Why You Shouldn't Open Ancient Teleportation Arrays on a Whim-Who Knows What Sort of Monsters Are Waiting on the Other Side?

An Otherworld rift was currently the most dangerous thing known to exist on the continent.

Two hundred years ago, the Bloodfear Clan opened an uncontrolled rift. In a single night, it claimed three hundred thousand lives and changed the terrain of the entire Ice Bay. Archduke Charlemagne, who had done it, was executed by Lord Paing himself, and the Bloodfear Clan was slaughtered until only its last ninety-nine younglings remained.

The same kind of Otherworld rift had opened beneath the ruins of Cadman City more than nine months ago. According to Triss's estimate, if that rift exploded, it would tear apart Transia's continental shelf and deal a second devastating blow to the mainland.

These brutal examples all showed the horrific casualties that inevitably followed the appearance of an Otherworld rift. However, these things actually came in different classes.

For instance, the rifts Old Manson and Captain Vetter had opened were less than a meter across and wouldn't cause such horrifying consequences. Murphy called those things "Otherworld fissures." They were lesser disasters that he could seal with his own hands.

A rift capable of causing a catastrophe had to be at least ten meters across—roughly as tall as a three-story building. The one in Cadman City was that size. In combat records, it was classified as a "small rift."

The one the Bloodfear Clan had opened all those years ago was larger. According to Claire, the pirate first mate who had experienced it firsthand, the rift Archduke Charlemagne opened that night had been about fifty meters across.

It was practically the largest Otherworld rift to have appeared on the continent in this era.

Of course, Murphy had seen a larger one.

In his ancient memories of Eden, the Otherworld rift that destroyed the Golden Age had been at least three hundred