"...We’re in the wrong world."

Damon lingered on the words.

Realising he could use mana absorption made him not think of consequences but even he couldn’t have predicted that absorbing the mana from the rift core would send them to the wrong world.

"Any ideas how to get back?" he finally asked.

"No," Yuki replied rather flatly as she took a slow look around. "We’ve always had a theory that using rifts to travel to a different world was possible, but even then, we never imagined actually doing it."

"So we’re stuck," Damon murmured.

"Well, was it at least worth it?"

Damon paused at the question.

843 Mana.

More than he had in total. No matter how he looked at it, as long as he could find a way back, that was the biggest jump in power he could make for the least amount of effort.

"Yeah," he replied. "It was."

Yuki raised a brow but didn’t question it. She expected him to say it wasn’t, maybe even covet in fear, but so far, everything she expected him to be turned out rather different. In a good way.

"Any theories on how to get back?" he asked.

"Find a rift core, you do your thing, and we hope it connects to the right world."

"And if it doesn’t?"

She shrugged. "Then we take a little detour across the universe."

Damon frowned slightly at the reply. "You’re not bothered?"

Yuki tilted her head slightly.

"Bothered?" she repeated. "I just saw a human clear an S-Rank rift by himself before absorbing the rift core..." She paused for a moment. "I don’t think I can get surprised by anything anymore."

For a brief moment, silence returned.

The strange vibration humming through the world became more noticeable the longer they stood still. Damon could almost feel it beneath his skin now, rhythmic and distant, like the pulse of something enormous sleeping far below the grey stone beneath them.

Damon’s eyes narrowed.

"You feel that too, right?" he asked.

Yuki nodded once. "The mana here is unstable."

"Unstable how?"

"...I’m not sure, but we should focus on finding a rift."

Damon took a close look at the landscape around them.

Grey stone stretched in every direction, cracked into irregular plates, each fissure between them leaking the same pale blue light upward. There was no wind or smell of any kind, just the vibration and the eerie sense of coldness that came from it.

In the distance, one cluster of fissures glowed considerably brighter than the rest, a convergence point where several cracks met, and the pale blue there was almost white in its intensity.

And between them, six shapes moved, resembling Stone Stalkers he faced earlier.

"Oh? Did you find anything?" Yuki asked, trying to follow his gaze, but unable to quite do so.

Damon looked at it for a moment longer before replying.

"The bright cluster there," he pointed. "I spotted some monsters. They might be drawn to some nearby rift."

Yuki nodded.

It wasn’t a perfect direction, but in this desolate and foreign place, it was as good as any.

They went toward it right away.

It didn’t take long for the six Stone Stalkers to take notice of them and quickly engage, trying to split apart and surround them.

Damon didn’t slow, he simply raised his left arm and reached instinctively for his lightning ability.

That’s when he felt the change.

The difference a sudden jump in over 800 mana points all at once made.

"...Oh." A slow realisation crept across his face.

The lightning that left his arm was unlike anything he ever witness before.

It roared to life with a sound so terrifying the creature froze mid lunge.

It hit them a split second later, obliterating all six of them at once as if they were nothing but trash and leaving only a scorched cracks across the grey stone beneath.

There were no traces left of the monsters that stood there a second ago.

Yuki, who stood right beside him, went completely still.

For the first time since they met, her expression held no amusement.

A moment of silence passed between them, until Yuki finally moved to see a purple lightning still dancing across Damon’s forearm.

It wasn’t on purpose, his overflowing mana capacity was basically begging him to make use of it, even the faintest flicker of intent turned his mana into a killing machine searching for his next target.

Purple lightning continued to dance across Damon’s forearm.

It crackled softly against the black glove until a sudden, low noise came from their left and Damon stretched his arm toward on pure instinct, the lightning snapping outward before waiting for his command.

The two Stone Stalkers that tried to flank them evaporated upon impact. The lightning went right through them before crashing against a nearby boulder, which was roughly the size of a small apartment building and shattering it with a single touch.

"...I think you’re overdoing it by a bit." Yuki finally said, realising he was using way too much mana on his targets.

Damon frowned, watching the lightning jump across his fingers before forcing it away.

"It’s gotten harder to control..." he murmured, more to himself than to Yuki who nonetheless heard it perfectly fine.

"There is a reason why you can’t just increase one stat, your body can’t keep up." Yuki explained.

Damon glanced at her. "So what, you’re telling me my mana’s too high now?"

"Hmm, yes and no." Yuki paused for a moment, taking a really long look at him before continuing. "The difference would have to be astronomical to be really impossible to control. But your body does need to adjust to the change and the higher your vitality is, the easier it is to adjust."

Even after forcing the lightning away, faint purple sparks still crawled across his fingertips, ready to come out at any moment.

Far in the distance, the strange vibration beneath the world pulsed once more.

And this time, it was a lot stronger.