First, I carefully checked the contents of the special assignment.

Unlike other assignments, special assignments were shared between all common courses in a given track. That meant that this assignment would be contributing to the grades of all my daily classes: Governance & Politics, Fantasm World Economics, and Literature, Culture, and Frame Management. That was almost 10% of my collective grade for the semester. If I didn’t want to fail out of school and get a lot of questions from everyone, I needed to take this seriously.

This first special assignment was an exercise in economics, diplomacy, rituals, and Fantasm World knowledge. Essentially, once we arrived at Fulsgate, students were expected to explore the city and observe its civil infrastructure and economy. Inside the Fantasm World, we would observe the rituals, processes, and safety measures taken to keep the Fantasm World under control. Then, combining this knowledge, each group would write a report summarizing their findings and create a proposal for how Iyiria could negotiate a supply of specialty goods from Fulsgate for the next year.

That was a lot of stuff I didn’t know anything about, so it was kind of scary.

It was apparently rare, but possible, for special assignments to receive over 100% if students did exceptionally well in different areas, such as in observation, diplomacy, knowledge, and “handling unexpected situations.” Incidentally, to attend this field trip, I was expected to sign a waiver declaring that I understood that entering a Fantasm World inherently carried risks and my safety could not be completely guaranteed.

Many things were inherently risky, so it was kind of hard to gauge the actual threat level here.

A small part of my grade would also come from teamwork and observing standard safety protocols. In other words, the teachers had assigned us in groups because partners were expected to stay with each other and look out for each other’s safety in the Fantasm World.

Should I be worried that Verica hadn’t talked to me yet?

I spent the evening at the library reading about the history of Fulsgate and Iyiria. Then the next morning, during home room, I went to find my partner.

Verica was a quiet girl with silvery-blue hair tied back in a long, voluminous ponytail that arced down to her waist. She usually wore Nithemoore’s male school uniform, a dark blue blazer and trousers paired with a light-colored dress shirt. She sat next to Luka in class, and he was the only person I’d really seen her talk with at length, or even smile at.

I waited for a moment when Luka got up to speak with someone else before approaching her.

Verica was frowning down at her highlighted and annotated textbook, tapping her pencil restlessly on the half-filled worksheet she had laid out on the desk. Her schedule planner hung halfway off the desk beneath her pencil bag, displaying the cramped writing and sticky notes that filled it to the brim.

I helpfully pushed the schedule planner up so it was in less danger of falling. “Verica.”

She glanced up and straightened when she saw me. A hint of turbulence appeared in her magenta eyes and pale pupils, but she composed herself before I could fully decipher her emotions. “Acacius.”

“Professor Raoul informed me that we’ve been assigned as partners for the upcoming special assignment.”

Verica blinked, checked her planner, and then gave me an awkward look.

“Right… I was supposed to tell you. I’m sorry I didn’t get around to it earlier; it’s my mistake. Are you familiar with the contents of the assignment?”

“Yes.”

“How do you want to do this?”

I didn’t know because I’d never done a group project before. I raised an eyebrow. “That’s what I’d like to ask you.”

“You want me to take the lead?”

“I want to hear your plan.”

“Well…”

She brushed a strand of hair back behind her ear as she thought. Then she heaved a sigh, stood up to face me, and fixed me with an intense stare.

“Let me say something first,” she said. “I don’t like you.”

What was the best way to respond to this? I opted for an indifferent, “Oh.”

“I don’t approve of how you handled your duel. And I especially can’t stand how you’ve treated Luka.”

Did that mean Acacius was generally unpleasant to Luka on a day to day basis, or was she referring to the kidnapping, entrapment, and near death incident at the manor?

Verica gauged my unchanging expression and narrowed her eyes. “But I suppose how I feel doesn’t matter much to you, does it?”

“If you dislike me so much, why not ask the professor to assign you a new partner?”

Verica pursed her lips, eyes flicking away. “I can be diplomatic.”

Maybe she’d already tried. “That makes things simple then. Let’s agree to operate independently until the end of the field trip. Once we return, we can compare our observations and discuss how to write our report.”

“Independently? You are aware that part of our grade relies on teamwork, right? We have to grade each other on our collaborative skills.”

“I’m happy to give you full marks if you do the same for me. Or do you actually want to spend that much time with someone you dislike?”

Verica hesitated.

“Not to mention,” I said, “we were also partnered for safety reasons. So let me ask you two questions.”

I raised one finger.

“First, in an emergency, would you trust me to have your back?”

Now Verica just looked uncomfortable. “Acacius, that’s…”

“I don’t think you do,” I said. “Which brings me to the second question. If I were to act against you in an emergency, are you confident that you’d be able to handle it?”

“What kind of questions are these?”

“If you can’t say yes to at least one of those questions, then there’s no point in partnering up. In that case, I think that independent action would suit us best. Can’t we also say that this arrangement is a form of cooperation?”

“If you bend the definitions, I guess, but…”

Verica brushed back her bangs again. It must have been a nervous tic.

“If something actually happens, we’re responsible for each other’s safety. I still think it would be best to stay together, at least in the Fantasm World.”

I thought about it. “Alright. When we enter the Fantasm World we can reconvene to discuss this further.” I didn’t have any practical experience with Fantasm Worlds, after all, so it might do me good to follow someone else’s lead.

Verica slowly nodded.

“We should probably exchange contact information in case anything comes up,” she said, rolling up her sleeve to reveal a black leather wristband. There was a glassy pane embedded in it, so it must have been one of those hologram-projecting devices that I saw people using occasionally. “What’s your number?”

I had no clue, so I said, “I don’t want to exchange information.”

Then I quickly walked away before she could ask anything else.

Negotiation success. Now I just had to do something about all these travel applications.

It would be weird for Acacius to ask someone else to help fill out his personal information, so I had to figure out a different way.

After the school day was over, I headed to the Office of Student Affairs and went to one of the workers at the desk.

“Hello, what can I help you with?”

“Hello,” I said, sliding Acacius’ student ID across the desk. “Due to some recent issues I’ve had, I’d like to verify my information in the system. Could you help me check that everything is correct?”

“Certainly,” he said, pulling up a screen whose contents were blurred from my viewing angle. He tapped away at his keyboard. “What exactly would you like to check?”

“First, is ‘Acacius Duval’ spelled correctly?” I said.

“It matches what is on your student ID.”

“Good. Then can you read out how my address is spelled within your system?”

After chatting with the desk worker for a while, I got ahold of the Duval estate’s official mailing address, Acacius’ personal information, and a few other important bits of citizen registration information. I carefully memorized everything, thanked the worker, and went back to my dorm room to fill out my applications.

Acacius’ birthday was in the late summer; it had already passed by the time I arrived. I wondered what he usually did to celebrate his birthday, if anything. I could easily picture him as the type of person to forgo any celebration, save for one or two private rituals he didn’t tell anyone about.

On Friday, I turned in my forms and made some soup after classes. Cynara didn’t show up, though, which was sad. I’d have to find a way to get her address sometime without raising questions about why Acacius didn’t remember the residence where he’d lived last year.

I spent the weekend reading about Fulsgate, preparing supplies, and practicing aura with Etienne. My progress with aura was apparently pretty fast. Etienne told me I’d be able to advance to the Energy stage within a couple of months if I kept practicing diligently.

“The main thing is gettin’ practical experience,” he said. “It’s one thing to use aura to read an object’s properties, a whole ‘nother beast to circulate aura in it without ruinin’ it somehow.” He plucked another leaf off a branch and handed it to me. “Here, try again.”

I dropped my latest shredded leaf and took it from his hands. “Wouldn’t it be better to practice with something sturdier? Like a twig.”

“Nah. If you practice with somethin’ too hardy, you’ll have a hard time gaining sensitivity later on. Just look at all those so-called ‘swordmasters’ in the capitol — can’t use anything less than an artisan’s ranked work, and can’t bring out its full potential neither.” Etienne snorted. “Pansies in a greenhouse with no flexibility at all. Just suck it up and break a buncha delicate goods first. You’ll thank me for it later.”

“I might, but this tree sure won’t. What’ll you do if I strip the whole riverbank bare?”

“If it takes you that long to learn what I’m teachin’ ya, I’ll beat you up myself.”

For supplies, aside from buying new breathable clothes that were easy to move in, I also bought food rations, a metal water container that could double as a cooking pot, a compact blanket, a compass, ropes, hunting supplies, and flint. While practicing for the duel, I’d figured out that I could summon [Caller] directly in addition to copying it with my World Proof, so I had two knives I could summon at any time; however, they were really distinctive, so I also got a cheap dagger just in case I needed to be discreet.

Last, I went to get officially certified artifacts that would enable me to use 6E and aura force frames in the Fantasm World.

After taking a light rail down to Nithemoore’s municipal center, I went to the shrines erected across the street and bought two cheap artifacts they had for sale, created in amulet form for ease of carrying. One was a six-spoked wheel that flashed in different colors; the other was some abstract art-like symbol that twisted in three directions. Then, together with Isul’s little charm, I strung them on a corded necklace and tucked them under my shirt collar. That way, they couldn’t be easily pulled off or lost during a fight.

When Monday rolled around, Professor Raoul took attendance at home room before distributing glossy, important-looking documents to everyone.

“These certificates are proof of your authorized entry to the Fantasm World,” he said. “Be sure not to lose them.”

Next, our class, along with the other classes in our year, took the light rails down to the city’s main transit center. It was located near the river, where travelers could board or disembark from passenger boats, and it had a few large, open lots where airships regularly arrived and departed, stately and silent in the air.

We weren’t taking either of those modes of transportation. Instead, after some administrative coordination and a security checkpoint, we went to a large central hall that contained multiple towering stone doorways shimmering with light. Intricate runes were engraved around each doorway. The pathways were clearly marked with fence rails, accompanied by signs warning travelers not to step off the given pathways — it could damage the rune circuits and endanger anyone using the spatial transference doorways.

The actual process of using those doorways was pretty simple, though, since all you had to do was walk through when the technician waved you in.

It felt like stepping through a cold, gel-like barrier. Then, in the blink of an eye, I found myself in a grand hall that had replaced Iyiria’s characteristic fondness for warm stone mosaics with a love for uniformly colored walls, stained glass windows, and elaborately carved pillars.

Professor Raoul gathered our class together and told us, “You have two hours to explore the city. Return to the transit center by eleven o’clock so that we can complete the safety orientation before entering the Fantasm World at noon.”

Then he set us loose to explore.

Fulsgate was a bustling city that favored open-air architecture and large, airy windows. The streets were wider to make room for large transportation vehicles. Light-colored buildings with neatly tiled roofs lined themselves up in careless rows along the terraced hills overlooking a sparkling sea.

According to the reading I’d done, the city-district of Fulsgate had a bit of a special status. It was located on the narrow strip of land connecting the Kingdom of Iyiria to the Lemirian Empire, where a few low-lying mountains widened the isthmus. Nominally, it belonged to Iyiria, but it lay just outside the western boundary laid down by the Great Dragon, so the Lemirian Empire had never ceased eyeing it. Its position between the two nations, as well as its many specialty products, made it an important point of trade.

Because of its disputed territorial status, Fulsgate had been diplomatically named a “special autonomous zone” that mostly governed itself. It was effectively run by the Broken Kaleidoscope, which was an international research organization that dealt with “systematic frame technology,” but I didn’t really understand what that meant.

Apparently, the Fantasm World we were visiting was just one of many that the Broken Kaleidoscope researched, but it was part of the “kaleidoscope perspective” frame system that the Broken Kaleidoscope had named itself after.

In any case, I was happy to wander around the merchant district for a while, browsing the open-air market’s local produce and looking through the stylishly arranged windows of specialty stores. I saw a lot of art, hand-painted handicrafts, and stained glass pieces. Many signs were written in both Iyirian and a foreign language that shared part of the Iyirian alphabet, which I assumed was Lemirian.

I didn’t know much about governance, so I couldn’t infer much about Fulsgate’s societal infrastructure. I only felt that Fulsgate, like the city of Nithemoore, was a peaceful and prosperous place.

If it was possible to live this kindly, then why the hell did my world turn out that way?

I spent some time to settle my mood before returning to the transit center for the safety briefing.

A group of people in uniformed blue coats had arrived, speaking with our teachers and bustling about the area. At the front was a dark-skinned woman with short, tightly coiled hair and stylish pants. After the teachers finished taking roll call, she got on a stool and clapped her hands.

“Attention, everyone!” she called. “Hello! My name is Hanan. I am a senior network artisan of the Broken Kaleidoscope, specializing in the kaleidoscope perspective frame, and I will be your guide for today. For your own safety, please pay attention to what I am about to say!

“Today, we will be entering the Fantasm World, KP-04. As you can tell from the name, this is the fourth discovered Fantasm World from the kaleidoscope perspective system. It is an unsolved Fantasm World, and although it has been under control for over a decade now, that is no reason for complacency! We will now review the emergency contingency plans.”

Hanan told us some important things.

First, as an unsolved Fantasm World, KP-04 looped through a set period of time — in its particular case, seven days. KP-04 was only safe to inhabit for the first four days. Therefore, a ritual for the Scribe was performed on the third day in order to rewind the Fantasm World’s timeline back to day one. Hanan’s accompanying staff were back-up ritual specialists in case all three teams on rotation in KP-04 were somehow unable to perform the ritual.

Second, should KP-04 reach the fourth day of its timeline, it would suffer a “visually transmitted” catastrophe, the exact nature of which was difficult to determine because everyone who had seen it had died. Therefore, if the timeline were to progress, everyone was advised to find a safe place, barricade themselves in, and ideally keep their eyes closed for the next three days.

Third, the emergency systems. Hanan used a hologram to project a diagram of a single island, the city on it, the caves beneath its mountains, and the seas around it. She pointed out the main research center in the city aboveground, where the Scribe’s ritual would be carried out, and she also showed us the gathering points in the cave systems under the mountains, where emergency provisions and supplies had been placed. One of them also had a back-up setup for the Scribe’s ritual. In case of emergency, we were advised to regroup at one of these areas as soon as possible.

Hanan then had her team pass out leaflets containing information on KP-04’s general culture as well as overall timeline.

“For those of you entering Fantasm Worlds for the first time,” she said, “the process may be disorienting and strange. Remember to keep calm, be patient, and observe your surroundings. The Tripartite will always assign you a suitable role within a Fantasm World.

“Most of you will find yourselves as an ordinary citizen in the island’s downtown district. If a denizen speaks to you, be sure not to contradict their understanding and interpretation of the world. Conclude the conversation as soon as possible and bring yourself to the nearest significant landmark. Our staff will come find you and guide you to the rest of the group.”

Hanan finished off with some promises that even if we got lost, her team would be able to find any stragglers, and that as long as everyone was careful, KP-04 was quite safe.

It seemed like one of those low-risk, high-fallout scenarios that people only ever thought about in theory, like, “What happens if the quantum territory collapses?” Most of the time it wouldn’t, but that one in a million chance could wipe out an entire population.

Uh, this comparison was kind of scary, actually. It would be great if Fantasm Worlds weren’t like that in any way.

We boarded chartered buses that ran silently with no emissions that I could sense. It was a twenty minute ride out of the city proper, out into a fenced-off area in the hills with security guards that checked everyone’s papers at the entrance.

Then finally, I laid my eyes on a Fantasm World for the first time.

Between the trees, a pulsating rift tore open space, swirling with impossible colors that left imprints behind my eyelids when I blinked. Small eddies of wind swirled around its dark and ragged borders, tugging leaves and stray branches closer to its entrance.

A golden phantom of a snake encircled the rift, biting the end of its tail. A message in the same script used in my Record of Existence was inscribed on its scales.

[May those who challenge the circle of history have the strength to break it.]

That felt ominous. Forget my grades; should I just leave?

If I wanted to stay in this world, though, I needed to learn about Fantasm Worlds eventually. Maybe it would be better to do it under controlled circumstances when there was emergency infrastructure in place.

As everyone lined up to enter the Fantasm World, Verica approached me with a grave expression on her face.

“Acacius. Don’t forget to meet up after we enter.”

I nodded.

“I’m serious,” she repeated. “Even if you like acting alone, it’s still safest for everyone to have a designated partner.”

“You take your responsibilities quite seriously,” I observed.

Verica narrowed her eyes. “You should, too.”

“If you warn someone not to put their hand in the fire and they do it, do you feel responsible, too?”

“Maybe not,” said Verica, “but it’s still the right thing to pull them away.”

If she really thought that way, it’d be hard not to like her just for that.

“Are you very close to Luka?” I asked.

“Why are you asking?”

“You just reminded me of him for some reason.”

I wasn’t sure why, though. Yeah, I’d learned Luka was the type of guy who’d dive recklessly into dangerous situations to save one friend, but that was different from being the type of person who would seriously apply their moral principals even to people they didn’t like. Why had I thought of him…?

I felt like I was forgetting something.

“What do you mean by that?” Verica said suspiciously.

“Just take it as a passing thought,” I said. “Luka seems to have gotten himself in trouble recently. You might want to watch out for yourself, too.”

Verica narrowed her eyes. “Is that a threat?”

I knew that delivering a warning from Acacius’ mouth would obscure my message, but still, if she chose to ignore it, that wasn’t my fault.

“See you soon, Verica,” I said.

I turned away and, following the footsteps of those before me, stepped through the portal.

The ground dropped from under me. The world disappeared in a riot of force and color. I felt like I was falling.

Then, neat as a hook, something pulled me out of my body into the realm of consciousness — just like the time that Luka had summoned me. My physical senses fell away even as my spiritual body unfurled like a cloud of smoke.

A compact and glittering consciousness brushed against mine.

It unfolded tendrils of thought in fractal brightness and reached out. It didn’t think in human thoughts, but I could sense something like emotion from it: surprise and curiosity, hope, and finally, trust. It let out a decisive and affirmative pulse.

What the hell did that mean? Why did it take me here? What about my body that was falling through a portal right now?!

But before I could try asking, a strong force wrapped around me and pulled me away. My senses inverted and turned upside-down, so chaotic I couldn’t grasp a single thing.

And then, I was plunged into darkness.

It was tight and cramped. I was suffocating. Struggling to move in the restrictive area, I strained against my bindings until they started to crack.

But coordinating my limbs felt weird. Something wasn’t matching up right. I struggled to pull myself out of my container with my — arms? My legs?

Fresh air washed over me, and I shivered. I still couldn’t see anything, but some kind of instinct had me opening my wings.

Wait. Wings?

I took a moment to take stock of my body.

First, my arms. I couldn’t feel any articulate fingers, so I clumsily used the end of my limbs to paw at the rest of my body.

I felt fur. A second pair of arms. A third pair of arms — no, they must have all been legs. I reached up and tentatively felt at my face.

Roundness. A pair of sensitive antenna that jolted when I touched it. A long proboscis. And last of all, reaching back, I felt a pair of damp wings that, seemingly of their own accord, were stretching and fluttering to dry in the slight breeze.

…

Hey.

Didn’t Hanan say that we’d be given appropriate roles once we entered the Fantasm World?

Hadn’t she said we’d probably end up as ordinary citizens?

Expert, my ass! What a freaking liar!

Why the hell had I been turned into a bug?!

Chapter 17 Chapter 19