Chapter 292: Between Some Hole and Some Crack.

"What the fuck is this shit?"

I couldn’t help but curse as the wind came crashing against my face along with the sound of my cloak fluttering rapidly behind me as we fell towards the ground, pulled by gravity.

We were now in Rockwave’s atmosphere and the spaceship that had been kind enough to escort us to this point just a few minutes ago was letting out smoke from all directions as it spiralled away in the opposite direction.

I could even see some poor Murgins falling off the ship to their deaths through the holes which definitely didn’t have anything to do with me, their furry little wings flapping uselessly like chickens as they failed to fly.

But that wasn’t why I was shocked.

I was shocked because the planet stretching wide in front of me was nothing like I had imagined.

Whenever I thought about a planet, I always imagined something spherical with vast oceans and land visible across its surface. Hell, maybe there are even some weird ass plans of some strange color growing on its surface.

But this damned planet defied every single one of my expectations.

It was a rock.

A massive fucking rock.

There was one enormous and elongated opening stretching down from the top, almost as if someone had created a gigantic hole straight into the planet to do something rather unholy.

And except for that single opening, there was nothing. Rock surrounded it from every direction, packed together without even the smallest visible gap.

[IMAGE]

"This is Rockwave, young Monkin," Pandelion said with a bitter smile, his cheeks flapping violently due to the intense wind. "A planet with a history of countless millennia and a planet that was once used as a prison for Divine during the Age of Gods."

The moment he said those words, my eyes widened.

"A prison of Divine?"

"There are only legends from the distant past and even we don’t know much about them anymore but long ago, this planet was supposedly used as a prison for the Divine who had broken some kind of divine law."

Pandelion glanced toward the massive rocky world beneath us.

"Our ancestors, the Kings and the Patron Deity of our people, the Great Pranda, was connected to this place and was said to have been the Overseer of this prison."

I seriously had no idea what the panda was going on about but even I knew now wasn’t the time to ask.

Although our descent had slowed considerably thanks to my cloak pulling against the combined weight of all three of us with everything it had, we were still steadily getting closer to the rocky shell of the planet.

"Anyway, we can discuss all that later, for now, tell me where the fuck we’re supposed to land?" I shouted as the roaring wind tried supressing my voice.

I looked toward the enormous hole stretching into Rockwave.

"That hole, for all its massive size, is definitely going to be heavily guarded if those pirates have even the slightest bit of brain. So do we have no choice but to enter through that?"

I turned toward Pandelion.

"Judging by how confident you were earlier when you begged me to take you with us, I am assuming you have another way in?"

He nodded slowly.

"Yes, young Monkin. I do have a way."

He pointed toward the side of the massive opening.

"To the right of the entrance, there is a small crack. Spaceships have difficulty squeezing through it but it should be more than enough for us to enter the ecosystem of my world."

He paused for a moment before continuing.

"The crack is said to be a scar left behind long ago by some kind of spatial rupture and it works in strange ways."

The panda started overexplaining things I hadn’t even asked about as my cloak adjusted the direction of its pull, slowly shifting our descent toward where Pandelion had pointed.

As we pulled closer, the absurdity of the planet only became more obvious. At first glance, Rockwave was definitely larger than Earth from my previous life but that massive opening was something else entirely.

It was large enough for thousands of adult dragons to be stacked on top of one another and still not reach its ceiling.

Shaking away my useless thoughts, I focused on our descent and just as we got close enough, I willed my cloak to pull with everything it had while channeling as much mana into it as I could through it.

The cloak immediately ballooned up against our combined weight, its edges fluttering violently in the wind as our descent slowed even more.

It was not enough to stop us completely but it was enough to keep us safe from being turned into paste.

THUD!

Just as we were about to crash, I twisted my body just enough so that my left side faced the ground because that unnaturally fluffy panda was on that side.

His body crashed onto the ground with a loud thud as I landed directly on top of his fluffy body.

Perfect.

But before I could even celebrate my brilliant landing strategy, Arza came crashing down on top of me, her elbow slamming straight into my solar plexus, almost knocking my soul out along with the remaining air in my lungs.

"Fuck."

And as if she hadn’t just nearly murdered me, she immediately got back to her feet and casually dusted herself off.

"That was... fun."

She said it while staring down at the rocky ground beneath us, probably trying to figure out what it was made of.

I seriously didn’t understand this girl.

She barely showed any emotion toward anything but apparently falling thousands of feet through the sky toward what could have very easily been our deaths was fun to her.

I rubbed my temple before finally getting off the fluffy panda beneath me and somehow, Pandelion had managed to look even deader than before.

He had already looked half-dead back in that prison but now, he just looked straight up dead.

His eyes were wide open, his tongue hung limply from the side of his mouth and his entire body remained completely still.

I stared at him for a few seconds but he didn’t move.

An ominous feeling slowly crept into my mind.

... Did I maybe accidentally kill this guy?