Re: Tales of the Rune-Tech Sage

Chapter 381: Arduous Travel

Volume 2 - Path of Providence

CH381 Arduous Travel

***

There were countless mysteries woven into the fabric of Interplanar formations—mysteries still far from being unravelled.

Perhaps this was inevitable. After all, the Interplanar formation used on the plane was not originally design by a Pangean. It was a technology reverse-engineered from the relics of another race –another realm altogether.

And though generations of Array Masters, Alchemists, and Forgesmiths had studied and improved upon it, numerous enigmas and mysteries continued to elude even these brightest minds.

Travel duration was one such riddle.

The time spent crossing the void varied wildly—anywhere from several minutes to a full month. Distance played no apparent role. Far-flung realms could be reached in a day, while nearby realms might demand weeks.

The most widely accepted theory among mage scholars attributed this disparity to each realm’s planar shield—its natural protective barrier against external incursion.

Yet even this explanation only applied most of the time. Not always.

These uncertainties, frustrating as they were, also formed part of the allure of Interplanar travel—its expedition, its conquest—its intoxicating unknown.

Still, regardless of whether the journey lasted an hour or a month in the flow of reality, for the travellers themselves it was always instantaneous. One heartbeat they stood beside an active portal, and the next heartbeat they arrived in their target realm—

At least, that was how it was supposed to happen.

--

”Father! Stop him!” Alex roared the instant he sensed the nefarious intent directed at him and his party.

Even before the shout fully left his lips, he witnessed Earl Drake strike the hostile spatial mage down with ruthless precision.

But this was far from the end of things.

A dark, imperceptible apparition drifted out of the mage’s corpse. It glanced towards Alex –or rather the Interplanar portal, chuckled, then shot away into the distant horizon like a shadow slipping between folds of reality.

No one else reacted. Not even Drake. That meant only Alex had perceived it—thanks to his Truth-Seeker eye’s Spirit Sight.

Unfortunately, he had no time to pursue the mystery.

A vital section of the interplanar grand formation’s core had been damaged. Alex didn’t recognise the full function of that segment, but for the apparition to target it... it could not have been anything trivial.

And before anyone could attempt repairs, the vast formation completed its activation cycle. Runes flared while the pillars thrummed.

The entire structure roared to life.

In that moment, Alex understood.

’Safety and guidance!’

The damaged segment controlled the stabilisation and navigational path of the interplanar transfer.

That was his final coherent thought before the formation released a blinding surge of power. The entire expedition party was swallowed by a column of light and hurled across the void.

Ordinarily, every traveller would lose consciousness during the transition.

But Alex found himself somehow still awake.

Not that remaining conscious helped—Alex couldn’t so much as move a finger. Even if he wanted to, what could he possibly do? He was being hurled through the void at near-light speed, locked helplessly within the carrier beam.

Everything around him streaked past faster than his mind could grasp. All he could make out was that the beam was travelling erratically.

Instead of shooting straight upward as it should, the beam zig-zagged in a chaotic, almost drunken pattern.

Fortunately—absurdly—it still managed to escape Pangea’s atmosphere without smashing into anything.

And then... everything paused.

ROAR!!!

A thunderous bellow shook the void—so vast, so ancient, Alex couldn’t place its origin. Yet he felt the rage behind it. His body reacted on instinct, drowning in primal fear... only for that fear to suddenly soften into something strange—

Trust.

A deep, comforting trust he could not explain.

The beam slowed drastically, and Alex’s vision shifted downward—towards the world ’below’.

Pangea.

Beautiful and vast

But he had no time to take in the sight, because his mind finally registered the true implication:

They were in outer space.

The void.

Which meant the Interplanar formation was transitioning into Phase Two.

He forced his frantic mind to recall the formation’s working principles.

The Interplanar grand formation functioned through three major phases:

Phase One beamed the travellers into outer space, clearing the plane’s gravitational influence.

Phase Two opened a semi-stable spatial subdimension—akin to a spacetime corridor—through which the carrier beam would accelerate to faster-than-light speeds toward the target plane.

Phase Three involved exiting the subdimension just outside the destination plane’s gravitational field, then descending with lowering speed until the travellers rematerialised safely on the surface.

But there was a problem.

A fatal one.

If Alex’s suspicions were correct –which they likely almost certainly were—the hostile spatial mage had damaged, if not outright destroyed, the two formation components responsible for keeping them alive.

The Safety Formation Component was a protective core structure of the Interplanar portal. Its role was simple but indispensable –shielding every traveler inside the carrier beam from the forces acting upon it during each phase of travel.

Under normal circumstances, if the safety component were compromised, the formation should not activate at all.

Yet the saboteur had forced activation anyway... likely through tricking the formation into thinking its core was still intact.

The protective ”shield” around the beam was starting to fracture.

If it collapsed fully, they wouldn’t even survive the entry into the FTL subdimension, much less the journey through it.

And even if—by some miracle—they managed to survive entry, there was still another missing piece.

The Guidance Formation that ensured the beam travelled through the correct spacetime path toward their intended destination.

Inputting the necessary parameters and performing all spatial calculations into the Guidance Formation was one of the most crucial responsibilities of a Spatial Mage. They ensured the carrier beam travelled an unobstructed path toward the target plane.

Even though travel occurred within a subdimensional corridor—allowing faster-than-light speeds—the corridor itself remained influenced by real space.

Massive bodies in real space cast a kind of shadow or indentation into the subdimension.

An indentation which, if struck by the carrier beam, would be utterly catastrophic and fatal.

Without the Guidance Formation, the chances of survival through the Subdimension were essentially none.

While Alex’s mind instinctively spiralled—rapid-fire permutating every possible disastrous ending, each worse than the last and each utterly beyond his control—the world around him continued its dreadful transformation.

The precoded conditions in the interplanar grand formation were fulfilled, and far ahead of the beam, the entrance to the subdimensional corridor opened.

Under normal circumstances, the beam would glide smoothly into it.

But given its erratic zig-zagging... if they missed the entrance by even a fraction, it would mean instant death.

Then again, even if they somehow made it in, they would almost certainly die inside.

In this moment of overwhelming dread, a familiar phantom blossomed into existence before Alex’s eyes.

A bonsai.

The Heartwood Tree.

Its phantom released a deep, radiant golden glow—the unmistakable light of Providence... or, as Alex fondly called it –Daddy Golden Energy.

The golden radiance overwhelmed his vision, soothing his restless mind and pulling him into a sudden, peaceful trance.

The illumination was so potent that it crashed into the unstable carrier beam itself, generating a compressed resonance wave that surged ahead like a shock wave front.

That resonance interference front forcibly stabilised the beam, halting its wild zig-zag motion.

More than that—

The resonance front shaped itself into a curved, cocoon-like barrier at the beam’s forefront, effectively shielding Alex and the expedition party.

A temporary, yet miraculous phenomenon.

It effectively replaced the damaged Safety Formation just in the nick of time.

At the same moment, the resonance shove-corrected the beam’s disastrous trajectory, forcing it back onto a straight path... directly into the open subdimensional gate.

As always, Daddy Golden Energy was only just warming up.

The very moment the beam crossed into the subdimensional corridor, the Providence light’s intensity sharply dipped.

This sudden change rippled through the resonance interference front.

The front tilted—ever so slightly—but enough.

Without the Guidance Formation to recalibrate their flight path—assuming they were even close to their original travel path—the beam was forced to follow the new path of least resistance carved out by the shifting resonance wave front...

And so, the carrier beam veered off course.

If Alex had remained fully conscious—if he had been able to clearly perceive what was happening—he would have absolutely lost his mind.

Because the change in course... did not lead the beam toward some hidden safe passage.

No.

It redirected them straight toward a mass-depression phenomenon.

Their flight angle had shifted just enough that the beam was now on a seeming collision path with a meteoroid drifting through real space—

A meteoroid whose presence was creating a gravitational distortion inside the subdimensional corridor.

Fortunately, as the beam closed in on the distortion, it became clear they would not strike the meteoroid head-on.

A direct impact would have vaporised both the meteoroid rock in real space and the carrier beam in the subdimensional corridor—erasing Alex and the expedition party entirely without leaving a trace.

But, disaster was still far from avoided.

The beam drifted close enough to be sucked into the mass depression’s gravitational pull.

Anything with mass generated a gravitational influence on another body with mass.

Even within this subdimension, his basic rule held true, and now the depression exerted an increasingly powerful attraction on the carrier beam as they got closer.

However, the resonance interference front pushed back—acting as an opposing stabilising force clashing against the pull of the mass depression.

Barely... barely... the beam managed to remain at the very outer edge of the depression’s gravitational orbit.

Doing close to a single high-speed rotation, the beam inadvertently pulled off a slingshot manoeuvre –due to its faster-than-light momentum— and was flung away, hurled into a completely new direction... one nowhere near the path to the original target plane.

Still protected by the fading resonance barrier, the carrier beam shot through the sub-dimensional corridor until, after an unknown passage of time, it detected the presence of a massive celestial body.

A plane.

Instantly, the beam exited the subdimension and returned to real space.

Ahead of it hovered a massive spherical world—its gravitational field quickly pulling the beam into orbit, then slowly guiding it downward through the atmosphere.

The resonance interference front was steadily eroded by gravity and friction, thinning, weakening, and finally dissipating completely...

But not before fulfilling its final task.

The beam descended, struck the surface of the plane, and shattered—

Reforming into Alex and the expedition party, alive and whole... mostly.

Both literally and figuratively—

Providence had guided their path.

***