The longer one stared at the abyss's blood-red sky, the lower it seemed to press down. Even standing in the boundless wilderness, one would still feel a suffocating tightness in their chest.
Ruger looked at the ruins behind him, which had nearly filled an entire fissure, then at several twisted trees of bizarre shape in the distance.
Maybe I can go back and ask Half-Man about it, he thought.
With a wave of his hand, he opened a spatial gate. The positions of the spatial rifts on this side of the abyss could not be changed, so when he came next time, he would probably still be able to see these ruins. He wondered how long the abyssal environment would take to smooth away every trace.
He stepped inside, and the illusory door vanished with him.
He wondered how Old Gold Tooth was doing. He decided that, once back, he would see Old Gold Tooth first. If the old kobold was fine, he could begin preparing. He also wondered whether Half-Man liked the extra gift he had given him. One old boot in exchange for two things—buy one, get one free. He had definitely come out ahead.
To be honest, he had always wanted to wait until he found the purer dragon blood mentioned in the diary, stripping away what was unnecessary and retaining only the powerful source. But this experience had made him consider another possibility: what if he became trapped somewhere he could not open spatial items at all, or in a state where he could not move in the slightest? How long could his brief kobold lifespan hold out then? So he intended to make one final attempt with Half-Man. If that path proved blocked, he would use the dragon blood in the Bedroom space to complete