Haruto looked solemnly at the light gate floating in the center of the living room.
It all started a day ago.
In the early morning, he had just woken up as usual, but the next moment, a flood of information forced its way into his mind, giving him a splitting headache.
When the intense pain subsided, lines of clear text were branded deep within his consciousness.
[House of Myriad Realms: This house can randomly connect to the myriad realms. Once the host enters a connected world and stays for a specified duration, the coordinates of that world will be permanently anchored, allowing free travel back and forth.]
[Warning: World traversal carries a risk of death. If the host perishes in another world, it will be a true death.]
[Hint: If the connected world is not entered within three days, the coordinates will automatically disconnect, and the time of the next connection will be unknown.]
[Current Status: Connected to an unknown world, the world gate has opened.]
These few words left Haruto stunned for a good half hour.
After snapping out of it, he subconsciously looked around.
The furnishings of the familiar old house remained the same—the peeling wooden table, the bamboo basket in the corner, and the old locust tree outside the window that he had watched since he was a child.
But when he pushed open the door and stepped outside, a strong sense of incongruity instantly enveloped him.
Gone were the crowing roosters and barking dogs of his rural hometown, and gone was the fragrance of soil between the fields.
In their place were the incessant honking of cars and rows upon rows of Japanese-style buildings lining the streets.
The Japanese hiragana on the road signs was clearly visible, and on the giant billboards of the distant skyscrapers were the faces of celebrities he had never seen before.
What shocked Haruto even more was that his two-story tiled house with a small courtyard seemed to have been meticulously ’embedded’ into this urban architectural complex, blending seamlessly with the surrounding apartment buildings without the slightest awkwardness…
“This isn’t my hometown…”
Haruto murmured to himself, subconsciously taking two steps forward as the conversations of passersby reached his ears.
It was clearly Japanese, yet he could understand every single word, which Haruto found quite miraculous.
He pulled out his phone; the signal was full, but the location displayed on the map app was Tokyo.
He had actually crossed borders and arrived in Japan.
Haruto’s mood was complex to the extreme.
He had originally quit his job and returned to his rural hometown because he was tired of the city’s concrete jungle and the exploitation of the 996 schedule, wanting to live a peaceful life working at sunrise and resting at sunset.
But now, not only had he returned to the city, he had also arrived in a foreign land.
This sense of absurdity made Haruto even suspect he was dreaming.
Forcing down the stormy waves in his heart, he spent half a day wandering around the vicinity.
The rice balls in the convenience store, the crowds at the subway station, the torii gate at the entrance of the shrine… everything was frighteningly real.
At dusk, Haruto returned inside, his gaze falling once again on that light gate—or rather, the world gate.
Haruto didn’t go in immediately.
The fear of the unknown was far more daunting than a strange city.
No one knew what awaited him behind the door.
Was it a paradise paved with gold, or a purgatory filled with hidden dangers?
Moreover, he still remembered the previous warning: dying in another world meant true death.
He needed time to think, time to prepare…
That night, Haruto hardly slept at all.
He dug out an old backpack from the house and stuffed in everything he might need.
A polished kitchen knife, a few packs of compressed biscuits, plenty of drinking water, salt, and a small alcohol stove and lighter.
Haruto was no daredevil, but he understood that opportunity often coexists with risk.
The three-day limit was right before him.
If he missed this time, he didn’t know when he would encounter such an opportunity again.
Moreover, hidden behind that door were the infinite possibilities of the myriad realms.
The next morning, as the first ray of sunlight shone through the window onto the light gate, Haruto took a deep breath.
The hesitation in his eyes faded completely, leaving only determination.
“I’m taking the gamble.”
Griping the kitchen knife and shouldering his backpack, Haruto stepped into the shimmering silver light gate.
There was no imagined tearing sensation, nor the dizziness of space-time travel, only a slight feeling of weightlessness, as if he had missed a step on a staircase.
The next second, Haruto’s feet landed on a soft surface.
The sight before him made Haruto’s pupils shrink.
The ‘ground’ beneath his feet was formed by the intersection of countless thick red and yellow cylinders.
Looking up, the area he was in was covered by a curved pink ‘wall’.
In addition, many pink ‘trees’ that looked like Christmas trees ‘grew’ on the ‘ground’.
A strange, fishy sweetness filled the air, not entirely unpleasant.
“What kind of hellhole is this?”
Haruto murmured, his heart pounding uncontrollably.
He subconsciously gripped the kitchen knife in his hand, warily scanning his surroundings.
Just then, a ‘rustling’ sound came from the distance.
Haruto looked toward the sound and saw a brown object moving rapidly in his direction.
As the distance closed, the full appearance of the thing became clear.
A monster about three meters tall, covered in countless slender brown tentacles.
It had no face, only two massive, bloodshot eyes staring intently at him, their gaze filled with naked malice…
“A Tentacle Monster?”
Haruto’s scalp tingled, and a chill shot from the soles of his feet to the top of his head.
However, the appearance of this thing felt strangely familiar to him, but at this moment, Haruto had no mind for recollection.
Once he snapped out of it, he turned and ran.
He didn’t even dare to look back, only hearing the ‘patter-patter’ sound behind him, clearly indicating the monster was in hot pursuit.
Fortunately, the Tentacle Monster’s speed wasn’t that fast, barely keeping pace with Haruto’s full-out sprint.
Haruto ran for his life, his lungs feeling like they were about to burst, a metallic taste of rust welling up in his throat.
He didn’t know how long he ran before he reached the edge of the pink wall and discovered an opening.
Without a moment’s hesitation, Haruto ran straight inside.
After running a bit further, Haruto found that the Tentacle Monster had stopped outside the opening.
Its two eyes stared fixedly at him, but it didn’t take another step forward, only letting out low growls.
Seeing this, Haruto’s heart finally settled.
He slumped to the ground, his back already soaked with cold sweat.
After resting for a while, he propped himself up against the wall and began to observe the situation inside the ‘passage’.
The environment here was even weirder than outside.
The floor and walls were all a uniform pale red, the surface smooth and elastic.
With a gentle press of the hand, it would sink in and then slowly spring back.
The touch was delicate and warm, feeling like flesh.
Haruto’s heart started racing again as an absurd yet perfectly logical thought surfaced in his mind.
“Could it be… that I’m currently inside some giant monster?”
This thought made the hair on Haruto’s body stand on end, yet the bit of curiosity in his bones drove him to make a bold move.
He raised the kitchen knife in his hand, took a deep breath, and stabbed fiercely into the wall.
The blade easily sank into the pale red ‘wall’.
No blood flowed out, only a faint, fishy-sweet scent wafted out.
With a flick of his wrist, Haruto cut off a palm-sized ‘piece of meat’.
The meat was heavy, and its color was a fresh, pale red.