Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

  Garen smiled, but remained silent. According to the myths, this Giant Tortoise was the guide to the underworld, and the world that it was heading to was not a place living creatures could get involved with. Even merely looking would cause blindness.

  "It’s heading towards the underworld. Don’t you want to take a look?"

  "Is it?" Garen only smiled, but did not fall for her tricks at all.

  The little girl’s eyes darted around.

  "Weren’t you looking for Kid? I know where he is now."

  "Oh?" Garen looked at her with a faintly shocked expression. "You heard the things I said earlier?"

  "That guy Kid has constantly been hanging one at one place recently, so it would be really easy to find him." The girl had a sly look in her eyes. "He seems heartbroken."

  "Heartbroken?" Garen never thought that Kid would be so grown up.

  "Let’s go, I’ll take you there!" The little girl pulled Garen’s hand again, before their surroundings became blurry suddenly, while countless images flashed around constantly amidst the blurriness.

  After an unknown amount of time, their surroundings stopped moving and became clear again.

  Garen stood up steadily and took in his surroundings.

  He and the little girl stood in a vast farm that was filled with sporadic clusters of large yellow pumpkins.

  Most of the pumpkins were hollowed out, and although they were some solid ones, only a few of them were left.

  The ground below his feet was pitch-black, as if it were lifeless, scorched earth.

  In the furthest and deepest end of the farm stood a wooden house. The faint sound of what sounded like Kid’s voice could be heard from within, singing to a tune.

  Garen glanced at the little girl, but realized that she had disappeared suddenly, leaving him by himself at their original spot.

  He furrowed his eyebrows, and walked towards the house on the far end of the farm.

  As the distance between them closed, and the sound of Kid’s singing became clearer.

  "……if you plant a girl in spring, you’ll reap many girls in autumn……"

  Garen’s words were caught in his throat; when he came closer, he suddenly saw a small piece of empty land in front of the house, where Kid stood watering something with a kettle in his hands.

  The empty piece of land was merely an area made up of black dirt, planted in the clearing was an enlarged egg; the bottom half of the egg was stuck inside the dirt, while the top half was being watered by the kettle.

  As if he had heard something, Kid raised his head and turned towards Garen’s position.

  "Nineheads Boss?"

  "What are you doing?" Garen walked towards Kid.

  "I’m sowing seeds," Kid answered simply. "If I plant them in spring, I’ll have a wife in autumn."

  Garen patted Kid’s head, unsure of what to say.

  That little girl had a mysterious attitude. At first she seemed to harbor malicious intent towards Garen, but later realized that he was an interesting plaything and ended up playing with him later. Finally, her attitude changed again, and she sent him to Kid voluntarily. No one knew what she was actually thinking about.

  "What is this place exactly? That little girl brought me here," Garen finally asked in a low voice.

  When Kid heard him say ‘little girl’, his body shivered suddenly, as if he were scared somehow. "This is the True World, the real world, that we Listeners can come into contact with. All of the appearances that we are usually unaware of, they will all show up here. And since time has stopped here, even if one spends an eternity in here, only a few seconds would have passed outside."

  "True World?" Garen furrowed his eyebrows.

  "Yes, relatively speaking. Boss, the place where you used to be was the opposite, Normal World, a place where you were unable to see the truth directly," explained Kid elaborately. "It’s rumored that the strongest Totem User can touch the borders of this world, possessing the qualifications to enter this place. In other words, things in the Normal World, they’re present here, while the things that are absent in the Normal World would still be present here. The Normal World is an extension of the what appears in the True World, except that it’s just a part of its outer ring. The relationship between both of them, when loosely described as a simile, can be likened to an egg; the egg white is the Normal World, while the egg yolk is the True World."

  "So what does the Door to Heaven mean then?"

  "The True World is a visualization of all truths and all sources, while the Door to Heaven is the door to all of the sources in this world. I’m unsure about it myself, but perhaps there are deeper layers of the True World inside, where deeper levels of truth and sources may be seen. Or maybe it’s a whole different thing. No one has went in before, because no one can open it." Kid was honest as usual, answering everything that he was asked.

  But Garen had been thrown into this world mysteriously, and still had some doubts in his heart. Even though he had received some explanations from Kid, these uncertainties had not disappeared yet.

  "My guess is that someone wanted to open the Door to Heaven, so that girl dragged Boss here, perhaps to use Boss’s powers to stop that person," Kid held the kettle and pondered. "After all, her parasitic strength isn’t strong enough."

  He paused. "Or maybe, she’s thinking of changing parasites……"

  "Whatever, just send me back first," Garen exhaled.

  "Alright," Kid nodded, before pulling Garen’s hand, and leaping a step forward gently.

  Tch!

  Their surroundings flashed in a blur once again, and a loud noise echoed beside their ears, before the sound of a band slowly filled their ears.

  Garen’s vision turned black and lit up again, before he realized that he was standing on the balcony as before, his hands still rested on the railing as he looked into the faraway distance. Meanwhile, Kid was standing beside him.

  "You said that she may have been looking for me because she wanted to change her parasite?" Garen merely transferred his thoughts to Kid, no longer having to open his mouth to speak to him directly.

  "Yes, that’s very likely, the Door to Heaven exists within the True World, but there was once an Imprinted madman that used some unknown measures to merge a part of the True World with the real world. Now, many strange occurrences are the result of this mergence," answered Kid while nodding.

  Garen thought of Hellgate suddenly, and using unknown measures, Obscuro caused the Great Turmoil. The black copper was also part of their doing, and after the Great Turmoil, various weird occurrences also followed. The likeliest person to be this madman, was undoubtedly and certainly Hellgate.

  "Thus, since parts of both worlds have merged, the Door to Heaven will probably be revealed in reality," Kid continued to explain. "She came looking for you because she probably saw the changes that would happen afterwards. When the Door to Heaven finally appears and that Imprinted madman wants to push it open, he would definitely choose to do it in the True World where he would not be disturbed by anyone, and since time stops there, only other Imprinted individuals would be able to intervene. His threats would be very much smaller."

  "So she was making preemptive damage control measures?" Garen said immediately. "Why don’t you want the Door to Heaven to be pushed open?"

  Kid became silent at once.

  After some time, he finally opened his mouth to speak again.

  "The Door to Heaven is the source of everything in the True World, but once it’s pushed open…… We Listeners all have bad feelings about that."

  Garen had a vague feeling that it was likely the Door to Heaven had a certain link to the Black Smoke Pot that he passed through in the beginning.

  When he returned this time, he truly came into contact with the mysterious world that Kid inhabited. His heart simply defined the True World as the inner world, while reality was defined as the outer world, making everything clearer.

  Now he had grasped more than half of everything, and he was certain that the person who had plans with the inner world’s Door to Heaven, was almost certainly Hellgate.

  Hellgate got out for his own goals, and he had also integrated all of the resistance forces in an attempt to uncover the true secrets of the world. Was this the true insights and thinking after achieving the peak of Form 5?

  Unfortunately, according to the original historia, he fell short in the end, and what lay behind the Door to Heaven was still something that eluded the world. However, the preparation and work underwent to open the Door to Heaven caused serious injuries, and even death to befall the people of the outer world, and although mankind’s violent counter attacks that followed were enough to exceed Hellgate’s limits, it eventually ended up in hatred and grief.

  "What do we need to do to open the Door to Heaven?" Garen inhaled deeply, before asking in a low voice.

  Kid fell silent again for a moment, but answered regardless.

  "The Door to Heaven is the foundation of the sources of the world, the symbol of all of the rules of truth. In order to open it…… One can only observe it continuously and investigate its shifts."

  "Shifts?"

  "Yes," Kid nodded. "Every time the world undergoes major shifts, shifts enough to affect the rules of changes, the Door to Heaven will undergo changes as well."

  "Major changes……" Garen seemed to understand the basic reasoning for Hellgate to unleash the Great Turmoil. If it was merely the doing of a mad scientist for the sake of research……

  Suddenly, he remembered that this planet was merely one of the countless planets in the universe, thus, did the inner world of this planet, exist on other planets as well?

  Suddenly, he realized, that if the Secret Technique World also existed inside the inner world, then, those myths, those relics……

  Except that the inner world was a wasteland, and there were too many strange occurrences inside, and most of them were derived from fixed rules which would not allow normal life forms to step in at all, but perhaps he would be able to find certain clues about Warlocks from there.

  Garen could now feel that he was currently walking on the path that countless Warlocks had crossed before.

  However, he was not using normal means. Besides the fact that he had crossed through the Secret Technique World, he was also carrying talents, attributes, and abilities that had no relation to Warlocks at all. Although the Black Smoke Pot’s startup and pass-through was merely an accident, if the explosion of the nuclear bomb and the volcano had not happened at the same time to amplify and activate a specific power, or if the self defense necklace that Old Man had given him hadn’t worked; he would have not been able to come to this world if even one of these conditions were lacking.

  Garen had a feeling that he was an illegal immigrant that had accidentally arrived on the planet where Warlocks once walked. He had initially hoped to walk on the path of the Warlocks, but because of the possibilities of his attributes and talents, in a short span of time he was able to achieve the progress that others would only reach in decades, and this terrifying rate of growth allowed him to walk in the direction of self-exploration.

  However, this speed was too fast, and did not allow him to brake at all, instantly going over his head instead.

  Earth’s knowledge systems combined abilities and talents, and Garen had now walked onto a path that only belonged to himself.

  When he thought of this, Garen became aware and squeezed the railing. At this moment, Kid’s voice continued to ring out beside him.

  "There was once a parasite that deduced something about the Door to Heaven, saying that it was an entrance that separated everything, that it was the door of life, and also the door of death. The inside of the entrance was chaotic, random. At the same time, it was also the source of all of the rules. Perhaps that sentence was also the reason that influence people’s desires to open it."

  After listening to that sentence, for unknown reasons, Garen suddenly remembered the lonely period of time that he endured while traveling to this planet.

  Within the darkness, there seemed to be a large river that pushed him along, and now thinking back upon it, there were countless different powers that dragged him along at that time. When the Black Smoke Pot’s surge of power broke through everything, it decided upon a determined force that instantly brought him to this planet.

  When the memory began to really come back to him, the Warlock’s power was not the true catalyst that brought him to the Totem World. They did not drag him here, but among the countless powers that had been pulling him along, he merely pushed one of them gently, picking the direction that was best suited to himself.

  "At that time, what would happen if I had picked a different direction to fly in?" Garen could not help but consider this thought, and even though this thought flashed through his mind quickly, it was still deeply embedded in his head.