I Can Only Cultivate In A Game

"The oldest trick in the book," Victor groaned while dragging a hand down his face. "Are you seriously trying to trap a Void Emperor in a space loop?"

He snorted.

"Cute."

Victor inhaled slowly, then activated his Void Emperor Bloodline.

At once, his body reacted with his long white hair rising weightlessly as glowing arrow-like markings illuminated his form. Space trembled around him like stretched cloth, and the entire chamber suddenly… changed.

Not physically.

But in perception.

The whirring sound was no longer sound. It was displacement.

Temporal displacement.

Small shoals of symbols that looked like translucent markings drifted through the air like swimming fish.

They shifted and phased in and out of reality. Whenever one of these touched a person, it reset their position to a "checkpoint," making them repeat the same path endlessly.

To someone without spatial sensitivity, it was perfect.

To Victor?

It was like walking into a room full of people waving neon signs.

"Oh, you guys are really outdated," he said with a grin. "Did no one update your trapping system in the last few thousand years?"

He slid forward and shadow Blink across the surroundings. He phased around the temporal symbols, stepping between slivers of warped space like navigating a crowded street.

Every loop marker he avoided caused the chamber to shift subtly, until finally…

He reached a massive set of double doors.

They stood nearly a hundred and seventy feet tall, made of a frozen material that glowed faintly with an inner blue light.

Two towering statues flanked them. One was shaped like a humanoid with three eyes and six hands while the other was a beast with curling horns and layered icy scales.

Victor exhaled.

"Well… nothing horrifying about this at all."

He pushed.

The doors groaned as they opened, echoing through the vast chamber behind him.

And then—

Victor's jaw nearly detached itself from his face.

Because beyond those doors was not a room.

Not a cave.

Not another chamber.

But an entire city.

An ancient underground civilization, sprawled across an icy hollow the size of a mountain range.

Buildings carved from translucent ice rose like crystalline spires. Bridges of frozen light connected towers that twisted upward like spirals. Streets wound in elegant looping arcs. Glowing runes floated in the air, illuminating everything in shimmering blue.

And the inhabitants...

Victor's brain momentarily shut down from overload.

Hundreds of beings moved across the icy streets.

Some were tall and slender with luminous skin like polished opal. Some were short and furry with crystalline horns. Others had four arms and glowing veins. Some walked, some floated, some crawled.

Not a single creature resembled anything Victor had ever read about.

"…Okay," he whispered. "What in the frozen hells is all this?"

Before he could recover his wits, two of the nearest beings turned in his direction. They had elongated faces, icy-blue skin, and their eyes glowed like azure lanterns. They stiffened as they noticed him.

Victor instinctively raised a hand.

"Uh… hi. I swear I'm friendly and not here to steal anything… except maybe one gem—but that was an accident."

The beings froze.

Then dozens more turned.

Then hundreds.

Silence spread like frost.

Victor swallowed.

"…You guys don't happen to have visitor passes, do you?"

One of the taller beings stepped forward with its crystalline claws brushing the surface.

Its voice echoed like cracking ice:

"Iruhi…?"

Another whispered:

Then the whisper became a murmur.

And the murmur became a roar.

Even before Victor fully understood what was happening, a tremendous pressure closed in on him from the far end of the crystalline settlement. The sound of rushing bodies and shifting ice echoed like thunder as something immense approached.

Victor exhaled sharply and reached back, curling his fingers around the hilt of his legacy sword.

His heart steadied. His posture lowered. He mentally prepared to draw.

Whatever was coming… wasn't small.

A tall figure suddenly burst into view and skidded to a halt before him.

The being was easily three meters tall with a lean transparent light blueish body that was heavily corded with muscle. Its skin glowed like polished moonstone, revealing thin lines of blue bioluminescent veins beneath. Two long, swept-back horns curved from its skull, and icy, pupil-less eyes regarded Victor not with hostility… but awe.

It dropped to one knee so fast the ground cracked.

Victor blinked.

"Uh… what?"

Before he could even question the sudden display, the rest of the beings up ahead that were over a hundred in number, followed in a wave. Every creature in sight dropped to their knees and bowed so low their horns scraped the ground.

"Iruhi! Iruhi! Iruhi!"

The chant erupted like a living earthquake.

"I really, really don't like whatever is happening right now," Victor muttered, looking around helplessly.

The enormous one lifted his head only enough to meet Victor's gaze and spoke a series of strange syllables that clattered like cold bells.

Victor stared. "Bro, I don't know what you just said."

The creature who was apparently quite enthusiastic, rose halfway, clapped his hands sharply, and gestured. A group of smaller beings rushed forward carrying… a platform?

A hovering platform.

Of ice.

Of course.

"Whoa—hey—hey!" Victor protested as they gently but forcefully lifted him and set him atop the floating slab like he was some oversized baby prince.

"Iruhi! Iruhi!"

"No, no, stop chanting, I'm not—hey! Don't lift me—dammit—"

They lifted him.

And carried him.

Through the under-ice city.

The deeper they went, the more Victor realized just how massive this civilization was.

The structures were carved directly from glacier walls with shimmering walkways suspended above streams of liquid light. Everything was bathed in soft blues, silvers, and crystalline whites.

And everywhere he went, the inhabitants dropped to their knees the moment they saw him.

Victor dragged a hand down his face.

"Can't one thing in the outside world just be normal?"

He didn't jump off the platform only because the beings didn't seem hostile, and because falling off a floating slab of ice did not sound like a fun thing to do.

After several winding paths, he was finally carried toward the largest structure in the settlement: a towering palace carved from a single slab of translucent ice, glowing faintly from within as though harboring a sun.

Inside, they sat him upon a massive stone chair which was like a half throne, half ancient artifact, positioned at the palace's center.

Victor did not appreciate the height.

He dangled his legs just slightly.

This did nothing for his dignity.

"…Okay," Victor voiced while eyeing the horned beings who gathered around him reverently. "First things first—what the hell is going on?" Thıs content belongs to novęlfire.net

"Kati Kati o shi wara mi so lon yi..."

They responded in their strange tongue, gesturing wildly, bowing, explaining and gesturing again.

Victor stared at one of them.

Then stared at the next.

"…Yeah, nope. Still do not understand a word."

They seemed mildly distressed by his inability to communicate. One hurried away and returned moments later with a glowing parchment that was as thin as frost.

The parchment depicted a crude drawing. A stick figure. Passing through a pair of doors. The exact doors Victor had walked out from.

"Oh, wow," Victor muttered. "They've got children doing divine artwork down here."

The beings pointed at the drawing, then at him repeatedly, speaking insistently.

Victor raised both hands. "Still don't get it. Sorry. I only speak Common, sarcasm, and sleep deprivation."

One of them hurried forward with a cup—made of translucent crystal, filled with a rippling silver liquid.

Victor raised a brow. "Is this going to kill me? Because honestly, at this point—"

He glanced at them suspiciously and then back at the cup and then back at them again.

But Victor could tell that they weren't hostile at all so his suspicion dwindled a little.

He proceeded to drink from the cup.

The contents tasted like cold starlight, somehow.

And then—

everything changed.

The voices around him no longer sounded like incomprehensible ringing icicles. Instead…

"…He comprehends! Iruhi comprehends!"

"…Truly the one foretold!"

"Oh heavens, he finally understands—"

Victor spat a bit. "What the hell—what did you give me?!"

The large one thumped his chest proudly.

"A comprehension draught! It attunes the mind to hear the speech of the Kahr'uun people!"

"Okay, and Kahr'uun is…?" Victor gestured vaguely.

"Our people, Great Iruhi."

Victor pinched the bridge of his nose. "And Iruhi is…?"

"You," the giant replied without hesitation and then pointed at person in the drawing stepping out through the double doors.

Victor stared at him. "No. It's not."

The giant blinked.

"It is."

"It's not."

"It is."

"It's definitely not—look, the drawing on that parchment looks nothing like me, okay? It looks like somebody's third attempt at drawing a potato with legs."

The giant frowned deeply. "The prophecy states: the Savior shall walk through the Eternal Temple. Only the Chosen can pass without being devoured by the endless cycle."

Victor snorted. "Devoured? Endless cycle? Dude, it was literally just a looping hallway. Anyone with enough patience—or madness—could've gotten through."

He waved a hand dismissively.

The giant stared at him like Victor had just casually described swimming through lava.

"Great Iruhi…" the giant whispered, horrified and reverent at once. "The trials were not… merely the loop."

Victor's brows pulled together. "Huh?"