However, as a traveler of myriad worlds who had crossed countless gates, she clearly and distinctly sensed the difference between this time and the last.
The passage that had previously been impossible to squeeze through now seemed to have gained a little room. Perhaps compared to the past, it was only an insignificant sliver, but a difference was still a difference. The gate of passage had indeed widened somewhat after something had been accomplished.
I did something that changed the size of the gate.
Was it because I had devoured enough unclaimed souls to increase my scale? Or was it because my actions had produced some major impact on this world?
The girl thought it over, then quickly rejected the former possibility. Her past self had experienced dream realms as numerous as the stars, among which were plenty of modern worlds without any supernatural possibilities whatsoever. In some worlds, when she departed, she had been absolutely weaker than when she had arrived.
Even in the world of Dark Souls, when I finished linking the fire and was burned until I was forcibly expelled from the world, I was certainly weaker than I had been at the moment of my initial arrival. If that condition held, then I would have been completely unable to leave this world more than ten thousand years ago. Therefore, Hypothesis One is invalid. The size of the gate should have nothing to do with the power I possess.
*Then there's a very high chance that the truth is Hypothesis Two... The world is a lake, and I'm a balloon that fell into it. I could originally escape the water at will, but carrying one more person was equivalent to tying a water-absorbing stone to the balloon. So, if I wanted to leave the lake, I had