Jason was still fully awake, while his golden eyes shimmered within the seemingly endless darkness, preventing him from collapsing on the ground with an unknown yet unyielding will, he never felt before.
Forced to stay awake, the only thing he could do was to reassure that his comrades were still alive, which was the case according to the flickering mana fluctuations he perceived.
But even if that was the case, Jason was unsure what exactly happened to him, when the eternal darkness vanished, with thousands of bright shining stars emerging in his surroundings.
Without knowing, goosebumps covered his whole body and he even forgot to breathe by the sight in front of him.
The stars next to him vanished as soon as their group crossed them and Jason wondered if their speed was too fast, as he saw that they passed a terrifying humongous blue planet, while feeling that something about the planet was familiar…
'Is that mana?!' Jason was shocked, as had never felt such strong mana fluctuations from Argos, even though he was much closer to its core when he stood on the ground, compared to the blue planet that was an unknown, yet long distance away from him.
'What is going on here?' he wondered as his golden eyes began to lose their luster once they crossed the huge planet, causing him to collapse next to his comrades.
**
Nobody knew how much time passed when all of them regained their consciousness, laying inside a small tent, while one of them seemed to be absent.
Jason awoke at first but the things he saw before shocked him extremely, as he began to question everything he previously thought to know.
'What exactly are rifts? Where do they bring us and what the hell was this tremendous large planet?'
The more time passed, the fewer answers he obtained while even more questions appeared in his mind…
'It doesn't seem like anyone else saw the same things as I did, right? Not even Shane told me about the millions of stars and the huge blue planet within this transportation "tunnel"…He didn't even tell me anything about the runes stabilizing the rift, as if he is incapable to see them….
Did the foreign races create them or are they accidentally manifested?
What about the blue planet? Do the foreign races know about it or is that also something they don't know about?'
Jason understood that he didn't understand anything at all, which was extremely unpleasant souring his mood.
After their group was thrown out of the four-star rift, they were brought into the infirmary by the government workers on the other side of the rift in order to look after them and if necessary supply them with IVs and other medicaments.
Once it was clear that nothing went wrong with their transportation to the other side of the rift, their expedition group was transferred into a small tent.
Not long after they were moved, Jason woke up.
When he couldn′t take the torture his mind created as he was unable to answer the questions, he Jason went outside the tent.
While Malia and her classmates knew where they would land, Jason was still not sure where exactly the four-star rift brought them.
With his mana eyes constantly activated, he already figured out that the mana in their surroundings was much higher than inside Cyro-City which was thinned out because of the dome′s high mana demand.
If his estimation was correct, they were currently inside an area, that had a mana density comparable to a common four-star wild zone, causing his passive mana absorbing technique to hasten up.
With his current passive absorption speed, Jason was confident to reach the 4th Adept rank in 10 days without actively absorbing any mana at all, causing him to smile lightly.
'How fast would my ranks improve inside the blue planet?' He asked himself, sighing deeply as he looked around with interest gleaming in his eyes.
It was cold where they were and from his perspective, their own and many other tents had to be built on a highland plateau.
Behind them was a large mountain, piercing through the clouds, while Jason noticed that the rift was in front of the hillside, barely on the highland plateau.
If the rift manifested a few meters behind it would have been inside the hillside, which would create many unforeseen difficulties for everyone venturing into it.
Walking around, Jason suddenly heard a familiar screeching behind him with Artemis struggling to fly towards him, as he sighed slightly, patiently waiting for her.
Artemis never left him since she finished her evolution, which was not really advantageous in Jason's opinion because they fought every time he wanted to take a shower or go to the toilet.
Forcing her to stay out of the bathroom was difficult, but Jason didn't want to be eyed the whole time while enduring her naggin was acceptable for him in exchange for some peace.
During their journey through the rift, she also lost her consciousness, however, because Jason′s soul energy was too small, she wasn′t forcefully sent back into his soul world like it happened with the other expedition members' soulbonds.
From this fact and the obvious fact that not only their expedition group but all humans summoned their soulbonds, which were most likely also forcefully send back to their master's soul world, he could decipher that this four-star rift they entered was definitely nothing ordinary.
Otherwise, why would everyone waste their time and energy in order to summon their soulbonds before they entered the rift only for them to collapse and be forcefully sent back?
'Does that mean losing consciousness is not a common occurrence during a teleportation through the rift?' Jason wondered, but his brain was still filled with other questions, causing him to disregard everything, as Artemis dived towards his shoulder, where she landed, only to rub her head at Jason's.
Everything about their current situation was weird, but it seemed like the government didn't care about it, which also meant that it was most likely not as uncommon as he thought.
Shrugging his shoulder, Jason told himself that it might be because of the restriction as he couldn't think of another reason with his current knowledge.
This would not explain the reason for him to stay conscious during the teleportation and the existence of the colossal blue planet, but his shallow answer was better than nothing at all.
Walking towards the other side of the rift he noticed that the highland plateau, that was situated on a mountain-ring, surrounded a huge valley with lush trees piercing through the clouds, covering smaller trees, while a large sky-blue gleaming cascade could be seen on his right, creating a large river within the valley, flowing through a complex of multiple magnificent buildings
'Wait?!' Right as Jason was about to continue to look through the valley which seemed to be filled with extremely dense mana, he noticed that something was off.
In the center of the valley, he could clearly perceive an astronomical amount of mana while magnificent building complexes made out of an unknown material pierced through the ground attracting his attention, even though they were covered by different trees.
'Are these ancient ruins?!' Jason wondered as he remembered many documents about rifts, saying something about extinct intelligent races, allowing humanity to use their intact remains to develop their technology worth hundreds of years further ahead.
At the same time, some big families and clans received 'blessed' martial art techniques from ancient ruins, which was the reason for their strength to soar.
Smiling brightly, Jason wasn't disappointed with what he saw, as his golden eyes gleamed brightly.