Hotel Between Worlds

He was back in this strange and bizarre "Border City."

Not long ago, this place had still felt like a vast, eerie, and unsettling city to him. Yet now, seeing those familiar streetlights and buildings, the faint morning light on the streets and in the sky, Darian felt an almost unbelievable sense of nostalgia welling up inside him.

The experience of being trapped in that valley shrouded in eternal night had made even returning to the Border City feel like coming home.

But the next second, the daze brought on by his dwindling life force shattered his emotional reflection. He sluggishly lowered his head and saw bright red blood slowly spreading out beneath him.

His body had been pierced. The horrific wound was enough to be fatal in a short time. Even though his current body possessed remarkable healing abilities and vitality, he knew he was about to die again, something he had grown disturbingly accustomed to.

And the cause of that terrible injury was lying right next to him. The scaly "tail" severed from the monster had fallen through the doorway along with Darian. Incredibly, it still seemed to retain a hint of life or even consciousness. It was slowly writhing in the pool of blood, attempting to crawl away from this place.

Darian could even sense that the thing was trying to crawl away from him... This chunk of flesh was afraid of him.

He frowned and, with great effort, pushed himself up from the ground. He glanced at the entrance to his home just a short distance away, then reached out and grabbed the still-wriggling scaly tail before staggering forward.

As he walked, he muttered under his breath, "Aren't protagonists supposed to be fine after escaping desperate situations…? Why does the map clear and I still keep the injuries, what kind of crappy design is that…? Damn it, this hurts like hell..."

The continued blood loss was gradually clouding his consciousness, and the drain on his stamina made each step harder than the last. He swayed with every movement, barely able to stay upright. By the final few steps, Darian was moving purely on instinct. He didn't even know why he insisted on making it home, maybe to say something to Elara? Or to prevent his "corpse" from being discovered by early morning passersby?

Everything before his eyes was gradually darkening, and the morning light took on a reddish hue. In his mind, he saw Lyra's golden-red eyes that, in the end, were filled with a bloodthirsty hunger, but also a trace of lingering humanity, struggling to remain deep within the crimson glow.

That fox... he wondered how she was doing now. She had said she wouldn't die, but was that really true…?

These thoughts filled his mind as he finally made it to the door. The door wasn't locked. He fumbled at the handle and pushed it open, then stepped inside.

He saw the dining room directly across from the entrance and the oil painting still leaning against the wall. Elara looked up from within the painting, surprised to see him at the door, and her eyes slowly widened.

Darian gave her a fading smile, like a final burst of light before darkness: "Elara, I'm home."

He knew his wound was severe. If it hadn't been for the extraordinary healing capabilities of his current body, he would've already died outside.

Just as that thought crossed his mind, his vision tilted, and he slid down against the doorframe. The familiar weight of darkness closed in from all sides and with it came Elara's terrified scream.

Now he had died inside the house.

…

With a soft screech of brakes, two electric scooters came to a stop deep within Wutong Road. Two figures dismounted, gazing at the old and quiet alley in front of them.

One of them was a middle-aged man who looked reliable and composed. He wore a long brown coat and had a tall, muscular build, dark skin, and short black hair. A jagged scar near his neck gave him a slightly intimidating air, but the tired expression on his face and the dark circles under his eyes clashed starkly with his imposing frame and that fierce scar. His face looked like someone who had been working overtime for three months straight without a single day off.

The other was a young man who looked just barely in his twenties. He also had short black hair, but was much slimmer than the older man. His appearance was average, so ordinary that he could disappear in any crowd. He wore a black and blue jacket with matching pants, his expression tense and stiff, like someone freshly hired who had already been dragged into fieldwork by his supervisor.

The two of them had ridden into this quiet old neighborhood, observing the seemingly ordinary buildings around them. Occasionally, a local resident passed by at a distance, but few paid them any attention.

"This place doesn't look weird at all…" the younger man mumbled. "Captain Song, are you sure this is it?"

"There was an alert from the border just now. Coordinates match this location exactly," the man called Captain Song nodded. "The signal vanished quickly, but it definitely indicated an Otherworld disturbance."

"We rushed all the way here and still didn't make it in time," the young man glanced at their electric scooters and hesitated. "Should we have come by car instead…"

Captain Song gave him a look. "All the vehicles from the Bureau are already out on assignment. The only one left is Xu Jiali's junk heap. You gonna drive that? Even with the pedal to the floor, it might not beat your scooter."

The young man chuckled awkwardly and shifted the topic. "So… um, that person from before her codename was 'Red Riding Hood,' right? From the Fairy Tale Organization? She didn't find anything here either?"

"No, she didn't find a thing. Which makes it even more certain that something's off about this place." Captain Song nodded slowly. "Red Riding Hood has worked plenty of missions for the Special Operations Bureau. I know what she's capable of. Her wolf can sniff out even the faintest anomalies in the environment but she searched here the entire night and found absolutely nothing."

The young man blinked, as if he hadn't quite registered it right away.

"Nothing at all, didn't you get it?" Captain Song reminded him again. "It's too clean. Too normal. There's no place in the Borderland that's ever this clean! Red Riding Hood's wolf can sniff out anomalies anywhere in the city, even the faintest trace. But here… from an occult perspective, this entire street is so 'clean' it's like a vacuum."

At that, the young man finally began to understand what he'd learned during training in the academy finally lined up with reality.

"It's either that this place is really that clean, that a 'pure zone' completely aligned with the outside world has appeared in the Borderland which isn't impossible, considering any place in the world might connect to the Borderland," Captain Song said tiredly, waving his hand, "or, something big is hidden here. Something that's continuously altering the environment. Red Riding Hood's wolves encountered a boundary vacuum in this area."

The tension already on the young man's face visibly tightened.

"I'm not approving any transfer requests to logistics," Captain Song lifted his eyelids and glanced at him. "Nor to another squad."

"I never said I wanted to transfer!" the young man quickly waved his hands. "I was fully prepared when I joined—I'm absolutely committed, loyal, and ready to perform my duties…"

A suddenly ringing cellphone interrupted their conversation—a cheerful melody, the theme from some currently popular anime.

The young man froze for a moment, giving his superior a strange look. "…You watch that too?"

The middle-aged man known as Captain Song visibly twitched. While reluctantly pulling his phone from his pocket, he muttered, "Must be my daughter… she changed it without telling me. She's been watching it lately…"

The young man's expression shifted subtly, but after holding it in for a while, he still didn't say what he was thinking—Is it really okay for a middle schooler to be watching a bunch of girls forming a band…?

Captain Song answered the call, holding the phone to his ear and listening for a few seconds before speaking. "Yeah, Callen and I are already at the site. Just like Red Riding Hood's earlier report, the place is suspiciously clean. You should get things arranged—we may need to set up a permanent surveillance point here. I'll decide who to assign when I get back. Also, contact the Fairy Tale side and see if they can send someone else. This might turn into a long-term operation…"

After hanging up, Captain Song let out a long breath and turned to see the young man named Callen still looking at him.

He paused, then couldn't help but clarify, "It really was my daughter who changed it. I don't watch anime."

Callen quickly cleared his throat. "Uh, cough cough, I believe you. I believe you."

The two shared an awkward moment, then tacitly agreed to drop the subject entirely.

Just then, Callen seemed to notice something.

He furrowed his brows and quickly walked toward a nearby corner of the wall.

"Captain Song, come take a look at this!" he called after glancing down for a moment.

Captain Song walked over and looked in the direction Callen was pointing.

A dark red stain appeared at the corner of the wall. It looked like dried blood—small in size and easy to miss from a distance. But even now, it was shrinking at a rate visible to the naked eye.

It wasn't seeping into the cement; it was vanishing into thin air.

"Blood?" Captain Song frowned at once, then quickly reacted, pulling a plastic tube and a portable scraper from his coat pocket. "No, that's not blood. Collect a sample!"

"Got it." Callen responded, took the sampling tools, and was about to scrape off the remaining dark red "bloodstain" on the wall. But just before his blade made contact, the last speck of red suddenly let out a soft hissing sound—and disappeared completely.

(End of Chapter)

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