My eyes widened as Cacophony's words sank in.
"Rip this place in two?"
I glanced around at the seemingly innocuous houses lining the street. Each one seemed like an iron bar in an overly elaborate prison cell.
The proud Empress stepped forward, her feet crunching against the cracked asphalt. She raised her arms high above her head, fingers lacing together as her back arched with a satisfying crack.
"Veri, it's fairly simple. There's almost certainly a guaranteed route out of this place, but there's no obvious way of finding it. So, what shall we do?"
Cacophony twisted at the waist, her joints popping in rhythmic succession like distant fireworks. She hummed with satisfaction, then dipped low in a fluid motion, pressing her palms flat to the ground.
I felt a strong pulse in my chest, and I forced myself to look away from her.
'Damn it! Those are just some normal stretches! It shouldn't be weird at all, but—!'
The mind of a teenage boy really is an enigma, even in these circumstances.
Cacophony let out a long, pleased sigh as she held the stretch.
"Well, given that I don't plan on spending any more time in this place, we'll have to forcibly create extreme conditions to make the path clearer."
Extreme conditions?
I looked around, but I wasn't exactly sure what she meant. Then came the fact that whatever these extreme conditions were, they would lead to ripping this world in half.
Ripping it in half...
My eyes widened as I stared down the long, endless street.
Cacophony rose from her stretch, her graceful figure seeming to ignite with anticipation.
"In my time, Veri, when one is trapped within a spell or domain of unknown nature, the most effective solution is often the crudest," she said with a lilting cadence. "Rather than solve the maze, I would prefer to shatter its walls."
"But, you said that you didn't have the strength to do that right now."
"Correct, so we'll be employing the second-best option. We'll break this place by abusing its own rules."
I took a deep breath. Even without her saying it, I already had a decent picture of what it was that she was planning to do. And it is certainly an audacious plan.
"Yeah... I get it. That's why you're stretching, huh? Guess even a lord of the night needs a little warm-up before exercise."
"Think of it as a ritual of preparation. I'd recommend that you also partake in it. You'd certainly require it far more than I."
"I'll have to pass. A great galactic tier creature such as myself doesn't need to stretch."
Having finished her stretches, the Empress offered a faint smirk. She then placed her hands on her hips.
"The subspace that we're currently trapped in, the Null Streets, has to have certain rules and processes operating in the background to make it function. They're likely numerous and complex, but we don't have to worry about most of them. We're only going to focus on one—the infinite loop."
I nodded in understanding; it was exactly as I suspected.
Like the Empress, I'd also thought about the actual method that the Null Streets used to loop.
In the process, I came up with a few ideas.
My first idea was the most straightforward answer: There was a border.
Essentially, there was an invisible wall at the end of the street. Once you cross it—bam—you're pulled through a hidden portal and spit out on the opposite side, no matter what direction you were walking in. To the victim, it would feel like an endless street, but really, you'd just be passing through the same transition point over and over again.
Basically, once you reach one of the ends, you'd restart from the other side.
While horrible, it was at least within the realm of rationality.
In comparison, my second idea was far worse: The Street generates more houses as you go.
While we might have considered the Null Streets as being a loop, it might be a straight road. In the background, there may have been some algorithm designed to spawn more and more space as needed. A street that stretches forever, building hollow, lifeless homes with every step you take.
It was like a story that was still being written and had no end in sight.
If this were true, then in a way, our walking would feed into the trap. The progress of anyone who made their way down this street would only increase the scale of their terrible place.
Even so, that would be better than my final idea.
My third idea caused my skin to crawl: We're walking in circles.
I don't mean that in some metaphorical way; I mean it very literally.
The street itself was somehow twisted, curled into some impossible shape. A kind of Möbius strip of concrete and chain-link fences, bending space so that even if you walked straight, you'd always find yourself right back where you started.
A perfect circle disguised as a line.
I could hardly wrap my head around the idea.
Even the term 'Möbius strip' wasn't a perfect description. If this really were a true Möbius strip, then there would've been obvious signs. There would've been a flip in orientation at some point when he crossed into the 'underside' of the strip. Since I doubt we would've missed something so obvious, it was a true Möbius strip.
I'm simply using it as a placeholder or example. There wasn't a term or concept that I knew of that fit perfectly for the idea I had in mind.
A line that folded space itself to connect back together in a feat of cursed geometry.
It was impossible and so far removed from the realm of possibility that any sane human should've discarded it immediately.
But I knew better than to throw it away so quickly.
If magic were involved, who's to say that even something that far-fetched couldn't be done?
I mean, I'd watched the Empress create intense flames from nothing and even effortlessly throw rocks at speeds a pro baseball player would drool at.
I needed to keep all options open and approach the Null Streets from the strongest position possible.
Even with a great mage like Cacophony at the helm, I should at least try to keep up with everything around me, as useless as I was.
I swallowed hard.
Any of those explanations could be real. All of them could be wrong. There could even be a solution far more sinister than I'd thought up.
Cacophony stepped past me as she pointed toward a house.
"Do you recall when I threw the stones?"
I nodded slowly. "You shattered some windows a while back."
"Correct. There's a house down there with a broken window from that time."
I peered down the street and squinted my eyes, but I couldn't see what it was that she was talking about very well. Barely, just barely, I could see a house with a speck of black that the other houses lacked, but even then I wasn't certain.
'To be able to notice that from this far away, her eyesight must be—'
I blinked.
Then an uneasy smile crept onto my face.
"I could've sworn that I'd activated my mental barrier this morning... How did you—"
The Empress shrugged. "Your cute little expressions show it all clearly."
My brain stalled for half a second.
Cute...
And she said something about my reactions being adorable earlier as well...
I shook my head fiercely.
Focus.
I had wondered about the house and the result of her rock throws.
Despite not saying any of my thoughts aloud, it seemed as though the Empress already knew exactly what I was thinking.
Was my body language that obvious?
A shiver ran up my spine.
Could she read minds?
If so, that raised all kinds of awful questions. Like how many of my internal monologues she'd been listening in on. Like whether she knew about that moment earlier when she stretched and I—
"Don't spiral," she said coolly.
Oh no.
"Hey," I said slowly, voice low and wary. "I command you... please... no more of that..."
Back to... Yeah, back to the street! The mind-reading queen of blood has just given me a clue.
If there really was a house with a shattered window, and it really had been the same house that Cacophony had thrown the rock at, then that changes things.
That was undeniable proof.
We'd definitely passed by this exact point before.
That meant… the second theory—the street generating more houses endlessly—probably wasn't it.
If new houses were being created with each step forward, there wouldn't be a broken window down the road. At least, not the same broken window. A procedurally generated trap wouldn't bother to maintain a detail like that. It would just keep building endlessly forward using the original line of streets as a blueprint.
I crossed it off the list.
That left the portal idea and...
Möbius strip.
Once again, my skin still crawled at the thought.
A twisted reality where a street folds in on itself so impossibly perfectly that it has neither a beginning nor an end. A nightmarish magical structure that should never be allowed to exist.
At the moment, I couldn't think of any way to disprove it.
"And so, that's another reason that we've got no other choice. We've got to... run..."
"Yes," she said simply, voice a touch more solemn than before. "We must run—fast, and in opposite directions."
I nodded. "To test the limits of this world?"
"Precisely."
She gestured down the street behind me and then in the opposite direction behind herself. "The goal is to stress the mechanism that causes the loop. We'll both run in opposite directions, and eventually we'll hit the 'boundary'—assuming that one exists—on either side. From there, we should be capable of better understanding how this subspace works, but ultimately, we've got a different goal."
I furrowed my brow. " Even without using my telepathy, I've got the idea. That's how we'll 'rip' this place apart."
She tilted her head slightly. "Or crack. Or rupture. Or split like a poorly forged blade. The Null Streets may be more delicate than we imagined. If we push hard enough and put stress on the rules, it may break on its own."
I bit my lip.
"And if it does break? What'll happen to everything inside?"
Cacophony grinned. "Who's to say? We'll probably get sent to the real world, but that's not guaranteed. Maybe we'll curse ourselves into oblivion. Don't you want to find out?"
From her tone, I couldn't tell if she was teasing me or being serious.
The more I thought about it all, the more worrying it all became. If my portal theory were correct, then our idea would likely. We'd be able to stress the very rules of this world and cause it to tear.
But that wouldn't be the case if the Möbius strip idea were correct. In that case, there was a far lower likelihood that we'd be able to put stress on the rules. AIn that case, we weren't pushing against anything at all. We were just looping endlessly across a surface with no true edge. You can't break a treadmill by running on it. This would be no different.
I clenched my fists and drew in a breath so deep it felt like it reached down into my ankles. Then, I threw out my arms and bellowed, "Very well, wicked dimension! Gird your teeth and ready your end credits, I'm done being stuck in this twisted space."
My heart felt as though it could have exploded in my chest.