D.E.M.O.N.S: Getting Summoned Weekly isn't so Bad

Chapter 2227 When is a Hole a Hole?

--- Lily ---

Lily was trying to wrap her mind around the box in front of her. The more she looked into it the deeper things seemed to run. There were unique applications of space under several layers of interesting and unique applications of space. Just as an example, were the air holes she’d spotted. They let air in... but they notably didn’t let air out. The holes themselves were almost... inverted? Lily didn’t have the vocabulary to properly describe what she was feeling.

In practice though, it meant they were acting as one-way portals. That wasn’t quite true on a technical level, she could sense that much. But it was true in a practical sense. It meant Kat wasn’t going to suffocate any time soon... but where was the air going afterwards? If air could come in but not out eventually carbon dioxide would build up and cause issues. Well... assuming that’s how Kat’s lungs work? *Is that how your lungs work?*

[I mean... I have to assume so? Then again it’s not like my stomach works ’normally’ and I’ve never asked. I assume there’s some waste product though. Kamiko’s house has a massive garden after all. How else would it operate if nothing produced carbon dioxide.]

*I mean, the trees could breathe oxygen while the people breathe carbon dioxide.*

[Right but neither you nor me were suffocating.]

*What’s to say I don’t operate off carbon dioxide?*

[Can we avoid this potential existential crisis for now? We can just ask Nira later, or maybe D.E.M.O.N.S]

*Dammit. It’s a weird question but it’s kind of important. I sense space not air currents and I can’t tell where the exit is. There really has to be one right? How else could the air circulate. Why would it continue to be sucked inside if there wasn’t something sucking it out?*

[How do you know it IS sucking air in?]

*I guess I don’t? What else would those gaps be for then? Actually wait no.* Lily just shifted over to the holes in question before transforming and putting her whiskers right next to one. With how sensitive they were it was easy to tell that air, was in fact, being sucked in like she assumed. With confirmation of that, Lily took a few steps back and sent a smug look Kat’s way.

[Right but so we breathe oxygen.]

*Kat for fu-* Lily stopped and blew out a long hiss of air, glaring at Kat.

[You set it up too well.]

*Fine, I did, but it’s not getting me any closer to getting you out of the box. Kat shrugged. Doesn’t that bother you?! Kat you’re trapped! I might not be able to get you out!*

[I don’t know why this is freaking you out so much. If there’s no way to get me out, then we’ll just need to ensure that everyone has properly fortified the area before I attempt to break out. Well, that or you could wait for the other people with you know, warding experience, to look at the box.]

Lily found much of her anger draining out of her when she heard that second suggestion. *Why didn’t I think of that?*

[I think you got caught in the ’I have to fix this’ trap, and you weren’t really thinking about your options, so much as you were thinking about what YOU personally had to do. Then the fact that you can’t seem to figure it out was working you up and well... here we are.]

*Yeah but now I just feel like an idiot.*

Kat sighed. [Lily...]

*Look it’s fine.*

Kat pursed her lips, clearly debating if she wanted to insist or not... but of course the fact that she wasn’t shielding her thoughts at all meant Lily heard the entire thing anyway. Even if it wasn’t words exactly, she knew what Kat wanted to say. So Lily just sighed along with Kat. Letting the silence reign for a bit so that they could both just... exist with those thoughts for a while.

*Alright. Now that I know I’ll have backup eventually, I can focus on the box and the weird bits of space instead of thinking about runes in the back of my mind. It’s... still very weird.* The box itself actually wasn’t one box so much as it was a series of boxes all nestled together. Lily assumed that was for structural integrity but couldn’t be certain.

The odd thing was that each layer of the box had a small gap between it and the next layer... and Lily had no idea how that would effect things considering Kat’s seemingly reduced size. Another thing Lily was unsure about. Did Kat just seem smaller? The box was obviously smaller visually and so was Kat... but getting a sense of how big it was with just her special sense was surprisingly difficult.

Feeling out the edge of the box wasn’t hard... but it came in layers, and it made identifying the ’central’ layer hard. When you combined that with the fact that even if each box is smaller than the last... it actually didn’t mean much when you were dealing with something that could manipulate space. It was possible the actual area of the innermost box was double the size of the one before it. Potentially an issue if Kat broke out... but yeah it was hard to tell.

Perhaps if she could feel directly into the box instead of through so many layers of abstraction Lily could have a better sense of things, but it’s not like her spatial sense gave her an inherent understanding of the size of the room she stood in, so perhaps it simply made sense.

Lily decided to do a bit of testing. Extending a shadow towards one of the invisible gaps, Lily shrunk it down as much as her control allowed, getting a single hair thin strand of shadows and then tried to guide it through one of them to see what happened. Annoyingly enough, the invisible portal seemed to act as a gate. Even as thin as her shadow was it still couldn’t fit through. Lily focused her senses on it as closely as she could... and still wasn’t sure why.

Was it a distance thing? Was the other side of the hole ’too far’ from her? Was there something that kept everything not air from moving through? Lily didn’t know... yet. Summoning a bit of paper, Lily tried to feed that through instead. She was glade she hadn’t been tempted to try a finger instead.

The paper was shredded to bits. A few of those pieces made their way to Kat... but it was impossible to tell if it had been shrunk during the process. All that remained was confetti essentially and there was a good chance that not all of her paper made it through. Kat could pick it up and count the pieces... but what did that help. It was all paper at the end of the day, and the cuts were so thin and precise that none of the edges were jagged at all.

*Alright so we are NOT trying to get you to use your water form to sneak through any gaps we find.*

[Why not? I can essentially regenerate from a single drop of water.]

*How much mana would that take, er, demonic energy?*

[Not that much? It’s shockingly cheap to ’regenerate’ as a piece of water. I’m guessing it’d take... maybe thirty percent if I was down to absolutely nothing? Probably not even that much.]

*Ok that... that’s kinda crazy.*

[I mean it’s just water really. I have no idea how my ability is ’meant’ to work but like... it’s just water. I don’t need to fix anything complex, I just need to generate more water and it somehow becomes me again. We’ve already seen that if my water gets scattered too far I can just... summon more of it. Heck, I have that ineffective water gun technique remember?]

*It’s really that efficient?*

[Lily, even my normal regeneration is super efficient. The main issue with regenerating from say, a drop of blood, is that I’d need to pay the cost not only to regain my lost... everything but also that I’d need to spend more demonic energy to keep myself alive while missing said everything. When I’m water I just... exist. As water. It takes some demonic energy sure, but it actually takes more energy the more water I’m controlling.]

*Alright... but what’s the guarantee that the bit of water you control is the one that makes it through to this side? Assuming I can find a gap for you to fit inside, or make one?*

[That... is a much better question. I’m actually not sure. My ’conscious’ tends to stay ’in place’ when my water in scattered but I’m not sure how that would change if I wanted to be moving... hmmm... certainly if I started out as a drop of water I’d get flung away with the droplet...]

*Would your dream smoke be better?*