Dreamer in the Apocalypse

009 – The One with the Other Protagonist (Final)

A short while later Dalis left the corridor and reached the tunnels and a minute later he walked out onto the surface.

His footsteps echoed against the ground on the empty surface.

It was a barren field of lightless dust with barely any structures in sight, everyone lived in the underground base and the only reason to come to the surface was to go to the terminal.

It wasn’t like the surface was any prize, the sky was a clear dome that only highlighted the infinite darkness they lived in, a sky with no stars, not even a nearby sun.

It was a hellscape, the soil was healthy but barren, with no sun nothing could survive, save for the Equanox.

That was why they had to use the terminals to travel to the other side, to gather food, so that the race could survive.

But there were some serious problem with that.

Everything that transferred would denature, seeds would never be able grow even with methods like hydroponics, and any living creatures that originated from the other side and were transferred would die in the process.

Then there was another major obstacle, it was known as ‘The Incineration Effect’, when matter was transferred over only 1/10 000 of the matter would make it.

Put simply if 10 000kg’s of a material was sent, only 1kg would make it over, the rest would be incinerated.

There once was a time when the incineration rate was much lower, but that was a time in the distant past, as time passed the transfer gradually became less effective and destroyed more matter in the process.

It was a problem that caused constant fear in the higher ups, they feared the day when things would no longer be able to transfer over.

That’s where the book in his hands came in, it was something that his father sent to him from the other side, and it remained perfectly intact, without so much as a mark on it from the transfer, it broke all the known rules.

But Dalis felt a great deal of resentment as he looked down at it, it was a gift for his thirteenth birthday, but it was useless.

The book had another special quality it had some type of spell woven into it, spells were common on the other side, but this world that rejected the light also rejected all forms of magic, yet in here the spell held firm.

The spell was a peculiar one for it kept the book sealed, no one could open it, not the chancellor of dome Rose, nor the chancellors of any of the other domes.

But it opened for him, not that it was anything great, it only opened to the first leathery page where just seven words were inscribed on it.

‘Take this to the other side kid.’

That was all that was written, in this book that he received as a gift from his father seven years ago, it was worse than getting nothing at all.

But then there came the problems that the book presented, the most annoying was how everyone including the chancellor would find every opportunity to find him and question him about the contents.

No matter how many times he insisted that it was exactly the same as it was the day he received it.

But if that wasn’t bad enough from time to time the book would mysteriously vanish, there were many people in this dome and the other domes who had their eyes set on the book, but no matter what it always seemed to find its way back to him, like a bad infection.

The final problem being the transfer.

Just like bringing things into this world, there was a limit to how much could be sent out at once.

There once was a chancellor who crafted an entire set of weapons and armour for his beloved son, and when it was time to send his son to a new world where he would set up a terminal he gave his son the complete set of items.

That day marked the end of an entire dome, there is a limit to how much energy could be used for the transfer, and if the energy requirement goes beyond that the transfer terminal goes critical, and if that happens the entire dome could shatter.

That was why Dalis was leaving ahead of everyone, the book had qualities that no one could understand, so the energy requirement to transfer it was completely unknown.

He basically had to believe in his father’s genius and hope that nothing goes wrong, a tough thing for him to do considering that he never met the man in his life.

At last he saw a series of tall hills almost large enough to be called small mountains and in the centre of the hills a tall structure rose from the ground, hundreds of lines wrapped around the building, each line glowing with a violet light.

It was the only thing in this dark world that radiated any real light, but the darkness still drowned it out.

Dalis drew nearer until he stood before the tall five-meter-tall columns that supported great archways wide enough to fit almost a hundred people standing side by side.

As he inspected the columns closely he could make out the violet lines that up close looked like little pulsing veins.