"So, it’s just you who’s joining us?" I remarked, as I glanced at Zelmira.

"Yes, one of us should be more than enough. Showing up with too large a group may make it seem like we’re picking a fight, after all," She responded prudently.

"Good luck out there, Mira, we’re counting on you," Chimed in Erisia with a smile.

"Yeah, this may well be our only chance to realize the goal we’ve been fighting for. But even if it doesn’t work out, make sure you get back safe," Added Veon, a look of concern on his face.

"And in the meantime, we’ll make sure to take care of things here," Grinned Drewen, giving her a thumbs up.

"Thanks, you guys, I appreciate it. I won’t let you down," Zelmira smiled gratefully, before glancing at me and giving me a nod.

Alright, then, it’s time.

I opened a portal to the Pocket Dimension, Zelmira approaching it curiously and stepping inside.

I closed the portal and let out a slow exhale, a sense of determination welling up as I mentally prepared myself.

Can’t afford to screw this up.

It’s around 10 PM right now, though from my perspective, it’s been a little over five days, thanks to the time dilation in the Pocket Dimension.

We spent that time working on mastering Spirit Fusion, and once we all agreed that we’d reached a satisfactory level with it, we rested up and got ready.

It’s time to go to the Demon nation now, we’ll cross the border, make our way to the Demon Lord and negotiate to get back to our world.

And if that fails, we’ll do it the hard way and take the ritual by force. Of course, that does mean screwing things up for Revolt, but if that’s what it takes, well...so be it.

Anyway, since it’ll be tough for all of us to cross the border without being spotted, I’ll head out by myself, while the others and Zelmira stay in the Pocket Dimension.

The plan is to let them out after I cross the border, which should be relatively easy. This world doesn’t have anything similar to Detection Magic, so I don’t have to worry about avoiding any sensory abilities.

Now, then...

"Here you go. This will take you close to the border, just channel some Mana through it to activate," Remarked Ezel, handing me a scroll with a sigh.

"Got it, thanks," I nodded, taking the scroll from her.

Here goes nothing.

I stepped back and ran my Mana through the scroll, before suddenly finding myself in the middle of an open, grassy space in the blink of an eye.

Not too far ahead, was a large, towering wall, stretching out in either direction endlessly. Does this wall seriously span the entirety of the border between the two nations? Wonder how long it took to build this thing?

Hm, more importantly, I can sense several presences atop the wall. And I can several flickers of flames, must be torches or lamps.

It’s pretty dark out, the sky’s cloudy, masking the moon and stars.

I stretched my arms up as a gentle breeze blew across, before partially activating Descent, just to manifest my wings.

This partial release gives me a pretty minimal power boost, relatively speaking, but the tradeoff is that I can maintain this well beyond my usual time limit.

I cracked my neck with a tilt of my head as I spread out my wings and took up, zipping up into the air rapidly, the wind beating down on my face as I shot up towards the clouds, before flying right through them.

I halted my ascent as I flew up past the clouds, a bright starry sky and a crescent moon coming into sight.

I took a moment to bask in the pleasantly cool air and enjoy the view, before shifting my focus back to the task at hand.

No chance of being spotted when I’m this high up, I’ll just fly right over the border and then look for a safe place to land.

I shot through the air, steadily lowering my altitude as I crossed the border, swooping down through the clouds and emerging back below them.

I glanced around as I soared below the clouds, continuing to head forward for a few hundred meters, before gliding down towards a forest.

Doubt I’ll have to worry about running into anyone down there. This world doesn’t have Monsters, and regular wild animals are bound to avoid me on instinct.

Though, I haven’t actually seen any of this world’s animals yet, so I suppose I can’t rule out the possibility that they’re different and potentially more dangerous than the animals on Earth.

They might even straight-up be Monsters...yeah, like maybe regular animals don’t exist in this world and only Monsters do instead.

And since regular animals don’t exist, the residents of this world defaulted to calling Monsters animals.

Then again, if the animals here do pose a serious threat, Zelmira probably would’ve mentioned it in the first place.

As I swooped into the forest and landed in a small clearing between a grove of trees, I retracted my wings, reverting to my base form before looking around.

I do sense some presences around, a lot of them feel like they’re running away. There’s a big presence too, but I think the animal’s asleep.

Alright, time to let the others out and head to meet the Demon Lord, we’ll-...hm?

As I stepped on a dry twig, a loud snap echoing out, I sensed the large presence start to move, the sound waking it up.

The sound of leaves rustling and branches creaking rang out, followed by a deep, ominous growl.

I turned my gaze across to the left, where the presence was, right as a large head poked through the leaves of a tree, narrowing its eyes at me as I stared in bewilderment.

The creature let out a defensive, threatening snarl, followed by a bellowing, deafening roar, presumably in an effort to scare me away.

But, uh, I was pretty damn distracted by the sight of it... 𝕗𝐫𝚎𝗲𝘄𝐞𝕓𝐧𝕠𝘃𝕖𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝚖

Hey, Ai, is that...is that a T-Rex?