With just a mental command, space warped. It distorted like a glitch in reality, a ripple in the fabric of the real. The void itself thickened, a palpable, intense heaviness seeping into the non-air, as if the universe had just gained a universe more of weight.
Then, a book materialized beside the glowing panel. It was leather-bound, its cover shifting through a spectrum of colors—deep emerald bled into midnight blue, which then ignited into burnished gold. It emitted an iridescent glow that captivated the eye, a lighthouse in the nothingness. A pressure of immense, ancient power radiated from it, making the space feel dense and sacred.
Zane reached forward, his movement cautious in the heavy air, and grasped the book. It settled perfectly in his hand, its spine resting against his palm as if crafted for his grip alone.
The cover flipped open at his will, obeying his mental command with fluid precision. There was no resistance, no hesitation; using the grimoire felt as natural as breathing.
The first page was a canvas of snow-white, upon which a golden orb was depicted. As Zane stared, the illustration transformed, becoming vibrant and hyper-realistic, as if he were gazing at the actual object floating just beneath the page's surface.
It wasn't merely a ball, but a mass of golden, swirling mist that exuded a majestic, mystical aura. Within its depths, ancient runes—different from the system's script—danced between the silken tendrils. They were holographic, emitting a cool blue glow that pulsed with otherworldly energy. As Zane focused, he could feel the profound depth of information they contained, layers upon layers of knowledge waiting to be cracked open.
Recognition was instantaneous. This was a skill orb.
He reached his consciousness into the page, the sensation like dipping his mind into warm, thick honey. He mentally grasped the orb and drew his awareness back, pulling the conceptual weight of the skill with him. Focusing his intention on the empty space beside the book, he willed the panel away and positioned the skill orb in the void.
The moment it occupied that space, information began to cascade through the surrounding nothingness.
The air itself felt thick with knowledge, pressing against Zane's skin like an invisible weight. He locked his gaze on the orb, and immediately, understanding flooded his mind in a torrent. The fundamental laws of space unfolded before his consciousness—complex geometries, dimensional mathematics, theories of adjacency and folding that made his head spin. Through this brutal, forced enlightenment, he could suddenly sense the architecture of his prison. He was in a pocket dimension, and outside it existed a much larger, resonant realm.
The silky, mist-like energy within the orb began to stir, lashing out like ethereal ribbons that wrapped around his body. Wherever the energy touched his skin, it penetrated, and with each absorbed particle, another foundational law of trans-dimensional travel was seared into his mind. He felt his consciousness expanding, straining at its very seams. Each passing moment was a battle against the absolute limit of his mental capacity.
After what felt like an hour of continuous, violent upload, Zane's head throbbed with sharp, stabbing pains. His mind, raw and overloaded, simply could not process another byte of cosmic data.
He wrenched his gaze away, gasping. The mystical energy retracted instantly, resuming its eternal dance within the orb's confines. He had absorbed only a fraction—a single drop from an infinite ocean—and yet his brain was completely, utterly saturated.
Despite the psychic assault, a new power stirred in his core. He now possessed the fundamental principles needed to travel between worlds. This void was a small pocket dimension nested within a larger one. When Nyx said he was in a dimensional storage space, he had concluded that he was still on Earth. Therefore, the "outer" world had to be home. This dark storage space was the inner sanctum. It reminded him of the grimoire's pages, though the Grimoire's space felt infinitely more vast than both dimensions combined.
He could perceive the existence of these layered worlds, though not their contents. More importantly, he could feel the connections between them, the ley lines of reality he could now navigate.
The space he occupied maintained a primal link with the mysterious coin. There was an extremely small micro-dimension within it, sharing a powerful, resonant bond with his current location. Zane could sense the intricate web now—a perfect triangle of spatial relationships binding the coin, this pocket, and the world outside.
He withdrew his consciousness from the dimensional sensing, and the perception of connected worlds vanished. The loss was physical. A crushing headache invaded his skull without warning, excruciating and precise, like hot needles driven through his temples. His mind reeled, chaotic flashes of unconsolidated information cascading behind his eyes in violent, nonsensical waves.
For ten agonizing minutes, he endured, until finally, the pain subsided. The knowledge had been forcibly integrated, carved into the bedrock of his being.
As the last echo of the headache faded, a familiar panel materialized before his weary eyes.
***
『With Every Expertise Reigned, A Path Is Trodden. The Grand Bazaar Bestows Upon Its Eternal Patron』
『Boon』
◇100 Exchange Echoes
『Craft Revelation』
☆Realm wanderer
「A silent key, to worlds unseen. A merchant's way, to strings Unplucked. Where all realms lie, an Era dawns.」
The Bazaar was proving itself quite poetic. Now, he understood his new skill not as raw data, but as a revelation, a verse in a cosmic epic. The currency, too, was a marvel—Exchange Echoes, resonances of all transactions lost to time. The meaning bloomed in his mind with a single glance, deepening his awe for the entity he had fused with.
Now, with the skill Realm wanderer thrumming in his veins, the only thing left was to leave this damned place. If only it were so simple.
His desire was straightforward: to step from this storage space into the outer world that enveloped it. But his newly acquired skill defied such simplicity. It could only enable travel to realms outside the universe, never to locations within it. At his current proficiency, he could journey between planes and realms, but the storage space was located inside the primary plane. He was a prisoner in a room within a house, given a key that only opened doors to other cities, not the hallway outside.
The only faint hope of returning home was a desperate gambit: journey to another realm, and then attempt to return, hoping against the odds he would land on Earth, in Ashburn. The probability was infinitesimally small. The skill could only transport him to a habitable point within the vast expanse he targeted. How many habitable worlds were there in the infinite? The math was a funeral dirge.
Still, a thread of hope remained. He could always increase his skill's proficiency later. If he survived. Now… now, he just had to leave this damnation of a hole.
His gaze fell upon the coin, beautiful and hateful. He loved it for the Bazaar it had given him—that sweet, beautiful treasure found in an abyssal trove. With it, he could exchange for his father's health. He didn't know the price, but the mere possibility made his heart clench with a fragile, desperate hope. After three years in a sterile room, his father could be cured.
The smile was brief, washed away by a grim resolve. Now was not the time for hope. It was time for a leap of faith into a hungry unknown. Habitable did not mean safe. He might be serving himself to a star-beast for dinner.
What lay beyond the universe? A childhood question was now a terrifying reality. Realms dotted the void, their contents a mystery he was about to solve. Soon enough, he might die, attacked by an alien horror. Or find himself in another habitable void, or a desolate world with only oxygen to recommend it. He would then trade his precious Echoes for food until he had none, then his clothes, and then… he would simply cease. Better to stop thinking and act. On the brighter side, if he didn't die, an adventure awaited him unlike any other.
He reached his consciousness out into the layered space, feeling the vast, grand universe beyond the storage space's membrane. Beyond that, he felt the True Void—not the neat darkness of his prison, but an absolute nothingness, seething with potential. And within that nothing, strands. Endless in number, elongating from the edges of the known cosmos, each attuned to a different frequency. Some were too potent for his will to grasp, requiring a higher mastery of his skill. Others were malleable but led to nowhere—uninhabitable dead ends. A rare few welcomed his psychic touch, promising somewhere… somewhere habitable. Too many options, each a possible gateway to death or deliverance.
Yet one called to him. It shone brighter than the rest, pulsing with a resonant frequency that felt like a summons. It might be a siren's call, death welcoming him with open arms, but an instinct deeper than reason told him to reach for that strand.
He pulled.
The void did not so much shatter as it simply… ceased to be relevant. He became one with the strand, a note in a silent song hurtling through the abyss, and then, he was nothing.