Pain. A pounding, rhythmic pain, as if someone were beating a drum inside his skull.
Each heartbeat throbbed in his ears—thump, thump—and with every breath he drew in, the ache sharpened like a blade.
As for the headache itself, Victor Wang could endure it. After all, he'd gritted his teeth through the agony of cleansing Electro from his body—this was nothing in comparison.
Still, with pain like this, focusing on anything else was impossible. Even breathing required care. And the symptoms didn't stop at just pain.
The dizziness was far worse than any he'd ever felt after using a teleport waypoint. The sensation—though he'd never truly experienced it before—was unmistakable: the instant just after being struck hard in the back of the head, right before collapsing.
No, that's not right.
Victor shook his head, remembering the time back in Mondstadt when he had taken such a blow—courtesy of the Fatui.
So yes, he could confirm. It was exactly that feeling.
Ripples shimmered across his vision like water waves. In plain words—he was seeing things. And as his sight blurred, the world itself seemed to tremble. Of course, any sane person knew it wasn't the world shaking—but this went far beyond normal vertigo or seasickness.
And then—
"Ugh… ughwah…"
The sound of violent retching echoed through the hollow, empty depths of Enkanomiya, lasting several long minutes.
The current situation: a headache so fierce he wanted to carve out the part that hurt, nausea so bad he wanted to turn his stomach inside out and scrub it clean—misery so intense he almost wished for death.
It hadn't been like this before. If anything, this was his first teleport since purging the Electro element—perhaps that change in his body had something to do with it. He hadn't expected the side effects to worsen so dramatically.
When the sickness finally subsided, Victor lay sprawled across the cold stone floor of a small island known as "The Serpent's Heart."
He already missed the soft, warm bed of the inn.
But returning was impossible. Enkanomiya was sealed off. Teleporting out would only mean suffering again—and teleporting back even more so.
"Almost died before even starting the mission…"
After resting a bit longer, Victor finally stood. He was here to search for a Khaenri'ahn Relic, and combing through all of Enkanomiya was a daunting task. Fortunately, Enjou had given him a clue: south of the Nation of Byakuyakoku—just keep heading south.
The southernmost island of Enkanomiya was indeed this "Serpent's Heart." Yet he felt none of that Abyssal resonance—the call of the Abyss that [The Two Ends of Beginning and End] once emitted. Further south, faint mountain shapes loomed in the distance, their bases swallowed by thick mist. Beneath that mist lay seawater—Enkanomiya's very ground was ocean. He'd confirmed that before.
So, while he had a general direction, the difference in altitude made the search complicated. His only hope was that his Abyssal sense could guide him more precisely.
Victor steadied himself atop the Dragontooth Armor and flew south.
Until at last, the mountain hidden behind the mist came clearly into view. The journey there had been uneventful—and the mountain itself held little to see. Bare rock, no sign of human touch. Circling up and down, he sensed nothing of the Abyss. So, he decided to go further south—because beyond that point, the world grew completely dark.
A wall—no, not quite a wall. Perhaps… the earth itself.
Of course, the entire world's underbelly couldn't be hollow. Enkanomiya was a rare exception. Ahead lay its border—where the ground became solid once more, the natural stone forming an endless black wall that enclosed the whole region like a grave.
But to Victor's surprise, from within that wall came a faint pulse—a trace of the Abyss.
Following that thread of energy, he adjusted his direction and altitude, until he finally found—halfway up the wall—a man-made tunnel.
It was enormous, tall enough for two Ruin Guards, wide enough for three to stand abreast. Its precision matched that of the facility he'd found in the Ancient Nation of Thousand Winds. The difference here was the presence of a great mechanism gate—simple and stony in appearance, but clearly artificial. Once, it must have been sealed tight.
But at some point, something inside had exploded outward. The left half of the gate had collapsed entirely, and the right half hung crooked, jammed in place as if on the verge of falling—though that "verge" might have lasted centuries.
Victor slipped through the gap between the doors, reaching for a Lumenstone to light his way—but found he didn't need it.
The tunnel walls were carved with Khaenri'ahn runes, and every so often, light-crystals were embedded within. They still glowed faintly, casting enough light to reveal the cluttered floor—weapons, armor, everyday items scattered in disarray, their pattern impossible to read.
Having learned from his experience in the Ancient Nation of Thousand Winds, Victor stayed cautious, keeping his distance while mentally noting every suspicious object as he advanced.
What caught his attention most was that although the books he found crumbled to dust at a touch, it was obvious they had once been soaked in water.
"Could this base have been flooded?"
There had been water once—but not anymore. Something had changed between then and now. Among the principles of Life, Death, Time, Space, and Reason, water was closest to the Flower of Life.
In any case, with every step forward, the Abyssal resonance grew stronger. He only needed to reach the end to find his answer.
With that thought, Victor pressed on for two hours. The sensation had intensified long ago—after just thirty minutes, it had already peaked and stopped changing. Yet there were no branching paths, no side chambers, only one endless corridor.
Since the resonance hadn't weakened, he kept walking.
Another hour passed. He no longer knew how long the passage stretched—only that by his pace, he'd already walked far enough to cross all of Enkanomiya.
"Enjou wouldn't lie to me… right?"
Of course, Abyssal energy didn't always mean a relic. It could be an Abyss Lector—or something even stranger.
Victor sighed, leaning against the cold wall to rest. The aftereffects of teleportation had faded, but the memory still made him wince.
"A little tired… I just wanted to finish this fast and go back to bed. My bed…"
The moment the words left his mouth, the world went black—and he was back in his bed at the inn.
"?!"
With his extensive experience being dragged into illusions, his first thought was: a new kind of hallucination?
But no—across the hall, Lumine and Paimon were there, as real as ever. The innkeeper, the people of Inazuma—all real. Shouting at the sky to "break the illusion" did nothing. His abilities still worked, Little Wen was still there, the hourglass still turned, even the teleport waypoint—was active.
A terrifying thought dawned on him: if this wasn't an illusion, then he'd actually been teleported out.
To return to Enkanomiya, he'd have to teleport back.
"Why…"
Why was this teleport so smooth—when using a waypoint felt like torture?
"Why?!"