The basic outline for these situations is the people find themselves in the middle of a king's castle or grand cathedral.
I didn't find myself in either of those places. Neither am I greeted by a middle-aged king or an old bishop, nor by a beautiful princess or saint.
Where I am is at what I can only describe as a bottomless abyss.
I rub my eyes and pinch myself. All around me is nothingness. To be more exact, it's a dark abyss with a couple of floating islands.
How am I able to see in a literal abyss?
Floating above the islands are various green sigils not too dissimilar from the ones in my source book.
Except... much bigger and more ominous looking. Even more so than Haruto's mom's hips and jutting belly she got four months after meeting a guy who wasn't his father at a motel.
I wish the dude was here so I could have said that remark out loud as payback for the morning.
I walked to the edge of the island I was standing on.
Looking down from a height that I can't even fathom, I see an endless sea.
Not the nice turquoise-blue color seen in advertisements for the Bahamas. No, its waves are pitch-dark. Whenever the tides churn, something resembling tentacles spray about instead of white foam.
It isn't just the sea that's dark, the skies are equally murky, if not more so than the glistening void frothing below.
I don't know if it's my aversion to extreme heights or the atmosphere, but I feel extremely queasy.
Even on a cruise ship, I never felt the urge to hurl as much as I do now.
My head's tingling. Were those eyes I just saw blinking down there?
Blinking green eyes?
God, I'm really losing it. I feel like I have a fever.
I forcibly pull myself back from the edge before my sanity deteriorates further.
Unintentionally, I stumble into the light of one of the sigils.
Basking under its eerie glow, I feel the nausea recede.
Whew, nearly lost myself for a second right there. I shudder to imagine what would've happened if I kept staring into the sea for too long.
Looks like it's true what they say: 'if you look into the abyss, the abyss stares back at you.'
I don't know if those eyes were real or not, but I am not staying in this godforsaken place any longer.
I turn my gaze inland.
Ruins, dozens of floating statues in a circle. Most were weathered beyond recognition or lay in pieces.
The only statue that remained relatively intact is a disturbingly large tentacled creature.
Honestly, I don't know who it's supposed to be referencing since half the entities in the Cthulhu Mythos are tentacle monsters.
...
No matter how one slices it, it's quite clear I'm meant to investigate those ruins.
I trudge forward. The island I'm on is small, so it doesn't take long for me to reach the center.
The buildings aren't of any note. I'm not an archaeologist, I doubt I could figure out what happened to this extinct civilization.
The only thing worth noting is a single dark shiny slab. Surrounding it are candles burning in an eerie green that's similar to the sigils floating near the islands.
Obviously, this is an altar, but I'm more interested in what lies on it.
At the center of the altar floats a book.
It's incredibly chuuni-looking, black, covered in forbidden sigils, sealed with chains. To top it off, there's even a skull adorning its very center.
My gut and my knowledge of typical isekai tropes tell me this is a really bad idea, but I have no idea how else to get myself out of here.
I go up to the altar and place my hands on the book.
And...
I immediately regret my decision, like a toddler placing his hand on a hot stove.
Actually happened to me once, guess I never learned from that mistake.
"A-aaah!"
Images are sheared into my mind. The rise and fall of civilizations, forbidden world-upending secrets, visions of horrendous beings drifting through space. So much information, so many nightmares, so many prophecies.
It's like a guy trapped in a white room, forced to do nothing but watch soap operas back to back for the entirety of his life.
Heck, even that option is better than what I'm experiencing right now.
At the very least, humans have a lifespan and eventually die. Plus, there might be a few good series easy and interesting enough to follow along.
Where am I going with this? Yes, that's right, I'm trying to distract myself from the pain.
Crap, I think my brain's going to be fried. If not, my personality's going to be out of tune at best or batshit crazy.
Suddenly-
'GO.'
That single voice resounded in my mind. It was subtle, but the shock to my brain is far greater than listening to a boombox directly blasting Ado into my ear.
I black out immediately after.
As if someone pressed the factory reset button on a stuffed PC, all the recent visions I saw were wiped from my memory.
Fortunately, it also wiped away my mental stress and psychotic breakdown.
I'm honestly surprised I haven't gone insane in the first few moments. Or could it have been moments and the pain was so great, my senses didn't perceive it that way?
It hurt a thousand times worse than that time I went through a fever while recovering from wisdom teeth removal surgery.
I swear, if I ever find out who toyed with me using those visions, I'm going to fill their mind with eternal brain rot once I get my hands on some mental manipulation magic in the isekai world.
Anyways, that's for the future.
Right now I'm unconscious.
I have no clue how long I was out.
But that doesn't matter. What does matter is I awake in the new isekai world and start my adventure with the rest of my class.
Surprise, surprise... The moment I wake up, I find myself in a grand hall full of religious iconography. I'm surrounded by my bewildered classmates, and armed inquisitors who look geared up to bring judgement down on heretics.
Okay, I know what everyone's thinking. I said things were going to be different in this isekai, but I never made a promise of how different they were going to be.
But getting surrounded by angry church members who look like they're about to scream "Deus Vult" and start purging cultists with their weapons is new.
Hold up, why are they angry?
Also, why do their gazes seem to be directed at me?
Wait, hold up, why are they drawing their swords and aiming their halberds at me!?
Ugh. I feel nauseous, and I don't think it's caused solely from being mentally cattle-branded with dark knowledge or flung through a half-dead dimension.
Hopefully everything ends well, right?
...
...
...
Yeah, I figured out later it didn't.