Using the same senses as Salvia, I was able to perceive the Dimension Door’s presence. Until now, I’d only had a vague sense of direction to go by, but we were finally close enough for me to grasp how far away it was.
“Please lower our altitude!” I yelled to the dragon I was riding.
We flew lower, and the dragons behind us followed suit. We knew how far away it was, but we couldn’t actually see it yet. Still, the exploration team members had been getting tired of sitting idly on their flight through the skies, so the excitement was palpable now that the goal was in sight.
Lily supported me as I leaned hard to look over the dragon’s back. The scenery beneath us was nothing but forest, yet I could feel its presence.
“Misty Lodge.”
I deployed the one and only magic I was capable of. If Gerd’s last words were correct, this was the only compass and key left in the world to find the Dimension Door. Mist burst outward, trailing behind us like vapor. By thinning the fog, I was able to perceive a wider area. And just as expected, our net caught something.
“Found it!”
My eyes focused on one section of the forest beneath us. It was impossible to see with the naked eye from here, but it was definitely there. It was a door, frame and all. The magic tool Jinguuji had stolen had been left behind in a corner of the forest.
We considered the possibility that he’d left a lookout behind, but it seemed that wasn’t the case. He’d placed the door deep in a forest where no human could enter and had flown through the air to make it impossible to track him. He’d likely judged that a lookout would be unnecessary. This hadn’t been a careless decision. On the contrary, the fact that Jinguuji had gone so far with the door demonstrated his judicious planning.
However, his plan had failed. The departed archbishop’s tenacity and the enmity of the dragons whose home he’d destroyed had come back to haunt him. That said, there wasn’t much point to simply finding the door.
“From here, it’s our job.”
We needed to jam the key in and force it open. This was something only we could do.
“Salvia!”
“Yes. Let’s do it, my dear!”
Salvia embraced me from behind. Our senses overlapped and enhanced each other’s. Acting as my sense of touch, the mist brushed against the door. It slipped through the cracks. I stretched my imaginary fingers deep inside it.
“Got it!”
I felt the Misty Lodge reach the world beyond the Dimension Door. Even at the eleventh hour, I’d been a little worried whether this would work, but it turned out just fine. At the same time, I felt some resistance. It was like my fingers were being pushed back by a wall.
Harrison had informed me of this beforehand, so it was hardly a surprise. This was something like a defense mechanism. Even if we had a Dimensional Cornerstone, it was made so that it wouldn’t open unless the proper procedures were followed. If we wanted to disregard these procedures, we had to force our way in. I didn’t even have the proper key, so we’d predicted some resistance.
“Huh...?”
The unexpected thing here was that I broke through the defenses far more easily than I’d anticipated. It was like punching through a piece of styrofoam. That didn’t mean the defenses were weak. I’d met a similar level of resistance during the battle against Harrison to control the fabricated world. What had changed since then was me.
“How surprising. Your power to interfere with another world is remarkably different from before,” Salvia said.
Her bewilderment made sense. I couldn’t hide my confusion either.
“Why...?”
I definitely had more power, but I had no idea what had caused my rapid ascent. Had anything changed since then? I couldn’t think of anything which could explain my sudden growth, certainly not between now and the fight against Harrison.
At most, I’d formed a connection over the mental path to Katou. For the first time, I’d manifested my ability in its original form, allowing me to connect to a human. That had been a major step forward for me. That said, it was hard to link that to the drastic improvement in my use of the Misty Lodge. The ability to link hearts was mine, whereas the ability to interfere with other worlds came from Salvia. Maybe there was some other reason...
“Whatever. We need to focus on what’s in front of us first.”
Unfortunately, we didn’t really have the time to sit back and think. We did, in fact, have to hurry after Jinguuji, but there was a more direct threat to handle first.
“Takahiro! Here they come!”
The first to detect the anomaly was Shiran. In some ways, her spirits’ ability to detect danger surpassed the Misty Lodge’s. A part of the forest was changing. A semitransparent black sphere swelled in size as if to swallow the woods. The sphere quickly surpassed the height of the trees until it was like a small mountain. It was centered exactly where I’d detected the door. This was no coincidence, of course.
“That’s the Dimension Door!”
By all rights, if the door were opened properly using a Dimensional Cornerstone, the door itself would vanish and a black wall would appear leading to the other world. This time, however, we were breaking in, so there would be consequences.
Back during the Grand Calamity, a similar phenomenon had been witnessed when elves made contact with a Dimensional Cornerstone. The Holy Church’s opinion was that this was a result of the restraints malfunctioning due to a forceful entry. Still, even if it looked different from intended, its nature remained the same.
If we dived into the sphere, we would find ourselves in another world. Seeing how large it was, it would be entirely possible for us to fly in while riding the dragons. However, we’d decided beforehand to dismount before entering. We expected it to be dangerous, after all.