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“I didn’t really need to control the direction, so Minho shot up to the sky at terrifying speed.”

In an instant, the buildings receded, and the clouds that had seemed so distant were suddenly right there. Yet, the background still didn’t break or look odd.

So, this isn’t even close to enough? Maybe the sky has hardly anything to load.

“Diagonal… a bit, tilt…!”

It was tough to speak properly due to the wind and acceleration, but I asked Minho to move a little diagonally.

Though I didn’t think it would change much, at least we had to load more things somehow.

Minho seemed to get my words in one go, slightly adjusting his body and starting to fly diagonally.

Looking down, the scenery was whipping by. And the shapes of the buildings were becoming increasingly lackluster.

“It’s working…! Keep this up!!”

As expected, I was right. It was connecting. The clouds were increasingly morphing into square chunks, and the buildings sprawled below us were lacking proper windows now.

If we keep this up, we should be able to escape smoothly. Just then…

A clone shot towards us.

“Wah?!”

It completely missed us and zoomed by on a wildly wrong trajectory, but that thing was definitely targeting us.

To make matters worse, the half-rotten background was gradually becoming more defined. That crazy bastard followed us here?!

Ah… right. That guy must have a decent range for cloning.

He likely created the clone far away, swapped bodies with it, then made another clone from there and continued chasing us like that.

“That persistent jerk…!”

If he’s moving like that, the amount of loading required must be insane. Does he not care at all if he breaks down?

Or maybe the brain usage for loading is surprisingly low? Either way, it wasn’t good.

“Up again! Stretching sideways isn’t gonna help!”

At least there’s a bit of good luck in that the clones can only make appearances where they can land. If that guy could spawn clones in midair…

We’d have been caught and smashed into the ground by now.

A chill ran down my spine at the horrifying thought. But it didn’t last long.

Having witnessed the clones being thrown from below, I wondered how on earth they were being flung out, and it seemed like they were just barbarically tossed.

With eyes at the tail end, I observed the trajectories of the clones flying toward us and directed Minho on where to dodge and how much time he had.

“25%!”

“What does that even mean?!”

“I don’t really know!”

Not helpful at all. Anyway, I figured somehow we’d make it if we just kept going higher.

Now, even the thrown clones couldn’t catch up to us at this height, but it was getting hard to breathe, and I was starting to feel cold.

Even if I forced down the cold with magic, I couldn’t ignore the lack of oxygen.

I’m fine since my body can produce oxygen, but Minho was struggling just to breathe.

He was wheezing heavily, desperately trying to inhale as if his lungs were gonna freeze.

“You okay?”

I asked him, but he had no response, whether he heard me or was too drained to answer.

He seemed to still have enough mental power to maintain his abilities and rise, but even that looked dangerously exhausting.

“…Even if it feels a little weird, just hang in there.”

I reluctantly extracted a bit of slime, shaping it into a breathing apparatus and sticking it to Minho’s mouth.

Adjusting the slime so it wouldn’t consume Minho, I sprayed a makeshift atmosphere with a nitrogen to oxygen ratio of 8 to 2.

“Hah, hah… I can do this too, huh…”

Minho looked a bit surprised, but once he got to breathe comfortably, relief washed over him.

“Didn’t you feel anything breaking?”

“Not really… I still might not be out of it yet. But it’s definitely true that the Mirror Dimension has its limits.”

Since he actually saw the world rendering, he didn’t think it was entirely different dimension, but…

“The issue is, where exactly is that limit… I can’t believe we’ve come this high and there’s still no sign of breaking. Do we need to go higher?”

“At that point, we might not be able to hold on anymore.”

That makes sense. I could feel him shaking from the cold even now.

“Still, we gotta go as far as we can, right?”

He nodded, acknowledging it, and with his last bits of strength, he declared he’d fly higher, putting on a burst of speed.

After desperately climbing, finally, there was a loud “crack” sound as something seemed to break.

It was loud enough for Minho to hear, so I could guess we had finally escaped from the Mirror Dimension.

“We did it! We’re out, Blanca! It really worked?!”

“Get yourself together, it’s not over yet!”

Minho was overjoyed, but I knew this wasn’t the end, so I told him to hold off on celebrating. There were some issues.

The first problem was that just because we left the Mirror Dimension doesn’t mean we’d popped back out to where we were kidnapped.

The second issue was that there was probably still a fight going on down below.

When I suggested we hurry down, he agreed, saying we had to do just that, and released his abilities.

Instantly, he began a vertical drop with a fierce wind, and I imagined what might be happening below.

Just as I was about to ask Minho if he could fight down there, he beat me to it.

“Blanca! There’s only about 2% left, okay?!”

With the whistling wind, I couldn’t catch everything, but I definitely heard “2%.”

Not knowing what that meant, I asked him how much that was, and he stammered before answering loudly.

“It’s enough that slowing down is a struggle! But don’t worry, I’ll manage!”

I doubted that we could manage at this speed. Should I really squeeze every last bit of slime to slow down?

Should I try and make a parachute out of slime now? I had no idea how a parachute even worked.

Could I just stick some strings together and spread a fabric like a parachute? Would that even slow us down? I was indecisive and confused about what to do next.

“And… try not to worry too much! By now, Geizer and the other heroes should’ve arrived too! They’ll help us out somehow!”

Thinking back, that might be true. Maybe those guys would come to our rescue.

Still, it’s best to be prepared for anything, so I asked for permission and spread the parachute in advance.

There was a jolt that felt like my arm would get ripped off, and while the speed slightly decreased, it wasn’t anywhere near enough.

“Oh, oh! It’s slowing down, it’s working!”

Minho didn’t seem too burdened by it; he looked happy that the speed was diminishing.

But… it still wasn’t enough. I felt uneasy with just this. But there was nothing else I could come up with.

There was no way to try anything fancy like wings right now. Just keeping the parachute steady was already tough enough.

As I pierced through the clouds from above, I finally saw the ground.

We had drifted a bit off course while moving unnecessarily in a different direction, so I needed to get us back to where we should’ve been.

“Look over there! I can see fire and lightning! Isn’t that it?!”

When Minho pointed it out, sure enough, there were flames bursting and electricity crackling. And the flames were dancing around erratically.

It was Yeonhwa controlling the flames.

In that case, that must be Jinhyeon who started it.

“Good eye!”

I wasn’t well-versed in parachutes, but I knew that if I pulled on the line toward where I wanted to go, it would steer me in that direction, so I was able to approach the area where the kids were fighting.

“This is our only shot, are you ready?!”

The parachute wasn’t a proper thing; at this speed, I worried I’d break not just my legs but my hips and spine too, so Minho needed to pull off something big.

“Just leave it to me!”

Minho must have drained every last bit of his power because I could tell he was slowing down quite a bit. His spine, hips, and legs…

But in the end, it seemed he could no longer hold on, as his head lolled, and he fainted right there.

He probably strained every last ounce of magic he had.

As we sped up again, I figured my femur was definitely done for, but this would suffice. Just as I squeezed my eyes shut in preparation for the shock of landing…

I felt no impact.

…Huh, what’s going on? Why can’t I even open my eyes?

I thought something was wrong, but I opened my eyes and found myself landing softly without any pain.

It was Justitia.

Ah.

She stopped us.

“Are you alright?! What on earth happened that you fell from the sky? No, focus! Hurry and regain your senses! We’re right in the middle of a battle!”

Justitia released the halt, approached us, and checked our conditions, mentioning that Wang Tai-lun was having a big fight over there, so we should assist.

“Minho can’t go, he’s out cold!”

“Then Minho must have done something, I’ll hear the details later, so go assist quickly! If you help Blanca, we might just catch him!”

What are we catching? As I thought it over, I soon grasped what we were trying to catch.

Wang Tai-lun’s clone was up in the sky.

That guy still hasn’t managed to escape.

Whatever the case,

Today, I’ll bring this to an end.

 

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