The Guardian System: The strongest Summoner's quest to save his family-Chapter 358: On the other side of the portal (3)

The wind up here was hot, to the point that it coated the back of Reidar's throat. He sat low on the back of one of his ravens from the Apex Menagerie.

"I hate this."

Despite all his attempts to stop the heat and the HP drainage, nothing seemed to work. The environmental damage continued to tick away at his health pool without pause.

Reidar looked down. The area wasn't just unwelcoming—it was built to kill. The obsidian shelf they'd landed on eventually crumbled into fractured badlands where jagged spires of rock jutted at angles that defied logic, and fissures split the ground deep enough that he couldn't see their bottoms.

Reidar gazed across terrain shaped by destruction, where every sharp ridge and river of molten rock made Earth's volcanic zones look harmless in comparison.

As he followed Mara's trail, he noticed the glow of the magma beginning to recede. It was replaced by a dark grey that stained the sky, which made Reidar feel as though the sun had never existed here at all.

In the distance, he could see a shift in the terrain. The jagged, blackened rock smoothed out into something resembling plains or plateaus. There were shapes that might have been petrified forests or ruins of some colossal architecture. The worst-case scenario would be monsters.

<It looks stable despite everything. >

Even a world that went through the apocalypse still had to be a complete planet, which meant there had to be regions beyond the volcanic wastelands.

Reidar couldn't shake the feeling that any moment of quiet in a place like this was just a trap. On Earth, he knew the wilderness meant monsters, but as he looked around at a world that had seemingly finished its apocalypse long ago, he realized the very definition of a "monster" would be pushed to a terrifying extreme here.

He looked toward the horizon, thinking that if any life actually existed down there, it had survived the fire and the poison that was currently eating at his hit points.

To Reidar, this meant the creatures here weren't merely powerful—they were survivors forged by an environment that constantly threatened their existence.

Reidar wasn't just looking for Mara; he was also trying to find a way to survive himself.

The complete lack of vegetation in the area made him uneasy. He looked down at the barren rock and realized the problem: no plants meant no herbivores.

If anything moved in this wasteland, it was a predator looking for a meal or something fueled by energy sources he couldn't even fathom. 𝗳𝗿𝐞𝕖𝘄𝗲𝕓𝗻𝚘𝚟𝕖𝐥.𝚌𝕠𝕞

<If there are monsters, they're hunting each other. Or they're waiting for something new to drop out of the sky. Guess who that new thing here is. >

Back on Earth, his level of 395 made him a titan—a force capable of reshaping regional politics and crushing armies with a single command. But as he looked out over the alien horizon, that number felt meaningless, a digit stripped of all context.

He had no idea what the average level here was, let alone the damage types or resistance thresholds. He was flying blind in a death zone, and the bitterest part was knowing his only safety was the very woman he had to kill and who wanted to kill him.

He felt a lurch in his stomach as the raven banked left, responding to his mental nudge to avoid a plume of toxic gas belching from a nearby fissure.

He watched the smoke drift past.

<I need to get my feet on the ground, and soon.>

Every second he spent in the air exposed him, but he was doing it to not get too far from Mara.

<So, I need to find an easily concealable shelter.> He looked out over the area, as he knew he couldn't stay in the open.

<This heat is driving me crazy, and of course, it's also killing me.>

System notifications updated.

[Environmental Hazard: Extreme Heat]

[You are taking 5 Fire Damage per second.]

[You are taking 5 Fire Damage per second.]

[You are taking 5 Fire Damage per second.]

The damage wasn't lethal in the short term, but it was a relentless tax on his mana, because to offset it, Reidar had to spam healing skills. Besides, what would happen once he got to sleep? He could keep his summons thanks to some of his perks, but they were large, easily noticeable, and they had mana to take into account. They would end up without it too.

He imagined trying to sleep in this; even inside his magic tent, it would be like crawling into a convection oven, and that was without taking into account that whatever flying monsters stumbled around these parts would just spot him.

<The best thing would be to hide underground. I have the tools for this,> he thought, scrolling through his summon list.

The Vorathid Sky-Hunters were perfect for this. They could just make a tunnel into the side of a cliff. They would be able to carve out a bunker deep enough to shield him from the surface's oppressive temperature and the eyes of monsters, but of course, that would require more time.

He knew that whatever solution he found wouldn't be comfortable, but the thought of a safe place gave him a flicker of relief. <A tunnel is a tunnel, no matter what planet I'm on. But where do I dig?>

He looked at the glowing veins in the ground, knowing that if he dug too close to a magma vein, he'd be cooking himself alive. Or worse, he'd break into a nest of whatever alien monstrosities called this place home.

He pulled up his map interface, but the sight of it only frustrated him. The "fog of war" was a vast, blank expanse, clearing only in a tiny circle around him and the Vorathid Sky-Hunters he sent around, but that was still not enough. He urged his mount away from the volcanoes.

<Just a few more miles,> he told himself.

He kept his eyes on the damage log as it flashed in his vision.

[You are taking 5 Fire Damage per second.]

[You are taking 5 Fire Damage per second.]

[You are taking 5 Fire Damage per second.]

<The sooner I find a place where the numbers finally hit zero, the better it will be.>

Only then could he allow himself to rest; only then could he begin to plan the next phase of this nightmare.