"It's unstable," Beth said immediately, examining the rent in space as she grabbed a three-rebirth monster by the head and Spatial Obliterated it by squeezing her hand and crushing its head like it was caught in a vise.

"Is that good? Or bad?" asked Ash.

"Good, I would think," Beth answered as she offhandedly killed monsters, something the rest of the group had certainly noticed.

"Is there anything you can do about it?" Bolt asked while the team tried to clear the room, a near hopeless task with the monsters continuously spawning from the rift and also swarming the place. Even if the rift weren't present and producing monsters, cleaning up the place, that had been filled to the very rafters by the rift, would be the work of weeks at the least.

"I can try something," Beth replied with a slight frown. "You just have to give me some clear space."

"I got it," Ash said simply before manifesting her Presence. A golden scepter appeared in her hand, intricately detailed, with thirteen glowing rubies embedded about the crown. The weight of her Presence crashed down on the room like an avalanche, Beth noting that she and her two companions dealt with it far better than any others but the two other Enlightened.

Ash spun the scepter about the room, long, thin lines of fire whipping out from it and slicing apart the monsters, many of the weaker ones burning away to ash from the merest touch of the flame. Ash was clearly an expert with her Presence and her manipulation of fire, scouring the room clean in but a handful of seconds while the others pushed back to the three doorways, blocking them with nothing more than their bodies and weapons. Ash retracted her Presence once the room was clear, but took over guarding the portal with Bolt and the third Enlightened, who went by the name Whisper, but Beth assumed that was also a nickname or nom de plume of some type.

Beth walked up to the edge of the platform and inspected the portal, carefully studying the rip in space as more monsters poured out of it. They weren't spawning at an obscene rate, meaning that the three Enlightened could more than keep up with it, even without their Presences deployed. The monsters were dropping out of the portal, not appearing near it, each of them falling out of the rent in space like strange, rotten flesh soughing from a decomposing body. Beth ignored everything else and focused on the rift, watching as lines of twirling space, visible only to her, unless one of the Enlightened had a very powerful mana sensing skill or eye power, moved in strange waves from the heart of the tear. The lines were twisted and uneven, speaking to how the space had been disturbed by whatever event it was that had kicked this all off, and whatever that event was, the rift was being held open by some energy source below the platform.

"Anything?" asked Bolt, looking back at her after a few minutes.

"I'm gonna try something crazy," Beth replied calmly. "I would stand a little further back."

"Crazy with portals means real crazy," Bolt said, commanding the others back, though they still killed the monsters as they appeared.

Beth stepped back just slightly, putting a couple steps between her and the edge of that strange platform. She gave her sword a flick, grinning again as she looked at her auction purchase, the new level three hundred blade being heavy, powerful, and incredibly sharp. She grasped the hilt with both hands and slowly lifted it overhead, ignoring the questioning glances of the Enlightened as they held the area around the portal clear, focusing just on the blade and on her sense of space. She concentrated on her sword for a moment, feeling the blade in her hand and the space it occupied before starting the first part of Monstrous Blow, pumping herself full of mana. She didn't complete the attack, but focused inward, pulling on what she knew of how Spatial Obliteration worked, focusing spatial mana around her sword. She didn't notice what the others in the room could start to see, a shining silver and gray swirl of mana around the sword, but she felt the changes. She strengthened herself to the limit with Beastly Tyrant before using her knowledge of how skills worked, how they changed and grew, and how her skills in particular operated, to slice down with a singular cut, faster than lightning and ten times as strong.

Her blade sliced through space itself, cutting apart the very fabric of the universe where it passed, slicing everything, including the spatial mana, both what the gate made and what was normal for space itself to possess. The blade never made it close to the portal, despite its over six foot length, but that was not at all a detriment to Beth's skill, as a line of spatial mana, thinner than a hair and with enough force to slice steel like paper, cut away from the edge of her blade in a line straighter than a razor and far more deadly. The cut made not a noise at all, only the aftereffects of the blade and the spatial mana's passage making any noise at all, and that noise was only a slight whisper, lost in the general noise and mayhem that permeated the chamber.

At first, it appeared that nothing had happened, though Beth and the three Enlightened watched the tear in space carefully, her most of all. Her skills gave her quite a sensitivity to space and spatial mana, and she could see, long before the others noticed with any sense of theirs, skill-based or not, that the rift was twisting and fraying. It became obvious to the others after a few seconds, far before Bolt could even ask if she had truly done anything with that slash, that something strange was happening. That led to caution, which was well-advised, as the rift in space collapsed in on itself all at once, a whooshing, ripping, tearing sound ensuing which was then followed by a thunderous clap like a giant bolt of lightning had just struck the center of the room. Bolt raised an eyebrow, looking at the relatively small amount of devastation and the fact that no more monsters were spawning before looking at Beth.

"Clear?" he asked.

"Should be," Beth said with a shrug. "I'm not a big expert about this stuff, but space looks like it's settling back to normal. The tear is definitely closed, and the monsters have stopped, so I guess we can call that one mission accomplished."

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"Still a lot of the fuckers crawling around," Ash returned, nodding at the doorways that the teams of Empowered were holding. Sera and Blood had teamed up with the stone man and were holding the doorway just behind Beth, the other six members of the team likewise splitting into groups of three, with the dwarf working with the two Empowered elves to hold the far doorway.

"Old saying on my homeworld; 'Not my circus, not my monkeys,' " Beth said with a shrug.

"Damn right," Bolt said with a nod. "We were told to come down here and get this thing shut down, not clean up the rest of their damn mess."

He walked to the center of the room before speaking in a loud, commanding tone, saying, "Listen up! We're going to take fifteen minutes to investigate this room, unless any of you lot need a longer break. If not, we're securing what we can, then we're heading back up."

"Understood," and "Roger that," was the reply from the rest of the group, nobody complaining of needing any rest, the nine holding the doors continuing to focus on their current tasks.

"Platform," Bolt commanded and all four of them not defending doors immediately moved back to it to investigate.

Beth gave the whole thing a good look over before walking over to Sera and switching with her. "I'm good with space but Sera is good with void," she explained for the room's benefit. "Best to let her look."

"See what you can find, but we're not staying down here for hours," Bolt commanded Sera, the three Enlightened still inspecting the platform.

Sera moved over to the platform and gave a grunt right away. She knelt by the corner closest to where Beth had sliced across the portal, digging into the stone with a very sharp claw. It didn't take her more than a handful of seconds to cut a chunk away, picking it up and setting it to the side before slicing back in again. She removed several more chunks before gesturing Ash over, the woman looking down at the section of runes that Sera had exposed. There was an intricate webwork of lines and symbols in a circle that Sera had exposed, and the other two Enlightened also walking over to see what she had found.

"This is a holding array," Sera said, the others nodding in agreement. "At least, it looks like it's meant to contain a certain object; I could detect the void mana and a weakness. I think we can destroy this, specifically with fire, and not cause any backlash. We could burn it away and then get at the root of the whole thing. The symbols mean to redirect void mana, but it's clear the whole thing has failed critically somehow."

"How dangerous is that?" asked Bolt.

"Not really much more dangerous than leaving this all here in its broken state," Sera replied with a shrug. "If it backfires, we can still get clear, and I don't think there's a high chance of that. Unless somebody else has a different opinion?"

"Let me look," the dwarf called, Sera directly switching out with him so they kept three to a doorway. The old dwarf knelt over the hole Sera had carved, having to hold his very long and full beard back to keep from dipping it into the pit. He inspected the runes for just a minute before nodding his head, standing and backing up a bit.

"Lass is right," he said. "Can't do this shite much more harm than has already happened, and honestly better we get this taken apart. It getting more unstable and still having that big power source down there won't lead to good things happening."

"Do it," Bolt commanded Ash, the woman not needing to be told twice.

Ash didn't use her Presence, but she clearly had a great command of fire and fire mana, expertly extending very thin and powerful beams into the hole. It was more like she was making a rather thin and quite powerful plasma torch or cutting device rather than slinging fireballs around, and she used that to very precisely cut through the runes, cutting several at once, which actually lowered the chance of a backfire rather than going one-at-a-time. She took about a minute to fully cut through everything, after which everyone could very clearly feel a shift in the mana in the air.

"Cut through the middle, quick!" Sera said. "You can grab the source right now."

Bolt didn't even wait or issue an order, just stepping right to the edge of the platform and slicing it apart with his blade. Ash and Whisper moved the cut chunks out of the way in the blink of an eye, clearing up the area to reveal the underside of the platform. Buried down there was a series of runes and symbols carved in several circles, though the center was left clean and clear. Sitting in that clear area was what looked very much like a big power cell, a large, square container that was about two feet to a side and made of some kind of metal and other material, perhaps a ceramic composite. There was a window on the front of the device that glowed a dark, ominous purple, and the thing also had four connector ports, one to each side, all of which were attached to powerlines or rune links carrying some kind of charge.

"Just grab it and pull it out," the dwarf concurred with Sera. "Damn thing's in temporary shutdown right now. Don't let it get back online while still hooked up."

Ash and Whisper leapt into the pit, careful not to directly step on one of the mana circuits, each taking a side of what proved to be a very heavy box and lifting. The worse part was that the connectors were tough and needed to be manually disconnected by just pulling the whole unit up, which gave a lot of resistance. Before the dwarf or Bolt could join in, Beth leapt over, leaving Blood and the stone man to quite easily take care of their doorway. She activated Beastly Tyrant at a super high output, her hair swirling and lengthening while her body visibly bulked up and grew thicker from the effects of so much mana being used with the skill. She grabbed the box, hauling on it with a growl, the others watching with wide eyes as the thing slid smoothly upward as if it was being raised by a hydraulic lift or jack. Beth lifted the whole thing herself, the other two letting go to give her room to maneuver, and she lifted it fully clear of the pit they had made in the platform before leaping over to clear floor, her weight and the weight of the power cell causing the pavers to crack and break where she landed.

"Heavy," she grunted, setting it down with a very loud thump.

"Built solid," the dwarf said. "Safe for a storage space now."

"I've got it," Bolt said at Beth's questioning look.

"All yours," she said before moving back to her door.

"Alright, form up! We're out of this shit pit!" Bolt barked, pulling everyone back together before leading the way out through the same path they had come in. They followed their exact same course back, still under constant attack the whole time, but it was more manageable this time as the monsters weren't being replenished. Clearing out a space of enemies gave the party a bit of breathing room a couple times, all of which they used for quick, potion-drinking breaks.

They slowly made their way back up to the surface, finding themselves in the cavern they had leapt into quite a few hours ago. They cleared out a large space in the cavern with a burst of power, Ash doing a lot to just vaporize a big chunk of the monsters, before everyone leapt or climbed back up. The stone man burrowed through the earth again, joining them at the top at the edge of the path they had plowed earlier. They used that path to get back into the woods before heading up the long slope they had come down to get to where the breach had happened.

Beth was a bit confused how the breach occurred like that, but both the dwarf and stone man put forth a theory that mana had sped through the underground, building up in a big wave before coming together in the large cavern, causing a thunderous explosion at a point where multiple streams overlapped. Beth wasn't sure how much water that theory really held, but it was better than anything she could come up with, so she left them to debate it as they got back to camp. She looked over her own little gain as they were getting back into the walls.

Transformative feat acknowledged.

Monstrous Blow Gold[5] has become Spatial Slice Gold[6].

It wasn't necessarily a huge upgrade, but the new skill was a tier above the old one and just seemed more powerful to her. She was also coming to accept that she had some talent or some innate natural affinity with space and spatial mana that made it rather easy for her. It also led to her more easily and completely being able to manipulate and understand spatial mana and any related skills, meaning that the upgrade was more than just a minor one for her. Also, the ability to be able to slice through space itself just seemed…well, really cool. She wondered if she could use it with her fists, giving a little test by punching into the air, slicing apart the space for quite a distance directly above her. When the others in the group glance at her sharply she had the decency to look a bit sheepish and shrug at them in response.

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