(3rd POV)
Arthur brought the full group to Room 404: Firfel, Apollonia, Sylwen, Kaiser, and Keanu. The last two weren't optional — if things went sideways in a world with its own deities, he wanted the backup.
Before stepping through, he cast a last glance back and confirmed that his clones — calibrated as closely as possible to his own personality — were in place to keep the Star Wars production moving in his absence.
The array powered up. The portal swelled to full brightness.
Apollonia watched it with wide, unblinking eyes, her expression caught somewhere between wonder and the sincere suspicion that she was dreaming.
They stepped through.
Thick fog swallowed them immediately. Without the light bleeding through from the portal behind and the faint glow of the one ahead, orientation would have been impossible. Arthur hadn't expected this — the fog was dense and strange, carrying a weight to it that felt like more than weather.
"Firfel, stay close to Apollonia." He glanced back, then reached for Sylwen. "I'll take Sylwen."
Firfel drew Apollonia in. Arthur settled a hand at Sylwen's waist, conservative and steady.
Sylwen said nothing. The fog was thick enough to hide her expression, which was fortunate.
'If my sister could see this right now, I would never live it down.'
Arthur kept his focus forward. Kaiser and Keanu needed no guidance — they moved through the fog with the unhurried ease of beings who had survived considerably stranger things.
Then the strangeness began in earnest.
Distorted voices drifted through the fog from no clear direction. Shapes moved at the edges of visibility — figures that weren't quite right, the geometry of them slightly off.
A humanoid entity passed through their group without acknowledging them, its movement too smooth, too purposeless, gone before anyone could get a proper look at it.
Apollonia pressed closer to Firfel without a word. Firfel, newly a deity and considerably more composed than she might have been otherwise, kept a steady hand on her — though even she couldn't fully suppress the unease crawling up her spine. This space between worlds was wrong in a way that didn't have a clean name.
They walked for thirty minutes.
When the far portal finally resolved fully before them, Arthur paused. Red and blue light spiraled into each other in patterns he recognized — not from anything in this world, but from quantum physics he had studied in his previous life.
The behavior of it, the way the colors folded and intersected, matched theoretical models he had once pored over in textbooks. Seeing it rendered visibly, physically real, was something else entirely.
Then, one after another, they stepped through.
The sensation was nothing like entering the first portal. This one took them — a sharp, total pull, like being drawn through a needle — and deposited them into sudden stillness.
They stood at the center of a vast hall, high-ceilinged and artistic, the floor beneath their feet covered in an elaborate magical array. The architecture around them was refined and deliberate, built with the kind of care that came from a culture that took its craft seriously.
Apollonia immediately bent forward. "Ugh—"
Arthur was at her side before she finished the sound, one hand steadying her, a thread of power easing the nausea back. She straightened slowly, eyes watering.
He looked up.
Saza stood a short distance away, wearing a faint smile. Beside her were two men — one elderly, white-bearded, carrying the settled authority of someone who had held responsibility for a very long time; the other in his forties, refined in bearing, with the quiet self-possession of old money and genuine competence.
Behind them, held at a respectful distance by an invisible magical barrier, was a crowd of young people in sky-blue mage robes — delicate and artistic, clearly academic in design.
They were not managing their reactions particularly well.
"Look, look — those are the people Principal Saza was talking about!"
"The one in front and that girl — those are actual demons! Are they really harmless like she said?"
Arthur caught every word without appearing to.
The old man stepped forward with a bow that was genuine rather than ceremonial. "Welcome to our world. I am Profellie — former Principal of this academy, now serving as Mage Guardian of Eisen City."
"Reiner." The man beside him inclined his head. "A pleasure."
Arthur and the others exchanged greetings in turn. He glanced toward the barrier of students and looked at Saza. "The academy students, I take it."
"The portal sits in a public space," she said, unbothered. "They got here before we could stop them." She lifted a hand. "Somewhere quieter."
Space folded. They reappeared in the Principal's Office.
Kaiser's eyes moved to Saza with a careful, reassessing attention. He kept his expression neutral, but his thoughts were not.
'Her power sits close to mine. Close to Keanu's too. A fight between us would end without a clean winner.'
"Your Space Magic never ceases to impress, Principal Saza," Profellie said warmly.
"It's nothing," she replied.
Arthur had already stopped paying attention to the exchange. His divine sense stretched outward — past the office walls, across the academy grounds, into the city beyond, reading the shape of the world he'd just entered.
He turned to the window.
The office sat at the academy's highest point, and from it the entire city was visible — and beyond the city, open land stretching toward a clean horizon under a sky that felt genuinely, almost unreasonably clear.
Something settled in him unexpectedly.
Firfel came to stand beside him without being asked, and he felt her reaction without looking — the same quiet astonishment, the same involuntary exhale.
She had grown up in a world that had been modernizing at speed for years now, and she was a goddess by any measure. But this world was something else. Untouched by industry, unmarked by the particular kind of exhaustion that came with rapid development. The air coming through the window was clean in a way that felt almost unfair.
Pure. The magical aura of this world was foreign, yes — but pure. Uncontaminated.
Neither of them said anything for a moment.
Just then, Apollonia began coughing — sudden and sharp, her body doubling slightly with the force of it.
Saza and the others turned immediately.
"What's wrong with her?" Reiner asked, his brow creasing with concern.
Arthur was already moving. "Apollonia — stop drawing in the mana. Don't absorb it unconsciously." He set a hand on her back, running a thread of healing power through her, then layered a protective aura over her before stepping back. "The mana here is too pure. For someone not acclimatized to it, pulling it in freely is like drinking water that's too clean — it becomes a poison."
Apollonia straightened slowly, still catching her breath. "I... I understand." She looked embarrassed. The air had felt so good, so genuinely clean, that she had breathed it in greedily without thinking. "I'm sorry."
Nearby, Sylwen had caught herself doing the same thing and quietly reined it back before it became a problem.
With that handled, Arthur turned to Saza. "I held up my end — you made it back to your world. I'd say it's time for you to hold up yours."
Saza didn't even pause to consider it. "Of course. I promised, didn't I?" She gestured toward Reiner. "That's why I asked him here. He's the Guild Master of the Merchant Guild in Eisen City. If you want to establish your company in this world, he's the one to help you do it."
Arthur looked at Reiner properly for the first time since arriving.
Reiner met his gaze with a composed, genuine smile — the kind that came from confidence rather than performance. "I'll do everything within my power to assist you."
"Then I'm in your care," Arthur said.