Return of the last survivor

Merlin was stunned at this turn of events. However, he did not have the time to bother with it. His soul fragment was being eroded by the second, and he might lose the location of his first ever plane when that happened.

"Then, will you let me go to this new plane I just found?"

"Your wish is my command."

With those words, space-time in front of Merlin warped, as he felt himself being sucked into, and then through a wall. This was the planer shield he had read about earlier, and he could feel its immense strength. For the current him, he would not be able to pass through Earth's shield easily. He might need to use at least 70% of his mana in the process.

One he was through, he immediately heard a deafening screech from Mecha.

"Aaargh! Master! It is eating me! Help!"

"Mecha. Hold on! It will be alright. Your body might be destroyed, but remember you have a part of yourself within me. I will bring you back to tip-top shape in no time. Just persevere!"

Time passed as more and more of Mecha's main body was being corrupted, and ejected into the void, away from the rest of the suit.

Although the speed at which this occurred was incredibly slow as shown by the time Cortana was displaying, the overall time for the entire journey was equally as long.

Estimations based on how close he felt to the soul fragment, as well as the initial calculations he had done on Earth before leaving, showed that it would be incredibly close. By the time he would reach the plane, most of Mecha would have been eroded, leaving the thinnest of layers in its place.

Time slowly passed, and by now Merlin knew it had been almost 12 days, Earth time. He had been shuttling through emptiness for 12 days, with absolutely no changes.

However, at this point, there was finally a change. In front of him, what was originally emptiness, rippled, as a vast translucent screen appeared in front of him.

This seemed similar to the one around Earth's dimension, with only one difference, it was far smaller. Earth's dimension had an entire universe inside it, while this dimension was incomparably small, approximately a few planets large, in terms of size.

Merlin found his soul fragment and decided it was better to leave his nearly corrupted and dissipated fragment out of his real body. Instead, he noticed that Mecha was too thin to last much longer and put all his efforts into finding a way to enter.

He used all the mana in his body, along with the limit of soul he could detach without any long term effects, and condensed it into a drill shape.

With this in front, Merlin charged straight into the pale translucent screen known as planer shield.

Just as he was about to come into contact with it, a thought suddenly fleeted across his mind.

"Why did I want to explore planes? There is nothing for me to gain from it? Was it my own subconscious telling me I needed something different from last time to beat Zero? Or was it someone else changing my thoughts?"

However, just as this terrifying thought came to Merlin's mind, he broke through the planer barrier, which instantly healed behind him, and an unstoppable wave of forces assaulted him as he descended onto this new plane.