Chapter 18 – The Realm Without Name
The moment Tae-hyun pressed his hand to the array, the world shattered.
A surge of ancient qi burst from the ground, wrapping both him and Jinhwan in threads of crackling light. The air warped, trees melted into nothingness, and the forest's sounds were swallowed whole. For a split second, Tae-hyun felt weightless—like his body had been torn from the earth and hurled into the void.
Then came the impact.
The two of them hit the ground hard, the scent of ash and iron heavy in the air. Tae-hyun coughed, staggering to his feet. Around them stretched a barren, grey wasteland. The sky was a sickly red, swirling with unnatural clouds. Jagged stone formations jutted from the ground like the ribs of a buried titan. No wind. No birds. Just silence.
Jinhwan rose beside him, blade already in hand. "This… isn't part of the forest."
"No," Tae-hyun muttered. "We've been transported somewhere else."
A cold chime echoed in his mind.
> [System Notification]
You have entered: Unknown Domain – Coordinates Invalid
New Quest:
Find Yul.
Difficulty: ???
Time Limit: Unknown
Note: All tracking functions temporarily disabled.
Tae-hyun's heart sank. "The system can't even locate her…"
"Then we search the old-fashioned way," Jinhwan said grimly.
They walked.
The ground crunched beneath their boots, brittle and lifeless. Hours passed—maybe more. Time felt warped in this place. No sun marked the sky. No wind touched their skin. The silence grew oppressive, broken only by the sound of their footfalls and the occasional flicker of unstable qi across the horizon.
Then they found the first body.
It lay sprawled across a flat stone, face down, soaked in dried blood. Tae-hyun rushed forward—and froze.
It was Seok-min.
His throat had been torn open, his blade shattered beside him. A look of terror was frozen into his face.
Jinhwan's expression darkened. "Your teammate?"
Tae-hyun nodded slowly. "Yeah… he was in the same team as Yul."
They found another corpse twenty minutes later—this one burnt beyond recognition. But the armor, the scraps of a crest, matched Ji-woo's.
Then another.
And another.
Tae-hyun fell to his knees beside the last one—a young man with a crushed ribcage, hands still clutching a broken talisman. "All of them… they were with us when we split up. But…"
"But no sign of Yul," Jinhwan finished quietly.
Tae-hyun's jaw clenched. "No. And no trace of Tip either."
"Either she's still alive…" Jinhwan said, "...or whatever did this to them took her somewhere else."
Tae-hyun stood slowly, wiping blood from his hands. His voice was low and steady. "I won't let this be the end of their story. We keep moving. We find her. No matter what."
As they stepped away from the corpses, the red clouds overhead began to churn violently, casting long, shifting shadows across the desolate ground.
Whatever this place was—it wasn't done with them yet.
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Here is the revised Chapter 35 – The Realm Without Name, with all mentions of the system removed from Jinhwan's awareness:
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The moment Tae-hyun pressed his hand to the array, the world fractured.
A surge of ancient qi burst from the ground, wrapping both him and Jinhwan in crackling tendrils of light. The air twisted. Trees bent and dissolved into mist. Sound vanished. And in the blink of an eye, their bodies were hurled into an abyss that devoured the sky.
Impact.
Tae-hyun landed hard on his side, breath torn from his lungs. The air was dry and thick with the scent of ash. He forced himself up, blinking against the crimson sky that loomed above them. The land around them was a grave of jagged black rock, stretching endlessly. No trees. No sun. No wind. Just a scarlet sky and the faint hum of something ancient and wrong.
Jinhwan stood beside him, silent, tense. His hand hovered near the hilt of his sword.
"This isn't the forest," he muttered.
"No," Tae-hyun said under his breath, eyes scanning the horizon. "We've been sent somewhere else."
Inside, something clicked—unseen to Jinhwan. A silent presence bloomed in Tae-hyun's mind. An unseen interface only he could feel.
> Quest Activated:
Find Yul.
Difficulty: ???
Location Tracking: Unavailable
Warning: All familiar coordinates lost. Proceed with caution.
His heart dropped.
No guidance. No direction. Not even a pulse of Yul's presence. The system had nothing. Which meant… she was truly lost in this hellscape.
"We search," Tae-hyun said aloud. "No point standing still."
They walked.
Time became meaningless in this place. The sky did not shift. No light changed. The land was silent and dead—dust breaking beneath their boots, strange shadows rippling in the far distance like ghosts watching.
Then they saw it.
A body.
Tae-hyun broke into a run the moment he recognized the armor—a dark brown vestment, stained with blood and ash. His steps slowed as he dropped beside it, breath catching in his throat.
"Seok-min…"
His teammate lay face-down on the stone, throat torn open. His blade was snapped in half. His last expression frozen in terror.
Jinhwan knelt beside the body, grim. "Someone or something ripped through him."
Tae-hyun said nothing.
They found another body twenty minutes later. Half-buried under loose rock, burned nearly to ash, but still wearing the crest of Tae-hyun's unit.
Ji-woo.
Then another. And another.
A trail of corpses.
All familiar.
All torn apart.
By the fifth one, Tae-hyun couldn't move. He stood there, fists trembling, blood pounding in his ears.
"They were my team…" he muttered.
Jinhwan stepped back to give him space. "There's no sign of Yul among them," he offered, voice low.
Tae-hyun looked over the battlefield. Burn marks. Deep gashes in stone. Even traces of shattered talismans—used in desperation.
But no trace of her.
No blood. No broken body. No belongings. No corpse.
And no sign of Tip either.
"They all died here," Tae-hyun said. "But she's not among them."
Jinhwan looked toward the horizon. "Then we keep going."
Tae-hyun nodded slowly.
"Yeah," he murmured. "We keep going."
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