Ayame paused for a moment, studying Yuki’s expression before asking. "Where?"

Yuki’s smile widened slightly. "Nearby. An hour walk at most."

Ayame’s gaze moved from Yuki to Damon.

He was already looking at her, with an expression that made it clear he had already made up his mind.

"We go," he said.

She held his gaze for a moment, not hesitating, but simply holding a reply she didn’t want to give.

"I can’t leave the estate. If the other clans hear of my movements, then they will attack."

Damon nodded.

Yuki clapped her hands once with the enthusiasm of someone whose suggestion had been accepted faster than expected. "I’ll go with him."

Ayame frowned. "You?"

"Me," Yuki confirmed, completely unbothered by the frown.

"You hate fighting," Ayame said.

"I’m an excellent fighter." Yuki tilted her head slightly. "I’m just not as dramatic about it as some people." She glanced sideways at Damon. "Besides, someone needs to show him where it is. Unless you’d like him wandering the forest alone on his first day."

Ayame held her frown for a moment longer before accepting the logic with the particular expression of someone who had arrived at the right answer and didn’t enjoy it.

She turned to Damon.

"Don’t die," she said flatly.

"I’ll try not to," he replied.

Something moved in her expression, something brief and composed before she turned toward the estate without another word.

Yuki watched her go with a small, satisfied smile.

"Our dear Ayame..." Yuki mused. "She tends to worry too much."

***

They left the estate as the afternoon light shifted, the waterfall catching it differently than it had at midday, warmer, the mist briefly iridescent before settling back into white.

Yuki moved at a comfortable pace, her four tails drifting independently behind her, occasionally glancing at Damon with the open curiosity she hadn’t bothered concealing since the courtyard.

"So how are you finding our world? Any doubts?" she said after a few minutes of walking.

"Exactly how I expected it to be." Damon replied flatly which heard him a small chuckle from the girl.

"Ayame bet her life on you," Yuki continued, her tone shifting slightly, lighter on the surface, more serious underneath. "She doesn’t do things without reason. She never has." A pause. "But even she couldn’t have known what you’d become. She sent that summons on trust alone."

"I know," he said.

Yuki glanced at him. "You two must’ve grown quite close with her time on earth, huh?"

He looked at her sideways.

She held his gaze for a moment then looked forward again, satisfied with the lack of answer more than she would be with actual words.

The forest closed around them as the path descended from the cliff face into the treeline, the canopy dense, the light filtering through in long amber columns that shifted as the branches moved above. The air here was different from the estate, cooler, heavier, carrying the particular quality of somewhere that had been undisturbed for a very long time.

The movement he’d noticed from above was more present down here. Things shifting at the peripheral that stilled when he looked directly and resumed when he didn’t. He stopped tracking them after the third time.

"Forest spirits," Yuki said without him asking. "They won’t bother us. You’re just new."

"Last new thing was a Tengu scout apparently," he said.

She glanced at him. "Ayame told you that?"

"You did. Earlier."

"Ah." She looked forward again. "Yes. He was very lost and very loud about it." A pause. "He kept shouting that he was on a diplomatic mission. The forest spirits had no interest in diplomacy." Another pause. "Neither did we, at the time."

He filed that without comment.

They walked in silence for a while, the path winding deeper through the forest. Yuki seemed comfortable with silence in a way most people weren’t — she occupied it rather than filling it, moving through the trees with the particular ease of someone who had grown up in them.

"Raiden," Damon said eventually.

"What about him."

"Will he be a problem?"

"He’ll be fine," Yuki said. "He’s always like this with new things. Suspicious first, grudging acceptance second, fierce loyalty third." She glanced at him. "You just have to survive long enough to reach the third part."

"How long did that take with you?"

She thought about it. "Only around hundred years."

Damon said nothing.

"You managed to last a minute against him, " she added helpfully. "That should speed things up."

The rift announced itself before they saw it.

The air changed , a pressure he recognised from Earth’s rifts but considerably more intense, as though this one had been settled into its own weight for centuries. The trees thinned ahead into a stretch of open ground where nothing grew despite the forest pressing in from every side.

In the centre of the clearing, suspended high above the ground, the rift hung.

Larger than anything he’d encountered on Earth.

The darkness of it absolute in a way that made A-rank rifts look like shadows, not just the absence of light but something that seemed to actively resist the concept, pulling the ambient light of the clearing toward it in slow spirals that were almost visible if you didn’t look directly.

The sound of it was wrong too.

Not loud, the opposite of loud, a silence that pressed outward from the opening like a held breath that had been held for a very long time.

Yuki stopped beside him, her four tails stilling for the first time since they’d left the estate.

"S-rank," she said. "Monsters start at level 90. The boss—" she paused. "Nobody has cleared it. Estimates put it somewhere around 115."

"I’ve never seen a monster below level 90 inside one of these..." she paused, debating something for a moment. "I guess it might be best not to tell you the highest level i’ve seen." she leaned forward toward him slightly. "Wouldn’t want to scare you off.

"I don’t scare easily." Damon replied.

Her lips curved into a pleased smile. "No you don’t." she watched him for a couple of long moments before turning her eyes back to the rift.

He was at level 76, about to enter a rift where monsters started at level 90 at least.

The gap between where he stood and what waited inside was the largest he’d ever walked toward deliberately.

He thought back about the notification, his summoning and the words that clung to him ever since Ayame’s first departure from earth.

Too weak.

His resolve hardened as the words echoed in his head.

He unsheathed his sword and took a step toward the rift. 𝘧𝓇ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝘣𝓃ℴ𝓋𝑒𝑙.𝑐𝘰𝑚

"You coming?" he asked Yuki who was watching his every movement.

"Oh I wouldn’t miss it for anything."

With that, they stepped forward.

The inside hit differently from anything on Earth.

The air was thick, not uncomfortable, more like the difference between breathing at altitude and breathing at sea level but in reverse. Every breath carried more than it should. His mana reserves registered the density immediately, the particular sensation of an environment where everything was amplified.

The landscape resolved gradually.

They appeared in some form of a cavern, vast with its ceiling lost in the darkness above and its walls covered in a bioluminescence that pulsed at random intervals. The rhythm seemed vaguely organic, as if the cave itself was breathing.

The floor was flat stone broken by deep fissures from which the same pale light leaked upward, casting everything in shifting blue-white that had no clear source.

The silence from outside was gone. In here there was sound, low and constant, coming from every direction simultaneously without any single point of origin. It wasn’t threatening, at least not yet, just ever-so present.

The sound of somewhere that had been alive for a very long time.

The first creature appeared before he’d taken ten steps.

It was three meters tall at the shoulder and had six limbs that moved with the fluid efficiency of something that had never needed to accommodate anything slower.

Its surface was the same dark stone as the floor, edges slightly blurred in a way that reminded him of the forest spirits outside, existing in slightly the wrong focus, as if this world’s creatures occupied a different layer of reality that overlapped with his own rather than sharing it completely.

He didn’t wait for it to finish closing the distance.

He shadow stepped behind it and thrust his blade through the natural seam between the second and third limb on its right side, where the stone surface had cracked a long, long time ago.

A combination of a few more strikes, lightining and black ice came a moment later, resulting in the creature dropping dead in less than eight seconds.

[You have slain a Level 91 Monster: Stone Stalker.

[New Monster Index Bonus: +23 Strength, +18 Dexterity, +16 Vitality]

[You have reached Level 77. You have received 1 Stat Point.]

[You have reached Level 78. You have received 1 Stat Point.]

[You have reached Level 79. You have received 1 Stat Point.]

Three levels from a single kill.

And yet, Damon only looked at the notification for one second before turning away.

Without wasting a second he moved deeper into the cavern, with Yuki walking right beside him, waiting to see what else he can do.