The Guardian System: The strongest Summoner's quest to save his family-Chapter 356: On the other side of the portal (1)

To Reidar, it didn't feel like he was falling; it felt like he was being unmade.

He tried to deal with the sensation of crossing what he assumed was the event horizon, but his mind couldn't map it as a physical transition like that of changing location, which he could only infer, though, since he had never teleported before or gone into a portal. Instead, he felt a violent change of reality itself.

Plus, the feeling was disorienting for many reasons; for example, one second, he could feel the resistance of the dirt under his boots and the strain of his muscles as he grappled with Mara in the forest; the next, his brain stuttered as the very concepts of "forest" and "dirt" simply ceased to exist, as everything else did.

The gravity he expected to drag him down vanished, leaving him sick with disorientation, replaced by an omnidirectional pressure. He felt a spike of genuine terror, as if the universe were trying to compress his entire being into a single mass of flesh.

Reidar gasped, expecting air, but found only a thick-filled viscosity. He could not understand or name what he was feeling. It was simply too weird.

Although he braced himself to choke as the mysterious substance flooded his lungs, the reflex never came, and he instead felt a cold so intense that it bypassed his resistances entirely.

He realized that the temperature must have been many times below zero degrees Celsius, and as he flailed in the emptiness to orient himself, he quickly understood that "up" and "down" were obsolete concepts.

He watched dizzily while flying at high speed through a void of screaming lights and strange objects that moved too fast for even his F.L.A.I.R attribute to render.

Then came the nausea; he felt stretched, a horrific sensation like his limbs were being pulled toward four different corners of existence simultaneously. Desperate for an anchor, he pulled up his System interface, searching for the party status.

—[<<PARTY STATUS>>]—

Jake: [CONNECTION LOST]

Lena: [CONNECTION LOST]

—[<<END>>]—

They weren't here, which made him feel both relieved and isolated. Then the pressure inverted, and the void tore open.

The freezing vacuum was replaced by searing heat and the impact of solid ground.

Reidar hit the rock shoulder-first. The force should have shattered the bones of a normal human, but his S.H.I.E.L.D. was far higher than that of a normal human at that point, although it was nothing compared to what the others had, since he focused on A.C.U.M.E.N.

Behind him, the portal snapped shut with a sound like a vacuum seal breaking. The light collapsed inward and disappeared, leaving nothing but searing heat.

He was truly alone at that point because he had crossed the portal.

[You have entered a New World.]

[System Data not found.]

[Environmental Hazard Detected: Extreme Heat.]

[Oxygen Levels: Low. Toxicity: Moderate.]

Reidar scrambled to his feet. He ignored the bruising on his shoulder and the screaming warning signs in his vision. Instinct took over, forcing him to check the environment.

The world Reidar found himself in appeared to be lifeless and desolate, devoid of any signs of organic life.

Choked with heavy, low-hanging clouds, the sky loomed as a bruised, swollen grey. Bleeding up from the ground itself, the light illuminated a world where no sun hung in the sky.

Standing on a vast shelf of jagged obsidian, Reidar looked out over a landscape of black and glass-like rock that stretched as far as the eye could see.

An angry red glow pulsed through the smog and illuminated the black rock from beneath, where veins of magma ran through the ground like open wounds. Ash clouds swallowed the peaks of massive basalt spires that rose in the distance while dozens of volcanoes along the horizon spewed columns of fire and soot into the air.

The air reeked of sulfur and iron; its oppressive heat parched his throat every time he breathed. Besides, the temperature wasn't just uncomfortable—it was actively damaging his body.

[You are taking 5 Fire Damage per second.]

[You are taking 5 Fire Damage per second.]

[You are taking 5 Fire Damage per second.]

[You are taking 5 Fire Damage per second.]

[You are taking 5 Fire Damage per second.]

[You are taking 5 Fire Damage per second.]

"Shit."

Reidar cast [Wellspring of Vitality], and his health started surging back again. Then he scanned the immediate area; his eyes ended up onto the only other living thing in this area.

<I guess I'm not exactly alone, uh?>

Mara was twenty meters away, trying to stand still.

She had landed harder than he had. Her robes were torn and stained with soot. Then she looked up, and her eyes met Reidar's.

The instant Mara's gaze landed on Reidar, a wave of terror seized her entire being. Her pulse hammered in her ears as her mind raced to process the situation unfolding around her.

She forced herself to tear her eyes away from him, looking through the area that surrounded them, which was volcanic peaks belching columns of ash and fire into the distance.

Then, almost against her will, her attention snapped back to Reidar, standing there on the obsidian shelf, watching her with that cold, calculating expression she had come to fear more than anything else in this world or any other.

She understood where the portal had taken them and what kind of world they had been thrown into, but that was secondary.

If she had opened a portal to bring them to this place, then with enough time and the right conditions, she could make another portal that would take her back to Earth.

The problem was Reidar.

The man didn't waste time on words. He didn't ask where they were. He didn't ask how to get back. He raised the Void-Caller's Baton and summoned the Vorathid Sky-Hunters.

Space tore open, and hundreds of winged monstrosities burst from thin air. They locked onto her. 𝗳𝗿𝐞𝕖𝘄𝗲𝕓𝗻𝚘𝚟𝕖𝐥.𝚌𝕠𝕞

"Break her legs and arms," Reidar said. "Don't let her cast a single spell."

The Sky-Hunters shrieked and launched themselves forward. One of them almost got on Mara, to the point that it extended its claws to grab her.

Mara's survival instinct overrode her panic. A burst of light designed to disorient appeared.

The entire area erupted into a blinding radiance that became completely impossible to look at, the intensity so strong that even squeezing one's eyes tightly shut offered no protection from the brightness that seemed to pierce directly through closed eyelids.