Left alone in the booming silence of the sanctuary, Izayoi stood for another minute, listening to the emptiness. The ghost had vanished, but the sensation of a foreign presence—that same divine mana—had not gone anywhere. It had soaked into the stones, into the air, into the very dust beneath his feet.
"Well then," he said aloud, cracking his neck. "The tour was informative, but it's time to get some fresh air."
He turned his back to the statue and headed in the direction where, by architectural logic, the exit should be. The passage was long, dark, and led upward on a gentle slope. Izayoi walked confidently, his footsteps echoing off the walls, until the corridor came to a dead end.
Or rather, not a dead end, but an obstruction.
Before him loomed a massive stone slab, about five meters high. Its entire surface was etched with an intricate script of glowing blue runes. This was not just stone—it was a seal. A multi-layered magical defense created by humanity's greatest mage so that no one could enter... and, apparently, exit.
Izayoi stepped closer, his gaze sliding over the symbols.
"Ancient language, magic formulas, closed circuits," he muttered, running a finger along the cold stone. "According to genre conventions, right about now I should start looking for hidden levers, solving linguistic puzzles, or searching for a key hidden in the stomach of some mini-boss."
He smirked. Amused sparks danced in his eyes.
"But I'm allergic to wasting time."
He didn't adopt a combat stance. He didn't concentrate energy or chant grandiose spells. He simply drew his right arm back, clenching his fist.
For Izayoi Sakamaki, obstacles did not exist. There were only objects to which he had applied insufficient force.
"Open up, Sesame," he tossed out lazily.
Impact.
It was like a siege weapon firing at point-blank range. Fist met stone, and for a split second, the runes flared with blinding light, attempting to activate defense protocols. Flamme's magic, designed to contain demons, howled as it collided with kinetic energy that denied the very concept of resistance.
CRACK.
The sound of breaking stone drowned out the hum of magic. The tablet didn't just crack—it exploded.
Huge chunks of granite weighing several tons shot outward like shrapnel. The blast wave carried dust and debris, clearing the passage crudely, effectively, and irreversibly.
Izayoi stepped into the newly formed opening, waving away a cloud of stone dust.
"Too much drama for one door," he commented, stepping out into the light.
Bright sunlight hit his eyes, making him squint for a moment. The air here was different—fresh, humid, filled with the scents of earth and greenery.
He found himself in the middle of a dense, wild forest. Giant trees, whose crowns met somewhere high in the sky, created a green twilight. Roots, thick as ship cables, entwined everything around.
Looking back, Izayoi whistled.
The tomb he had just exited wasn't a building. It was a hill, completely swallowed by the forest. The entrance had been buried by earth and roots centuries ago. If not for the hole he had just punched through, no one would ever have guessed that humanity's legacy was hidden beneath this mound.
"Not bad camouflage," he appraised. "Nature does the job better than any illusion."
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, switching his perception. Sight, hearing, touch—his senses expanded, scanning the surrounding space.
Quiet. Too quiet for a normal forest, but natural for a sacred place. Not a soul. No signs of human habitation, no sounds of battle or the presence of sapient beings. Only the rustle of leaves, the calls of small birds, and the scurry of rodents in the undergrowth.
But there was something else.
Izayoi felt it on his skin—a thin, barely perceptible vibration in the air.
"A barrier," he stated.
He sensed a perfectly shaped dome covering the area with a radius of about a hundred meters. It was the same energy that emanated from the Goddess's statue—soft but unyielding. It wasn't hostile. Rather, it was a filter, averting the eyes of outsiders. "There's nothing here, move along"—that was what this magic told anyone who approached.
For an ordinary mage or demon, this barrier would be invisible and imperceptible. But for Izayoi, whose perception was honed to find anomalies, it was as obvious as a glass wall.
"Idiot-proofing and protection from prying eyes," he nodded to himself. "Smart. Flamme knew her business."
He bent down and picked up a simple dry branch from the ground. Just an ordinary piece of wood that had fallen from an ancient oak.
"Well then," Izayoi twirled the branch in his fingers. "No map, GPS isn't picking up a signal, the guide quit. That leaves the old-fashioned method."
He placed the branch vertically on a flat stone, holding it steady with a finger on top.
"Wherever it falls, that's where the adventure is," he grinned. "Don't let me down, navigator."
He removed his finger.
The branch swayed, froze for a split second, choosing fate, and fell smoothly, pointing its sharp end to the northeast, where the trees stood slightly further apart, letting in sunbeams.
"Northeast, is it?" Izayoi adjusted his blazer and strode confidently in the indicated direction, stepping over giant roots. "Excellent choice. Hope they serve something stronger than spring water there."
A couple of hours later, the sun began to dip toward sunset, painting the forest in anxious crimson tones.
Izayoi sat on a fallen tree trunk, lazily turning an improvised spit over a fire. The flames crackled merrily, licking at a huge, fat-dripping hunk of meat. It smelled surprisingly appetizing—something between chicken and expensive fish.
"A bit tough," he muttered, tearing off a piece of roasted flesh with his teeth and chewing thoughtfully. "But for a first dinner in a new world, it'll do. The local fauna is nutritious, at least."
He glanced at what remained of the dinner's "source." The massive, coiled carcass of a snake, as thick as a barrel, lay in the bushes nearby. Its scales, glinting like metal, were mangled around the head area, as if a freight train had slammed into it.
Izayoi chuckled, recalling the encounter.
It happened almost immediately after he left the range of Flamme's barrier. As soon as he stepped over the invisible line, the "silence" of the sacred place was replaced by a cacophony of life. His heightened senses, no longer restrained by the magic filter, instantly picked up dozens of signals: heartbeats, rustling, growling, the smell of blood and musk. The forest that seemed empty was actually teeming with predators.
Curiosity, as always, took over, and he headed toward the source of the loudest noise.
In a small clearing, he came upon a scene worthy of the Discovery Channel, if it broadcast monster battles. Two giants were dividing territory. On one side—the very snake whose meat he was now finishing. On the other—a bear. But not an ordinary grizzly, rather a monster four meters tall, whose hide was covered not just in fur, but in strange crystalline growths pulsating with a dim light.
"Oho," Izayoi assessed then, stepping into the clearing without even trying to hide. "What do you have here, a radioactive waste leak? or is this the local piercing trend?"
Both beasts froze. Four eyes—two yellow vertical pupils and two bloodshot bear eyes—stared at him.
They assessed him. Small. No fangs. No claws. No visible magical aura (which Izayoi, out of habit, kept on a leash).
The verdict was unanimous: "Not a threat."
The bear snorted, losing interest, and turned back to the snake, preparing to lunge. The snake simply ignored the bipedal misunderstanding, focusing on the larger opponent.
They turned away. They just went ahead and crossed him out of the equation.
Something clicked inside Izayoi.
"Ignoring a guest? How rude. I guess no one taught you manners."
He smiled. But there was no warmth in that smile.
For a split second, he allowed his essence to "leak" out. He didn't attack. He simply released "bloodlust"—a pure, concentrated promise of violence. It was as if the temperature in the clearing instantly dropped to absolute zero, and the air became as heavy as lead.
The reaction was instantaneous.
The crystal grizzly, being a mammal with a more developed brain, howled. Its instincts, honed by years of survival, screamed a single word: "RUN." It didn't check what was in front of it. It simply turned around and, snapping bushes like matchsticks, bolted away with a speed a race car would envy.
"Oh, I'm so flattered," Izayoi praised. "Smart teddy bear, he'll live long."
But the snake was less lucky. Its reptilian brain, governed only by hunger and aggression, interpreted the threat differently. It didn't run; it attacked.
The massive maw flew open, revealing dagger-sized fangs, and the snake lunged at him in a lethal strike.
"And you—are stupid," Izayoi stated, not even taking his hands out of his pockets.
When the monster's head was a meter away from him, he simply lifted his leg and, with lazy grace, brought his heel down on the creature's skull.
CRUNCH.
The strike was precise. He didn't smear it across the ground, but the kinetic wave passed through the bone, turning the snake's brain into jelly before it could even realize it was dead. The carcass collapsed at his feet, twitching in a final convulsion.
"For that, you become dinner," he concluded then.
And now, sitting by the fire and finishing the result of "natural selection," Izayoi watched the flames.
"Monsters, magic, crystals in the hide," he mused aloud, tossing a branch into the fire. "Flamme wasn't lying. This world really lives by the laws of power. And that is... damn pleasant."