Haruki had no way of telling how much time had passed.
There was no sound. No sense of distance. No horizon. No matter where he looked, he could not make sense of any direction, nor even time.
Just white.
He could move — at least, he thought he could. His body responded when he willed it, but there was no resistance, no feedback. No way to confirm if he had actually changed position at all. It was a bit of a scary experience.
At first, he panicked.
The reaction came fast and instinctive, his thoughts spiraling as his senses failed to give him anything to hold onto.
But it did not last.
Haruki forced himself to slow down, steadying his breathing out of habit more than necessity. Panic would not help him understand this.
So he did what he always did.
He observed. He thought. He tried to impose structure onto something that had none.
The space around him was empty — everything around him were all featureless, endless. Even the brightness did not feel real, as if it existed without a source.
The only thing he could confirm with certainty…
…was that he could still think.
=====================================
Haruki narrowed his focus, forcing his thoughts into order.
In uncertain situations, clarity came from structure. That was something he had learned long ago —not from experience, but from studying those who had it.
Great commanders did not act on confusion. They reduced it. Broke it down. Controlled what they could, and adapted to what they could not.
This… was no different.
'No different, my ass...'
The thought slipped out, followed by a dry chuckle. Though he could not hear it.
There was nothing. No sound. No sense of direction. No way to tell how much time had passed.
He had read plenty about great commanders. How they handled uncertainty, how they stayed calm under pressure, but none of them had ever been stuck in something like this. Not in a place where even their senses did not work.
Haruki exhaled slowly, or at least tried to.
He liked to think he was calm, and rational. The kind of person who did not panic easily.
But this… was not something you could prepare for.
It was already strange that he had not completely lost it. Though, not yet at least.
He tried to focus on that — on the fact that he could still think.
As long as that was true, he was not gone.
'... Right?'
The thought lingered.
Regardless of how mentally strong a person is, it has its limits. And Haruki's mental strength was already slowly being chipped away the longer he is stuck in the white void.
However, something flickered at the edge of his vision.
Haruki froze.
.
.
.
.
There it was again.
It is currently faint, but it is there. Almost unnoticeable, though.
But it did not belong in this empty space.
He turned his gaze toward it. Though "turning" did not feel quite right here.
The moment his attention settled on it, the distortion became clearer.
Lines.
Thin, pale lines forming shapes that did not match anything around him.
Haruki narrowed his focus. He had seen this before.
Back on the street. Just before everything… stopped.
The lines flickered once... then stabilized, as if locking into place.
=====================================
[RECONNECTING…]
[SYNC IN PROGRESS]
=====================================
The text hovered at the edge of his perception, not quite in front of him, but impossible to ignore.
Haruki did not respond immediately.
He watched it instead, his thoughts trying to make sense of what he was dealing with in general and in front of him.
This was not random.
This was the same thing from before.
Which meant—
"So it's not over," he muttered quietly.
The interface flickered once more.
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[SYNC COMPLETE]
[PREPARING TRANSFER]
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The text lingered for a brief moment.
Then everything shifted.
There was no warning this time. No gradual fade, not even time to think. He could not react fast enough to question what those lines meant.
One moment, Haruki was standing in that endless white void.
And the next, the world came crashing back.
Sound hit first.
Not gently, but all at once — a chaotic rush of noise flooding his ears, sharp and overwhelming after the silence, a sharp pain briefly struck his head before disappearing. Wind, distant movement, something rustling nearby, it all blended together before he could make sense of any of it.
Then came weight.
His body dropped.
Hard.
Haruki hit the ground with a dull impact, the air forced out of his lungs as pain flared across his side. For a brief second, his mind went blank.
"…gh—!"
He drew in a sharp breath, rolling onto his back as his vision swam for a moment before settling.
The ground beneath him felt uneven and coarse, pressing against his palm as he steadied himself. What he felt was not concrete, nor tiles.
It was grass.
Haruki pushed himself up onto one arm, blinking as the light sharpened and shapes began to form around him.
"…This isn't Tokyo."
His gaze moved slowly across his surroundings, taking in what he could as the details came into focus.
Trees, spaced unevenly. Open ground stretching further than it should. A few mountains in the far distance. No buildings. No roads.
No people.
He let out a quiet breath, steadier now.
"Alright…" he muttered. "Let's think."
=====================================
Haruki stayed still for a moment, forcing his thoughts into order.
If he stripped away everything he did not understand, what remained was simple.
He was not in the white void anymore.
He was somewhere physical. Somewhere real.
Everything looks familiar. The grass, the trees, the blue skies, and the breeze hitting gently on his exposed skin. Yet, where he was was unfamiliar.
The question pressing him was whether that "real" still belonged to Earth.
It is still a much welcomed experience, though. Much better than being stuck in that place.
A part of him leaned toward the obvious answer — something had gone wrong, something impossible had happened, and he had been moved elsewhere.
Another part refused to accept that so easily. There were explanations that did not require breaking reality entirely.
He did not commit to either. Not yet.
Instead, he pushed himself fully upright and took a slow, deliberate look around. Scanning everything again.
He was standing on a slight elevation. A hill-like terrain that sloped gently downward in multiple directions. The ground was uneven, covered in patches of grass and scattered stone. Beyond that, uneven but open land stretched outward, broken by clusters of trees in the distance, and mountains on one direction farther beyond what look like a forest.
Everything was the same when he first laid eyes on them.
No roads. No buildings. No signs of human maintenance.
Haruki narrowed his eyes slightly.
"Not good…" he muttered under his breath.
His gaze shifted upwards to the sky, eyes landed on a group of birds moving to one direction. Their group heading toward the mountains beyond the forest.
As Haruki observed the flock of birds, he noticed that all of them had figures that was unnatural. At least, unnatural compared to the birds he knew on earth.
Although Haruki is more of a military nerd, he still had quite a repertoire of knowledge on many fields, which includes birds. But that is a story for another time.
As he broke away his observant gaze from the flock of birds, he saw them.
At first, they were just movement in the distance — low shapes cutting across the terrain faster than anything natural should move.
He focused.
As they got closer, he could finally make out the shapes in the distance.
They resemble a four-legged creature. A dog perhaps? But they were too big.
As they got a bit closer, their figures have started to become sharper.
'They look like wolves?' he thought. His eyes still focusing on the group that seems to be coming closer.
How could he tell they are wolves when they were far away? Repertoire of knowledge of many fields and experience. But a big part of it was just because that was the first thing that came to his mind.
However, he still had some doubts.
At least, from this distance, he felt they were not the wolves he knew.
And Haruki was right.
Their proportions were wrong — too large, too dense in build, but he had no way of confirming this for now. Their movements are too coordinated. Even from this distance, something about them felt off in a way he could not immediately articulate. But his instinct proved correct when they got closer.
Haruki could still not make out if they were actual wolves or something else, but he saw something on them that look like a horn on each of them. Black horns with a glowing red aura, highlighting their shapes and color.
It was an unbelievable sight.
Haruki did not move. He watched, and counted instinctively.
'One group. No — multiple...'
He thought. His gazed harden.
A pack structure, but larger than anything that made sense for predators this size.
And they were coming closer.
Fast.
"…"
His hand moved before his thoughts fully caught up, searching his pockets. Jacket. Pants. Even searching his underwear. Anything he could use to defend himself.
Nothing.
No tool. No weapon. Not even something improvised.
His breathing changed — subtle at first, then sharper as the distance between them collapsed faster than expected.
400 meters. Maybe less now.
"Wait…" he whispered.
300 meters.
The realization came not as fear at first, but as calculation failing to produce an answer.
200 meters.
His body finally reacted.
"—Shit!"
And then—
A presence pressed into his perception.
Unnatural in its timing.
=====================================
[SYSTEM INITIALIZATION COMPLETE]
[USER STATUS LINK ESTABLISHED]
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