Reidar abruptly shifted his focus from the combat to the horde of vicious insects he had sent into the Chittering Tunnels.

Through the senses of the Vorathid Foragers, he saw a cavern deep beneath the ground, illuminated by torches that flickered where they were set in the stone. Inside, black-robed figures belonging to the Church of Unbinding stood in a circle.

They were in the middle of some kind of circle, and to that circle, mana was rushing.

An invisible vortex pulled the energy along the lines of the magic circle, which caused the air itself to thin. The valley's energy was siphoned away into a single, hungry point. Reidar watched this unfold through the Foragers' eyes, though the purpose of the ritual remained a complete mystery.

<Why gather so much mana? Why here, and how the fuck are they able to do this?>

It looked like getting rid of the system granted access to something that made humans and monsters far more suited to deal with mana. Of course, it was a power Reidar didn't want to have if it meant losing his humanity.

He didn't wait for the world to answer his question. He realized he needed to stop the Church of Unbinding and commanded the Vorathid Foragers to attack. They surged from crevices in the rock and descended upon the robed figures.

It must have been comical to see ants that turned from normal size to horse size in a matter of seconds. That, of course, is comically scary, at least from the church member's perspective.

The first church member died before he could scream, a Forager's mandibles shearing through his throat. Shouts of alarm echoed as black robes whirled, hands raising to summon defensive spells. But Reidar's attack was too sudden and too vicious, and the church members weren't that strong.

The Foragers fell upon the church members. Robes tore. Screams echoed, cut short by sharp claws and crushing mandibles. The circle faltered as panic erupted.

But it was too late.

A church member, bleeding from a gash on his arm, gave a final, triumphant shout and activated some kind of mechanism inside the mana circle. Reidar didn't know what that was supposed to do, since he didn't even know how that thing could exist.

Still, the sigils blazed with unearthly light. A low, booming hum washed outward, a wave of raw power that dissolved the last Foragers and severed Reidar's link to them.

The ground beneath Reidar's feet gave a violent lurch. It wasn't the tremor of a dying beast or a collapsing tunnel. This was different.

The very valley seemed to groan, the mana saturating the air, thinning in an instant, and ripping away toward a single, hungry point. The System's frantic warnings confirmed it.

[URGENT WARNING! ALL THE MANA FROM THE ENVIRONMENT IS GETTING SIPHONED! TIME LIMIT BEFORE IT GETS COMPLETELY ABSORBED: 5 MINUTES.]

[QUEST RECEIVED: SAVE THE MANA!]

[IF THE QUEST IS NOT SOLVED IN FIVE MINUTES, THE REWARDS FROM THE QUEST THE CULLING OF THE VERDANT VALLEY WILL DISAPPEAR.]

[ERROR. IMPOSSIBLE TO COMPLETE THE QUEST IN THE ALLOTTED AMOUNT OF TIME.]

[QUEST: SAVE THE MANA! FAILED.]

<What the hell did these crazy fuckers do?>

The shaking intensified. Fissures snaked across the battlefield, swallowing the corpses of Mire-Crawlers. In the distance, near the entrance to the Chittering Tunnels, the earth bulged upward. Stone and soil fractured, pushed aside by something immense rising from the depths.

The air in the Chittering Tunnels thickened, then ripped apart. Reidar felt it through the last flickers of his Foragers' dying senses—a violent vacuum formed where the circle had been.

The stone chamber imploded inward, not from physical force, but from the sheer pull of a portal erupting from the magic circle.

Walls cracked inward, chunks of rock and earth shearing away like paper caught in a storm drain, sucked toward the growing vortex at the center of the chamber.

The remaining torches were extinguished instantly. The air itself was stolen, and only the sickly, pulsing glow of the portal's edges was left. It was a ring of fractured reality that shimmered with colors that shouldn't exist, like oil on poisoned water.

The magic circle's runes were peeling off the floor and spiraling into the void, feeding the portal's expansion.

The ground trembled from the sheer gravitational anomaly that was forming. Fissures raced along the floor, contracting, pulling debris, loose stones, and even the scattered bones of long-dead creatures towards the eye of the storm.

A piece of the tunnel's ceiling, the size of a wagon, groaned, then tore free, hurtling not down but up and in, disappearing into the maw with a soundless snap, leaving a jagged wound in the rock.

The portal itself wasn't a window, but a wound. At its heart was pitch-black darkness, an absence of light so severe it hurt to look at.

The fractured edges twisted into a mass of shadowy tendrils, laced with the corrosive glow of liquid lightning and deep-sea ink. The entire structure pulsed with the slow, sick rhythm of a breaking machine.

The air curdled as it thinned, forcing Reidar to perceive the metallic flavors of ozone and rot. A low hum shivered through his bones, a vibration below the range of audible sound that consequently rattled his teeth.

The portal consumed rock and air, drinking the valley's mana, the life force sustaining everything in the area. The chamber was consequently devoured, traded piece by piece to hold the nightmare doorway open.

Just before his senses gave out, Reidar noticed a shape stepping from the portal's shimmering edge—tall, impossibly tall. Something from beyond was pushing its way into their world.

Landing with devastating force, a limb as thick as an ancient redwood slammed down. The ground liquefied immediately, sending a wave of force rippling outward that flattened the entire tunnel system, or what remained of it.

Reidar made it just in time to see the name of the monstrosity and its level.

—[«World-Carver Behemoth—Level 763»] —

The mountain of a creature towered a thousand feet, its flesh veined with molten light. A single central eye cracked open. It was a pit of swirling galaxies that seemed to swallow the very light around it.

Though Reidar alone witnessed its emergence from the portal, the sheer scale of the thing meant the entire valley would soon know its presence.

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