In Another World With Omnitrix

The narrow path sloped downward, cutting through the chasm like a vein carved by ancient forces. The silence was a lie—thick with unseen motion, whispers of shifting stone, and something far more deliberate lurking beneath. Every step Lyra and Saria took seemed to echo longer than it should, as though the air itself wanted to remember their presence.

Despite the tension, they moved quickly—methodically—one in calculated steps, the other with casual danger humming beneath every motion.

Lyra's breath frosted in the air as she walked, a thin mist trailing from her shoulders. Her expression remained unreadable, but her eyes were always scanning—reading mana flow, watching for inconsistencies, patterns, traps.

Saria, by contrast, flipped one of her sabers in her hand with every third step. A silent rhythm. Not from boredom, but preparation. Tension coiled behind her smirk.

"You know," Saria said as they entered a low tunnel carved through warped crystal, "you're surprisingly tolerable when we're not arguing."

"I prefer silence," Lyra replied without looking.

Saria snorted. "No wonder you have no friends."

Lyra paused, just long enough for Saria to notice, before stepping forward again. "I have comrades. That's sufficient."

"Comrades don't bring you tea when you're sick. Friends do."

"I don't get sick."

"You're impossible."

"And you're loud."

The air shifted suddenly.

Both stopped.

The tunnel around them lit up with a dim, crimson glow—pulsing faintly from crystalline veins embedded in the walls. The ceiling arched far above now, forming a vast cathedral-like chamber filled with jagged spires and towering, geometric columns. Each one hummed with corrupted mana.

A ring of light spiraled down from above.

"Trap?" Saria asked, gripping her sabers.

"Or a lock," Lyra said. "Either way, we're triggering something."

The ground trembled.

Then it screamed.

A sound like twisting metal and a hundred voices howling through broken speakers tore through the air. The crystal columns shattered—and from them, they emerged.

Six constructs—smaller than the last guardian, but far faster. Each one was hunched, limbs too thin, like wireframes made of obsidian. No two were shaped the same. Some had blades for arms. Others had wings made of jagged plates. One crawled like a spider, its head rotating independently from its body.

And they moved with purpose.

"Scatter!" Lyra shouted.

The first creature lunged, its jagged blade slashing horizontally. Lyra ducked, gliding across frost she conjured beneath her feet. A column of ice burst upward behind her, intercepting the blow.

Saria spun into the fray with twin sabers flashing, carving into one of the attackers with a clean double strike. Sparks and fractured crystal flew—but the construct reassembled mid-air, patching itself with surrounding debris.

"They're self-repairing!" Saria called.

"Then we destroy the core first," Lyra said.

She extended her arm and fired a narrow beam of compressed ice—spear-shaped and honed to a point—into the nearest construct's chest. It pierced through, freezing the internal core for half a second before the creature convulsed and exploded outward into shrapnel.

The others reacted.

One creature launched a barrage of crystal bolts from its back, forcing Lyra to dive behind a chunk of broken spire. Another activated a high-pitched resonance, scrambling her mana senses for a brief moment.

Saria, meanwhile, was in constant motion—dancing through the cluster of enemies with slashes and kinetic bursts. Her red cloak became a blur as she spun, parried, and countered.

But they were being pushed back.

"They're coordinating," Lyra said, ice crawling from her boots across the floor. "They're not acting as individuals."

"Think the dungeon's watching again?"

"No." Her eyes narrowed. "I think it's guiding them."

One of the constructs leapt from above—its entire body vibrating like a living tuning fork. Lyra stepped forward and unleashed a wave of cryogenic mist, flash-freezing the midair attacker into a solid statue, which shattered as it crashed into the ground.

Three remained.

Saria caught one with a spinning heel kick, followed by a downward saber strike that split the creature's body in two. "Two."

Lyra turned sharply and fired three precise frostbolts—one for each leg of the spiderlike construct. It collapsed, twitching. "One."

But the final creature was different.

It had stood still the entire fight, seemingly observing. Now, as the others fell, it moved. The plates on its body expanded like a fan, revealing a glowing rune embedded in its chest.

"Move—!" Lyra shouted.

Too late.

A pulse of violet exploded from the rune. Not a physical force—but a spatial one.

The room folded.

Gravity bent. The air trembled. For a brief moment, Lyra couldn't tell up from down. Saria floated above her—then beside her—then vanished into the curvature of the chamber.

And when reality reasserted itself—

—they were back to back, surrounded by twisted terrain and black crystal monoliths. The construct was gone. The chamber was gone. Even the light was wrong now—pale green instead of red.

"…Did we teleport?" Saria asked, breathing hard.

"No. Folded again. This is another layer." Lyra touched the ground. "But the distortion weakened here. We're in a transitional zone—between the core and the outer shell."

"Like a throat," Saria muttered. "Or a trap."

Lyra didn't disagree.

For the moment, they were alone again. The mana pressure was still heavy, but not actively hostile. And in the distance, they could hear echoes—distant fighting. Others were still alive. Still battling.

But there was no clear path forward.

Saria knelt near one of the glowing monoliths. "These things... they're not natural."

Lyra approached, scanning it. "Alien architecture. Probably part of the internal stabilizers. This area was never meant for human entry."

"You think there's more of those freaky constructs ahead?"

Lyra was silent.

Then she said, "Worse."

The crystal nearest them pulsed faintly. A heartbeat.

Saria stood. "We keep moving?"

"We don't have a choice."

Side by side, they walked into the whispering dark, the dungeon folding behind them again like a closing mouth.

End of Chapter.

Thank you for reading.

A/N:For this arc, I wanted to focus on other characters, which is why I didn't show much of Riven. But starting from the next arc, I'll bring him back into focus, along with him getting a new alien.