I thought it might be worth trying, but it didn't even budge an inch. No matter how hard I pulled, it remained exactly where it was, almost as if its physical position was a law of its own. If it was even possible to manipulate this way, I was way too weak for it.
I didn't know what exactly I hoped for when doing this, but it was definitely not this. It was the most likely outcome, but also the most boring one. There were two other possible outcomes I could imagine were possible if my pulling had actually done anything. The first possibility would have been my preferred outcome.
Wouldn't it have been fantastic if pulling on the strings just caused the thing to unravel and vanish back into the void of nonexistence, right where it belongs? I actually thought this to be somewhat likely in the event that something manages to move the strings to some extent. The thing would lose its structural integrity and collapse, just like how the hint of [Unstable Space] describes it happening.
The second possibility was the polar opposite of the first one. Instead of the whole thing collapsing, it would open the rift fully, somewhat like how I imagined a mechanical iris door normally opened. I didn't think this to be very likely, but I certainly wouldn't mark it as impossible either.
Some other possibilities included things like the anomaly moving its physical position or rotation in space, or something like causing permanent, unfixable damage to the fabric of reality. Both were a bit ludicrous, especially the latter, though. If I were truly strong enough to somehow rip open the fabric of reality with my own hand, then someone else who was stronger than me would have long since done so, whether it be on purpose or by accident.
If the fabric was truly that fragile, it wouldn't be my fault for accidentally breaking it, right? I don't think I'd be the one to blame in this case.
Well, maybe I'd be partially at fault at most. Anyways, it didn't play out that way, so there wasn't much reason to mull about it any longer. I should instead think about what to do next. I thought through anything else I would maybe want to try in the weird world of [Broken Sky], but I couldn't think of anything except for the obvious.
Not like this would be my last chance to do anything like this anyways. With nothing more causing me any hesitation, I finally invoked [Unstable Space] to destroy the anomaly. This one seemed a lot more flimsy than the actual rift I found, so I channeled a lot less mana than the last time. No need to risk more harm to the realm than what was truly needed.
Once again, the effect of the ability slowly ramped up while I carefully observed the strings that formed the anomaly in their weird convergence. Ever so slightly, the strings began trembling. Then, as if slowly losing the tension between the unseeable points they were spanned through, they deformed and went slack. They seemingly weren't affected by gravity, though, so instead of hanging down to the floor, they twisted and turned in random directions.
The same thing happened to the strings that formed the anomaly. Like butter left out in the sun, the anomaly basically melted away. I would describe it better, but I couldn't think of a more fitting analogy.
As suddenly as it started, it ended again, the mana fueling the ability running out as the trembling went away and the strings regained their previous rigidity. The anomaly was now nowhere to be seen. In its place was now basically nothing, at least not anything visible from the world of [Broken Sky].
Aborting that skill as well, I returned to the material world I was home in. I didn't mind how weird that other world looked as much as the first time I had cast that skill, but it was still a bit mind-bending.
What I saw here confirmed for me that the anomaly was entirely gone now, as if it had never existed in the first place. I peeked at my status to see whether that brought me a level up, but I got disappointed in that regard.
[Name: Hanah Mayflower (Sentinel of the Realm)
Race: Human
Level: 30 (Tier II)
Mana: 1385/1385 | 6500/10500
Achievements: [Hero Candidate], [Predator III], [Molten Rebirth], [Slayer of the Leviathan], [Sentinel of the Realm]
Class: Broken Star (Epic+)
Active Skills:
[Celestial Fire Lv. 23]
[Broken Sky Lv. 3]
[Regalia: Starfire Corona Lv. 21]
Passive Skills:
[Thermal Conversion]
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[Broken Celestial Physiology]
[Regalia: Starfire Corona Lv. --]
General Skills:
[Identify]
[Heightened Senses Lv. 9]
[Pain Resistance Lv. 15]
[Fire Resistance Lv. 7]
[Mana Sense Lv. 1]
[Corrosion Resistance Lv. 2]]
At least [Broken Sky] had leveled up twice in this quick adventure. Celestial Fire had also leveled since I last saw it, but that was pretty expected with how much effort I put into practicing with it. Even if dry practice without any stakes was pretty unrewarding in general, the time I spent doing it compensated for a lot of that.
Now, back to wandering the vast expanses of the Great Labyrinth again, I guess? There wasn't much more for me to do here, and I still had to get out of here.
I was actually a bit surprised by just how empty this entire region was. While the volcanic hellscape I had been at the beginning wasn't overcrowded or anything, you'd at least see something every now and then. Here, however, there was nothing interesting except for the occasional horrifying cave crawler scurrying through the tunnels.
They were so disappointingly weak that slaying them was barely rewarding, though. I really wouldn't mind a few stronger opponents every now and then, at least I would get stronger a lot quicker that way.
...
(POV: Jane Aubrie)
"Go support Ms. Edelwei? over there, I can handle this here!" I shouted at Mary, who was currently rapidly shooting arrow after arrow at the monsters in front of us.
"Are you sure? These monsters seem to be pretty strong!"
"Yes, trust me on this and just go already! I'm the strongest and highest-level fighter here, if there's anything here I can't handle, we're doomed anyways. With you supporting them, the risk of any deaths will be a lot lower over there, trust me on this one."
She visibly hesitated for a bit before replying. "...Alright then, good luck to you, Jane. And please don't die, alright? We still need you."
"Yes, yes, just go already!" I responded, while making a shooing motion her way with my right hand.
I didn't want Mary here not because she was weak or anything, it was actually rather the opposite of that. Among our class, Mary was the strongest we had after me and Dahlia, if you excluded the [Hero] Blake from that equation.
We were currently in a fight with weird, very disgusting-looking monsters that appeared all over the human lands just days after the global system message rang through everyone.
That moment had basically marked the beginning of the end for us. The anomalies we had been carefully researching had all suddenly started expanding rapidly. This had sent many people into panic, but it wasn't even of much use for us. We were already as prepared as we could possibly be.
The conference that was held in honor of discussing how to handle the distortions was brought forward in date and held the very next day after the system spread its warning. A lot of things were discussed, but there was also a lot of speculation involved in all of it.
The supposed [Sentinel] the system had apparently declared by itself was also discussed at length, even if it turned out completely fruitless. The conference had the vast majority of the strongest fighters humanity had to offer, and none of them were the chosen [Sentinel]. If the sentinel was actually among them, they decided to keep it to themself for some unknown reason.
They thought the chance of the sentinel being among us summoned heroes to be rather high as well, but it didn't seem like they were in our midst either. It couldn't be Blake either, he was already the [Hero] and explicitly mentioned separately from the [Sentinel]. If they were the same person, I doubt that it would have separated them so cleanly in the warning.
Of course, the chance that any of us was lying here wasn't zero, even if I thought the chance of that to be rather low. The majority of the class, me included, was pretty open to sharing things like classes, skills, and achievements among ourselves. If any of us were chosen to be [Sentinel], I was certain that we would have known by now.
Disregarding that topic, the preparation of defense had the highest priority in that conference. The result of it wasn't all that bad either. The three kingdoms that had hold over the entirety of human lands came together and united their armies under the banner of the newly founded UWDA, the United World Defense Army.
If there was one thing the leaders of the kingdoms had learned from the past, it was that you did not underestimate the system. If the system gave the entire world a warning, you'd better take it very seriously. If any of the kingdoms had backed out of the fight, there was no doubt that the majority of their population would revolt.
Keeping vital information like this secret was completely impossible if everyone knew from a global message that got spread over a channel they had no control over. In light of that, the leaders had no other choice apart from coming together and founding the UWDA.
In the end, the chosen response was very appropriate when considering how the situation turned out to develop. About a week after the anomalies started expanding, the first rifts started opening. There weren't many at first, and we were very prepared, even if the time we had for that was rather short.
Still, what ended up coming out of those rifts was not something we could have ever prepared for. I couldn't really describe how the things looked, even if I wanted to. They reminded me a bit of how I imagined fusions of mushroom and monster must look after they somehow got blended apart and were fused back together randomly.
While the pure physical appearances of the monsters were already incredibly disgusting, they also leaked weird purplish biological matter out of some of their many orifices. I didn't know what exactly that stuff was, but I wasn't planning on finding out in detail either.
The skill [Identify] wasn't that helpful in this regard either. Directing the skill at one of the monsters usually got you something like [Invader, Lv. 26-43 (95%)]. A bit of a mess of numbers, but its meaning was pretty clear to me. The monsters were most likely not under the jurisdiction of the system, and it could only approximate their level somehow. The percentage given along with it was, in extension, the confidence of the estimation, or simplified, the chance of it being correct, though that was slightly inaccurate mathematically.
If I remembered correctly, this statistical concept was even fittingly titled 'confidence intervals', though I wasn't sure if it could really be applied as an interpretation here, as we weren't talking about a range of values with an unknown statistical parameter here, but instead about a single unknown point value.
Strictly speaking, that wasn’t how confidence intervals were supposed to work at all. Usually, they described the reliability of the estimation process and not the odds for a specific case. Still, the practical takeaway was the same here. The system was fairly sure its guess wasn’t wildly off, and that was enough for me. There were probably some better-fitting statistical concepts out there to describe this accurately, but my knowledge of this was barely surface level at the very most.
I suppose it didn't matter much in the grand scheme of things, even if I liked thinking about unnecessary things like these. The invaders were here, and they weren't going to stop anytime soon.