Chapter 7: Tier 1 Gate (1)
The shift was instant.
One second Lanz was standing in a mossy clearing under the night sky outside Velmordop. The next, he was somewhere else entirely.
The light hit him first. The forest inside the gate wasn’t dark or spooky like those black-and-red gates from the NovelFire series. It was... morning? Soft sun filtered through high trees. Everything was green. Birds chirped somewhere off to the right. A breeze rustled the leaves like it was trying to calm him down.
He didn’t feel calm.
The gate behind him had vanished, typical. The air smelled clean, almost sweet, and the ground under his boots was a little too soft. There was a faint shimmer to the edges of his vision, but there was no system UI, health bar, floating map, and absolutely no button that said return to safety.
"...So this is a real gate," he muttered.
He crouched low and started moving. Quiet, careful, cloak tucked close. Just in case anything out here had a taste for morons in black hoods.
Animal tracks were everywhere, little clawed feet and a thick gash on the bark of a tree like something had marked it recently. A snapped branch was ahead. ’Something had passed here recently.’
"This isn’t a sim anymore," Lanz muttered, eyes scanning left and right. "But the dying part is still on the table, so that’s great."
Suddenly, leaf fell from the trees and landed on his head, making him jump.
"Even the forest wants to scare me, huh? Cool. Love that from you," he said, staring at one of the thick trees like a complete idiot.
He adjusted his grip on the sword hilt and moved forward.