CHAPTER 355: INSIDE THE RIFT

The guild wasted no time in issuing a public warning. Men and women who had been going about their lives in the nearby streets were ordered to evacuate without delay, escorted away from the danger zone by guild members assigned specifically for such tasks.

Now, standing on the wide, tarred road, Harry could see the results of those preparations firsthand.

This was the way it usually was whenever a rift was about to open. The guild prided itself on its efficiency in handling such events.

Clear the civilians. Secure the perimeter. Assign teams. Prepare for the unknown.

But it wasn’t always like this. Harry knew from the academy lessons, and also from Leon’s memories, that not every rift gave enough warning.

There were instances when the mana readings didn’t spike early enough, when the rift tore through reality unexpectedly, leaving no time to prepare.

Those were the most dangerous moments—the ones where chaos reigned, where streets full of people were suddenly torn apart by beasts that had no right to exist in the human world.

He could still the first mana beast attack he was involved in, which eventually led to him getting the system, changing his life forever.

Fortunately, this time was different. The warning had come early. Preparations had been made. The city was quiet, controlled, and waiting.

Harry’s team was one of those preparations.

He, Miranda, the burly man with the spiked club, and the short-haired blonde woman had been placed together as the assigned group to enter the rift once it opened. The assignment wasn’t random—Harry knew that.

This was to be his trial by fire, his first true mission outside of training, his chance to prove whether he was ready for the responsibilities of an adventurer.

And that was why the quietness around him felt heavier than usual. It wasn’t just the silence of an evacuated street—it was the silence before a test, the calm before he stepped into the unknown.

The four of them stood in formation, staring ahead at the widening cracks in the air.

At first, they had been small fissures, like thin lines etched into glass.

But as the minutes passed, those fissures spread, branching out, stretching wider and longer with alarming speed. Jagged edges glimmered faintly, and the sound of strained air splitting echoed like distant thunder.

Harry’s eyes didn’t waver. He watched as the cracks grew, spreading until they formed the rough shape of a door, looming in front of them with unnatural authority.

And then, with a sound that reminded him of shattering glass, the cracks gave way entirely. Reality itself seemed to break, and what lay behind was revealed.

A portal, glowing with a dark yellow hue, pulsed ominously in the empty space where the cracks had been.

The glow was sickly, almost nauseating to the eyes, and the mana pouring out of it was thick, heavy, and suffocating.

The portal churned and rippled, oozing viscous streams of energy like molten tar spilling into the world.

Harry’s lips curled slightly as he gazed upon it. He had seen portals before in Leon’s memories, but standing before one in reality felt a little different.

The burly man stepped forward first. His massive frame cast a long shadow across the road, his spiked club resting against his shoulder.

Without hesitation, he walked straight into the portal, the sickly yellow light swallowing him whole in an instant.

Miranda followed next, her long black hair fluttering as the energy of the rift pulled around her figure. The blonde woman went after, her steps steady, her brown eyes narrowed with focus.

Harry lingered only a moment longer, then moved. He was the last.

His feet carried him across the threshold of reality, and as soon as he touched the glowing surface, a sharp tinge raced through his body.

It wasn’t pain exactly—it was like icy needles stabbing into every nerve, like his very essence was being tested before being allowed to pass.

The sensation only lasted a breath, but it was followed immediately by disorientation.

Harry’s vision spun wildly, the world tilting and swirling in ways that defied logic. For a moment, everything was swallowed in pitch-black darkness, absolute and suffocating.

When Harry’s vision finally steadied and returned, the darkness receded, unveiling a world entirely unlike the one he had just left.

He instinctively drew in a sharp breath, his eyes narrowing slightly as he swept his gaze across his surroundings.

The first thing he noticed was the sky. Above stretched a canvas of gloom, a dark, suffocating ceiling of swirling clouds that twisted endlessly without allowing the faintest glimmer of sunlight to pierce through.

The horizon itself seemed swallowed, as if the heavens here had no intention of offering warmth or hope. Everything about it screamed foreign, otherworldly, and sinister.

The ground beneath his boots was brittle and lifeless.

Cracks spider-webbed in every direction, jagged and uneven as if the earth itself had long since given up on holding steady.

At irregular intervals, faint tremors rolled through the ground, rattling the surface and sending dust and loose stones tumbling into the fissures.

Harry could feel the vibrations travel up his legs, dull but insistent, as though the world itself was groaning under some hidden strain.

His eyes swept further and took in the scope of where they had arrived.

The interior of the rift was vast, stretching out further than he had anticipated—large, wide, and unnervingly open, like the remains of a small, ruined town.

Great piles of broken earth and shattered rubble were scattered across the land, jagged pieces of terrain stacked upon each other like the aftermath of some colossal battle.

Some chunks stood precariously tall, like makeshift towers of ruin, while others lay in heaps that crumbled further at the faintest quake.

The mana saturating the air was no less unsettling. It wasn’t smoothly flowing like the one in the real world.

Here the mana surged erratically like waves crashing against one another on the sea.

The erratic flowing mana made it quite difficult to spread one’s mana sense and properly scan the environment.

However, this didn’t affect Harry of course.