CHAPTER 4: Dragon Dimension
You could say this choice was the most difficult of all; no matter which one he picked, the other would be lost to him forever. He stared at these two remaining skills—Intimidation and Mind Read—and began to think about his future. He had to consider what would happen as these powers grew stronger.
If he chose Intimidation, the range of his terror would surely increase. Perhaps in the beginning, he could only scare someone from a close distance or maybe a hundred meters away, but as he leveled up, it might reach two hundred meters or even a thousand. As he leveled up, he might be able to freeze a person for more than a minute—perhaps two. Anyone paralyzed by fear for two minutes has already given you enough time to send them to the afterlife; you could destroy them and their entire lineage before they ever woke up.
Furthermore, he could potentially scare a person so badly they would faint instantly. Back in the world he left, it was a common thing to hear on the radio about people who were so terrified they lost consciousness. Sometimes, a person would be in a car accident and walk away without a scratch, yet they would collapse and remain unconscious for hours simply because of the shock. So, if his skill became strong enough, Edard could skip the fear and go straight to knocking his enemies out.
Then he looked at the other side: Mind Read. If he increased the power of this skill, how much more could he see?
It would allow him to dig deep and pull out a person's life story. He could find out their names, their ages, their hometowns, and whether they were married or single. He could uncover high-level secrets.
For example, Edard could encounter a high-ranking palace official or a powerful guard and simply peer into their mind. By knowing their thoughts, he could find the way to food, the way to new skills, or even the way to find his own people who might be in this world. You could say that if he strengthened this skill, he would reach a level where the moment someone told him a lie, he would recognize it instantly. This would be a massive advantage for survival.
For minutes, Edard could not reach a conclusion. He paced back and forth, trapped between these two powers. Finally, he decided to set both aside for now. He did not want to make a choice he would regret. He decided he would wait until the very first time he met an enemy in this world; only then would he know which weapon he truly needed.
Another notification appeared:
He continued to follow those massive serpents in silence. They were far ahead, and he stayed a little way behind their trails. They traveled on and on until they reached a very narrow, slender path wedged between two towering mountains. As they moved, the path became tighter and tighter.
A creeping fear began to grow in Edard's heart. He was afraid that if the path became too narrow, those snakes would surely see him. If they turned around and struck him with their venom, what would he do? Any one of those snakes was large enough to swallow him whole without even chewing. He remembered the movie Anaconda he had watched back on Earth, seeing how a massive snake could smash a boat and gulp down humans. He felt in his soul that if those snakes were to appear on Earth, they would be even larger than the monster in that movie.
Because of this fear, Edard began to pull further and further back, letting the snakes put more distance between them. Before long, he realized something that almost paralyzed him with fright: at the end of this narrow path, there was no road left.
The two mountains had met and closed the way completely. The path was sealed shut; there was no road forward and no shelter in sight. Since he had allowed the snakes to get so far ahead, he could no longer see them. All he had left were their tracks.
He studied the ground. He saw the small footprints of the black snake. Then he saw the other track—where the feet were so numerous they blended together, leaving only the wide, dragging mark of a massive body. He knew this belonged to the fifty-meter giant. To his amazement, the tracks of these serpents went right into a hidden way beneath the rocks.
Edard stood there for a long time, thinking and staring at the clock on his wrist. After a moment, he made a decision. He would not turn back. He would open a path and continue to follow them. And he would open that path using his skill: Dimensional Annihilation.
Many might say Edard was being reckless, but he was looking at one thing: if he lost this chance and failed to meet a person before his time ran out, he would surely die alone.
He gritted his teeth, deciding it was better to try and see what lay ahead. He promised himself that the moment he saw real danger, he would turn and run.
He thrust his hand forward and summoned that sapphire-blue flame onto his palm. In his mind, he willed the blue fire to change its shape. He willed it to transform from a circle into a small, sharp dagger. Instantly, it happened. A tiny blue knife, only the length of two fingers, appeared in his hand.
He looked at the size of the blade. He thought to himself that even if he were given ten of these knives, it would be incredibly difficult to cut a path through the mountain before the snakes escaped. But despite the doubt in his heart, he struck the rocks with the tiny blue blade.
The moment that knife touched the stone, the rocks blocking his way vanished into thin air. It was as if they had never existed in the world. The Dragon Essence in his hand, which he had shaped into the knife, also vanished.
There was no sound. There was no noise of breaking stone or crashing debris. It was as if the rocks simply ceased to be. Edard stood frozen, blinking his eyes. He began to rub his eyes with his hands, trying to make sure he wasn't dreaming.
After a moment, he reached his hand out into the empty space he had created, testing to see if it was real or just an illusion. When his hand passed through the empty air, his mouth fell open in wonder.
But before he could even grasp the mystery of what had happened, another message box appeared before his eyes.
When the box faded, Edard saw a tiny window that looked into a small, black world. He knew from the skill's description that he could not enter this place himself, but he could see what was happening inside. He saw the rocks—the very ones he had just made vanish—piled up neatly in a corner.
He didn't need anyone to tell him that this was the Dragon Dimension he had been told about.
Of all the elements he had ever known, he knew none was more vast or more destructive than the Earth. In all of history, nothing was as terrifying as an earthquake that triggered floods or brought molten rock from the deep. As he stared at those rocks and began to understand what this window wanted him to do, a wave of pure joy and excitement washed over him.
Another blue message box flickered into existence before Edard's eyes. It carried a simple but profound offer: he could retrieve exactly one bowl's worth of molten stone from within the Dragon Dimension at the cost of thirty points of Life Energy.
Edard couldn't help but smile, his hand reaching up to stroke his chin in thought. His heart felt a wave of relief, largely because of the silence. When he had struck the mountain with his blue dagger, there had been no sound—no crashing, no thunder. This silence was a blessing; it meant he hadn't alerted those massive serpents to his presence. And besides the snakes, who could truly say what other terrors might be lurking deep within this cave?
After a moment of reflection, Edard began to fully grasp the mechanics of his Dimensional Annihilation skill. The process was clear: he simply needed to strike an object with the sapphire fire known as Dragon Essence. Upon impact, the Essence would swallow the object into the Dragon Dimension, just as it had swallowed the rocks of the mountain.
Once inside that dark void, the skill would break the objects down, melting them back into the original elements that formed them—turning solid stone into liquid, molten rock. Then, by spending his own Life Energy, Edard could pull that molten destruction out of the Dragon Dimension and back into this world to launch a devastating attack.
He realized then that he hadn't made a foolish mistake. This skill was a triple blessing: it could destroy, it could store, and it could be turned into a weapon.
But Edard did not have the luxury of time to sit and praise his new powers. His eyes drifted down to his wrist. The glowing clock was cold and unforgiving.