Entering a monster's mouth… How difficult can it even be, right?

I mean, it's teleportation.

Quick, painless and maybe even a cool shimmer of magic and—bam—you're somewhere new.

Yeah. That's the dumbass thought I had a few minutes ago.

I swear, in all my two absurdly handsome lives, I never imagined I would end up sliding down a slimy throat like a cursed noodle just to move forward in life.

And all of this because of that bastard Noah.

For all his detailed rambling—for all the monster anatomy, system quirks and lore dumps he shoved into that pretty little head of his—not once did he bother explaining how this goat-baby demon's "teleportation" actually worked.

Or maybe he did and I skipped it.

Either way… screw that bastard with a rusty pole, no less.

Seriously. He could've written some other entrance like a glowing rune. A magic puddle. Hell, I would have settled for a talking squirrel with good taste in fashion.

But no.

He picked this.

This disgusting thing.

These were the thoughts screaming in my skull as I slipped and slid down the monster's tongue, its greenish-black spit coating me like it was oiling me up for life to screw me over.

I resisted the urge to vomit… not out of dignity but because I would rather kill myself than to open my mouth in this disgusting place.

After the tongue came the throat… Then the rhythmic, wet contractions of something pretending to be a digestive tract.

And finally—finally—I landed with a wet splat into the stomach cavity.

Where a single portal waited, glowing in ominous black light.

The glow wasn't welcoming.

It didn't say, "Step through me, hero."

It said, "Let's make bad decisions together."

I looked at the walls, which were squirming and pulsating like they were just thinking of ways to make this worse.

I closed my eyes, took a deep breath and whispered to myself:

"Next time I see that goat bastard, I'm turning it into jerky."

With those last words, I stepped through the portal as everything vanished.

My body lost its shape first.

My fingers dissolved into strands of silk, moving as if they were snakes.

My arms folded in on themselves, bones cracking and melting into liquid.

My chest turned inside out, revealing veins that pulsed with light and not blood.

My eyes stretched—no, bloomed—until they swallowed my face and through them, I saw everything and nothing all at once.

The laws of physics shattered like glass.

I couldn't even form a thought correctly.

And then…

The hum began.

A sound no throat should make. Feminine… but vast like an ancient goddess humming a lullaby to the void itself.

And just like that, my body started pulling itself back together.

First, my eyes reformed, blinking into sockets that weren't even there yet.

My fingers turned solid again.

My bones grew back, snapping into place where they belonged.

As the hum turned louder, the more my body healed rapidly.

Finally, my feet touched something solid and I was out of the void. The sudden return of gravity made my knees give out under the weight of it.

I dropped.

And for a moment, I couldn't move.

I couldn't breathe.

I couldn't think.

Just me, on my knees, blinking through the light…

… in a world that felt like it shouldn't exist.

I didn't feel nauseous… I didn't feel anything.

But just the thought about what had happened sent shivers down my spine.

"What the hell was that?"

And worst of all… I could still feel the feeling of my body being dismantled before being stitched back together.

It was just too horrifying to forget.

I exhaled slowly and pushed myself up, ignoring the phantom pain that wasn't even pain.

I just hoped… that whatever hell waited on this side wouldn't make me feel that again.

Because really, who the hell enjoys being taken apart at a cellular level while staying fully aware?

Definitely not me.

I would rather get back with my toxic-ex—death than to feel that again.

At least she would love me to death than dismantle me like a failed toy.

Finally, after cursing that godforsaken void for a few more seconds… I looked around me.

And immediately realized—this place was nothing like before.

The forest was still here… but denser.

The trees stretched endlessly into the sky like they were trying to strangle the heavens themselves.

Not that I wanted to look up.

Because when I did—

I saw it.

A single, gigantic eye… floating in the sky.

And it was blinking like it was alive. From its pupil poured a stream of endless golden liquid, falling somewhere far off in the distance.

The sky was deep crimson and scattered across it were patches of darkness, not like clouds, but… something else. Shapes I couldn't see properly.

I didn't know the exact location of where I was supposed to find the [Card of Arcana] but I felt its presence.

Not in my mind, not even through mana but somewhere deeper.

Like something invisible had reached inside and hooked its fingers around my soul…

…gently pulling me forward.

Toward the center of this cursed forest.

Where a single, colossal tree stood. Its blackened trunk twisted upward and pierced straight through the massive eye in the sky.

Like it was defying a god… Or killing one.

I remembered that Noah had to reach and touch the tree in the novel.

Only after touching it was he teleported to the trial, where he claimed his divine artifact.

So maybe… the tree was a kind of terminal. A hub for divine relics, and it sent you to the one you were worthy of.

But that brought up a different question.

Am I in the same space as Noah…?

Or was this some parallel-layer type shit?

Because in the story, Noah never met anyone on his way to the tree. Even though fifteen others were supposed to be sent here.

Back then, I thought they just died early.

But now?

Maybe they were never in the same space to begin with. Cut them off from each other on purpose.

Either way, I would find out soon enough.

As I walk toward the center… I would know. Whether I meet him or not.

Just then a low growl interrupted my peace.

I turned and immediately regretted my decision to see what was standing there.

Some distance away from me, a creature stood menacingly.

Its body was a silhouette of shifting shadows…

…except for the head.

The head wore a bone-white mask, which almost made it appear human in shape, but not quite.

It stood over eight feet tall, limbs stretched too long to be natural.

A hollow mask.

"SCREEENCH!!!"

With an unnatural scream, it lunged at me.

One arm shot forward, stretching with unnatural speed, aimed straight at my gut.

I wanted to dodge but I couldn't.

Fuck, move.

My limbs refused to respond.

The reason was because I had looked into its eyes.

They weren't just hollow.

They froze you.

A passive curse in its gaze.

Still, I stayed calm and forced my mana through my hands in quick succession.

The strain of channeling so much of mana in such quick succession was painful but I couldn't care less.

A card shimmered into existence above my palm, its surface unstable and edges jagged.

I had forced it out too fast. The mana inside it crackled erratically.

One wrong move and it might explode before I even used it.

But it was all I had.

I fired it because that was all I could do in my frozen state.

My palm was still angled downward, the card launched barely a breath away from my foot.

At that moment, it was the only move I had.

The card buried itself in the ground.

And just as the Hollow Mask was inches away, its claw poised to gut me—

I pulled the trigger.

BOOM!!!

The explosion went off point-blank.

The blast hurled me backward, heat licking at my mana-reinforced clothes as it scorched slightly.

My body crashed straight into a towering tree.

The trunk cracked, splintered and then shattered like glass.

I hit the ground hard.

But I was breathing.

Two rings on my fingers, the protective charms dimmed. Then crumbled to dust.

Fuck. If it weren't for them, I would have died after talking that unstable blast up close.

Without even caring for my condition, I looked towards the direction of the explosion.

The monster wasn't there either.

After straining my eyes a bit, I found it crashed into another tree… just like me.

But unlike me, luck wasn't on its side. A thick wooden spike had pierced straight through its skull.

Its hollow white mask—its only real weakness—was shattered in two.

Its body was already starting to disintegrate.

Hollow Masks were rare, annoying and one of the worst things to deal with in the second layer.

And the first thing I encountered was exactly that.

It nearly had me.

If I hadn't used [Card Throw]… I would've been the one pinned to a tree. Skewered like a kebab.

But before I could celebrate, a sharp pain erupted from my lower abdomen.

I looked down…

Wooden shards stabbed through my skin and cloth alike.

And more importantly, one small jagged spike had pierced clean through my lower abdomen.

Thankfully it seemed to have missed most of my vital organs and arteries.

But gods, it hurt.

The adrenaline had kept the pain at bay before but now that the monster was dead… it came rushing in all at once.

My first step in the battlefield of gods, and I'm already close to dying.

What the hell have I gotten myself into?

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