Inside a vast cavern, two men stood conversing. This scene would have been unremarkable if they were standing on a damp cave floor, but they were not.
Beneath their feet, only a gentle current of air served as their support. Indeed, both men were suspended in mid-air.
"Have you lost your mind? Thinking of letting them out into the world at a time like this!"
A well-built man in a navy-blue suit exclaimed, hovering dozens of feet above the ground.
His brown hair and beard were longer than a woman's, a stark contrast to the formal suit he wore. Yet, strangely, he exuded an aura of dignity and immense power.
Wrapped in a shimmering blue radiance that emanated from his body, he looked as mysterious and formidable as a god from ancient mythology.
Standing beside the man in the suit was an elderly figure in a gray cloak. In one hand, he held a peculiar staff, more twisted and curved than it was straight—looking very much like a wizard from a blockbuster trilogy.
Although he, too, stood upon the air, he emitted no visible aura. Nevertheless, he possessed an imposing presence that rivaled his companion. This old man's name was Alfor.
" You needn't worry about that. Though I am aged, I have not yet succumbed to madness,"
Alfor replied without glancing at the furious face of the other man. His gaze remained fixed on the deepest part of the cave—a tunnel of darkness more profound than the deepest abyss of the ocean, where, only a short while ago, two young boys had vanished into the shadows.
"Is this baseless act what you call sanity? Don't you realize how important this is? It's worth more than your own life! Yet today, you intend to throw it all away for the sake of these low-born races?"
The man with the blue aura spoke in a fierce tone. The aura around him pulsed wildly and powerfully beyond imagination. The massive lake inside the cave began churning violently, like ocean waves crashing during a storm, threatening to collapse the entire cavern.
'Heh...' Alfor let out a long sigh before turning his gaze toward the center of the lake. A white orb the size of a football was now floating just above the water's surface.
This item was the 'Naga Orb.' Legend had it that it was the egg of a Naga—the mythical giant serpent revered in Southeast Asian folklore.
"I understand your concerns, but those young men have passed my test. What would you have me do?"
Zoom!
As soon as Alfor finished speaking, the Naga Orb emitted a deafening hum, unleashing a blinding, brilliant light. The cave felt as if it had been transported inside the sun itself.
The man in the blue suit furrowed his brow, his expression etched with worry. He released his blue aura fiercely and extended one hand toward the white orb, as if he were about to take drastic action to calm it down. Alfor watched this reaction with a placid, neutral expression, showing no intention of intervening.
Ultimately, however, the man in the navy-blue suit seemed to abandon the idea.
He lowered his hand, and the raging aura surrounding him returned to normal—as if a violent, tempestuous sea had suddenly fallen into an inexplicable calm. Alfor looked at him with a glimmer of surprise before speaking.
"If you wish to stop them, it must be now. Otherwise..." Before Alfor could finish, the man in the suit cut him off.
"Old man, while I disagree with you, I know all too well that I have no right to interfere. Pray to the gods that you haven't truly gone mad. Because if you have, not only this Himmapan Forest, but Mount Olympus itself will face a cataclysm as great as those of ancient times."
The man spoke while glancing at his wristwatch—a face with only a single, motionless hand.
" Regardless, it is time for my meeting. That hot-tempered brother of mine won't appreciate me being late. In the meantime, you'd best stay away from the skies and dark clouds; Zeus won't be particularly pleased with what has transpired here."
Having said his piece, the man's body shimmered with a brilliant blue light before vanishing entirely.
"My grandsons... I leave the fate of this world in your hands," Alfor whispered.
As his words faded, the white orb suspended in the air transformed into the shape of a white serpent, over ten feet long.
It glowed with a radiance so intense it seemed to be forged from pure energy. The white serpent streaked into the pitch-black tunnel. A moment later, a blinding white light erupted from the darkness, consuming everything in its path.
---
Nawa slowly opened his eyes. He found himself no longer in the damp, dark cave, but in the middle of a dense forest somewhere back on Earth. He knew this because, high above, he could see a commercial airplane cruising across the sky.
After spending months in the Himmapan Forest—encountering monsters, witnesssing countless wonders, and surviving various perils—he had finally returned to his own world. A world without monsters or magic.
At first, a fleeting thought crossed his mind that it might be a bit boring, but in another sense, he was relieved that he no longer had to risk his life at every turn. Most importantly, he would finally be reunited with his family.
At that thought, a faint smile tugged at the corners of his mouth, and his eyes welled up with tears of overwhelming joy. Once his heart settled, Nawa began to examine himself.
He discovered that the powers he once possessed had completely vanished. If it weren't for the few items he had managed to bring back from the Himmapan Forest, he might have dismissed that entire journey as nothing more than a dream.
The remnants of his journey included the Dragon Scale tunic he was wearing, the Lek Lai armguards, and a specific item gifted to him by the wizard Alfor.
Nawa noticed that all these items seemed to have lost the mystical energy they once held. Even so, he wasn't deeply saddened. In his world, such power served little purpose anyway; his world was peaceful, far removed from the constant life-or-death struggles of the Himmapan Forest.
Nawa began his journey home. Along the way, he saw only ordinary birds and squirrels—no strange monsters in sight. This brought him a sense of relief, a confirmation that he truly had returned to his original world.
Before long, he successfully emerged from the edge of the forest.
He found himself on a road, with houses in the distance that he recognized at a single glance as Thailand; the unique architectural style was unlike anywhere else in the world.
However, his sense of familiarity was short-lived. He noticed something that shouldn't exist in the Thailand he knew: cars with no wheels, hovering nearly a foot off the ground, drifting effortlessly through the air.
"What is this? Don't tell me someone actually used my theory?" Nawa was lost in thought for a moment before continuing,
"No, that's impossible. I was only in the Himmapan Forest for five or six months. Even if someone published my theory, there's no way they could have developed this technology so quickly."
The reason Nawa had ended up in the Himmapan Forest in the first place was due to his experiments with the Space-Time Field, a phenomenon he had discovered himself.
Because everyone else had dismissed his ideas as delusions, he was forced to prove his findings on his own. Fortunately, Nawa had a wealthy and trusted friend who funded his experiments to validate the theory.
After several successful trials, he reached the ultimate challenge: propelling an object beyond the speed of light. This defied the current laws of physics, which stated that an object could never reach the speed of light because it would require infinite energy.
However, through the profound understanding of the Space-Time Field that Nawa had uncovered...
He had discovered that the reason for the energy requirement was that as an object gains speed, it sinks deeper into the space-time field, necessitating more power to push forward.
The solution was to supply energy to the object's temporal flow while simultaneously powering its propulsion. By accelerating the object's internal time, it would no longer sink into the space-time fabric.
The experiment proved his theory correct, but it triggered an unforeseen consequence. It cast him across dimensions into the Himmapan Forest—a land teeming with mythical monsters and gods.
Nawa had faced countless perils and eventually sacrificed all the power he had cultivated there just to return to the human realm. Yet, it seemed the world he returned to was no longer the one he knew.
Nawa shook the distracting thoughts from his head and headed straight for the city.
His first destination was a bank, hoping to withdraw cash for travel expenses and to gather information about what had happened. However, fate seemed to be mocking him. Just as he reached an ATM, the bank appeared to be under siege by robbers.
Police cars swarmed the front of the building, their sirens blaring at a deafening volume. Though this was the first time Nawa had ever encountered such a situation, it paled in comparison to the horrors he had faced in the Himmapan Forest.
He felt neither fear nor panic. Even though he was currently powerless and no different from an ordinary man, his countless experiences in surviving the impossible gave him the confidence that he could navigate this situation with ease.
A man stepped out from the bank's entrance, clutching two black bags overflowing with cash. He was dressed in a peculiar outfit—robes resembling those of a priest performing a ritual, but cast in a deep, ominous black.
Unfazed by the surrounding police, he moved straight toward where Nawa was standing.
With incredible speed, he closed the gap in the blink of an eye.
He lunged forward, seizing Nawa's throat and hoisting him into the air with a single hand. It was clear the robber intended to use Nawa as a human shield.
Had Nawa not lost his powers, even a thief with greater strength and speed than this would never have stood a chance.
Yet, Nawa did not panic. He knew that in a life-or-death crisis, a calm mind and sharp intellect were more vital than raw power.
Seeing that Nawa offered no resistance, the robber dropped the money bags and reached into a shoulder satchel to retrieve an object.
It wasn't a gun, nor was it a bomb. It was a small buffalo statuette made of clay. He placed it on the ground and pressed his hands together in a ritualistic gesture.
Instantly, the clay figure expanded hundreds of times its original size, swelling until it was twice as large as a living buffalo.
The earthen beast went on a rampage, obliterating everything in its path. Police cars were rammed and flipped aside like toys. Nothing could stop it; dozens of police bullets did little more than momentarily stall the creature's momentum.
The robber snatched Nawa, leapt onto the back of the clay buffalo, and the beast thundered away into the distance.
Nawa was not panicked by his status as a hostage, but the events unfolding before him left him bewildered and searching for answers. Between the leap in technology and the manifestation of supernatural powers straight out of a myth, he couldn't help but wonder: was this even the same world he had left behind?
While lost in thought, a figure appeared in his path. The man wore a crimson outfit resembling ancient military attire, adorned with golden glowing patterns shaped like an elephant's head. In his hands, he gripped a pair of seemingly ordinary swords.
The man lunged toward the clay buffalo without a trace of fear. His movements were far beyond those of any ordinary human, reminiscent of a superhuman or a superhero from a blockbuster film.
In the blink of an eye, he stood before the beast. His twin blades shimmered with a faint green light, as if coated in a mysterious energy. Suddenly, the clay buffalo—which had remained unscathed by dozens of bullets—was sliced into pieces.
Both the robber and Nawa tumbled across the ground, rolling several times. Despite the crash, the robber still refused to release his grip on Nawa.
"Stop! Don't come any closer! One more step and you can prepare to pick up this kid's corpse!" the robber snarled, pressing a dagger against Nawa's back while using him as a shield.
"Do you really think a threat like that works on a member of the Aiyara Unit?" The swordsman replied, his pace unyielding as he continued to close the distance.
The bank robber seemed to know his threat was futile, yet he had no intention of releasing Nawa. He viciously plunged the short blade into Nawa's back, sending Nawa tumbling forward toward the swordsman.
The robber hoped to distract the Aiyara Unit member with the hostage's life, giving himself a chance to escape.
But the Aiyara Unit member wasn't as concerned with Nawa's life as the robber had anticipated. The officer mercilessly batted Nawa's potentially dead or injured body aside to clear his path, then rushed forward and severed the robber's ankles.
'Aargh!'
The bank robber shrieked in agony, rolling on the ground pitifully before finally passing out from the pain of his wounds.
"Central Command report: Arrest complete. One injured, one fatality. Please dispatch an ambulance and recovery team to the sent coordinates. ...Wait. Cancel the recovery team."
The Aiyara Unit officer spoke into his communicator, his eyes flicking toward Nawa with surprise. He had fully expected Nawa to be dead after being stabbed severely in the back.
Yet, not only was Nawa alive, his injuries seemed minor; he could even push himself back to his feet.
"Are you hurt anywhere, young man?" the officer asked Nawa as he approached.
"Uh, just a few bruises. I'm mostly fine," Nawa replied flatly.
Although he understood that the officer's lack of concern during the fight was a rational response, it was hard to shake the feeling of dissatisfaction. If Nawa hadn't been wearing his Dragon Scale shirt, he would likely have been dead or critically injured.
" I apologize for what happened back there. That criminal was no ordinary man; if I had let him escape, many more would have suffered. I hope you can understand," the Aiyara Unit officer said, his expression tinged with a hint of shame.
"I understand," Nawa replied, his tone softening into a more friendly manner now that the other man had offered an apology.
Nawa took this opportunity to ask about the many things that puzzled him, trying to piece together what had happened during his disappearance. After nearly an hour of conversation, Nawa finally got the answers he sought.
This was indeed the same world he had left behind, but five years had passed—not five months as he had previously thought.
Although the reason for this time dilation remained a mystery, he had no choice but to accept it. Nawa also learned that during his absence, NASA had somehow gained access to the knowledge of his space-time theories, which was the primary catalyst for the world's exponential technological leap.
The world had discovered the science to create 'Teleportation Gates.' These were not simply portals to travel from one place to another on Earth, but interdimensional gateways leading to another world—a realm straight out of a fantasy novel, filled with countless monsters and immense treasures. NASA had named this dimension 'The Oneness.'
Humanity had reaped invaluable resources from The Oneness, the most significant being 'Energy Crystals'—gems obtained by slaying the monsters within that realm. Beyond providing near-limitless power, these crystals possessed numerous unique properties, serving as the key factor that propelled human civilization to the next level.
Consequently, The Oneness became the ultimate goal for the entire world. However, not everyone could enter. Less than 0.1% of the population had the right to step through, as the Teleportation Gates built by NASA would only function for individuals whose brain activity exceeded 12.5%.
These individuals are called 'Players'.
They are the ones who bring wealth and resources from The Oneness back to Earth, making them crucial personnel in this new era. Naturally, Players receive fame, honor, and immense wealth.
But of course, everything comes with a price. Players risk their lives every time they step into The Oneness, as the monsters there are incredibly dangerous and strong. To make matters worse, humans cannot bring items from Earth into The Oneness.
This means Players cannot use modern weapons or technology there, leading many to lose their lives in the alternate dimension.
However, there is a silver lining: the meat of the monsters in The Oneness can make Players stronger. Some even gain special abilities from consuming monster flesh, allowing them to rapidly increase their strength.
As Players grow stronger, their rewards multiply. This marked the beginning of a new age—the Golden Age of the Players—the Age of The Oneness.