The day before the entrance ceremony arrived.
For most people, it was simply the eve of a grand celebration. For me, it felt more accurate to describe it as the day before I would finally meet the protagonist and heroines in person—the characters I only knew as pixels on a screen in my previous life.
If I had transmigrated into this body not twenty-five years ago but now—if I had arrived at this exact moment in the timeline—I wouldn't have been able to sit still from pure excitement. I would have been pacing, obsessing over every detail, probably making myself sick with anticipation.
But twenty-five years of living in this world had tempered such reactions.
There was still anticipation, certainly. Excitement hummed beneath my skin like a low electrical current. But my mind felt heavy rather than energized, weighed down by the gravity of what was beginning.
The story was starting. The narrative I memorized was becoming reality.
And I still didn't fully understand the rules governing this world's connection to the game.
Technically, I didn't need to participate in the entrance ceremony itself. Doran had offered to introduce me to the other instructors if I attended, establishing my presence officially. But I chose to decline, preferring to simply observe from the sidelines for now.
With some unexpected free time on my hands, I retreated to my apartment's small yard. I sat in my weathered wooden chair, a bowl of dried fruit in my lap, and watched the night sky.
The stars were unusually bright tonight. Clear and brilliant, like diamonds scattered across black velvet. Watching them made time slip past unnoticed.
"Oh, a shooting star!"
The exclamation escaped me before I could stop it. Shooting stars were relatively rare—seeing one was considered good fortune.
I watched the streak of light arc across the darkness and smiled slightly.
'Not that I'm young enough to make wishes anymore. But it's nice to see.'
"Huh?"
My smile faded as more lights appeared.
Not one or two additional shooting stars, but dozens. Then hundreds.
Meteors poured down from the night sky like torrential rain, filling my vision with streaks of brilliant color. They weren't uniform—each one shone with a different hue. Blazing red. Deep sapphire blue. Meteors that gleamed like molten gold. Others that burned with light somehow darker than the black sky itself, as if they were falling black holes.
From the direction of the capital's main districts, I heard cheers erupt. Singing voices rose in celebration, perhaps attributing great significance to this celestial display. To most people, this was a blessing—an omen of prosperity for the Academy's centennial celebration.
But I knew better.
"Could this possibly be…"
I stood abruptly, my bowl of dried fruit clattering to the ground forgotten. My hand moved on instinct, reaching into my spatial inventory and withdrawing a specific weapon.
A sword materialized in my grip.
Its blade was as black as burnt charcoal—darker than midnight, darker than coal, an absolute absence of light. From blade tip to hilt, it was uniformly pitch-black. If I threw it into a dark alley, I doubted it would be visible even from a meter away.
This sword wasn't something I used personally. My actual weapons were far more practical. I acquired this particular blade for one reason only: to prevent it from falling into someone else's hands.
I focused my awareness on the weapon, and information appeared in my mind—the same game-like interface I learned to access years ago when interacting with certain artifacts.
[ Half-Baked Darkness ]
▷ Darkness does not blind the eyes.
▷ It is not tainted by any fear.
▷ …..
▷ …..
The equipment effects stretched on like a receipt, listing various combat bonuses and magical properties. I ignored all of that, scrolling down mentally to the description box at the very bottom.
Some items in this world carried words left by their creator or a previous wielder. Brief messages, usually cryptic, sometimes profound.
This sword had one such message:
[ Darkness is a transcendent and fundamental fear for all living beings. Perhaps it is because I found this blade within a meteor imbued with dark flames. That darkness now plagues the world. ]
I stared at those words, then looked back up at the meteor shower painting the sky in impossible colors.
'Dimensional rifts.'
The truth hit me with absolute certainty.
This sword, for instance—it had come from another dimension entirely. The martial arts techniques I used, the breathing methods I had learned from hidden scrolls, those too were from completely different worlds with different physical laws.
Even the protagonist himself was a soul that had crossed dimensional boundaries from Earth, albeit unintentionally.
Due to the game's fundamental nature and setting, more than half of the Hidden Pieces scattered throughout this world were not native to it. They were imports. Artifacts that had fallen through cracks in reality.
'SoL' was specifically designed with dimensional instability as a core mechanic. That was the entire point and characteristic of the game's world-building. The dimensional gate to Earth—which should have been impossible under normal circumstances—existed precisely because of these rifts.
When I was been playing the game in my previous life, I used martial arts in a fantasy setting, wielded weapons from completely different technological eras, and never thought too deeply about the implications. It was just fun. The unique setting was interesting flavor text, nothing more.
But now, living in this world, understanding what I knew?
'With the information I have now, who could watch that meteor shower without suspicion?'
The protagonist was the protagonist, after all. His arrival—his role as the dimensional anchor that would stabilize and eventually close the rift to Earth—was beginning to affect the world on a fundamental level.
The pouring, colorful meteor shower could be interpreted, from a convenient human perspective, as magnificent fireworks celebrating the Academy's 100th anniversary. A blessing from the heavens.
But for me, it was a moment where I could indirectly sense a major transformation approaching this world. A change in the fundamental rules governing reality.
I just grasped a clue to a problem that had been completely unsolvable until now—the mystery of why certain Hidden Pieces existed and others didn't, why some appeared and others remained frustratingly absent.
'They're being pulled here through the dimensional rifts. That's why the timing is inconsistent. That's why I couldn't predict which ones would be available.'
Having reached this revelation, I finally bent down and retrieved my scattered dried fruit, stuffing the remaining pieces into my mouth absently while my mind raced through implications.
This changed things.
This changed everything.