Leaving the rift was easier than I had imagined. I had thought a space so chaotic and upside-down would cause us plenty of trouble—for instance, when we tried to leave, we might discover that the way out was as endless as the way down. Yet with one flap of Viska's enormous wings, she was grinning stupidly at me from the mouth of the cave in the blink of an eye.
"I believe the true 'fracture layer' of this rift is only that thin layer," Viska said after I climbed up, shaking her head with the air of an expert. "If this is where two differently structured information sets intersect, then the intersection would not form a passage but a plane. That is a rule shared by the Dream Plane and all other void worlds. So the rift itself is the invisible 'ground' we were standing on just now. All information based on that 'plane'—falling, gravity, the illusion of solid ground beneath our feet—vanishes once we leave it. Escaping the rift is not difficult, at least not for the two of us. The real difficulty is crossing that layer..."
As I looked over the pale landscape around us, searching for Shilin, who was waiting nearby, I shot Viska a sidelong glance. "You're still thinking about breaking through the black barrier and launching an expedition into the Abyss Empire?"
"What's wrong with thinking about it?" Viska slowly dismissed her Valkyrie gear. Her magnificent armored skirt dissolved into the air, replaced by a simple black formal gown that was nevertheless much easier on the eyes. "Think about it. The Empire's greatest enemy, the Abyss Empire, has its home base separated from yours by a barrier without even the slightest thickness. The greater the danger, the greater the opportunity. I'm sure you're not the