Although the teleportation itself was instantaneous, Stan had sensed something was wrong before it happened.
Back in the cave, for the briefest fraction of a second, he had felt an indescribable distortion ripple through the space around him. It was subtle enough that he dismissed it as his imagination.
Then it happened again. This time, the feeling intensified.
The air itself seemed to twist, while the world around him folded inward as though reality had suddenly become a sheet of paper being creased by an unseen hand.
By the time he realized something was happening, it was already too late.
An overwhelming force seized him. The strangest part of it all was his System’s complete silence.
No warning. No notification. No attempt to resist.
It was as though whatever was acting upon him possessed an authority that even the System chose not to challenge.
The next instant, he was violently dragged through what felt like countless layers of warped space.
Each layer shimmered with a different color. Black, white, crimson, azure, gold, violet.
Colors he couldn’t even name flashed past in less than a nanosecond each, blending into an incomprehensible stream of light.
With every layer he crossed came the unnerving sensation that his body was being simultaneously disassembled and reassembled, not painfully, but so completely that, for an instant, he couldn’t tell whether he was still the same person emerging on the other side.
Then, as abruptly as it had begun... It ended.
He slammed onto cold, black stone.
He hit the ground on his hands and knees.
The impact sent a jolt through his tempered body. His palms scraped against a surface unlike any stone he had ever touched. It wasn’t the polished chill of marble or the coarse roughness of granite. This was something denser, older. The black stone beneath him possessed a strange mineral composition that he couldn’t identify, and its smooth surface carried a faint, almost wax-like texture, as though it had been shaped by something far more deliberate than the passage of time.
He slowly pushed himself to his feet. The first thing he noticed wasn’t his surroundings.
It was the temperature. The air was... warm.
The realization struck him immediately.
Only moments ago, he had been standing in the frozen depths of Antarctica, enduring relentless polar winds and the icy chill of a glacial cave. Yet now, the air surrounding him felt as gentle as a spring afternoon.
His breath no longer condensed into mist. The cold that had clung to his skin had completely vanished.
There was no doubt about it. He was no longer in Antarctica.
Just then, a series of degraded notifications flickered across his vision.
[Warning.]
[Unknown Spatial Domain detected.]
[Spatial Lock detected.]
[Host is advised to remain on high alert.]
Stan frowned as he read the messages. The System was still functioning. It could still communicate with him.
But something was different.
The notifications lacked their usual precision, appearing clipped and incomplete, as though the System itself had lost access to resources it normally relied upon.
He frowned. "Spatial Lock..."
’Doesn’t that mean abilities related to spatial manipulation are being restricted?’
’...That’s bad.’
Taking a slow breath, he tested the theory. ’System. Can I still access my inventory?’
[Inventory functional.]
[Access confirmed.]
’...Phew.’ Relief washed over him.
With a thought, the Introduction to Earth materialized in his hand.
The familiar book felt reassuringly solid. A moment later, he willed it back into storage, and it vanished without issue.
’So the inventory itself was unaffected. Good.’
Next, he attempted something more important.
He reached for the familiar sensation that had once saved his life against the werewolves, willing his own body into the inventory.
Nothing happened. A notification appeared.
[Spatial Lock detected.]
[Host cannot enter Inventory under current conditions.]
Stan’s expression darkened. The System’s answer was simple, clear and final.
Whatever force governed this place had sealed off spatial movement.
He could freely store and retrieve objects from his inventory, but using it as a refuge, or as a means of transportation, was impossible.
In other words... He was trapped.
Letting out a slow breath, Stan straightened to his full height.
Only then did he finally turn his attention to his surroundings.
He wasn’t inside a cave. That was the first realization.
The space around him was simply too vast.
Nothing about it resembled a cavern, a tunnel, or any underground chamber his mind could classify as enclosed. The sheer scale defied comparison. He stood upon the edge of a broad stone ledge, and beyond it...
An entire world stretched before him. Drawn by equal parts curiosity and disbelief, Stan walked to the precipice.
Then he looked out. His breath caught.
Below him, extending all the way to a horizon so distant it seemed impossible for anything beneath the Earth’s surface, lay an immense landscape.
It wasn’t merely a valley. It wasn’t a hidden ecosystem. It felt like an entire continent.
Endless plains rolled into ancient forests. Towering mountain ranges pierced the distance, while winding rivers carved their way across the land. Far beyond, where the terrain finally met the limits of his vision, he could make out what appeared to be a coastline.
Beyond that... A sea.
The landmass continued past the horizon, so immense that he couldn’t even begin to estimate its true size.
Slowly, almost mechanically, Stan lifted his gaze.
There was no sky. Instead, suspended high above the world, floated a colossal crystal.
It was incomprehensibly enormous, dozens of miles across at the very least.
Its body consisted of countless interlocking geometric planes, many still pristine, while others had fractured into intricate fault lines that spread across its surface like glowing veins.
A soft azure radiance emanated from within it. Neither harsh nor dim.
Just enough to bathe the entire world below in an endless, tranquil daylight.
A sun that would never rise. A sun that would never set. The crystal was the sky.
Beneath it drifted floating islands.
Some were only a few hundred meters across, lazily orbiting through the air.
Others were far larger. City-sized.
Even from this distance, Stan could distinguish faint outlines of buildings, roads, and what appeared to be movement.
People... perhaps. Or something else. His attention shifted downward again.
Rivers meandered through the landscape. Then his eyes narrowed. One of them... Was flowing upward.
A tributary climbed from a lower elevation toward a higher one, its waters ascending against gravity in a slow, steady current, as though such a thing were perfectly natural.
For several long seconds, his mind refused to accept what his eyes were seeing.
Then he noticed another. A broad river flowed horizontally across the face of a mountain, moving parallel to the horizon instead of descending toward the valley below.
Gravity itself seemed to have become little more than a suggestion.
Stan slowly turned his attention toward one of the distant peaks. He froze. The mountain... Was upside down.
Its broad base was anchored high in the air, while its jagged summit pointed toward the earth below.
By every law of physics he had ever known, it shouldn’t have existed.
And yet... There it was.
Hanging effortlessly above the world, as though reality itself had decided that "down" was merely a matter of perspective.
Stan stared in silence. After everything that had happened over the past several hours...
After vampires. Werewolves. Qi. Cultivation. Spirit Pools.
His exhausted mind managed only a single, quiet conclusion.
"...This place doesn’t obey Earth’s laws."