When the door closed behind me, the breath I'd held finally filled my chest.
The same thing happened when I exhaled. When I took a step, the sound of my footfall lagged behind.
I would have noticed it immediately if I were outside.
I couldn't tell if my body was moving faster than time, or if time was clinging to my body, stretching out.
I had never been in a place like this before—not in any game, nor in reality.
The darkness was the color of ink, yet my eyes didn't feel strained.
Instead of brightening, endless wisps of black smoke, like another kind of darkness, branched out from the black background. Those wisps formed outlines, one by one, of what could have been walls or pillars.
It wasn't because light was shining on them. The darkness was observing its own form and building itself up.
An inescapable scent also permeated all directions.
Damp moss, dry ink, rotted paper.
None of them were new scents, yet fixed at a certain moment, they neither rotted further nor softened. Such a... stench that seemed to have aged for thousands of years.
Dong Bong-soo felt that it was the "scent of thought and history."
The specific history of humans, where the thoughts of countless people were written in ink, rotted, and were then endlessly overwritten by the thoughts and histories of others.
Pffft. Pffft.
The Kirin that had followed him in snorted repeatedly. The violet light swirling around its horn was swallowed by the darkness, barely extending a few feet.
Yet, thanks to that, the darkness was clearing just a bit more.
'Absolute darkness, yet my vision remains clear.'
Dong Bong-soo scanned the gloom. The space felt both enclosed and open, yet simultaneously open and enclosed. A path seemed to form, leading somewhere as his gaze swept across the void. Just as he was thinking of heading that way, no less.
An intriguing mechanism.
One thing for certain was that from the moment he entered this place, his thoughts also began interacting with this place as history. All his senses were telling him so.
Thud, steeep, thud.
Listening to the sound of footsteps whose rhythm was entangled despite walking at a steady pace, he kept walking inside, deeper inside.
Soon, along the long corridor made of black smoke, countless wooden doors, precisely the height of his stature, lined up, submerged in darkness.
Only a narrow path to step on was opened, extending straight out between both sides.
Every spot he stepped on opened slightly ahead, then sewed itself shut again behind Dong Bong-soo's back as he passed.
It was not martial arts, a formation, a Daoist array, nor a skill or magic.
He couldn't pinpoint exactly what it was.
He could only feel that it was similar to the cosmic space he had experienced just a short while ago.
'Is it a gap where something like a worldline has diverged?'
A place that could not be clearly explained in the language of mathematics and physics.
It was intriguing, but a space Dong Bong-soo could not bring himself to like. For it was a place where neither calculation nor prediction was possible.
His sharpened five senses, his sixth sense, his intuition, his [Spiritual Eye], and his [Faith's Eye] all scanned the surroundings in unison as he moved forward.
Huu, uhuu, huaaa...
Thud... thud... thud...
His steady breaths and footsteps played wildly out of sync within this place.
'As expected, space-time is distorted.'
He had never experienced such a sensation before.
However.
Blink, blink.
Unlike this space, there was a world strictly controlled, reacting exactly as expected. A world serving solely and completely for Dong Bong-soo.
The System remained as steady as ever.
In the corner of his vision, the What is Hero system flickered incessantly, searching for a single coordinate all this time.
Even though it clearly indicated he had arrived, the pin refused to settle down.
The mini-map failed to draw out where this was to the end, while the coordinate spun idly by itself over an empty spot.
It was likely because the inside here was outside the System's grid.
Step, steeep, steeeep.
With every measured step, the doors to his left and right grew more sparse.
And beyond them, another vast space began to vaguely emerge from the gloom.
'Is it a bookshelf, or a library?'
The darkness didn't reveal their forms completely, so I couldn't see what kind of books were stacked with my eyes. Yet I could feel something immense stored deep inside—the very weight of the stagnant air said so.
If there were records and accounts of what the heavens had hidden away, they would surely be found around that vicinity.
Right at the moment he was having such thoughts—
Something stood where the space ahead had been empty, appearing without a trace or a sign. It was the same being that had suddenly materialized between the cliff and him outside.
However, it was not the same as before. A single outline shimmered, with multiple shadows overlapping and brushing past its edges. The form scattered into various shapes, then immediately coalesced back into one. Countless somethings stood layered upon each other in a single spot. That, at least, was clear.
Its features were lost in shadow, impossible to discern.
Dong Bong-soo stared directly at the figure. Just as before, neither his [Faith's Eye] nor his [Spiritual Eye] could read anything from it.
And then.
From somewhere, something right before becoming a sound began to cluster and rise.
— Remarkable indeed. To have walked all the way here without a hint of weariness.
A voice, a chorus of many merged into one, gently stirred the stagnant air. It carried a hint of welcome, yet also the tone of a merchant appraising and haggling over a piece of merchandise.
Dong Bong-soo's gaze fixed steadily on the being, a flickering mass of countless overlapping shadows.
"Where is this place?"
— It is a space yet not a space, a time yet not a time, a place like an error of space-time.
"An error of space-time?"
— Indeed. Therefore, do not attempt to measure it. Every scale you have measured with is useless inside here, and no measurement is possible.
Before those words could fully fade, the next sound followed.
— Time does not flow here. The laws of your world do not reach within this threshold. We merely exist open to places throughout the world as an error, and you have simply passed through one of them and entered.
"That means there are laws unique to this place, then."
The shadows flickered, and the voices of many gathered into a single intent.
— Indeed. We do not stand on this side before being summoned. That is one of the laws here.
The end of those words spread into the darkness, splitting into echoes of a different tune.
— The inside here is entirely different from your world. The 'outside' from which you were separated reaches here.
You, and outside.
Dong Bong-soo quietly recited the two words to himself and silently waited for the next words.
Beside him, Kirin let out a low cry; it seemed the creature was also chewing over the meaning of those words. The purple light beneath its horn shook finely.
It was not a cry of guarding against an unfamiliar place.
Soon, the shadow outline examined him for a moment and continued speaking.
— You have already glimpsed that outside. The darkness pooled between worlds. That empty void that appeared to hold nothing.
Dong Bong-soo's eyes narrowed.
The darkness. Was it referring to the place I fell into earlier due to the dimensional rift in the GOR world?
"What is that dark place?"
The answer didn't come right away. But the wait wasn't that long either.
— The gap connecting world to world. The boundary separating dimension from dimension. Beyond that is not yet your concern.
Even though it said beyond his concern, Dong Bong-soo could roughly understand.
It's a place like a tunnel between worlds.
"Then what are you?"
The sound split into several branches again. This time, it didn't gather easily into a single intent. Countless cries carried in a single mouth barely formed one statement.
— We are those who walked the same path as you and stopped at its end.
The cries of many subsided softly.
— We are those who pooled here, with nowhere left to go. Those who let go of life themselves, those who failed to reach the end. A collective entity where tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of souls are tangled together in one body.
If it felt like a single voice, it became ten thousand, and if it felt like ten thousand, it became one again. A different cry was steeped in every sound, yet all of them pointed toward one place.
Those divergent threads gathered together, finally producing a single name.
— If a name is required, call us this: The Body of Ten Thousand Souls and Ten Thousand Karma—the Karma Root Collective (萬魂萬業體).
Dong Bong-soo twisted one side of his lips into a dry, wry smile.
The Karma Root Collective.
"You mean the Descent Clan who killed and died, gathered and merged, until they became a single mass?"
—
...
All kinds of flickering occurred among the shadows, but in the end, they failed to combine into a single voice.
Though they claimed to walk the same path, they were beings who could never truly share it.
"You're wrong."
There was no rise or fall in Dong Bong-soo's voice.
"You stopped there. I won't."
— Any being possessing a soul has its end. Whether meeting demise as a collective of each world or being sealed away as an anomaly like us...
"A soul, huh. So you're saying even I have one."
— Indeed. Even a mere bystander like you belongs to the raw materials of the world either as a is a spiritual entity or a soul entity.
A fascinating way to put it. Raw materials of the world.
— The total mass of everything in the world is conserved from its beginning to its end. You cannot escape it either. Fulfill your life as a raw material.
Heh, hehehehe.
"I am human."
—
...
"A dull human who feels that humans are ridiculous, terrifying, amusing, enjoyable, and beautiful."
— Indeed. You are merely a worthless human. You have only reached this point by being more and more insane than all the other worthless souls. Humans are essentially cogs in the world.
"Does that mean human strength cannot surpass the limits of the world, realm, and dimensions?"
— Indeed. Because all total mass must be conserved, it is so.
"I am human."
In his entire life, Dong Bong-soo had never once properly recognized himself as a human for a single moment.
Just as he said, to him, humans were merely objects of hunting and observation that were ridiculous, terrifying, amusing, enjoyable, and beautiful.
That was why he could commit countless slaughters, and why he could become strong.
However.
He was now certain of one thing.
"Everything is possible."
Though he had many human habits remaining in him, he recognized that one most human trait among them was deeply rooted within him.
"Everything is possible until it is proven impossible. And even that impossibility is only true as of the present. Everything becomes possible eventually."
— It is forbidden.
"What is?"
— The Law of Absolute Conservation forbids it.
"Is that the god of the world?"
— No, nature.
Kukukukukukukuk.
Humanity versus Nature, huh.
It was a dynamic seen often.
And humanity had always treated that nature same way.
"Good. Then I'll just have to overcome and kill that nature."
"That is the sole instinct and law of humanity."