Entering the Third Floor, Nightingale swung his head around to examine the foreign environment.
He and Flaming Rose were standing inside a vast expanse composed of fractured stone and obsidian walls. The air carried a faint metallic tang, sharp and bitter on the tongue, as if soaked in the remnants of blood long since dried.
A thin mist rolled across the ground, moist, drifting between scattered ruins and cracked pillars that jutted upward like the remnants of some ancient cathedral. The further his gaze wandered, the less the horizon made sense. Structures curved upward, twisting into themselves, defying gravity as though the worldscape had forgotten the laws that governed it.
Well, to begin with, the floors of the Black Spire were regarded as augmented realities, or perhaps "artificial worlds" would be the more fitting term.
It wasn't mere simulation, nor was it truly physical.
It was both.
