"This is definitely not the sky of the Guern World."
"…That flash of white light just now was it a world-transmission sorcery array?"
In that very first instant, Lynn realized the truth.
Above him stretched a faintly crimson sky, where two "suns" hung suspended, one large, one small. One shone pure white like snow, while the other burned a deep crimson, like fresh blood.
Far ahead, Lynn could see a towering, perfectly arched black mountain range…
No… that's not a natural mountain range. This looks more like the aftermath of an impact crater. And my position right now is…
Slowly, Lynn pushed himself upright, his hands brushing against the smooth gray floor beneath him.
Turning his head, his vision was immediately filled by the looming shadow of a vast, gray-black structure.
He craned his neck as far back as he could, only then managing to glimpse the entirety of the colossal form before him.
It was a massive, ruined, spherical fortress. The place where he now stood was an outer plaza within the hollow interior of this structure.
Above the plaza, the dome, once part of the fortress's spherical shell, was long gone, blown away to reveal the crimson-tinged heavens overhead.
If this really is another world… then this must be… a fallen fortress from some past world invasion?
The thought shook Lynn to his core, but also helped him piece together his current situation.
He could almost imagine it: this gigantic "black moon" plummeting from the sky, crashing into the earth with such force that it hollowed out a vast crater and raised the surrounding mountain ridges.
The impact had driven the fortress deep into the ground, so much so that the teleportation plaza, originally somewhere in its middle or lower layers, was now nearly level with the surface outside.
All of this took far longer to explain than it did to happen. In reality, only a heartbeat had passed since Lynn had first stood up.
Across the plaza, many other wizard apprentices lay scattered on the ground, retching violently.
"Hsssss!"
"Ahhh!!"
Suddenly, a familiar screech rang out, mixed with a human scream.
Lynn whipped his head around only to see that same hideous, fleshy monstrosity driving its tentacle straight into the chest of a blond-haired male apprentice!
His blood ran cold, every hair on his body standing on end. He spun on his heels and bolted toward the structure behind him.
Emerald Shadow, damn it! It got transmitted here, too?!
Lynn knew all too well how terrifying Emerald Shadow was. It wasn't something mere wizard apprentices like them could ever hope to resist.
Worse still, scattered across the plaza were numerous thrall creatures with glowing green eyes, Emerald Shadow's minions.
They had also regained their senses and were now joining their master in slaughtering the remaining apprentices!
The survivors finally realized what was happening. Many first-class apprentices hastily cast flight spells, scattering in every direction in a desperate bid to escape.
Most fled toward the fortress's interior behind them, while a few who were too close to Emerald Shadow tried to dash outside instead.
In their panic, their only thought was to get as far away from the abomination as possible.
But they hadn't run far before their faces twisted in horror. Choking, gasping, they spun around and fled back the way they had come.
While most life-bearing worlds had breathable air by the Guern race, it was now obvious that this place was not one of them.
The very atmosphere here was poisonous to their kind.
Without the aid of special survival sorceries, venturing outside meant certain suffocation and death.
Fortunately, although the dome above the plaza had been torn away, the fortress's air-generating function was still active, just barely sustaining an oxygen-rich environment within.
At such a desperate moment, the slightest misstep was fatal.
Those apprentices who had turned back tried to circle Emerald Shadow once more, but it was useless.
Tentacles lashed out, snatching them up as casually as chopsticks plucking vegetables. The monster's writhing flesh quickly enveloped them, smothering their screams as it devoured them whole.
One shriek after another rang out, echoing through the crater's encircling walls.
At that moment, a first-class apprentice reached the edge of the plaza.
Though the dome above had been blasted open, the surrounding walls were still intact, enclosing them completely.
The only way forward was a single massive rectangular door of gray-black metal, leading deeper inside.
It stood seven or eight meters tall, and it was firmly shut.
The apprentice tugged, shoved, and clawed at it, but the great door didn't budge an inch. Panic-stricken, he screamed:
"Damn it, why won't this door open?!"
Lynn was not far behind him. Hearing those words, his expression immediately changed.
Behind them, the screams of the dying had not ceased.
"Hsssss!"
Emerald Shadow had already noticed their attempted escape. With another shriek, it commanded its thralls to give chase!
Some apprentices tried to fight back, but most continued to flee blindly until they too reached the sealed door, where they stopped short, eyes filled with despair.
In the chaos, one apprentice shouted:
"The door won't open, we have to stand together and fight back!"
"That's right, we must fight!"
"No! That thing is at least a First-Tier monster. How could we possibly stand against it?!"
"We're doomed!"
As it turned out, in such a moment of chaos, expecting a group of strangers to unite and launch an effective counterattack with just a few shouted words was nothing but wishful thinking.
Lynn's expression darkened. He turned his head left and right, desperately searching for any other possible exit.
Swish!
Swish, swish
Only when Emerald Shadow's thralls were nearly upon them did the apprentices, in blind panic, finally unleash a scattered barrage of attacks.
Yet more people were still running wildly. Lynn himself was swept along by the crowd, carried like a helpless body caught in a surging tide.
Just when despair seemed about to crush them
The apprentices at the very front suddenly noticed something strange: the Emerald Shadow thralls charging toward them had abruptly stopped, turned around, and rushed back the way they had come!
"Roar!!"
An eerie bellow rang out from above the plaza.
Lynn snapped his head around just in time to see a monstrous shape descending from the blood-red sky, a creature resembling a humanoid bat, wrapped in faint crimson lightning as it slammed straight into Emerald Shadow!
Its aura was overwhelming, no weaker than Emerald Shadow's own.
Twin pairs of razor-sharp claws gleamed with blinding scarlet light, tearing gaping holes through Emerald Shadow's body as they struck.
This was, without question, a powerful native lifeform of the Blood-Red World.
"Hsssss!!"
Emerald Shadow shrieked in pain, lashing out in fury at the new threat.
It was precisely because of this danger that it had recalled its thralls, intending to fuse them into itself to bolster its strength.
At the sealed gray gate, the apprentices watched in shock, then breathed a slight sigh of relief.
But their danger was far from over.
A blond-haired first-rank apprentice suddenly realized this, eyes flickering as he stared at the massive gate behind them. Hesitating only a moment, he raised his palm.
Whoosh!
A blazing fireball streaked forward, crashing into the gate.
This was an Explosive Fireball, a specialized variant of the basic Fireball spell, strengthened for maximum detonation.
Boom!!
The explosion shook the air with deafening force.
All eyes swung to the gate, filled with desperate hope.
The flames died away after a moment…
But the gate remained unchanged.
"Wait, look, the gate is glowing!" one apprentice suddenly cried.
Lynn focused his gaze. Sure enough, a faint silver sheen was spreading across the gate's surface.
"Step back, Lynn."
The voice came from his left. It was Elena.
Before Lynn could react, a lance of silver-white light shot from the gate, slamming into the blond apprentice who had cast the fireball.
"Ahhh!!"
The apprentice screamed, convulsing violently before collapsing to the ground.
Whsssh, whsssh
Threads of silver light manifested out of thin air, snaking around him. His arms were forced to cross tightly over his chest, his legs bound straight together like a cocooned silkworm.
At the same time, a fragmented, mechanical voice echoed coldly through the plaza:
"... Malicious… attack… Black Moon Fortress… according… to wartime regulations… target restrained… awaiting security wizards… Warning… malicious attack…"
"As expected," Elena murmured beside him, "the tower spirit of this invasion fortress is still functioning."
Lynn blinked, shaken. He took a few wary steps back, his eyes narrowing in surprise.
Elena… she hadn't charged toward Emerald Shadow like the other thralls?
"I told you I can resist its control." Elena smiled faintly.
Her expression seemed calm enough, but her left eye still flickered with eerie green flames, chilling to behold.
Perhaps sensing the unease it caused, Elena tore off a strip of her robe and wrapped it over her left eye.
"Damn it, how do we open this door?!"
"We're finished… we're doomed…"
The crowd before the gate dissolved once more into panic.
Then Elena raised her voice above the chaos:
"This is another world, this is a battlefield.
"And this fortress, this world-invasion stronghold, is the only thing we can rely on."
Several apprentices turned to stare at her, astonished.
"She's a Second-Rank apprentice from the Hossens School, isn't she?"
"I know her, she's with the School's Guard Corps. I think her name's Elena Rose…"
"Miss Rose, from the Hossens School, can you explain to us what's going on? Why were we suddenly transported to another world?"
A first-rank apprentice wearing the Bloodmark Society insignia interrupted sharply, demanding an answer.
Meanwhile, Emerald Shadow and the blood bat monster clashed savagely, their roars and detonations thundering across the crater.
Elena did not answer his question. Instead, she lifted her gaze to the fortress looming above them, her expression a mix of awe and regret, and continued:
"That is why a world-invasion fortress is governed by the strictest regulations. To prevent accidents, almost every major passage and gate is safeguarded by its own screening defenses.
"And as we can see… this gate before us, leading from the teleportation plaza into the fortress interior, is no exception…"
Elena's voice carried both excitement and a faint sigh.
For as long as she could remember, she had dreamed of one day laying eyes upon the greatest crystallization of wizard civilization, a World-Invasion Fortress.
Now that her wish had finally come true, of course, she felt elated… yet how bitter that it came to her in such a desperate moment.
"How do we get past this defense mechanism?" the Bloodmark Society apprentice pressed, brows furrowed.
"How do you get through the warding array of the Hossens School outpost?" Elena countered with a soft laugh, then shook her head.
"We have no way of opening this gate. Our only hope is that monster and Emerald Shadow destroy each other…"
Lynn stayed silent. He knew: to enter the Hossens School outpost, one required a badge bound one-to-one with one's own spiritual imprint.
If the World-Invasion Fortress worked the same way…
Then, without credentials and as mere apprentices, they truly were powerless before this gate.
"Impossible! I saw those strange runes first appear from the Hossens outpost. It was your school that transported us here!" another apprentice shouted, glaring at Elena.
"You're the only Hossens apprentice here. You must have a way to open it!"
"If you were paying closer attention, you'd notice I'm not the only member of the School here…" Elena shook her head.
"It's just that the others are either dead… or already turned into Emerald Shadow's thralls.
"I'm nothing more than a pitiful soul abandoned by my own school."
Her words did little to ease suspicion. The apprentice gathered his thoughts, ready to press her further.
"Ahhh!!"
A scream suddenly rang out beside them.
A young Second-Rank apprentice from the Golden Shadow Society stood with lingering traces of magic still crackling around him, his eyes bloodshot as he glared at the fallen body of a Second-Rank apprentice from the Serpent Society. He muttered hoarsely:
"Die, bastard… You killed Lian!"
His outburst seemed to ignite a fuse. Within moments, more screams erupted, and the scene once again dissolved into chaos.
A moment ago, they had been fighting side by side against monsters, yet here, in this new battlefield, their old grudges had not vanished in the slightest!
In the confusion, Lynn quietly withdrew toward the massive gate, running his hands along its surface, unwilling to give up hope.
"This fortress has been buried here for countless years. I don't believe the defense array is still completely intact."
Elena, right behind him, blinked in surprise, then hurried to join his search.
When it came to survival, her will was fiercer than anyone's.
No… I need to calm down. If I can't relax, I'll never notice anything.
Lynn suddenly stilled, took a deep breath, and forced himself into focus. As his hands traced the wall, he spoke to Elena, keeping his mind steady with conversation:
"Have you seen Giggs and Adeline?"
"They weren't brought here," Elena replied with certainty.
"I've already observed it: everyone on this plaza is a wizard apprentice. I guess that the teleportation's target range was preset to include only those who had crossed the Threshold of Transcendence."
Lynn nodded, his face showing little change. After all, the other side was no safer than this one.
But if the Lambiel Skiff, a top-tier Rank-0 craft, could activate its defensive barrier, it should be sturdy enough. If luck was with them, perhaps they could survive a while longer.
"Those runes we saw during transmission… I remember you once showed them to me."
"Yes," Elena confirmed, "they're the same runes. Explaining it all would be complicated.
"All I can say is that they originate from the ruins of a Second-Tier school called Black Moon, which existed a thousand years ago. I suspect this fortress is inextricably tied to that school as well."
"…A Second-Tier school?" Lynn frowned. "Such a massive fortress… it doesn't seem like something a mere Second-Tier could build."
Elena frowned too, falling into thought.
"Other than a credential, is there truly no way to open this gate?" Lynn pressed again.
"No… unless someone with higher authority opens it for us," Elena shook her head.
No sooner had her words fallen than Lynn froze.
Before them, the smooth, gray-black gate had silently split open by the length of a handspan. Slowly, the panels began sliding apart, revealing the intricate weave of a runic array inside.
"This looks like… a maintenance hatch for the gate's defense system," Lynn's eyes widened in surprise. "Did you touch something? By rights, this too should require clearance…"
"I didn't… maybe you were right. After so long, the structure has degraded," Elena replied, a flicker of hope in her eyes. "Can you use it to open the gate?"
"I don't know yet."
Lynn studied it intently, then suddenly his face lit up.
"You can open it?" Elena asked quickly.
"No," Lynn shook his head. "But I think I can disable the power module for the defense array!"
He didn't hesitate. At once, he reached inside and severed the module's flow of energy.
A moment later, he stepped back.
The silver sheen coating the gate's surface blinked out and vanished.
Elena stepped forward slowly, bracing herself as she pushed against the door.
She hadn't even used much strength, yet the massive gate swung open with ease.
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