The moment we stepped through the hidden portal inside the ancient tree trunk, I expected the familiar sensation of spatial displacement.
Instead, I found myself standing in the middle of a bustling marketplace.
For several seconds I simply stared.
Wooden stalls lined a wide stone street while people shouted from beneath colorful canopies. Children ran between crowds carrying baskets of fruits and wandered freely through the square. The air smelled of a marketplace full of spices and different type of foods.
It looked so normal that it immediately felt suspicious. Silver looked around before slowly turning toward me.
"Did we take the wrong portal?"
"I don’t think so."
Knight crouched and pressed his fingers against the stone road beneath us.
Then he frowned.
"This isn’t real."
Silver blinked.
"The city?"
"The space."
He stood back up.
"The city is real. The people are real. The ground is real. But the space containing it isn’t."
That was when I noticed the horizon. There wasn’t one. The city simply... faded into brightness at impossible distances. The effect was subtle enough that most people would never notice it. Unfortunately, we weren’t most people.
Knight glanced upward.
"The sky is folded."
I followed his gaze. The clouds weren’t moving naturally. They were looping. As though the same section of sky had been stretched infinitely across itself. A few nearby pedestrians glanced toward us before continuing about their day.
Nobody seemed surprised by our arrival or even remotely looked interested. It was as though strangers appearing in the middle of the street happened every morning.
"Let’s move," I said.
The group followed. As we walked through the city I began noticing something else.
Temples, they were everywhere.
Small shrines. Large shrines. Entire complexes. Every few streets another appeared. And every single one contained the same figure.
A hooded man with a black mask with no visible face or features. Just a blank expressionless mask staring outward.
People constantly entered and exited these temples. Some carried offerings. Others simply bowed before leaving.
Aurora stopped beside one shrine.
"Please tell me we’re not about to discover a cult or a new religion."
"I’m afraid that’s exactly what we’re discovering."
We continued walking and eventually the city ended. Or perhaps the world ended.
The transition happened without warning. One step we were walking through crowded streets. The next we emerged into an endless forest.
I immediately looked behind. The city was gone. The marketplace no longer existed. Behind us stretched ancient trees as far as the eye could see.
Nobody seemed surprised except us.
Travelers walked along dirt paths. Hunters moved between the woods. Entire villages stood among gigantic roots. The people wore completely different clothing from those in the city. They wore rough animal skins and carried primitive weapons.
Yet the temples remained.
Every village contained one. Every temple contained the same masked figure.
"I don’t think these are separate places." I muttered.
"What do you mean?" Knight asked.
"I think they’re separate worlds."
The possibility immediately made more sense than it should have. The deeper my perception extended, the stranger everything became.
Space wasn’t merely folded. It was layered. One reality resting atop another. Like countless sheets of paper stacked together.
And we were somehow walking between them. We spent the next several hours doing exactly that.
Walking and observing. Becoming progressively more confused.
The forest eventually transitioned into something resembling a highly advanced civilization. Towering structures made from a mysterious metal rose into the sky while floating platforms drifted through the air between them. Strange vehicles moved without wheels and countless runes illuminated entire districts.
The people there looked no less ordinary than those from the forest. They simply lived in a completely different world.
Yet even here the temples existed. Massive this time.
Entire cathedrals.
At the center of every one stood the same masked figure.
Being worshipped.
The transitions continued.
A medieval kingdom.
A floating archipelago suspended inside an endless ocean sky.
A civilization built entirely underground.
A city illuminated by artificial suns.
A world consisting solely of islands drifting through clouds.
Each one felt complete and real. Each one possessed millions of inhabitants. And every single one contained temples dedicated to the same hooded figure.
Eventually even Ragnar stopped making jokes.
The sheer scale had become unsettling.
"This can’t all be real."
Aurora glanced toward him.
"It is."
"No. I mean..."
Ragnar gestured toward the horizon.
"Look at this."
He wasn’t wrong.
The amount of space required should have been impossible. We had already crossed through what should have been multiple continents. Yet according to Hida, this settlement wasn’t particularly large.
Which meant one thing. The settlement itself wasn’t large.
The worlds were.
Space had been folded, layered, expanded and rewritten until a single hidden refuge contained civilizations. All existing within one impossible structure.
"This person really is a true master of space," I commented while looking around at yet another impossible world hidden inside another impossible world. Then I turned toward Knight. "Don’t you call yourself a space genius? Why have you never done anything remotely like this back home?"
Knight looked genuinely surprised by the question.
"Because you never asked."
For a few seconds I simply stared at him. Then I looked at the others.
"Did everyone hear that?"
"He’s lazy," Ragnar immediately said.
Knight ignored him.
"You asked me to fight wars and kill people. You never once asked me to create fifteen civilizations inside a pocket dimension."
"That sounds suspiciously specific," I said.
"Because that’s what this lunatic apparently did."
Aurora folded her arms.
"Ragnar is right. He’s lazy."
Knight slowly turned toward her. "You once spent three days deciding what color to paint a room."
"It was an important decision," Aurora scoffed.
"It was a storage room."
Aurora looked offended.
"A storage room still needs proper aesthetics."
Lyrate immediately burst out laughing.
"Coming from someone who buys a new makeup kit every time she discovers a slightly different shade of purple."
Aurora pointed at her.
"That is called self-care."
"That is called financial irresponsibility."
I looked back toward Knight.
"So you’re telling me that if I had simply asked, you could have built entire worlds?"
Knight thought about it.
"Not exactly like this."
"See?"
Ragnar smirked.
"Lazy."
Knight finally looked annoyed.
"I am not lazy."
"You absolutely are."
"I specialize in combat applications."
"Lazy."
"I spent years mastering spatial laws."
"Very lazy."
"I literally carry all of you through space half the time."
"Exceptionally lazy."
Knight stared at Ragnar for several seconds before eventually giving up. Ash, who had remained silent until now, suddenly looked around at the countless worlds stretching beyond the horizon.
"Personally, I think you’re all focusing on the wrong issue."
Everyone looked toward him.
"If Knight can actually do something like this, then think about what it means."
I raised an eyebrow.
"What?"
Ash’s expression became completely serious.
"It means he has spent years refusing to build us proper houses within different worlds. He is indeed lazy."
For a moment nobody spoke. Then everyone burst out laughing.
Ragnar slapped Knight on the shoulder hard enough to shake space around them.
"I knew it."
Knight closed his eyes.
"You know," he said thoughtfully, "after seeing your behavior, I finally understand why the creator built so many worlds."
Nobody trusted that tone.
"Why?" Aurora asked cautiously.
Knight folded his arms.
"Because he needed more space."
Silence. Absolute silence. But we could see in his eyes, he was proud of that joke.
Ragnar pointed toward the distant temple.
"Can we hurry up before he makes another one?"