'Ouch,' he thought from his Dei-shaped indent in the ice. He quickly turned himself intangible as the dark tentacle came down a second time, now coated in sharp spikes, but it didn't help when he still felt the force press into him.

'Okay, it can hit ghosts.'

When it pulled back once more, he grabbed onto it and let himself be pulled free. He was still in the battle form with his clawed fingers, so he gouged the flesh and kicked off it, attempting to put some distance between them while simultaneously firing off a Wrath Identify into it.

That particular limb was stunned in pain, but two more came from the sides to crush him. He dodged the first one, but the second wrapped around his leg, quickly making its way further up while tearing jagged lines in his skin.

The Identify gave him a better idea of what he faced- a Cosmic Beast.

It was in the same "Family" of entities as a Void Beast, but higher up in the affinity tower. It was composed entirely of Cosmic mana, and hungered to learn. It sought entrance into their world because it didn't understand a subset of its own power, the Space line, and the Physical world held close ties with Space.

It was attempting to kill them because its experiments on Space were sure to cause damage to the local reality, and it assumed they were the Physical worlds gate guardians. It wasn't a world-ending threat, but if he let it through, it was sure to cause some pretty bad fallout for the fabric of reality in the North Pole. He was the one to open this gateway, so it was naturally his responsibility to repel the Cosmic Beast

It was fascinating to see it alter its form into a fleshier visage. Its senses were immediately crippled once it arrived in the Physical world because it required fleshy organs such as eyes to see, which this beast did not have.

When it felt the "Teeth" experiment garner some success in causing damage because of its close relation to the idea of "Sharpness," the Cosmic Beast redirected its efforts at adapting in another direction, and Dei felt it begin enforcing ideas upon itself for how to exist in the new world it found itself.

Dei brought his mind back to his body and how the beast was about to attempt grabbing him by the head and pulling him in two. This was not an enemy his fists would do very well against, so he leaned into what a Leviathan would do in his place- use Connection.

In a flash of white, the hairs lashed out, cutting deeply into the one holding his leg while wrapping around the one coming towards him, stopping it dead. He could probably teleport himself free, but he was facing a Cosmic Beast; using Void, one of its specialties, felt like an utterly insane idea and would more than likely end with it hijacking his Roving Gate.

The arm he'd stunned regained its bearings and went for his chest. Dei could've grabbed that one as well, but he wanted to win, he didn't want a stalemate.

'Fuck it.'

He opened the slightest crack in Hellish Divergence, releasing a smidge of Chaos into the air. The explosion was much more controlled, vaporizing the two limbs close to him while pushing back the third, frying it with the residual lightning.

Dei finally flew back, getting a better look at the full battlefield and seeing Perumah skirt around her own attackers. In the center of it all, six tentacles squeezed themselves through.

Dei watched as a pulse flew down the limbs. Where it passed, organs formed in a horrific amalgamation. Hearts and lungs coated its skin, bones poked out, and flesh knit into strange asymmetrical muscles.

When the pulse hit the nubs he'd destroyed, the beast's movements froze as if it'd just realized that its limbs had been severed.

Dei flew forward, tying the limbs attacking Perumah together and cutting into them while keeping a watch on the opening. He saw space crack, and a space formed in the center mass that sucked in light. Bestial Communication told him it was in disbelief at how much damage it'd taken and was attempting to look through with its main sensory organ to perceive what it faced.

The amalgamant limbs also went through a transformation, and the flesh sloughed off to reveal a second layer- it'd removed all shapes and forms that it considered "Failures." Those that were damaged by their existence were not recreated, while those that showed a slight measure of success were given more resources to reform- the main survivors being "Surface" organs such as skin, ears, noses and, yes, eyes.

The eyes were mostly glazed over, but a few worked, looking around wildly and occasionally glancing at him.

By the time he finished sawing through two more limbs with the sharp lines of Connection, a third pulse flew down, cutting off the faulty organs again and replacing them with the ones that worked better. Eyes and ears were given priority because of their fast-paced ability to perceive their surroundings. Now that it knew what was happening, it also decided to focus on creating sharper blades. Teeth were okay, but inefficient and not damaging enough because of the lack of depth to their attacks. It lengthened them and sharpened the sides as well, creating a rudimentary blade.

Dei could only grimace at how… efficient its thoughts were. Getting into its mind with Identify certainly helped him know what to expect, and he had to admit that this thing would be trouble if he let it get a foothold in the world. He'd promised himself that he wouldn't use other spells from Slaughterer of the Sundered Realm, but they were perfectly suited to destroy something like this. It was composed of realm material manifest, and would be wildly nutritious for Starved Bastion. Entropic Touch would also rip through something like this, but he needed pure Entropic Energy from Starved Bastion to activate it at all!

A light use of Hellish Divergence had succeeded… he was going to risk it.

He quickly scanned over everything about Starved Bastion using Knowledge, and was much more hopeful when he saw that it occupied the opposite end of the spectrum from chaos. Rather than randomly impose the idea of everything at once, it destroyed every possibility. By cutting away the possibilities of everything except Dei himself, it pruned all unnecessary materials, turning it into fuel for him to use.

If he read this right, the world would have a much easier time of accepting this. Earth's universe already had a naturally entropic process as the stars slowly died out, leaving dead worlds in their wake. By that logic, the mana-based worlds that had closer ties with chaos would react to entropy in the same way that-

'Not important.'

He carefully activated the Skill.

His scarce use of entropy was for naught, though, as the current universe didn't seem to care even slightly about his Skill. It did not rip the energy from him, nor did it react badly. The Skill exhibited absurd efficiency, if he was reading it correctly, so he slowly ramped up the process, watching it clear away the more unnecessary things in his body to create the idea of nothingness.

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It abruptly stopped, and Dei saw that it'd run out of stuff to destroy. He had an idea and, while wrestling with the creatures remaining limbs, grabbed at the discarded body parts below with Connection. Though Starved Bastion would only eat things within him, Connection helped bypass this limit by marking the flesh as "Dei," linking it to his soul and allowing it to fall within the correct parameters.

They were steeped in the exact energies Starved Bastion needed, and he was filled with enough power to finally test Entropic Touch. When he forced entropy into the Cosmic Beast, he finally got a reaction of pain out of it.

Though it was silent, Bestial Communication insisted the monster was now crying out in agony, while before it didn't care about the damage to what it considered temporary flesh. All he'd done before was cut the strings to a puppet, but now he'd wounded the hand.

Rather than pull back, the monster threw its entire body into the portal to their world, throwing its experiments to the wind and deciding a show of force was now necessary. It was pissed, and ready to go all-out to squash some puny airworlders.

Now that it wasn't focusing all its effort on successfully adjusting itself, the portal was easily large enough for it to enter through despite its size. A squeeze here, a dip out of euclidean geometry there, and it manifested.

It was still mostly blind, but a beacon of energy stood out to it- Dei. The entropic energy within him was something familiar to the beast, and something it'd eaten before. It mentally grinned as it saw the "Guardian" was using something that fell within its domain, and Dei paled as it reached out, finding another universe hidden within the entropy. It assumed Dei was like it, and that this hidden universe was somehow his true body while the fleshy vessel existed as a simple object.

'It sees my Harmonic Sanctuary!'

Dei didn't know how it was reaching out, as its "Main" body didn't really look like anything. It was just an endless shadow that perpetually absorbed all light around it, making it seem like a kind of black hole. The tentacles were the only thing that was allowed to exit its "Body," everything else getting sucked in, and it drew them back within itself now.

Still, he was not helpless to resist it. He activated a low-level usage of Chaos, and felt its reaching grasp get ripped to shreds before it could touch his inner world.

He'd been afraid to activate the next part because it still hadn't noticed the connection between them and he didn't want it to, but they were a bit past that. Rather than sit there and take it, Dei marked the monster, which it was linked to, as part of itself and a tumor, allowing Starved Bastion to begin taking bits from it.

He felt it fight back, thrashing against the drain and mostly succeeding. Seeing that it was not nearly as effective as he wanted it to be, Dei used Entropic Touch on the lines of Connection within it, disintegrating the beast from the inside out.

Fear and panic filled its mind as it attempted to flee back through the portal, but it could not escape his Fragment of the Leviathan. The poisonous energy filled its veins while it was eaten alive by his Skills and, before it could solve the issue, wasted away to nothing.

The shadow of its body dissipated, and the battle was over.

"God damn, is that between every world?!" he shouted to the air.

"No, I was looking through its memories more while you distracted it. We just got lucky."

"Lucky?" he asked incredulously.

"Yes. Lucky. Now we will know to keep our guard up between worlds, and we know we have to figure out another, safer way for the Earthlings to move before they can dimension hop. Traveling through the seams is clearly a dangerous prospect. It is good to know that now."

He sighed, "Still, that scared the shit out of me. I didn't know it was even possible to attack me like that, and how did it bypass my soul's natural defenses so easily? It was able to just reach in, and nearly took hold of both my entropy and my inner world."

She gave him a slight sidewards glance, "Did you seriously forget?"

Dei's mind raced as he tried to not seem like an idiot, arriving at the obvious conclusion that he had forgotten.

'Connection works both ways! The cost of being able to pierce its soul defenses and look through its mind with ease is that it can look through mine as well and, if I'm not careful, fully bypass my defenses.'

"No no," he lied, "I get that this is the cost of using Connection to bypass my Slaughterer limitation, but it's still frustrating that I can't form some kind of defense against it. The entire reason I'm able to use magic on others despite having it cut off as a Slaughterer is because I have to mark them as 'part of me,' effectively giving myself some kind of auto-immune disorder of the soul. It's dangerous, but most of the time it is worth it. I just need to stay careful, and using chaos will help with that as well. I'm glad I was able to fight off its attacks from within my soul using chaos, but that's another thing I have to investigate- does that mean using Connection to extend my chaos will result in people linked to me suffering from it? I assumed if I marked them as part of myself they would be safe too, but I need to look more into it to see if I can patch this somehow." He quickly started flowing through the memory, looking for what went wrong with Connection that allowed it to hurt the Cosmic Beast

At his side, Perumah shivered, "Thank goodness I didn't let you test that on me."

When he arrived at the answer, he smiled. "You aren't out of the woods yet. It was able to hurt the monster because Wrath gave a self-destructive lens to the chaos, specifically altering the effects so the Beast would be hurt. This actually proves the opposite, that the chaos will be harmless to other people linked with me. It's verified safe now."

"Still no."

He laughed, "You don't have to, but it's an option for the future if we are in a desperate situation."

"Hmm. True. Now, let us see what's on the other side of this gate. The System one had enclosed white walls but I highly doubt it'll be that organized now."

"Haven't you already seen it through the monster's eyes?" he asked curiously.

"Using the monster's senses. I would like to see it using my own or yours."

"Oh is that how you see colors?" he asked, surprised, "You borrow my eyes?"

"Yes, now hurry before something else finds its way through."

He nodded, and they floated down to the gate.

* * *

"Well would you look at that?" he said, looking at a reverse night sky. It was pure white with small specks of darkness in the distance. On the horizon, he could barely see two planets.

"My senses do not pick up anything. There are no walls, barriers, or even air. If you step through, you will find no floor."

"Really? No air? Why isn't anything rushing in?"

"I do not know."

"Fair. About those dark specks in the distance, do you think they're other Cosmic Beasts? The one that came through was absorbing all light, perhaps that's why? Maybe the light in here is their version of the sun, or the lowest form of energy collection or something like that."

"It is possible, and likely. I cannot see how else a high tier creature would come into existence if there were no prey creatures to consume."

"Alright, let's do a bit of reconnaissance. I should be able to cross the entire space using Void in a blip, so let's go through and close the door behind us, then set out."

Just as she'd said, there was nothing the moment he walked through, not even gravity. It was a complete mirror to outer space.

When they were both through, Dei sent out feelers with his Void senses, running into a few issues.

He couldn't actually see further than Connection was able to go, which was about a mile. These planets were clearly far more than a mile away, so he had to lean on his other method of transportation- using the karmic threads of Meditation to resonate with a spot in space, then strengthening that connection until it could hold his and perumah's weight.

When he opened his senses to Meditation though, something struck him as odd- he already had a powerful link to one of the two planets.

Frowning, he looked into how he was karmically linked to the two, reeling in surprise. He'd tried finding Boris, Jean, and Jacob with his karma when they first went missing but came up short.

Now, however, Jacob's link shined like a beacon from the planet on his right.

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