Chapter 6: A World Within the Painting
For a long moment, Soma simply stood still, his breath caught in his throat.
The last thing he remembered was the blinding white light and the storeroom dissolving around him. Now, he stood beneath an open sky ruled by two suns—one orange and warm, the other pale and enormous, casting a cold brilliance across the land.
The grass brushed against his ankles, damp with dew. Flowers bloomed in colors richer than anything on Earth. Behind him, a colossal tree rooted itself like a guardian, its twisted limbs clawing the sky, while before him stretched a plain so endless it seemed to kiss the horizon.
It was the painting. The same impossible world that had hung in his grandfather's collection, now wrapped around him on all sides.
"No way…" he whispered. His voice felt too small for the immensity of what he saw. "I'm… inside?"
His pulse quickened. Wonder surged through him, but fear rode close behind.
Like any true manga fanatic, Soma knew what to do next. *If this was a transmigration… or maybe a lucid dream.* He remembered a manga where the protagonist entered a strange dream every night after falling asleep. There, he could do impossible things—throw lasers, soar through the sky, hurl fire from his hands.
Soma's eyes lit up.
Heart pounding, he thrust his hand forward. "Fireball!"
Nothing. Not even a spark.
He tried again, louder this time. "Laser beam!"
Only silence.
"Fly!" he bellowed, striking a superhero pose.
Still nothing.
Grinding his teeth, he tried the last desperate word every manga hero shouted at least once. "System!"
The grass stared back at him.
Soma dropped his arms with a groan. "Figures. I can't even get a lousy tutorial screen."
He stood still for several moments, trying to steady his racing thoughts. The more he looked, the more familiar the place seemed. The jagged mountain ridges on the horizon. The endless grassy plain. The cluster of violet trees in the distance.
Recognition slammed into him.
Now he was certain. There was no question anymore. *The painting… I'm inside the painting.*
Before he could process it, the ground rumbled beneath his feet—like thunder bottled underground, desperate to escape.
Soma's head snapped toward the forest edge. Branches shook. Birds scattered. The tremor grew louder. He barely had time to breathe before something enormous exploded from the forest's shadows.
A boar. But not like any boar he'd seen in his grandfather's hunting books. This one was taller than he was, its body sheathed in coarse brown fur, muscles rippling like slabs of stone. From its snout jutted a single curved horn—white, sharp, wicked. Its breath steamed in the cool air, foul and hot, and every stomp rattled through his bones as though the land itself wanted to flee. Spittle frothed from its mouth as it shrieked, charging.
"WHAT THE—?!"
Soma spun and bolted, the grass hissing against his legs. He leapt over roots, scrambled over rocks, nearly tearing his hand on a thorn bush. His lungs screamed. Every breath was fire.
Behind him, the ground thundered with each hoofbeat. The stench of wild musk filled his nose. The shrill roar of the beast rang in his ears. Death was a heartbeat away.
"I'M GONNA DIE!" he shouted, his voice cracking, flung away by the wind.
He risked a glance back. The beast was closing fast, eyes glowing like embers. It would skewer him in seconds.
He stumbled to a halt, instincts overriding thought. Turning, he threw up his arms and squeezed his eyes shut.
*This is it. I'm done.*
But instead of pain, there was only a sudden, fierce gust.
No impact. No gore.
Nothing.
Soma cracked an eye open. The monster barreled onward, horn gleaming, its bulk shaking the ground—yet it passed through him as if he were no more than mist. Seconds later, it disappeared into the treeline, its fury swallowed by distance.
Soma touched his chest. His arms. His legs. Everything looked solid—warm, firm—but the edges of his body shimmered faintly, transparent when caught by the light. Then he noticed his finger. The small cut from earlier was gone. Not even a scar remained, as though the wound had never existed.
For one awful second, a thought stabbed through him: *Am I already dead?* The idea lodged cold in his chest before he pushed it away.
"I'm… not solid?" His voice wavered.
The truth dawned on him, chilling and liberating at once. He wasn't really here. Not physically. His spirit—his consciousness—was what the rune had pulled inside the canvas world.
He collapsed onto the grass, his body—or whatever this was—shaking with ragged breaths. Above him, the twin suns blazed. One orange, warm and familiar. The other pale, almost icy. Together they cast twin shadows across the land, eerie and unknowing.
Then he noticed: no matter how long he stared, the suns didn't move. Hours might have passed, yet it was as if time itself had frozen.
To find a clue—any clue—on how to return to Earth, he wandered. Minutes, maybe hours. Time was impossible to measure beneath unmoving suns.
*Grandfather… did you know? Did you know what your painting was hiding?*
The wind whispered through the plains. A bird cried somewhere unseen. The world around him felt real—far too real to be mere dream.
At first, terror drove him. But slowly, unease ebbed. Fear dulled after he tried—three times—to pet a hare, only for it to leap straight through him without pause. It vanished into the brush as though he'd never existed.
When he hurled a rock at a saber-toothed predator, the stone sailed through its flank. The tiger's head whipped around, jaws gnashing—but finding nothing, it stalked away.
No creature could touch him. No creature could even see him.
A ghost. That's what he was. A ghost in a painting.
Soma managed a bitter laugh.
He forced himself to think. Logic. Deduction. Just like the heroes in the manga he'd read late into the night.
**Fact one:** Where was he?
Answer: Inside the painting. A world sealed in canvas.
**Fact two:** What happens if I get hungry or thirsty?
So far, he felt no hunger, no thirst. He'd tried biting into leaves, but they passed through his teeth like air. Yet his stomach never grumbled. His throat never dried.
**Fact three:** How could he return?
The most important question.
Three options occurred to him:
1. Find another silver rune and try bleeding on it. Maybe it was a key to teleportation.
2. Find someone—anything—sentient. Something that could talk.
3. Explore until he discovered a doorway back. If there was a way in, there had to be a way out.
As if in answer, the horizon shifted.
Soma spotted it: a swirl of dust rising on the plains, like a miniature sandstorm twisting against the still air.
His pulse quickened.
He stood, brushed phantom dust from his knees, and grinned with a flicker of determination. "Alright then. Time to explore."
Running felt strange. His body pumped, muscles burned, lungs heaved—but the grass didn't bend beneath his feet. No tracks marked his passing. It was like running above a cloud.
After less than a kilometer, he bent double, panting. "Ugh… pathetic. And I thought PE was hard."
Then, a thought struck him.
*If I'm a soul… shouldn't I be able to fly?*
The idea set his blood racing. He straightened, grinning.
He flapped his arms. Nothing.
He leapt high, imagining air currents catching him. Gravity still worked.
"Figures," he muttered.
In one of his favorite manga, a mother bird had pushed her chicks from the nest, forcing them to confront fear and learn to fly.
"Maybe I just need… a push."
He eyed a towering tree, twenty meters at least. Without hesitation, he climbed. His palms scraped, though he knew it was only sensation, not injury. Higher. Higher. Until the plains stretched like a green sea below.
"Okay… time to fly."
He crossed his fingers for good luck and jumped.
For one glorious heartbeat, he hovered—weightless, unbound, as if the laws of the world no longer applied. Then he drifted down like a falling leaf, landing softly on the ground.
Failure.
But he wasn't done.
He spent the next hour climbing, jumping, experimenting. Over and over. Dozens of attempts. He noticed something: when strong wind gusted, his body drifted with it—not resisting, but yielding.
That sparked a wild idea.
Momentum.
He grabbed a few rocks, climbed again, and leapt. Midair, he hurled a stone backward.
The world blurred. His body surged forward, flung a hundred meters across the plains before floating gently to the ground.
He had studied the laws of motion in his physics book many times—but this was the first time he'd used them in real life.
Soma laughed. He jumped and threw another rock downward, and his body shot upward—higher and higher—until he was more than a hundred meters in the sky. The world opened before him, a breathtaking panorama from his bird's-eye view. Now he could see the dust storm clearly.
Weightless. Untethered.
He could fly.
Not with wings. Not with spell. But with sheer intent and the help of science.
He hurled rocks in rapid succession, propelling himself like a ghostly comet. The plains rushed beneath him, green waves in the wind. The exhilaration nearly tore a laugh from his throat.
After drifting for a while, he reached the dust storm.
And froze.
Below him, two titans battled.
The giant boar—the same monster that had chased him earlier—was caught in the coils of a serpent. Seventeen meters long, scales glistening like polished obsidian, the snake constricted with brutal precision. Bones creaked under its pressure. Dust erupted in choking clouds. The sound of grinding scales against bristled fur was like metal on stone. Its jaws clamped on the boar's neck, tightening, tightening.
The boar screamed, thrashing. Hooves tore furrows in the ground. Then—slowly—its strength ebbed. Its eyes dulled. Its body stilled.
Soma hovered, transfixed. The clash below was savage, monstrous—a sight that should have frozen his blood. Yet his heart stayed steady. The accident—the loss of his parents—had carved something out of him, leaving not just grief but a hollow stillness that dulled fear as much as awe. Where others might have panicked or wept, Soma only watched, not because he was fearless, but because sorrow had left him nothing else to feel.
Soma's breath caught.
"What… is that?"
From the boar's lifeless carcass, a white sphere drifted upward. Drawn without thought, Soma reached for it. His fingers brushed its glow.
Instantly, the orb sank into his chest.
A shock ripped through him—like plunging into ice water after running in sweltering heat. Clear. Pure. Alive.
Soma gasped, trembling as energy coursed through him, clean and endless.
He pressed a hand to his chest, eyes wide.
"What… what was that?" His voice quivered. His body felt strange—brighter, sharper, *changed.*
And for the first time since entering this painted world, Soma realized he might not leave it the same.