"Hah... looks like we need to blow off so steam with these fellows. Look how constipated they look, don’t you think?"
Art’s voice oozed with casual malice, a crooked smile stretched unnaturally across his face. There was sothing off about it—too calm, too collected.
I nearly flinched. He rarely wore that expression.
Shaking my head, I forced a smirk, trying to match his energy. "Kk, let’s get it over with. Then we’ll figure out the damn mystery behind this distorted fog. Just hope we don’t bump into so entity beyond comprehension."
Art laughed. It was raw, guttural. "Hahaha... can’t disagree with that."
Then, as if it were rehearsed, we both rolled our shoulders and cracked our necks in unison. Our gazes locked forward. The monsters ahead—silent, stagnant, and watching—twitched like puppets awaiting permission to move.
Athyst lightning sparked around , faint at first, then roaring to life as it traced jagged paths across my arms and shoulders. A storm awakened beneath my skin.
Beside , the clink of iron echoed as Art’s chains slithered into existence, materializing with a dreadful hiss. Their purplish hue glowed unnaturally, licking the air with flas of purgatory.
And then—
BOOOOOOM!!
Our charge shattered the air.
We collided into their formation like twin calamities. The impact was apocalyptic. Fissures erupted from our point of contact, stretching in all directions.
Dust exploded, the ground cracked open like brittle glass, and the very atmosphere warped—sucked into the whirlpool of violence we had created.
My athyst lightning surged, dancing like serpents through the chaos. I directed it into the air, channeling mana as sharp as razors.
The wind itself turned into blades, slicing through flesh and spirit alike. Screeches filled the battlefield as their forms—once towering and grotesque—were reduced to mist.
anwhile, Art’s chains lashed out, binding the ones that tried to scatter. Each link coiled like a predator, searing with purgatory flas that burned from both the outside and within.
So of the enemies had form. Those were easy.
Scorch. Bind. Shatter.
But the ones that didn’t?
Those were the real pain.
A sludge-like creature with an ink-black texture targeted , oozing forward with no distinct form. It moved like thought—erratic, intangible. It slithered up toward , trying to latch onto my arm.
The mont its gooey tendrils touched my skin, I felt my mana ripple like a disturbed pond. It wasn’t pain—just an invasive presence. Sothing... wrong.
It tried to expand, to engulf .
Too slow.
"Bad idea," I muttered.
I forced it into a physical state—drawing in my lightning to condense its form. The mont its body crystallized into a semi-solid surface, I slamd a [Violent Fist] into it.
CRACK!
Its body burst like a pressurized balloon, goo spraying in every direction as chunks scattered into the mist.
But sothing was... off.
My senses flared.
A pressure settled over . Heavy. Distant, yet close. Like an ocean pressing down from above. My thoughts grew scattered, like static danced through my skull. My body wasn’t affected—at least, not directly. But I could feel sothing trying to dig into . A foreign will.
And then I noticed Art.
His movents—sluggish. His chains? Misfiring. Wrapping around his own limbs. His flas flickered, dying before they ever fully ford. His [Creation] skill... wasn’t working. It sparked, but never completed.
Soone—or sothing—was targeting him. Only him.
"Art, snap out of it!"
He gritted his teeth. "Trying, dammit!"
I didn’t have ti to help directly. Not with monsters still lunging toward us like moths drawn to a lightning bolt. I danced around their attacks, sparks exploding under my feet as I zipped through narrow gaps, all while charging mana into my palm.
If sothing was ssing with us from the shadows, I had to hit everything.
A gamble.
I condensed mana into a sphere in my hand, tightening it with every breath, every pulse. It crackled violently—unstable, eager to be unleashed. I didn’t stop there. I poured more into it.The sphere grew brighter, hotter—shifting between hues of violet and white, its glow warping the air around it.
Monsters lunged.
I rolled, dodging just in ti, and slamd the sphere into the ground.
KRRRRRRRAAAAACK!
The earth ruptured beneath like a spiderweb, and in the next instant—
THOOOOOOM!!
A wave of high-voltage thunder exploded outward, ripping through the battlefield in a do of crackling destruction. Arcs of athyst lightning tore through the mist, sizzling everything in their path. The monsters, both physical and intangible, shrieked as their forms disintegrated—ripped apart by mana turned sentient rage.
Ash. Mist. Silence.
All that remained were flickering bolts dancing across the shattered ground and the scent of scorched air.
Art, now clear of whatever was affecting him, stumbled beside —chains limp, flas gone. "Okay... that was sothing," he panted.
I exhaled. "It’s not over."
He grinned, though his expression was strained. "Good. Wouldn’t want it to be boring."
Then, as if on cue, the world around us began to shift—no, reshape.
It started subtly. The air flickered like a mirage, and for a brief second, I thought I was hallucinating. But no—this was real. The temperature dropped ever so slightly, and the wind that wasn’t there before suddenly whistled past my ear.
A tree manifested in front of us—not grew, but materialized. Its bark was gnarled and ancient, its roots floating slightly above the ground, refusing to obey gravity. Like reality itself had to bend to let this thing exist.
Then the sky cracked.
The warm hues of evening dissolved. Darkness poured in like ink, and in a blink, nightfall replaced the sunlit sky. The moon didn’t rise; instead, thousands of stars blinked into existence—far, far too close. So close that I instinctively raised my hand, certain I could touch them. They pulsed, breathed. They weren’t just stars.
They were watching.
Beside , Art narrowed his eyes. His hand tapped my shoulder—firm, deliberate.
"....."
He said sothing. He must have said sothing, it was a habit of his. But no sound reached .
Confused, I turned my head—and jolted.
He was still beside . Close enough to reach, yet... he wasn’t. Still his voice didn’t reach , thinking that he was playing gas.
Annoyed, I tried slapping his arm. My palm passed straight through.
His expression, once mildly irritated, turned grim. He raised his hand to hit in return—but just like , his strike failed to land. He stared at his hand, then at . Understanding clicked behind his eyes.
It felt... wrong. There was no physical barrier between us. Yet sohow, a space—no, a distance had wedged itself between us. An invisible chasm.
It was like standing across a canyon that didn’t exist, separated by thousands of kiloters that you could feel but couldn’t see. Spatial dissonance in its most terrifying form.
Art and I locked eyes. His expression twisted—not in confusion, but revelation.
This wasn’t so illusion.
This entire domain was a monster.
A sentient entity. One that had now decided to confront us directly.
I grimaced. My mind reeled with calculations, assumptions, and possible escape routes—but all of it was useless. I had no ans of defeating this thing. None.
But Art did.
I turned to him again. The only one capable of harming this thing.
Because he could hurt mana itself.
Art t my gaze, then nodded. He understood without words. He sighed, deeply, then exhaled slowly and sat cross-legged on the mist-wreathed ground. The mont he did, the air trembled.
Then I saw them.
Six glowing orbs—no, stars—began to orbit around him. Each one pulsed with a golden radiance, warm yet overwhelming. They hovered in an intricate pattern around his seated body, casting rippling shadows across the ground.
They looked like ★s.
And then it hit .
They were the stars. Not taphors. Not symbols.
They were his cores.
Until now, I’d assud the ★ system was just a tier chanic—another lazy ranking system in a broken eroge world. But this... this shattered that notion.
Here, ★s were real. Tangible. A true source of power. The foundation.
Like engines in a vehicle, they fueled everything.
They stored mana. Controlled flow. Governed force.
And Art—he had six.
For the first ti, I realized just how pathetically small my understanding of this world was. I’d been smug. Arrogant. Looking down on everything just because I knew the "original script." But this wasn’t a ga anymore.
This world had rules I didn’t understand.
I clenched my fist. My mind spun with theories—rushing, overlapping, none of them confird. The lore was full of holes, the dev notes never ntioned this, and nothing was ever explained.
And then there was Cassius.
The bastard who created [Violet Violent Swordsmanship]—a brutal technique designed to eviscerate.
There was no way he was a pacifist, no matter what the story painted him as. No man who crafted a technique like that was "gentle."
Sothing was off. Sothing had always been off.
And most of all—how the hell did I get here?
At first, I thought my transmigration was a miracle. A one-in-a-million stroke of cosmic luck.
But now?
Now I was sure it was orchestrated.
Cassius did sothing. Pulled so strings. Whether through mana, fate, or so fucked up reality-bending power, he brought here. Or at least interfered with whatever brought .
Mia’s presence here wasn’t coincidence either. There was no way two related people from Earth just happened to get thrown into the sa twisted fantasy. Not unless soone planned it.
Maybe I’m crazy.
Maybe I’m just being paranoid, trying to make myself feel special, like so chosen protagonist.
But honestly?
I don’t give a damn.
No normal person had two elents trying to kill them. No normal person woke up in a fantasy world with hostile mana in their very bloodstream.
I’m not normal. No way in hell was I normal.
And while I spiraled into existential dread, Art opened his eyes.
The mont he did, the world changed again.
Like a painting splashed with black ink and red wine, reality lted around him. The space between us shivered and began to crack. The stars above pulsed in sync with the golden ★s around him, like celestial instrunts drawn into a symphony of annihilation.
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