From Moving Crates to Killing Gods-Chapter 97: The Sundering

Damian stayed at the window for a moment looking out over the wasteland. "Before I give you my theory." He said in a measured voice. "Do you know anything about the Void."

I thought about it. "No, I don’t know anything." I admitted.

He turned from the window and walked back to his chair. "The Void is the source of corruption." He said as he sat down. "Not a place, not a creature. A force actively trying to spread throughout the universe. The portals are how it expands."

I absorbed that for a moment. "So the portals aren’t thrown at random." I said.

"Nothing about the Void is random." He replied calmly. "It expands with purpose."

"Then why is there only one portal near Argent?" I asked.

Damian folded his hands on the desk. "Three possibilities." He said before raising one finger. "First. From the Void’s perspective this region is already conquered. Corruptors roam freely. Whatever intelligence governs portal placement may simply consider the invasion complete."

He raised a second finger. "Second. Corruptors disrupt dungeon ecosystems. Any portal that opens here releases creatures that immediately encounter entities far more powerful than themselves. The Corruptors would destroy them before they could spread. From the Void’s perspective deploying portals here produces no return."

His third finger rose. "Third. Argent is too small to register in their radar. A handful of awakened individuals and a population of children who have not yet reached the age to receive an ability is not enough concentrated power to be seen." 𝓯𝙧𝙚𝒆𝙬𝙚𝒃𝙣𝙤𝒗𝓮𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

He lowered his hand. "Most likely all three apply simultaneously." He said calmly. "A region that appears already fallen, where dungeon creatures are immediately consumed by entities already present and populated by too few people to be seen. The Void looks at this region and sees a finished problem."

I turned that over slowly.

The Corruptors were not just dangerous creatures. They were the legacy of the Sundering, the event that had shattered the old world generations ago. Every child in Argent grew up hearing about it. Entire regions were lost in a matter of minutes, and the creatures we now called Corruptors began roaming the world.

What followed was the First Exodus.

Everyone ran toward the protection of the city barriers. Villages, caravans, frontier settlements, and entire minor towns abandoned their homes and fled to the fortified citadels.

The stories say the wasteland filled with monsters overnight, creatures born from the corruption itself.

But that wasn’t the truth.

The truth was far worse.

The Corruptors wandering the wasteland weren’t born from corruption.

They were the people who had been outside the barriers when the Sundering happened.

The Void had already won the battle for this region. It had no reason to fear a handful of level ones who couldn’t even step outside without being killed by Corruptors.

"If all of that is true." I said slowly. "Then why is there one portal still open?"

Damian looked at me with a steadiness that suggested he had been waiting for that exact question. "That portal." He said slowly. "Has most likely been open since before the Sundering."

The weight of that landed without either of us needing to emphasize it.

Before the Sundering. Before corruption swept everything outside the barrier into what it was now. A portal that had fallen from the sky when Argent was not the only remaining city, when the wasteland was simply land and the people who would eventually become Corruptors were still people.

Generations ago. More than generations.

"And no one ever cleared it." I said.

"The Sundering happened." Damian replied plainly. "Whatever was happening before stopped. The dungeon has been running without intervention ever since."

I stared at him. "Then what’s inside it now."

Damian was quiet for a moment, and that pause from him carried a lot of weight. "I don’t know." He said calmly. "And I want to be precise about that. I genuinely don’t know."

He glanced briefly toward the window. "There are two possibilities. The first is that early on, before the catastrophe fully settled, the dungeon experienced what we would call an outbreak. The creatures inside exceeded the dungeon’s capacity to contain them and spilled outward."

"That’s where the silver snakes come from..." I said before I could stop myself.

Damian’s eyes returned to me, his expression shifting by a fraction. "That possibility had occurred to me." He said carefully. "If they originated from that portal it would mean the major outbreak happened long ago. The strongest creatures would have emerged, encountered the Corruptors and most would have been destroyed. What survived would have adapted."

Silver snakes that organized themselves in nests in the underground. Adapted over generations to surviving alongside creatures that should have killed them.

"And what would be inside the portal?" I asked. "After the outbreak."

"Whatever remained." Damian said. "The dungeon does not stop, it keeps running. The creatures that did not leave, or those born afterward, would have had the entire dungeon to themselves." He chose his next words carefully. "By now there should be an entire self sustaining ecosystem inside that portal. Its own food chain. Its own territorial structure. Creatures that have never encountered anything outside it."

The room went quiet.

I thought about Wip. Pale, small, currently asleep on my bed with her nose tucked under her tail. Level one, Aspirant rank, a creature the system had labeled Mythical.

She had come out of that portal voluntarily at level one and rank one. The youngest possible version of whatever she was.

And inside the dungeon, left undisturbed since before the Sundering, was everything that had stayed.

Everything that had grown.

I kept my expression neutral and stood to leave. "Good to know." I said casually. "Something to consider for the future."

Damian watched me for exactly one second longer than the sentence deserved, the look of a man who suspected he had not been given complete information and had decided not to press it. "Sit." He said calmly.

I paused halfway to the door and turned back.

"There is another matter, remember?" Damian continued as he folded his hands on the desk again.

"The path between Argent and the Exile point is still really dangerous." He said.

"So you want them all killed." I said.

"Not all of them." Damian replied immediately. "That would be counterproductive."

I frowned.

"If my theory about the Void is correct." He continued calmly. "Removing too many Corruptors may change the assessment of this region. The Void could begin deploying portals again."

That idea sat in my stomach like a stone.

"So what do you want?" I asked.

Damian held my gaze for a moment before answering.

"A corridor." He said quietly.

"A safe path between Argent and the Exile point."

And somehow, the way he said it made it sound far more dangerous than simply killing them all.