Flight flickered around me—like static, like dying pixels—as I was thrown out of the red door of the portal leading into Manori's world. My body came apart into a buzzing mosaic before snapping back into shape on the stone platform outside.
Behind me, the red door dissolved, its color draining away until only a wide stripe of black on white remained, as if someone had dragged a paintbrush across reality.
I stepped closer and pressed my fingers to its surface."…Guess it changed," I muttered.
There wasn't much else to do but walk toward the scattered logs by the wall.
[Requiring Three World Encounters to Re-Encounter Previous Acclimated World]
A sigh escaped me, and I dragged my hands down my face. I dropped onto the cold floor, finally acknowledging the uncomfortable truth: I still had robots stored inside me.
So I released them.
A dull clunk echoed as a heavy droid pushed its way out of my integrated frame and sprawled on the ground, metal limbs unfolding, reconstructing—expanding—until it grew into its full half-ton form. Conservation of mass really didn't care about convenience.
"I need a break…" I groaned, rubbing my temples. "Go fetch me… I don't know. Coffee. Whatever you find."
The droid's visor blinked in compliance before it lumbered away, scanning for something resembling caffeine in this strange world.
While I waited, I deployed the drones.They shot upward in a burst of blue light.
[Visual Systems Activated]
Two drones ascended through the endless, shifting rooms—past doorframes that led nowhere, windows that opened into other dimensions—until they finally slipped out of the tower's boundary.
And then the world revealed itself.
A vast panorama of living bioflora spread across the land, each organism glowing faintly with its own inner contour of color. On a high tower roost sat a parrot-like beast tending to its young—birds the size of cars, their chests rising and falling with slow, heavy breaths.
Large, metallic flies buzzed toward the drones, jaws clacking, eager to devour.We retreated inside the tower.
The flies followed—but the moment they crossed the threshold, their bodies dissolved into steam, disappearing without a trace.
"…That's something," I said under my breath.
Inside, deeper in the tower's core, a spread of blue gemstones glittered in intricate patterns across the floor—constellations made of mineral. On the fourth floor, floating inscriptions pulsed and contracted around a ring of portals.
One drone entered a portal and immediately disintegrated——and then blinked back into existence somewhere else entirely.
It landed in a flat, silent expanse of concrete blocks. No lights. Only the echo of its own steps and the faint glow of its flashlight disk. Strange structures jutted out like windowed segments of a massive circle. Beyond them, chains extended outward toward the greater tower, connecting miniature replicas of the whole place.
Countless towers. Countless portals. A labyrinth of worlds inside worlds.
When I finally stood, stretching my back, I couldn't help but smile."…You could fit a whole kingdom in here," I whispered.
But before I could finish the thought—
[No—before that, Adam!?]
Rehan's hologram flickered beside me, glitching as she tried to hold me down even though she had no physical form.
"Yeah? What?" I blinked at her.
[Why don't you upgrade the Creation System?]
"And how much would that cost?"Rehan usually handled the automations, visuals, passive functions. I just imagined something; she made it happen.
[…Three hundred thousand creation points.]
"What—?!"My legs went weak, and I dropped to the floor. An entire kingdom's worth of potential—gone into a single upgrade I had already bought.
Rehan hovered closer.
[Hey, hey… The first upgrade let us enter the miniature towers.I got the second one so we could return automatically. It's not wasted.]
She poked my cheek with a glitchy hologram finger.
[Come on.]
I sighed. She was the brain here.
"Let me guess," I muttered. "You're curious about the next upgrade."
[Yes.]
I stood and walked through the hall of portals—thousands of them—until one caught my eye. A towering tree with sprawling vines, its roots wrapped across the ground. It looked like something out of an old Dota story, back when I wasted hours tossing coins into computer shops for game time.
A green portal shimmered beneath the branches, casting luminous ripples across the ground. Nearby, bloodstains, rusted swords, and rotting barrels lay half-buried in the soil.
"You know what I'm thinking?" I whispered.
[Yeah… Let's.]
I pressed my hand into the portal.
My consciousness spiraled—circles, rings, collapsing into darkness——and then water filled my nose and mouth.
I gasped awake, face submerged in a shallow river. Gravel scraped my skin as I pushed myself up, coughing, dragging air into my lungs.
A quiet forest stretched around me.Clouds blanketed the sky, hiding every star.
And I was completely, utterly alone.