As the spatial distortion of the collapsed Red Gate completely dissipated, the localized communication dampening lifted. Markus lifted his wrist, expecting the tactical interface to display a clean slate of green synchronization markers from the upper northern shelf. Per his structural timelines, Rosanne's vanguard team should have already suppressed the first Purple Gate and transitioned to the remaining two objectives.
Instead, the holographic display flashed a single, persistent amber notification.
Bypassing the local military channels, Markus forced a direct diagnostic query through NOVUS to ping the heavy armored crawler assigned to his team. The data that unfurled made his silver-blue eyes instantly narrow.
The vehicle's primary GPS coordinate matrix was completely stationary, anchored precisely at the entry threshold of Sector 4—the location of the first Purple Gate.
The vanguard had been on-site for nearly two hours. According to Sloane's efficiency models, the gate's core should have been inverted twenty minutes ago, yet the crawler's velocity vector remained at absolute zero.
Every automated status ping sent to Rosanne, Jessica, Mika, and Donna returned a localized network timeout. The signal wasn't being blocked by standard rock density; it was being actively smothered by an immense, dense mana saturation.
They hadn't moved. They hadn't cleared the gate. And they weren't responding.
"Sir!" the local Borealis Dominion garrison commander stammered, rushing toward Markus with a squad of medics as he saw the blood tracing down the architect's cheek. "The Red Gate... the readings just vanished. Did you succeed? We have a recovery team ready to—"
"Clear the transport bay," Markus interrupted, his voice dropping into a freezing, absolute frequency that instantly halted the commander in his tracks. "I need a high-mobility vehicle. Now."
"But sir, your mana readings... your mana core is completely hollow! Pushing back to the surface in your condition is—"
"I did not ask for a medical appraisal, Commander," Markus said, stepping past the unit without breaking his stride, his unyielding willpower forcefully overriding the physical tremors threatening to buckle his knees. "I asked for a vehicle."
Reaching the garrison's staging deck, Markus commandeered a heavy-duty, rune-injected tactical interceptor. Stripping out the unnecessary military cargo to reduce the structural weight, he ignited the vehicle's secondary elemental combustion engine. The heavy machine let out a mechanical roar, its wheels tearing out of the subterranean bunker and rocketing up the steep, spiraling transit tunnels toward Sector 4.
Inside the quiet cabin, the ambient air grew ice-cold. Markus's singular focus was his team's survival—a cold, unyielding imperative that completely eclipsed the sharp, localized pain radiating from his hollowed mana core. He didn't care that his hands were stiff against the steering column, or that his internal system registry was flashing a persistent, critical warning. Every gear in his mind was locked onto a singular objective. They were not merely assets on a ledger; they were the indispensable pillars of the framework he was building. If they broke, the entire architectural design of Eternity would fracture with them.
The tactical interceptor crested the final mountain ridge, its heavy treads tearing through the frozen slurry. As the vehicle slammed to a halt at the perimeter of the upper mining shelf, the scene through the ash-blizzard revealed a terrifying state of structural paralysis.
The tactical interface on Markus's watch struggled to read the chaotic environmental telemetry, rendering a fractured, pulsing overlay of the battlefield.
The Purple Gate had not simply opened; it had inverted its structural coordinates. A thick, crystalline miasma had bled into the atmosphere, flash-freezing the localized environment into jagged, hovering shards of violet mana-ice that completely warped the laws of kinetic movement.
The heavy crawler sat dead center within the stasis zone. Its primary defensive runic barriers were flickering violently under the crushing weight of a high-tier phased anomaly, its engine completely dead as the ambient field aggressively drained its electronic and elemental reserves.
Swarming the perimeter of the crawler were massive, jagged elemental beasts born from the fractured rift. Their bodies were composed of condensed violet crystal and permafrost, reinforced by the surrounding iron ore. Moving with unnatural, erratic speed, these crystalline monsters were relentlessly slamming their heavy, armor-plated limbs against the vehicle's integrity shields.
The violent vibrations of the beasts' assault shuddered through the frozen earth, but Markus didn't pause. The volatile, raw energy from the crushed mana crystals flooded his hollow pathways like liquid fire, providing just enough momentum to ignite his highest conceptual framework. He didn't need a massive reservoir of mana to rewrite reality; he possessed the fundamental comprehension of the universe's geometry.
Reaching out with a single, blood-stained palm, Markus forcefully pulled on the Law of Space.
A silent, pitch-black line of absolute vacuum snapped into existence across the entire battlefield. It bypassed the beasts' hyper-dense iron-ore armor and permafrost carapaces entirely, severing the atomic bonds of everything in its path.
Without a moment's hesitation, Markus sprinted past the shattered remnants of the elemental vanguard. Every step was a brutal tax on his physical endurance, his empty core screaming under the strain of the forced crystal absorption, but his eyes remained fixed on the undulating violet gateway.
He lunged forward, throwing his physical frame directly through the unstable event horizon of the Purple Gate to reach the stranded girls.
The transition through the portal structure tore at his senses, the ambient violet gravity twisting the darkness around him as he plummeted into the internal domain.
Before the local elemental forces could register his presence, Markus reached into his dimensional inventory. With a fluid flick of his wrist, three sleek, crystalline vials containing high-grade, concentrated mana elixirs materialized in his palm. He snapped the enchanted seals with his thumb and downed the glowing silver liquids in rapid succession.
The effect was instantaneous. The pure, highly refined elixir rushed through his parched pathways like a soothing glacial torrent, immediately extinguishing the agonizing, volatile burn left behind by the raw crystals he had crushed earlier.
[Mana: 2,000.... 12,000.... 22,000.... 32,000..../90,000]
As the hollow ache in his chest vanished, replaced by the familiar, dense hum of a partly saturated mana core, Markus closed his physical eyes.
Shedding the limitations of standard sensory perception, Markus activated his Fate's Eyes.
The blinding violet haze of the pocket dimension instantly dissolved from his vision, replaced by a vast, monochromatic fabric of causal webwork. In this conceptual realm, the chaotic movements of the dungeon's elemental denizens were reduced to predictable, glowing vectors. Cutting cleanly through the static noise of the rift were four distinct, tightly intertwined golden threads—the karmic signatures of Rosanne, Jessica, Mika, and Donna.
The threads were pulsing erratically, anchored deep within a subterranean crystalline crucible nearly five kilometers from his current coordinates. They were under immense, continuous structural pressure, but their lines remained unbroken.
"Found them," Markus murmured, his physical eyes snapping open, flashing with a cold, predatory silver-blue light.
With his mana reservoir completely replenished, he no longer needed to traverse the terrain on foot. Locking his focus onto the exact spatial coordinates of the girls' fate anchors, Markus stepped forward and forcefully buckled the space in front of him.