Grey woke up to a hand palming his face. For half a second he thought he was going to be suffocated or something until he realized that his Helm Frame was on and that he was breathing just fine.

"Why the hell is it so hard to wake you up? I’m pretty sure we’re about to land?"

Grey sniffled and then yawned, stretching out.

"Hey, hey, there’s not much room back here you know."

Grey ignored her, smacking his lips and looking around. "I’m hungry."

"Thanks for the information, but I don’t exactly have food I can pull out of my ass for you."

"Terrible concubine material."

Grey felt a knee dig into his back in thanks. He was still too groggy to care much about that either, though.

Slowly, he came to and the cobwebs over his mind slowly cleared up. He felt stronger now, once again. And to think he used to think that sleep was overrated.

He felt like the last two sleeps he had had were the best of his life.

He looked around to find the One Line Vessel slowly arching down. It was just about to land in the middle of absolute, butt-fuck nowhere.

"... I dunno if I set the coordinates right." He mumbled to himself.

"What was that?"

"Nothing. Nothing at all."

Grey frowned as the One Line Vessel fell in a steeper arch, its speed slowing considerably.

"I was trying to wake you up for another reason too," Amunet said. "We passed this weird barrier a couple minutes ago, and it was after that that the One Line Vessel started to arc down. I’m kind of worried if our flight path was affected or not because of it."

"A barrier?" Grey’s frown deepened considerably. It seemed he was missing out on some important details because he really wanted to sleep.

Luckily, there was a way to check. He pulled up his status screen and looked at the map. Now that he had the map given to him by Petri, basically the entirety of the Holy Empire was lit up. So, he could tell exactly where they were.

This was probably the real reason Amunet wanted him up.

"Okay, good news, we’re still in the correct zone. We’re definitely going to end up where we want to be. Bad news, instead of ending up by the city itself, we’re much closer to the outskirts."

The only reason Grey wasn’t already crashing out was because he had just had a good sleep and was in a decently good mood. But whatever was happening here had thrown another wrench in his plans.

Maybe it was too idealistic, but he felt that traveling here would take about half a day or so, and then he hoped to find Thi Lan in another half day, and then get back to the Holy City with yet another half day.

Was that a bit ambitious? Yes. But it was the only way to do things fast enough that he could actually have a chance at saving more than one of them.

But the barrier appearing where it was changed their trajectory, and now they were going to land at least another half day’s journey away from the city, and that was assuming they didn’t have to constantly stop because of Runes and everything else.

BOOM.

The One Line Vessel landed heavily on the ground, certainly far heavier than it should have. Luckily, Grey was up this time and had learned his lesson about his weak knees. Rather than absorbing the impact on his feet, he rolled about three times before he came to a stop and popped up.

He looked around, taking deep breaths to keep his temper at bay and scratching the back of his head.

The place looked practically identical to Zone 234. There was a light layer of fog that hung around everything, the smokiness making one feel like their vision was blurred by something. Other than that, it was just grass, trees, and a ruin with a leaning pillar he could just barely spot in the distance.

If you had plopped him down here with a blindfold and then told him to take it off and guess where he was, he would just assume he was back in his familiar stomping grounds.

"I guess there’s only one way forward." Grey said. He communicated with his heart and pulled out the Dark Kin Cycle.

However, his attempt came back with a frown.

"Huh?"

Grey looked back at Amunet. She was standing there, waiting for him to take out the bike as well. That was definitely the only option they had.

"What’s wrong?" she asked.

"I dunno. I couldn’t take it out."

Amunet blinked. "... The barrier?" she suggested.

"It’s possible. But I don’t know why that would affect something like that. Feels... weird."

Grey’s intuition toward these things had gotten great in recent days, especially after Prometheus took the form of that little cut flame. But he was drawing a blank this time.

The bike was in his heart, why wouldn’t he be able to take it out?

To Grey’s surprise, his inventory was the same. He tried to take things out of it but completely failed.

"Try yours." Grey said.

"My what? My inventory?"

Grey nodded and Amunet obliged, but she failed too.

"Is it space related, then?" Grey thought with a flicker in his gaze.

That would make sense. One Line Vessel seemed like just a speedy, light related travel method, but it was deeply intertwined with methods of space. That was why they were able to get from place to place so fast, not to mention accelerate so quickly without becoming meat paste.

It was obvious now that Grey thought about it, but for an entire bike to fit in his heart, some space shenanigans had to be afoot too.

"Fuck." Grey cursed, running his hand through his hair again.

Now, a half-day trek had become easily a three or four day matter. It would likely take at least double that time, actually, because on foot they wouldn’t be able to avoid ruins by diving into the ground.

The ground suddenly shook.

Grey cast his Resonant Sense domain out as far as he could toward the commotion.

To his surprise, it not only went further than he expected, but...

"... Well I’ll be damned."

Grey grinned.