Julien was leaning back against the wall outside his apartment, waiting for Gizelle.
It didn't take long for the elevator doors to open on his floor, he stepped in next to her, wordlessly.
"What's up with this building?"
Julien asked when the doors closed.
"Oh, took you long enough to notice." Gizelle said with a mocking grin. "I thought you were smart enough to notice the difference immediately, but it took you quite some time."
"Tch."
Julien clicked his tongue in annoyance.
He too was disappointed in himself for taking so long to figure it out.
He thought back to his intelligence stat–a 9, the only single digit in his stats.
'Does that mean I'm really dumb?' He thought, seriously doubting his intellectual abilities.
'No, that's not possible.' Julien quickly dismissed that thought, he knew that was not the case.
"Forgive my ignorance, I was too busy taking in the pathetic state of things." He replied, not forgetting to jab at her for the way their territory looked.
"I don't know why you're acting so high and mighty, the Vampire Continent looks exactly like this, if not even more dire."
"Lies."
Vampires have an absurdly long lifespan, so it is impossible for their continent to look like anything close to this.
In fact, it could possibly be the most developed continent in this world.
"You'll see."
But Gizelle's confidence made doubts crept into him.
"Tell me more about this building." Julien changed the topic, he didn't want to argue about a topic he had no knowledge about.
"First let me tell you about this world:
This planet is called Noctis. Noctis has many different races. Humans, elfs, dwarves, vampires, dragons, beastmen, demons, you name it and this planet probably has it.
Each of them occupies their own continent.
But there was one continent that stood out from the rest. The Forbidden Continent.
Nobody knows who or what is on the continent, and no matter who went there to find answers, they died.
But also, nothing from the Forbidden Continent came to the any of the other continents.
Scared of the unknown, the rulers of the world came together and signed a pact, a pact that forbids anyone from going to the forbidden continent.
For centuries, the pact served its purpose, but one day everything changed.
Portals opened up all over the world, and from them, spilled out terrible creatures, creatures straight from nightmares.
Creatures that wreaked havoc across the world, killing everyone they came across.
But all was not lost, the moment the portals opened, a voice could be heard by everyone across the world.
The voice called itself a system, something that can help us gain the strength to protect ourselves from the creatures.
And the voice delivered, we gained unimaginable strength, but we were unprepared and even though we fought back fiercely, billions still died.
Some races even went extinct.
When most of the creatures from the portals were killed, the remnants scattered all over the world.
Some went into forest, others into caves, plenty went underground, and sime into the deep sea, bifung their time, growing their power and terrorizing the world to this day.
The world thought that when the monsters scattered, everything was finally over, but the portals didn't disappear.
We found out that we could enter the portals and appear on different parts of the forbidden continent.
We called these portals gateways. You could explore these inside the gateways, but only in a limited range, but before you do that, you have to kill all the monsters first.
The moment all the monsters in the gateway are killed, you get rewards in accordance to the difficulty of the gateway, and then it disappears.
And if you don't kill the monsters inside before a certain period of time, the monsters from inside will spill out. When they do, they're strength skyrockets.
Their instincts tell them to kill and destroy everything in their path.
Then you get labyrinths.
These are different from gateways.
They are divided into floors from 1 to 10. The higher the floor number, or the lower down you go in the labyrinth, the tougher the monsters you face.
The monsters inside are exponentially stronger than the ones in gateways, but the rewards are even greater.
So far, no labyrinth has ever spilled out monsters, we don't know the reason for this, but because if the monster from the labyrinth ever spills out, it will cause irreparable damage.
That's why some labyrinths are constantly open to the public for exploration.
For a fee of course.
And other labyrinths are monopolized by kingdoms, nobles, guilds and the academy to nurture their talents.
These talents are called Acolytes.
Acolytes are divided into ten ranks.
Novice.
Adept.
Advanced.
Expert.
Master.
Grandmaster.
Pseudo-Sage.
Sage.
Saint.
Demi-god–a level that no one that has ever reached so far.
There are ten levels for each rank. But when your experience points are full at the 10th level of each rank, you receive a rank up mission.
This is nothing to crazy, but they get more difficult the higher you rank up, and everyones mission is different.
But no one was ever completed the mission to become a demigod.
Oh, and everyone gets a class when they complete their rank-up mission to adept.
A class is basically just what type of mage, swordsman, alchemist, and so on, you are."
They finally stepped out of the elevator ride that felt like it was going on forever.
Julien rubbed his chin in contemplation, taking in the information Gizelle shared.
"And just when we thought everything was getting better," she continued after a small pause "a mysterious organization calling themselves 'The Eye in the Abyss' appeared out of nowhere.
They went around killing everyone, from acolytes to monsters. They claim that they need sacrifices to open a portal for their abyssal god.
And once their god descends, he will devour this whole world, and then his worshippers will forever live on in the new world he will make.
This is probably true. I mean, they do use strange and dangerous dark magic, powers that are not from the system.
In fact, when they gain these powers, the system completely discards them, and the only way left for them to get stronger is through sacrifices.
That's probably why they still haven't summoned their god after all this time."
The finally stepped out of the building. Gizelle continued.
"Anyways, because these worshippers go around killing everyone, the world is on the backfoot again, and have been on the brink of chaos for a while now.
We barely have enough acolytes to clear the gateways, and you have to worry about not being killed by some crazy cult.
If it wasn't for the academy constantly producing new talent, the world would probably be in chaos right now.
It is also really hard to eradicate all these cult bastards, because they have eyes and ears in every corner of the world.
From the lowest beggar, to the highest king.
They operate from every continent, except from the dragon and elven continents, and the depths of the sea.
These races are tooloyal and prideful to be swayed into killing their own.
But the other races are fair game."
Outside the building, Gizelle raised her head, looking at the high-rise building.
"And if that isn't enough, we have these too." She referred to the building.
"We don't know what they are, why they're here, and what they are doing here. But we do know that they are not from this world and that they are not in this world.
Fragments from other worlds."
The first two pieces of info Gizelle shared to him was not such a big surprise to him, he read about something like that in countless different novels.
But the last piece about fragments from other worlds disoriented him, this was not something he ever heard of.
"What do you mean when you say that the fragments are not in this world?"
This confused Julien further. How could the fragments not be in this world when he was standing right in front of it?
"Follow my lead."
Julien's gaze tracked Gizelle, he saw her step backwards, her front facing the building.
This confused him even further, but he followed her lead nonetheless, stepping back slowly, with his front facing the building.
When he turned his head to look at her, she said,"Keep your eyes on the building."
Julien did as she said.
Step for step, he continued, his eyes never once leaving the building.
When he was 10 meters away from the building, something happened that completely mystified him.
The building disappeared..
Completely.
Like it was never there to begin with.
The only thing in his sights was a barren field, devoid of any high–rise buildings.
Julien didn't know what feel, what to do, or what to say. What he just experienced left him completely at a lost for emotions, a lost for action and a lost for words.
Racking his brain, Julien speculated that it must be the distance.
He stepped forward once, and there it was in all it's glory. Standing like it didn't just defy all reason.
He stepped back again, and it was gone.
"Fucking hell."
Julien was only in this world for a few hours, and it felt like he already cursed more than he ever did in his past life.
He turned to Gizelle. "It's the distance."
"Yes and no." She had a small smirk on her face. "It's the intent too. If you cross the 10 meter mark without the intent to go to the building, it will not appear.
But if you had the intent to locate the building, it will appear."
Julien attempted her theory, and all he had so was:
"Fucking hell."