"This is it. Follow me." Abium moved closer to the portal and looked into the bluish whirls.
Meanwhile, Nicolaus was hesitant at first but soon walked towards Abium.
He then picked up Umi, nodded his head at Abium, and jumped into it.
Abium also followed his action and leaped into it.
Once they stepped into the bluish portal, they noticed that the space around them began to twist strangely and pulled them somewhere.
Before they could even blink, Abium and others felt blurry and soon found themselves standing under a giant redwood tree.
Abium instantly knew they had already arrived inside the pocket dimension and tried to glace around but felt dizziness.
"Damn it, the spatial travel sickness again." He cursed slowly and glanced at Nicolaus and Umi.
Unlike him, both showed an uneasy look on their faces and even stood unsteadily.
If not for Nicolaus placing his hand on the nearby tree trunk and helping Umi stand straight, both wouldn't have long fallen on the ground.
'Wait... The sand looks more like the red sand from Easica World.'
He hurriedly glanced around and observed the surroundings vigilantly.
He was in a completely different place, so he didn't dare to let his guard down.
He soon noticed that they were in some dense woods filled with packs of green trees, shrubs, and vines and turned grim.
Most of them were oak trees, pine trees, and redwood trees, but Abium noticed a few unfamiliar trees with creepy dark leaves, which gave him a feeling of corruption and chaos.
Even staring at them for two seconds gave him some uneasy feeling.
He then looked up to see the sky but noticed that a bright light blocked his vision.
'Sunlight? Does Pocket Dimension also have separate sun?' He was startled inside and furrowed.
He hurriedly moved to an open area and soon saw what was up in the sky.
The next instant, his expression froze up as he saw what appeared above their heads.
A monstrous ball of fire hung up in the sky and illuminated the whole Pocket dimension like the real sun.
Although the bright light blinded his sight, Abium managed to look at the sun's outer surface due to his enchanted eyesight and soon widened his eyes.
He noticed that countless runic letters, magic circles, and mysterious lines appeared around the whole sun and looked artificial.
Indeed, the monstrous ball of fire was not a real sun but an artificial one!
'I never even heard of such a thing in the past.' He started at the burning orange fireball in shock and noticed an orbicular ring made of some mysterious reddish fire encircled the mini-sun and seemed to be helping it to hover in the sky!
'It must be above thousands of meters high.' Abium mumbled inwardly and stared at it in wonder.
After a while, he let out a deep sigh and shook his head.
At that moment, Abium had no idea how a mage could create such a thing, but the mere presence of such creation in the sky made him realize how weak he was in the past.
'During the final Planar War, I struggled to battle against a Second-Tier Demon named Kolgarth and even got pierced by its Abyss Spear bloodline spell. At that time, I also had many Low and Mid-Tier artifacts as backup and even comprehended my sword aura power to Master Level.' His Warrior strength also reached Peak-Eighth Tier, and he appeared as a battle genius among all other warriors.
The same goes for Helena, Nicolaus, Kuran and his elven friend Navarre.
But that Demon killed Abium using its other bloodline spells and even beaten others black and blue.
When he thought about that final battle, he couldn't help but smile bitterly.
'We were too weak. I cursed that Veteran Soldier Oliver for not telling me about the Mage Path at that time.' But Abium knew that if he hadn't helped him after the ambush incident, he would've died in the Baxbron woods and become food for the hungry wolves.
'But how powerful is that mage who created this artificial sun? I don't even know anyone more powerful than Magus Alius and always thought of him as a peak existence in the Southern Kingdoms. No, Pope should be more powerful than him.' Abium thought to himself and retracted his gaze from the mini-sun.
Then, he glanced at the others and saw Umi was looking at the surroundings with wide eyes while Nicolaus was staring at the sun with wide-gaped eyes.
"W-Where are we? Wait, are we safe here?" He asked in a shocked tone.
"We've to check on our own." Abium closed his eyes, released his spirit power, and even used the scanning function to check the surroundings.
Soon, he opened his eyes as he confirmed that the surroundings were filled with nothing but abundant small trees and plants.
Although a few trees around 100 meters high or above appeared here and there in the woods, they seemed pretty scarce.
Still, the woods appeared denser than any forest he had ever seen and looked gloomier.
As he was about to switch off the scan function, he noticed that many red dots appeared on the bluish map and squinted his eyes.
"Enemies!"
Although he had no idea about the new enemies' identity, he didn't dare to let his guard down and warned Nicolaus.
"Multiple enemies are coming from all directions." He paused for a moment, picked Umi's mom from his shoulder, and gave her to him.
"Take this lady and protect her and Umi. I will take care of the enemies."
Hearing Abium's warning, Nicolaus's expression also drastically changed.
He hurriedly grabbed Umi's hand, carried her mother on his back, and moved towards a nearby tall tree.
At that moment, Abium noticed that a black-cloaked humanoid figure was leaping from tree to tree and moving towards Nicolaus quickly.
No, he realized that figure was aiming its dagger-like weapon at Umi!
'Oh? You are aiming for the weakest person, huh. What a crafty plan.'
Abium tapped his spatial ring, ran towards the nearby tree trunk, stepped on the side branch, and leaped upward like a skilled bowman.
At that moment, a long sword appeared in his hand and glowed in a sunshine aura.
As the shadowy figure threw its dagger at Umi, he leaped above Nicolaus's head and blocked the incoming dagger with a clang.
Simultaneously, he moved his other hand, grabbed the tree branch, and swung like a monkey before leaping towards the next tree branch.
He landed on the tree branch a second later and slashed his 'Sword of the Wrath.'
The next instant, a reddish arc of lightning came out of his sword tip, flew towards the shadowy figure that hid in the tree leaves at an incredible speed, and collided with its head area.
The figure got paralyzed by the sword aura the next second and fell from the tree.
On the other hand, Abium raised his hand and thrust his sword directly into the falling figure's head.
His sword broke that figure's skull with a loud bam and even separated its head, leaving the body to descend.
But as Abium saw the head that still got attached to his sword, he couldn't help but look surprised.
'Skull?'
Indeed, the head was nothing but an empty skull with two reddish dimmed glows that appeared in the orbicular areas.
"Undead?"
He muttered aloud as he looked down and saw a skeleton figure covered in an eerie blackish cloak.
It was a human skeleton but appeared to be only 1 meter tall, and its bones had web-like eerie red and black lines.
The strange thing was that the skeleton wore a ragged black cloak and looked more like a skilled assassin.
The only thing that appeared missing was the human flesh.
'But why there is undead in this pocket dimension?' Abium showed a confused look and soon noticed a few shadows were moving in their direction from afar.
But unlike the earlier Assassin-like skeleton, these moved very slowly and appeared disorganized.
"But there seem to be many skeletons here. Necromancer?" He furrowed his eyebrows, locked his gaze on a particular shadow, and scanned it.
[Name: Unknown
Age: Unknown
Race: Undead
Class: Skeleton Soldier
Attributes
Strength: 1.1
Agility: 1.3
Spirit: 1.0
Skills: None
Spells: None]
As he saw the Undead skeleton's status, he couldn't help but show a smile.
"They are weak." Currently, these skeletons' strength appeared only around First-Tier Warriors' strength, which gave him a big relief.
Just as he removed the skeleton's skull from his sword, Nicolaus's surprised voice came from his left side and startled him greatly.
"What is that?"
Abium hurriedly turned his gaze towards Nicolaus and noticed that he was staring at the sky again.
Furrowing, Abium also followed his gaze and soon squinted his eyes.
At that moment, a large transparent blue screen appeared in the sky and looked similar to Azolla's blue screen!
As he read what was written on that blue screen, his expression stiffened.
[Mission: Kill all the skeletons in the Level-1 Domain.
Success- Unknown
Failure – Death
Number of participants: 4
Number of kills: 1 undead/ 200 undead
Time Limit: 56 Hours.]