiting for her arrival were lagging behind, still aggregated around the last spot she had disappeared from.

Now you really fucked up!

Grabbing at the air behind her, Sofia used [Roaming Free] to pull Pareth to her, because he was physically close, space posed almost no resistance, easily tearing up to let him through.

They both landed on the white core together as the white tumors rained from above by the millions, morphing into doors mid-air above them. The white core seemed to be what maintained gravity functional inside of the beast, which Sofia could clearly feel now that she was on it.

Protect me!

Pareth used all of his skills to buy time, be it the chains or the flying shields, he kept the doors away.

Since the bolts didn’t seem to hurt it, this is worth a try.

After two and a half seconds of cast time, Sofia bet all of the mana she had left on one attack. Thrusting the tip of her staff into the sinew-like white core.

“THE GODS CALL THEE!”

This toybox seemed not to have divine planes, at first glance. But Sofia still had her divine essences, and they were functional. Furthermore, this infuriating door creature had both a body and a soul. Thus they could logically be separated.

The white core started to unnaturally stretch as the entire cavity shook with a low rumble. After stretching more and more. It suddenly burst into a rain of white gore. The entire cavity tore apart. The gigantic beast, in its entirety, was bursting apart at the seams like a toy plushie being ripped open by an ogre. At the same time, gigantic blocks of flesh the size of buildings started falling and collapsing toward the core.

It’s done for, we’re out of here!

Storing Pareth into her eye, Sofia locked onto her effigy on the star map, made sure her armor was in the right state to resemble the effigy, and disappeared.

As Sofia appeared outside of the ECA facility again, she could visibly see the surrounding fog recede.

A system notification dinged a few seconds later.

[You have successfully dispatched the Dangerous-level threat ‘Closed Doors’, humanity's extinction has been slowed by a few days.]