As I fell, I noticed the rising sun on the horizon. Funnily enough due to the fact I was falling a few seconds later the sun was no longer visible, now hidden below said horizon.
The further and further I fell the more and more of my vision the black abyss took, despite this I still found myself on the side of this floating island.
Minutes passed and miraculously I was still not past the bottom of the floating island. It seemed that I had severely underestimated the unimaginable scale of it, which seems like a trend in this new realm but it was simply too large for my brain to comprehend.
A few minutes after that I was finally able to see the bottom of the immense land mass floating in the sky above this void. From the bottom the sheer scale became simply absurd.
Doing some rough estimates in my mind based on how long I had been falling places the whole island to be the size of a whole country by itself.
'If this thing is the size of a country then how damn big is this giant void beneath me?'
I couldn't even fathom how large it must be, possibly the size of a whole continent back on earth.
'Ridiculous.'
This thought also sparked another.
'If the hole is the width of a continent then how deep is it?'
My thought was then promptly interrupted by my stomach grumbling.
In the span of what must have been the few weeks I had been help captive they hadn't given me any food or water but despite my new lack of need for sustenance or hydration. I could definitely feel hunger and thirst.
Hunger was less of a problem, after some time it faded into the background but was still ever present. Thirst on the other hand was really starting to get away at me. I had gotten quite used to various pains but thirst was easily the worst one. I hoped that in time this thirst would fade into the background just like hunger but I didn't place my bet on it.
---
It must have been many many hours by now, the sky above me was shining bright with the radiant sun. It weirdly didn't feel all that hot anymore, unlike almost everywhere else in this god forsaken place it seemed that as I fell further and further it only got colder.
The continent sized hole opening into this great void was now solidly above me, it still covered most of my vision when I looked up but that was slowly beginning to change. It was painfully slow but as time passed, the rim to this endless abyss seemed only to grow smaller and smaller.
The same thing was happening to the floating island right above me, that goliath of a land mass was starting to become small enough to cover if I held both hands over it.
I turned around and looked straight down into the all consuming darkness I was falling into.
'Am I going to be falling endlessly?'
---
'I'm going to be falling endlessly.'
The sun above was almost setting at this point. It would be understandable to fall for maybe at best a few hours to get to some ridiculously deep part of the planet but taking this long? It should already be more than an earth day's worth of time that I was falling. I should have long reached whatever core this planet had.
The entire rim of the void was now a little larger than the moon in the sky. The floating country was starting to look like a dot, the now tiny crystal below making an ever so slight rhythmic beating.
'If this pit is truly endless then I guess there really is a way around my immortality.'
I had considered the fact that they might launch me into space, either to do experiments to kill me up there or to simply release my immortal body up there to eternally float in the cosmos. Though I realised this wasn't much different in the end. Either way I was endlessly trapped instead of being killed.
It's not like I had been completely idle during this time however, my weave was progressing much faster than before. Likely because I could actually focus on it with no distractions.
I had decided to continue on completing the initial stages of the weave first, my progress was far faster than I had expected. It was likely due to my past experience but I didn't discount the possibility that my immortality had some benefits for this kind of thing. It had one for certain, a constant stream of mana which is already somewhat attuned to my will was an immense boon in this stage.
I knew with the help of this supply of mana I could construct a weave quickly, and from that I could instead gather much more mana from the air and start work on my core. I didn't have any good estimates as to how long it would take but It would happen eventually and when it did I could start trying to make progress on mimicking that flying magic the demons had performed.
I knew that in time I would eventually be able to make it out of here. The question is...
'How many years will that take.'
---
The sky above me was beginning to go dark, I momentarily thought of how incredibly dark it would be once that happened but even now the surroundings are so black that it wouldn't matter much even once it did. It's all darkness in the end anyway.
Progress on the weave was now in the frustrating stage, before all I needed to do was continuously flow mana through specific paths, each time I did so made mana within that path move through it slightly more efficiently.
Now I had to properly make the gates to properly lock mana out of being able to go on whatever path I wished. Over time as both the channels and locks within my weave were used they would become better and better at their purposes, much like how a river slowly shifted over time to try and flow more and more efficiently.
Eventually I would be able to hold my mana in a net within my weave and begin extracting mana from the air in much higher quantities of mana than I would otherwise have access to. even with taking the passive flow of mana I possessed into account.
'I hate how boring this is going to be.'
As if to spite me, far below after this seemingly endless fall there seemed to be some kind of solid mass.
Naturally I didn't have enough time to react to such a thing.
---
I was laid on the floor among what felt like shards of glass. I was recovering quickly, I had been through this more times than I could count after all. I was almost used to having my brain be completely non functional.
When I finally decided to sit up and spread my soul sense around I noticed these tiny sprouts coming out of the ground. They looked almost like bamboo sprouts but these were a lot different, they looked to be made out of crystal for one but along with that they also were growing fast enough I could see it happening right in front of me.
'They aren't man eating plants right?'
As my senses expanded farther and farther out I eventually reached the end of the platform I was currently stood on. Beyond it was some kind of liquid, it wasn't water judging by its slow motion.
I stood up and decided to investigate, as I did I felt how solid the rocks beneath me were as I picked up one of the shards of glass from where I landed, no bigger than a phone.
As I walked over to the edge of the platform I touched and prodded at the shard in my hand. It was smooth but seemed to have had an edge carved out of it from when it had shattered.
I had now arrived at the edge of this island and bent down on the shore. I reached down to touch the mysterious liquid and as I did the liquid jumped up to cover my entire hand.
I jumped back quicker than I thought possible, I stood on guard for a moment in case the liquid would further attack me but it seemed to now once again be calm. Eventually I also calmed myself with the fact I was no longer in danger.
What took my attention away was my hand was regenerating. I was keenly interested in seeing this process happen but sadly every time those demons had killed me I never got an opportunity to see due to the fact every time it involved my brain being destroyed in one way or another.
It didn't take all that long to regenerate, roughly a few minutes. Once I was confident it had, I tried properly flexing and stretching it. It seemed to be working just fine, of course it was.
I still had the shard in my other hand and once again I became curious, not of my hand this time but of the liquid around this island.
I threw the shard, not very far sure but that's because I wanted to be able to sense what was happening. As the shard got close to the liquid it bulged before reaching out and surrounding the shard, then quickly after that it fell back down to combine with the rest of the liquid.
It seemed that whatever this liquid was it was alive in some way, and it wanted to eat.
'Why did it try to eat the shard and not the whole island?'
The island was already within the liquid, why not just consume the whole thing? A few moments later I noticed the very same shard float up to the surface of the liquid. Almost completely untouched.
'Interesting, if I were to guess it strikes at any movement but cannot consume this crystal the island is made out of, fascinating.'
At that same moment I began to notice a faint glow coming from within the crystal itself. The crystal, much like glass, was transparent. As this glow began to intensify I noticed the little sprouts all around me began to even more rapidly grow into what looked like little trees, which I now could see as clear from the top but on the very bottom they were completely black, they looked somewhat like little trees by this point.
Quickly they began to stretch higher and higher and higher. They had long passed my own height and were now towering over me within the sky. The light during this time had only been getting brighter and brighter, hotter and hotter.
As it did the black liquid started rising, for a moment panic came over me. Then a second later the black liquid disappeared.
All of it.
It was also at that moment that I found out that this island that I was on was in fact floating on said black liquid.
I was once again falling, but this time instead of endless darkness surrounding me. It was a light so bright fire erupted off my hair and skin.