By the time Ren reached the waiting area, there were already quite a few people there.
Some looked around his age, maybe a little older. Others were clearly adults with more experience written all over them. A good number of them wore armor of different styles—some light and flexible, some heavy-looking with layered plates, and some that looked simple at first glance but probably cost more than most people could imagine. A few others wore plain clothes, but Ren didn't think that meant much. In a world like this, the most dangerous people were not always the ones who looked like warriors, but those who wore fake smiles, got close to you, and betrayed you when your guard was down.
He quietly found a place near one side of the waiting area and stood there.
No one paid much attention to him.
That suited him just fine.
Some people around him were talking in low voices. Others were checking maps on their Light Brains, examining gear, or sitting with their eyes closed, probably resting or preparing themselves mentally. One man was eating something from a sealed container as if he were about to get on a bus instead of entering a Secret Realm. Another group of three people seemed to be arguing softly about route choices.
Ren listened here and there without making it obvious.
Nothing too useful came up.
Mostly normal things.
Warnings about not going too deep too early.
Complaints about transport fees.
Arguments over whether certain materials were still worth collecting after recent price changes.
In other words, nothing surprising.
The one-hour wait passed more quickly than Ren expected.
Eventually, a staff member arrived and called out that it was time for the next transfer group. Ren moved along with the others as they followed him deeper into the transport section.
The further in they went, the more obvious it became that this place was much larger than it should have been from the outside.
Space technology again.
Ren had already guessed as much earlier, but now it was impossible to miss.
The corridor widened, opened, then opened even more, until they finally stepped into a vast section that made even the guild's main hall look ordinary.
This was the teleportation center.
Ren's eyes moved around quietly as he took it all in.
There were a massive number of teleportation circles there.
Some were small, clearly meant for one person or a handful of people.
Others were huge, large enough for entire teams, cargo transfers, or maybe even military-level movement.
Some were out in the open.
Some were enclosed in separate rooms.
Some were surrounded by barriers and staff, clearly restricted.
Others looked routine, almost casual, as if people used them all day long.
The entire place looked like a strange mix of sci-fi technology and cultivation civilization.
The circles themselves were not plain platforms. They were covered in symbols, patterns, and lines that looked too complex to be called decoration. Ancient-looking script curved around modern structural material. Energy nodes were set into the floor at specific points, and faint light flowed along the carved patterns in a way that made them look alive.
The circle their group was led to was medium-sized.
Not one of the giant ones, but not small either.
As Ren stepped closer, he noticed the patterns and inscriptions more clearly.
They shimmered with colors that shifted between green, purple, blue, and black, all woven together in a way that looked both beautiful and dangerous. Some of the symbols reminded him of old cultivation novels from his previous life. Others looked almost like circuits. Put together, the whole thing gave off the feeling of a machine built from ancient knowledge.
He couldn't help staring for a second.
It was the first time he had ever seen a working teleportation circle this close.
The staff member leading them onto the platform said in a practiced voice, "Once the barrier rises, do not move around unnecessarily. Do not interfere with the activation lines. Remain calm during transfer."
People nodded.
Ren stepped onto the platform with the others.
There were around twenty people in this batch.
The moment everyone had gotten into place, something like an invisible shield rose around the edge of the platform. It was faint at first, then became clearer as it sealed the group inside.
Ren narrowed his eyes slightly.
So even the transfer itself had layered protection.
Made sense.
A few seconds later, the teleportation system activated.
The carvings beneath their feet began shining brighter and brighter. Energy ran through the inscriptions in pulses. The colors deepened. For a brief instant, Ren had the strange feeling that the ground beneath him had become less solid—not unstable, just… less normal.
Then came the burst of light.
It was bright enough that instinctively he closed his eyes for a fraction of a second.
After that, everything went dark.
Not painful darkness.
Not frightening darkness.
Just a strange, in-between blankness where his body felt like it was there and not there at the same time.
Then, almost before his mind could properly process it, the darkness receded.
When Ren opened his eyes again, he was somewhere else.
He was standing inside another building.
This one was much smaller than the teleportation center inside the guild, though still clearly important. The platform beneath his feet was different too—simpler, more utilitarian, less decorative than the main guild one. The staff here were also different. Their uniforms were not exactly the same, and the general feel of the place was rougher, less polished, more frontier-like.
The shield around the platform faded away.
The staff member on this side spoke, informing them that they had arrived and should move in order.
Ren stepped off the circle with the others.
After showing the transport token and clearing the short exit process, he finally walked out of the building.
The moment he stepped outside, his eyes shifted slightly.
This place was like an open market built on the edge of danger.
There were many people moving around outside, far more than he had expected.
Temporary shops had been set up in rows, some in tent-like structures, some in portable metal booths, and others under reinforced canopies. There were stalls selling food, gear, basic tools, medicines, maps, emergency kits, and even small batches of materials that people must have brought out from nearby trips.
And all of this existed inside a larger enclosed zone.
Ren quickly noticed the energy shield around the entire area.
It rose high into the air, faint but visible if one looked carefully. Beyond it, he could see towering trees, strange vegetation, and movement deeper in the wild. The protected market and staging area looked like a small human outpost pressed against the unknown.
Then his gaze found the thing that drew everyone's attention sooner or later.
The portal.
It stood beyond the market area like something from a dream or a myth.
The border of the portal looked like a slice of the galaxy itself—dark and deep, yet filled with shifting points of light and color. The inside was even stranger, a mixture of purple, blue, black, silver, and flashes of other colors that changed every few moments like liquid light.
Ren stood there for a second, looking at it.
He wasn't exactly mesmerized.
But he was definitely awestruck.
This…
This was a Secret Realm entrance.
He started walking toward it.
On the way, he passed through the outer market area and looked around carefully.
A lot of things were being sold.
Some were basic.
Some were clearly far beyond him.
There were swords, sabers, knives, gloves, crystals, strange orbs, bottles of liquid, monster bones, plant roots, map scrolls, little charms, armor pieces, and books or tomes whose covers alone made them look valuable.
And for the first time since arriving here, Ren began using one of his system's functions properly.
SCAN.
He didn't use it too openly or too often in a way that would make him stand there staring at random stalls like a lunatic, but as he walked, he started scanning various items.
A blade here.
A stone there.
One strange-looking orb.
A thick old-looking tome.
A pair of gauntlets.
A dried-up plant sample in a sealed case.
The results were interesting.
Some items looked impressive but turned out to be ordinary or just decorative.
Some looked plain but were actually decent.
One weapon looked almost like some legendary main-character treasure from a fantasy novel, glowing and dramatic, but when he scanned it, it turned out to be a good-quality weapon… and nothing more.
Not garbage.
But not heaven-defying either.
Ren almost laughed.
"So no lucky cheat moments today, huh?"
He kept walking and scanning.
Still nothing outrageous.
No hidden divine weapon.
No absurdly underpriced miracle treasure.
No inheritance casually lying around because the universe had decided the main character deserved it.
Which honestly made more sense.
This wasn't a novel.
"Yeah," Ren thought to himself, "looks like my luck is not at main-character level."
He didn't mind too much.
That kind of thing was fun to imagine, but he would rather rely on the things he actually had—his optimized cultivation, his pathway, and the system—than on random miracle luck.
By the time he finished passing through most of the market stretch, he had reached the portal side.
There were lines there.
And security too, clearly connected to the Explorer Guild and whatever joint local authority managed the outpost.
Some people were in teams.
Some stood alone.
Others looked like veterans who had done this many times already.
Ren joined the line and waited quietly.
As he stood there, he watched the people ahead of him going in one by one or in small groups. The process was simple enough—show access proof, get scanned, move forward, enter the portal.
When his turn finally came, he handed over his ticket.
The staff member scanned it, checked something on a side panel, then nodded and took it.
"Proceed."
Ren stepped forward.
As he passed through the portal, the sensation was different from the teleportation circle.
The circle had felt structured, mechanical, controlled.
The portal felt alive.
Or at least less stable in a human-made way.
The moment he crossed the threshold, it felt like pushing through some kind of membrane—thin, cool, and strange. For an instant, there was darkness again, but not the clean darkness of teleportation. This one had depth to it, like he was crossing through a layer between two worlds.
Then, suddenly—
He was inside.
Ren found himself standing in a forest.
The first thing he noticed was the air.
It felt different.
Denser.
Richer.
It carried a wild freshness mixed with something harder to describe—something like old energy, wet wood, and living growth.
The second thing he noticed was that he was alone.
No one else stood nearby.
Then he remembered what he had read.
Everyone who passed through the portal was randomly transported to different positions inside the realm. The only exception was if they used a special team binding scroll—something created by high-level cultivators, according to the public info—which allowed linked teammates to pass through together and arrive close to one another.
Those scrolls were mostly used by established teams.
Ren, obviously, had no such thing.
So random entry it was.
He looked around carefully.
The forest around him was alive in a way that normal forests were not.
There were many kinds of plants around him, and some small animals too, but even from a glance it was obvious this place wasn't normal.
Some plants had faint fire burning on parts of them without actually being consumed.
Some leaves glimmered with odd colors.
Some vines moved just a little too deliberately when the wind touched them.
The animals, at least the ones nearby, did not seem aggressive.
Still, they looked strange.
Some were shaped like twisted combinations of things he knew—too many limbs, odd scales, unnatural eyes, fur patterns that looked almost like markings, or bodies that seemed like someone had mixed different creatures together and somehow made it work.
Ren watched one small creature with a lizard-like body and feathered ears disappear behind a glowing fern.
"…Yeah. Definitely not Earth."
After a moment, he opened his terminal and confirmed what he already knew.
No connection to the outside world.
As expected.
He then opened the map he'd just bought and looked at where he was.
He saw his position.
He let out a breath after seeing that he had not been teleported into the core area.
That would have been a disaster.
But he also wasn't in the outermost zone either, which was slightly annoying. Instead, he was somewhere in the middle region between the outer and inner area.
Not terrible.
But also Not great.
He would have preferred the outer area for a first entry, but at least according to the map, his current position was not in one of the marked high-danger zones. There were no especially powerful monsters or top-grade dangerous plants nearby in the currently known area.
That was something.
He didn't move immediately.
First, Ren reached into his storage ring and took out a small black crystal.
He looked at it for a brief second, then pressed it against his chest.
The response was immediate.
The crystal softened like liquid and spread over his body in a dark flowing layer, enclosing him almost instantly before stabilizing into a fitted combat suit.
Ren looked down at it briefly.
Smooth.
Protective.
Light enough not to interfere with movement.
Good quality.
Definitely better than anything he could have bought for himself right now.
Next, he took out a pair of strange gloves.
The moment he put them on, their shape changed, tightening and shifting into a metallic structure that still moved naturally with his fingers. A faint energy ran through them.
These were the suit and weapon-support gear his parents had left for him.
And just like the storage ring, they had come through Alex, their team leader.
At first, Ren had thought it was too much.
These weren't low-end things someone casually handed over to a random junior.
Even if they weren't top-tier by the standards of powerful cultivators, they were still far better than what he could normally get at his level.
But Alex had been very direct about that too.
It was an investment.
Simple.
Straightforward.
And honestly, Ren preferred that over fake modesty or mysterious benefactors acting like everything had happened by fate.
He flexed his fingers once inside the gloves.
The fit was excellent.
He scanned both the suit and the gloves just to confirm.
As expected, both were high quality for his current level—far better than ordinary outside-market gear and more than enough for a first realm expedition.
A small smile appeared on Ren's face.
"Good."
Then the smile faded, replaced by focus.
He was inside now.
No more training room.
No more maps and plans in a safe building.
This was the real thing.
Ren took one more look around, checked the nearest safe-ish route on the map, then started moving.
(Author Note: If you enjoyed the chapter, please vote, rate, and leave a comment if you can. Your support really helps the novel grow and motivates me to keep writing. Thank you for reading!)