In the Royal Mansion Mines…
"This is it?" Alistair stepped into the tunnel, torchlight bouncing off his shoulder as he eyed the open chamber ahead.
"Yes, Archmage," the miner replied, keeping his distance. "It was just... there, embedded in the floor. No magic traps, no signs of carving. We thought it best not to touch it."
"You thought right," Alistair muttered.
The others retreated as he moved forward alone, boots echoing softly against the stone. They were deep underground, yet the air was unnaturally cold.
At the center of the chamber, the crystal stood—tall, smooth-edged, half-sunk into the rocky floor. It pulsed faintly, but not with any color he could name. Light refracted through it strangely, as though it wasn't obeying the same laws of reflection.
He narrowed his eyes.
"No enchantment lines... and it doesn't follow any core structure." His voice lowered as he muttered, "Not natural. But not crafted either."
He extended a palm and formed a simple detection rune. The glyph hovered forward, touched the surface of the crystal—
—and shattered instantly.
"Tch."
His brow furrowed. It reacted… but not to the spell. To me?
He leaned in. Inside the crystal, slowly rotating, were unfamiliar glyphs. They looked like runes, but moved on their own, as if floating in thick liquid.
That's not any language I know. Not high arcane. Not forbidden glyphs either.
"…Is it responding to my presence?"
He reached out.
His fingers brushed the surface.
The glyphs flared.
"What—?! It's pulling me in!"
Light exploded around him. The floor vanished. The walls, the ceiling, the air itself—all torn away.
He didn't fall. He didn't rise.
He simply ceased to be where he was.
Warmth.
The scent of grass.
A soft breeze.
Alistair blinked up at the sky.
Blue. Unreasonably blue.
"…What?"
He sat up slowly. Tall grass bent beneath his hands. Birds chirped somewhere in the distance. The wind carried the warmth of a lazy summer afternoon.
But the mana in the air—it was heavy.
He took a slow breath and frowned.
"This mana density… it's everywhere. Thick. Wild. Unstructured."
No leyline flow. No anchor points. Just mana—raw and pulsing—spread through everything like fog.
No one's supposed to be able to survive in something this dense....Yet I'm fine.
He looked down at his hands. His robes were scorched and torn in places. His staff was gone. The grass felt real. The tree nearby cast a natural shadow. The sun warmed his skin.
"This isn't the mansion... Nothing familiar. I must've been teleported—but by what?"
"Only an ancient dragon or a demi-god could forcibly teleport an 8th-Circle magician..."
He stood up, dusting himself off, scanning the horizon.
Plains. Gentle hills. A few distant trees. Everything shimmered with strange clarity—like the world had been rendered with impossible detail. Leaves rustled realistically in the breeze. Tree bark showed deep grooves and patches of moss.
It was all... too perfect.
"…This is ridiculous. Where exactly am I?"
Chapter 1 – Part 2: Silent Horizons
He walked.
The terrain stretched endlessly—open plains, soft slopes, and perfectly spaced, vividly detailed trees. The grass shimmered like silk threads, swaying with every movement of the air. Flowers bloomed in patterns too precise to be random.
Alistair narrowed his eyes.
"This isn't like the eastern grasslands. And the mana's still just as dense."
He stopped near a tree and raised his hand.
"Search Magic. Trace Radius: ten thousand meters. Filter: intelligent lifeforms. Begin."
Blue glyphs rotated around him, pulsed once—then faded.
"Results: cows, pigs, birds…" he muttered.
He sighed. "No humans?"
Dismissed.
Another hill. Another scan.
Still animals.
Another hour passed. Then another.
Still nothing.
He cast the spell again. His fingers trembled slightly—this time from a growing sense of unease.
"Still no one…?"
Three hours passed without result.
"This isn't the Central Plains, nor the Kingdom of Eldoria… Is such powerful teleportation magic even possible…?"
Not a single person. Not a single aura. No city wards. No tower markers. Just untouched land, thick mana, and scattered wildlife.
"Am I in an illusion? No... this doesn't feel like an illusion. My body reacts to it. The magic holds. I'm burning through energy—real energy..."
His stomach growled.
"Great. Getting hungry already…"
He scanned the area and spotted them near a small pond—three cows grazing slowly, their tails flicking lazily. But something about them looked… off. Their movements were slightly stiff. Their forms too symmetrical.
"...Even the cows are weird."
He approached quietly. No need to overthink it. A meal was a meal.
With a flick of his fingers, he cast a focused Fire Edge—a clean arc of red-hot flame.
One cow dropped instantly. The others lazily wandered a few steps away, unbothered.
Alistair carved away a few clean cuts and laid them on a flat stone. A soft heat rune activated beneath it, and the meat began to sizzle.
The scent of seared fat drifted up.
He sat down beside it, watching it cook.
"Three hours of walking. Search spell used at least six times. No people found. Why is my body itching so much...?"
He rubbed at his temple.
"To think I, an Archmage, am struggling with such a low-level spell…"
Sigh.
He flipped the meat with a flick of his fingers.
The sky hasn't shifted much either... Is time slower here?
He bit into the cooked meat, chewing slowly.
"And it's not like the dense mana makes it easier on me, either. Tsk."