Dimensional Summoner: Infinite Growth in a Leveling Apocalypse

The success made the second case feel reasonable. That was the danger Liora had made me name aloud. I ignored the pale roots beside my hand and checked only the conditions I had written before coming here.

The drive’s pulses travelled through the water as pressure against my chest. The cam had entered its weaker phase, leaving somewhere between three and a half and four minutes.

I could not see the guardian, which meant it had not returned. My entry lane remained clear. The remaining drive time sat on the edge of my minimum, but still above it.

That qualifies. Just.

I attempted the second block because the numbers still allowed it, not because I had forgotten the abort conditions.

Even then, I chose a smaller section than the one beside it. The larger network would have produced more usable Marrowlace, but its edge ran toward the egg depression. The smaller fractured block kept the cut on the bed’s periphery and left most of the living network untouched.

The substrate on that side had cracked around an old foundation pad. The block I could reach was smaller, with a fracture already running through one corner.

The undercut went wrong.

The block separated into two pieces, and the smaller piece took part of the root network with it. With both hands full and a metre of visibility, I forced both pieces through the case valve. Pell would have opinions if I survived long enough to hear them.

The disturbance travelled through the bed.

I had treated the stable ground as an advantage. Stable ground also carried force. When the substrate broke beneath the foundation, the shock passed through the soil into the water surrounding the eggs.

It was a small signal from exactly the wrong place.

The pressure against my chest changed. The camshaft continued its fading rhythm, but another sustained displacement rolled toward the greenhouse from the southwest.

It strengthened too quickly to be one of the ordinary Lurkers. The guide rope trembled in my hand. Loose silt lifted from the outer crop bed before the animal itself came anywhere near the foundation.

I sealed the second case, checked the valve, and put it into the spatial ring.

The guardian had abandoned the decoy.

The returning pressure wave struck the foundation before I reached the guide rope, and every remaining pane in the western roof rang above me.

I did not stop to look.

The guide rope went into my left hand. I kept my right hand forward for the frame and moved toward the western doorway with my body low, controlling every motion until control stopped being the thing most likely to keep me alive.

There is a point where stealth ceases to matter. It arrives when something heavier than a car already knows where you are.

Four metres from the threshold, I stopped worrying about displacement and moved as fast as I could.

I surfaced beneath the walkway, caught the underside of the grating with both hands, and hauled myself up.

Something passed below me. The water it pushed lifted me a full body length and slammed my shoulder into the walkway. A grating edge opened my forearm, and broken glass cut both palms as I climbed onto the span.

My left hand nearly failed on the second pull. Blood and floodwater made the steel slick, and the fresh cuts crossed the same palm Liora had dressed that morning. I hooked an elbow through the grating, got one knee onto the span, and rolled far enough that the guardian’s next pressure wave passed beneath instead of throwing me back into the channel.

The guardian turned in the channel and oriented on me.

I had known it was enormous while observing it from hundreds of metres away. At nine metres, that knowledge became considerably more urgent. Its flat, silt-coloured head filled the channel. Scars crossed its back like old plough marks.

I ran along the walkway and pulled the secondary trigger cord from the fence post as I passed.

The bladder discharged in the shallow channel beside the third greenhouse. One violent burst slapped through the water—the pressure signature of a large animal hitting the surface.

The guardian turned toward it.

It only lost four or five seconds. Its whole body followed the burst for two lengths before it realised nothing had moved again.

Those seconds carried me across the final submerged section and onto the concrete apron on my hands and knees.

The guardian corrected and came after me.

I reached the doubled release line, took it in both fists, and threw my weight backward.

Both corroded stanchions failed at the waterline. Eleven metres of steel walkway collapsed into the channel behind me, throwing water across the apron and leaving a barrier of grating and twisted supports between the guardian and dry ground.

The span fell exactly where I had planned, well clear of the greenhouse foundation, eggs, and root bed.

The guardian struck the obstruction. It went beneath or around it—I did not stay to learn which. By the time it cleared the debris, I was ninety metres up the causeway and still running.

I did not stop for two kilometres.

When I finally took shelter behind a hedge with my back against a gatepost, I checked everything in order because I did not trust myself to have noticed injuries during the escape.

A shallow cut ran down my left forearm. Four small pieces of glass remained in my palms. My shoulder was bruised from hip to collarbone, but nothing felt broken and none of it would stop me reaching Greyhaven.

I removed the glass with tweezers from the medical kit, flushed the cuts, and wrapped both hands loosely enough to keep circulation. The shoulder would stiffen once I stopped moving. I ate half a ration bar while checking the field cases because fainting on the road would be an embarrassing way to lose a plant I had just escaped a Level 20 predator to obtain.

The first field case remained sealed. Its solution was clear, and the root network stayed pale behind the inspection port.

The second case held one and a half fractured blocks. Darkening had begun along the broken surfaces where roots had torn rather than separated cleanly. Some material remained pale, but the damaged edges were already turning the colour of weak tea.

No experience report appeared. I had killed nothing. The System did not award progress for difficulty, preparation, or restraint.

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