The building shook violently.
Chandeliers swung violently, clinking against the ceiling, and the polished floor beneath Aziel seemed to ripple, like it had become liquid for a fraction of a second.
[System Alert!]
.
[Reality Flux Detected…]
.
[Transfer to alternate dimensional layer imminent.]
.
[Attempt to deny transfer: Failed.]
.
[Excessive possibility required]
.
[Available possibility insufficient to alter outcome.]
.
[Warning: Unauthorized possibility utilization may trigger 'random' catastrophe.]
---
Aziel froze.
Twisting streaks of light appeared before his eyes, like shards of glass bleeding through the air.
The crowd seemed to warp
faces stretching, bodies flickering in and out.
Something was…
wrong.
Everything was wrong.
"What the hell is this…?" he muttered, stumbling backward.
He reached out to grab something solid, but his hand passed through air that felt denser and heavier.
Shadows twisted unnaturally, almost alive, stretching toward him and recoiling.
Doors that should have been closed were ajar, walls warped like waves on water.
His stomach churned.
He wanted to run, but the room felt...
Endless.
Infinite in all directions, and he couldn't move fast enough.
.
[Alert!]
.
[Cancelled unauthorized possibility usage]
.
[Proposal: Sacrifice one of the highest-possibility endearing skills to free up possibility space for 'potentiality' adjustment.]
.
Aziel's eyes went wide.
'Possibility? Why does it make it feel like i am supposed to understand this?'
"What the?"
He didn't understand a single word.
Was this… a warning?
A threat?
And…
A skill?
What skill?
One of those he had created...?
"…Yes?"
His voice cracked, unsure if he was agreeing or just reacting.
.
[Intellectual Intellect dismantled—reverted into entropy.]
.
[1,38,27,234 trajectories nullified out of 34 ,58,84,393 potential dimensional entry paths.]
.
[Anchor shifted to nullified trajectories.]
.
[Freed possibility space successfully redirected to alter the potentiality of remaining dimensional transfer paths.]
.
[System Judgment: Host not within altered potentiality.]
.
[Quotable Protocol: Possibility does not bend for the host]
.
---
.
He staggered, blinking rapidly, trying to make sense of what just happened.
"Hey, hey, Aziel, wha-what happened?"
He heard muffled, distant voices of Oliver, disorienting.
'Wha-am I the only one who has to get into trouble?'
Aziel looked at Oliver, who didn't seem in a hurry, his hands repeatedly slapping against… nothing.
It felt like he was hitting some invisible barrier around Aziel, though Oliver's motions kept coming.
Aziel raised a hand, but it passed through the air, vibrating oddly.
He wanted to speak, to tell Oliver he was fine...
Or at least alive.
But words seemed swallowed by the warped space between them.
Then suddenly...
He kept falling, and his surroundings shifted.
'Tch, Not this endless fall scene again'
He thought to himself, not even trying to open his eyes expecting another hour long fall scenario.
However...
His fall came to an end.
Until it didn't.
A second later, after he thought he'd struck something solid, his body sank further, swallowed by the ground itself.
'W-what… maybe this is the part where I run,'
Aziel screamed inside his head, forcing his legs to move.
The moment he shifted, the falling stopped again.
"What the heck is this place…" he muttered, freezing for a second.
His feet were half-buried in the ground that is if it could even be called that.
It shimmered like condensed light, currents rippling beneath him as if alive.
Before it could drag him deeper, he pushed forward, striding carefully.
"First, keep moving. Second, find a safe spot to observe. Third… figure out exactly where the hell I am."
He muttered, running the plan through his head, oddly meticulous, just like how the webnovel protagonist mapped out moves no sane person would in his previous life.
Reading Osmosis actually worked after all.
For what he thought was a minute, he tested the strange surface.
He jumped.
He summersaulted.
He stumbled his ankles.
Nothing happened.
That meant weight or force wasn't the factor here.
Until he stood still.
For one heartbeat.
Two.
Three.
Four.
The moment his fourth heartbeat passed, the condensed light beneath him flared violently, trying to swallow him whole, snapping like frozen currents in a storm.
Aziel staggered, gasping at the scenario around him.
"Why does my sense of time feel so broken here? I can't even tell when a minute has passed or an hour,"
He muttered.
Earlier, he had tried keeping count by instinct, but instinct failed. Sometimes time stretched for eternity, and sometimes it collapsed.
Until he figured out something far more accurate to measure progression.
His heartbeat.
"I know for a fact… the more accurate I try to be, the more I'll end up waiting for that fourth heartbeat every time. Great, that's-"
He halted mid-step, eyes drifting to the distant red mountains, glowing faintly like molten beacons, isolated in the vast, stretched space.
The emptiness around him reminded him of something.
One of the landscapes he had seen in a dream, impossibly vast and hauntingly familiar.
"…going to be hazardous."
A sigh slipped past him.
One misunderstood sound...
One missed beat.
That could be the reason his life might comes to an end here.
"What the hell are those?"
Aziel muttered under his breath as he spotted light sparks flickering on the mountainous rock ahead. It stuttered like bad electricity, violent bursts then sudden dimmed.
His gaze locked onto one.
It sputtered violently, then blinked out, gone.
"…Wait—"
Before he could even finish the thought, it reappeared a few steps off, this time clinging together, almost physical, almost solid.
His breath hitched as the form sagged, melting into liquid that bled down the slope, only to shiver and collapse back into pure light, scattering like shattered glass.
.
His eyes widened. 'You've got to be kidding me…Whatever it is, it's not even picking a state. Solid-liquid-light, it's just… damn!'
The spark vanished again, then flared somewhere else entirely, as if it itself couldn't decide where to go.
Aziel slowed, moving closer to a jagged heap beside him.
It looked like rock, but when he pressed his palm against it, the surface buzzed faintly, caught between stone and molten glass.
.
A material he had never seen truly before.
.
"W-wait… no, that's impossible. I barely walked a few hundred meters. So how the hell does this mountain look like it's right in front of me now? Don't tell me I've crossed kilometers without even realizing…"
The words came out sharp, uneasy, his eyes darting between the flickering sparks and the horizon.