Royal Ring Secret Realm—
Woosh!
The sensation of entering the Secret Realm was strange.
There was no tunnel or path, there wasn't even the feeling of being pulled through space. One moment, Petra was standing before the Realm Door, and the next—
She was standing somewhere else entirely!
Experiencing this for the first time, she was nearly overwhelmed by a feeling of vulnerability.
It was like being able to walk, but suddenly losing control of your body, only to experience it return automatically from where you had come.
This was how Petra, who had a rudimentary understanding of space, had felt.
The realm Gate was like a large pillar, but after entering, instead of being filtered into one spot, those that entered had reappeared scattered in hundreds of clusters. After a flash of red, she was submerged by a wave of multicolored light, then, following a few streaks of violet, she felt her feet settle.
Petra opened her eyes.
She found that a vast grassy plain stretched out before her.
The sky overhead was a pale blue, almost identical to the outside world, while a cool breeze rolled across the endless fields of waist-high grass.
The air smelled fresh, unnaturally fresh, like this place was a perpetual dawn filled with morning dew.
Petra touched her leg and felt the damp texture that had clung to her clothes, but instead of feeling resistant, she almost felt refreshed as this moisture was quickly absorbed into her body.
To her surprise, it was a condensed form of spiritual energy.
After realizing this, her brows furrowed because Petra didn't have the feeling that she was standing in a place drowned in spiritual energy. She narrowed her eyes, then looked ahead. Several hundred meters ahead stood a massive forest. It was dense and silent, swaying gently back and forth. Looking even deeper, it was covered by a thick layer of pale white fog that drifted between the trees.
Petra blinked, then immediately looked around to do a quick headcount.
Wind, Bell, Rose, Lira…
Everyone had arrived. That was good, at least they hadn't been separated.
Rose rolled her shoulders. "Well, that's convenient." She looked around. "We almost need one of those back home."
Hearing this, Wind rolled her eyes, but Mell completely agreed.
Meanwhile, Petra slowly turned around.
Behind them appeared to be more grassland, no, an endless grassland, at least at first glance. But after staring for several more seconds, Petra's eyes narrowed.
"...Hm?"
Something wasn't right.
The space in the distance twisted ever so slightly.
The distortion was subtle, almost invisible, like heat rising from stone or water flowing across glass, but because Petra had a certain level of spatial sense, she could vaguely feel it.
Petra squinted.
The further she looked, the stranger it became.
The horizon folded strangely, and the distance seemed wrong. No, the more she looked, the more she realized that the world seemed wrong.
Eventually she came to a conclusion.
"Is it… a loop?"
If someone walked back far enough, they would probably return to the same place.
It was A spatial loop, and an extremely well-hidden one at that.
This was likely how the secret realm concealed its borders without looking too unnatural.
Petra took a deep breath before looking forward again.
Around them, countless groups, thousands in total, were making different decisions. Some impatient practitioners had already entered the fog-covered forest, while others remained outside, observing cautiously and taking a wait-and-see approach.
Nobody trusted the fog, which was fair, because the fog looked super suspicious!
But Petra's attention wasn't on the forest, instead…
She frowned.
Her expression gradually became serious, which was cute on her little face. To her, something else felt wrong, very wrong.
The Verdelith Castle possessed a spatial barrier, so it could be said that Petra interacted with space regularly. Yet, this place, despite being a complete secret realm, felt completely different.
The entire Secret Realm felt… 'unstable.'
Brittle?
Like cracked glass…
To Petra, every step felt strangely uncomfortable and precarious.
It was as if the earth beneath her feet could shatter at any moment. The sensation wasn't physical; it was instinctive, something on a spatial level. She felt as if she were standing atop thin ice while everyone else was walking normally.
In short, only she could feel it.
Petra had no idea that, unlike normal people skilled in the arts of spatial manipulation, she could be considered an oddball. Although Petra possessed an innate sense for space, she didn't actually have any talent in controlling it. To date, all her achievements had come from the Ethereal Echo Silverwing Butterfly that she was contracted with. Aside from passing on insights to Petra, it also allowed her to use its abilities freely, which was the reason she could so easily teleport around.
It was exactly here where the problem also appeared.
At the end of the day, the Ethereal Echo was not a spatial mage, it was just a creature with an innate ability to interact with space.
This meant that Petra was extremely limited in the abilities she could borrow.
Aside from teleporting and destroying space, she lacked the other aspects of spatial manipulation, which was probably a good thing.
If she wanted to learn, she would have to put in the proper effort, and considering Petra's lack of situational awareness, it was unlikely that she would have any real achievements on this path. To make matters worse, Petra didn't actually have a space-type spirit root, so all her training would have to be done through the eyes of the Ethereal Echo Silverwing, which also limited her in countless ways.
Petra looked toward the distant forest.
Then toward the sky, then toward the ground, and soon, her unease only grew greater.
Nobody else seemed to notice, only Petra, because she was the only person present with any meaningful level of sensitivity toward space. Although she didn't have an innate talent for spatial manipulation, her ability to view and deduce it was unparalleled.
Several minutes later—
Wind watched Petra suddenly trot away from the group.
The little girl hopped and skipped, then stopped beside a space seemingly filled with empty air.
She stared intensely at nothing, peering into the empty void.
"...What are you doing?" Wind asked.
But Petra ignored her…
She was focusing on the spatial structure of the secret realm, or more specifically, a thin crack that ran through the air right before her eyes.
It was Invisible to normal people, a tiny spatial fracture.
Petra narrowed her eyes and attempted to peer through it, but unfortunately—
She couldn't see anything. There was only darkness, endless darkness…
"Tsk!"
After several more seconds of nothing, she clicked her tongue and gave up, then walked back. Returning to the group, Petra looked toward Wind, seemingly ready to move on.
"...Directions?"
Wind nodded, then paused and rolled her eyes.
Closing her eyes, she listened as the wind drifted through the grass, across the plains, and into the forest. For nearly half a minute, Wind, the White Whistle, remained completely silent.
Eventually, she opened her eyes.
"...I can't tell..." She muttered with a hint of uncertainty.
Petra blinked up at her in confusion.
"You can't tell which way to go?"
Wind shook her head.
"The wind here feels wrong. I think it shouldn't be real wind like outside." She paused, then her head looked at the fog. "This fog is also impeding my senses. It's strange, but I feel as if it's not fog…" That answer alone was enough to make everyone pause and think.
If it wasn't fog, then what was it?
One should know that the White Whistle had the absolute ability to resonate with the wind. For Wind to struggle could only mean that the air in the secret realm was something that had already started to diverge from the concept of wind on a fundamental level.
This was not a good thing.
If Wind couldn't navigate properly, then this Secret Realm was probably far stranger than it appeared.
Mell folded her arms.
"So? What now?"
Wind looked toward the forest.
"We'll just have to go in and see what happens, right?" Her words were directed at Petra, not Mell.
Petra immediately nodded.
"Sounds good!"
Without any objections, the girls joined the flow of people and entered the fog-filled forest beneath the watchful eyes of countless people.
* * *
Time passed, three hours later—
Petra walked and walked and walked some more, but regardless of how far she walked, the forest remained surprisingly ordinary.
The trees looked normal, and the terrain was relatively flat.
Birds occasionally chirped overhead, and several small animals darted through the nearby bushes. Even the insects crawling across the leaves appeared identical to those found throughout the Cross Continent. There were no ancient ruins, no strange monsters, no shining treasures, and no mysterious environments. Aside from the fog, which occasionally flickered with light, nothing was out of the ordinary, no, perhaps it could even be said to be more normal than the outside world.
If someone had been dropped into this forest without being told where they were, they would likely assume that they were simply wandering through a normal wilderness.
The only slightly unusual thing was the fog.
It never seemed to thin, and never seemed to thicken. It simply existed as a constant, unmoved by time and existing as a static feature of this small and sealed-off world.
It constantly lingered between the trees, like a spectral haze that filled the forest with a mysterious vibe.
It was a mysterious space that was closer to a fairy land rather than a ghostly forest.
Petra glanced upwards and looked through the canopy.
She pursed her lips.
The feeling of instability still hadn't disappeared, but as they entered further into the forest, the structure of the Secret Realm became more and more solid, and more and more complete.
It was clear that the structure of this space was formed from something in the core areas ahead.
At least, that was how she felt…
The wind blew past, and the faint scent of grass swept past her nose.
Like this, Petra and the girls continued into the forest…
* * *
Time continued to pass—
The forest remained as quiet as ever, but it was also this quiet atmosphere that had started to become slightly unsettling.
The fog lazily drifted between the trees while the occasional chirping bird broke the silence, but aside from that, the chitter of insects was both omnipresent and at the same time strangely lacking.
Petra walked in the front of the group, absentmindedly kicking a small stone through the undergrowth.
She hummed, playfully skipping, when suddenly—
Rustle!
Rustle!
Her ears twitched, and everyone immediately turned towards the source of the sound.
The nearby bushes shuddered.
Rose's petite hand clenched into fists while Lira instinctively crouched down and reached for her bow.
A few moments later, several cultivators emerged from the shrubs.
The two groups froze at the sight.
Petra's mind turned, quickly anticipating a classic robbery-like scenario like those from a novel, but these people did not take the bait.
Petra eyed this group, quietly assessing them while they did the same.
The newcomers were dressed in mismatched armor and cloaks, carrying travel packs and weapons stained from their recent combat. Their eyes swept across Petra's group, showing a bit of disdain, but Petra could tell that they weren't like any of the local official forces; instead, they were more like mercenaries- no… they were more like pirates.
If she remembered correctly, and she obviously remembered correctly, these people should be a small group from the Blue Sea Guild.
They seemed to be hurrying somewhere…
As they looked at Petra, Petra stared back.
"..."
"..."
"..."
This continued for a few beats until they eventually got impatient.
One of them, a young man, frowned.
"...Children? No, why do I feel as if I've seen her before?"
Another, an older woman, glanced toward Wind and Mell.
"...They're probably some noble youths who ran ahead."
After a brief exchange, they muttered among themselves before continuing deeper into the forest and disappearing from Petra's sight. The bushes behind them shuttered, and soon, the foliage closed up, concealing them from sight.
Petra watched them leave.
Her eyes narrowed.
"...those people are pretty suspicious, why do I feel a 'plot point pending?'"
Mell nodded, although she didn't completely understand Petra's use of that term.
Rose asked, "Where do you think they're going? Should we follow them?"
Wind sighed, already knowing the answer.
Petra nodded.
Several seconds later, she was already sneaking after them, following them further into the foliage of the fog-filled forest.
"...Petra! Come back here!"
"Shhh~!"
Mell: "..."
Wind: "!!"
"Tsk!"
The girls quickly followed from behind…